A song at Passover is a reminder of Ladino and Sephardic traditions in Greece and the Balkans

Patrick Comerford

Passover this year begins tomorrow evening (Saurday 12 April 2025) and ends on the evening of Sunday week (20 April 2025).

It means there is an overlap between the Jewish celebrations of Passover this year and the Christian celebrations of Holy Week, which, in a rare occurrence, also coincide this year for Christians following both the Western Church Calendar and the Eastern Orthodox Calendar

As I was considering this coincidence in advance of my visit to Greece next week, I came across a relatively modern piyyut in Espanyol, Pesach a la mano, ‘Passover is at hand,’ whose origins date back to 17th century Greece and the work of Hazzan Yosef Shalom Gallego from Thessaloniki.

A piyyuṭ (plural piyyuṭim, Hebrew: פִּיּוּטִים / ‎פיוטים, פִּיּוּט / ‎פיוט‎; from the Koinē Greek: ποιητής, poiētḗs, ‘poet’) is a Jewish liturgical poem, usually sung, chanted, or recited during religious services. Most piyyuṭim are in Mishnaic Hebrew or Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, and most follow some poetic scheme, such as an acrostic following the order of the Hebrew alphabet or spelling out the name of the author.

This piyyuṭ from Greece is in Espanyol or Judaeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino or Judezmo or Spaniolit. This Romance language is derived from Castilian Old Spanish, and it was originally spoken in Spain. After the mass expulsion from Jews in 1492, it spread through the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, including Greece, Turkey, West Asia and North Africa, and also found its way to France, Italy, the Netherlands, Morocco and England.

Today it is spoken mainly by Sephardic minorities in more than 30 countries, with most speakers residing in Israel. Although it has no official status in any country, it is acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel and France, and is recognised formally by the Royal Spanish Academy.

The core vocabulary of Ladino or Espanyol is Old Spanish, and it has numerous elements from the other old Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula: Old Aragonese, Asturleonese, Old Catalan, Galician-Portuguese, and Andalusi Romance.

The language has been enriched by Ottoman Turkish and Semitic vocabulary, such as Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, with many words for new and modern concepts adapted from French and Italian.

There are influences too from local languages in the Balkans, such as Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbo-Croatian.

Inside the Monasterioton Synagogue, the only surviving, pre-war working synagogue in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Hazzan Yosef Shalom Gallego, the author of this 17th century piyyut in Ladino, was born in Thessaloniki in the late 16th century, and became the first Hazzan or cantor of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish community in around 1614.

In 1628, he published Imrei No’am’, a compendium of piyyutim that helped spread a new style of Hebrew religious song from the Ottoman Empire to Western Sephardi and North African communities. Among these was the Hebrew piyyut ‘Purim, Purim, Purim Lanu’ (פורים, פורים, פורים לנו), which recounts the Purim story and the salvation of the Jewish people.

The song became widely popular in the Sephardi tradition, inspiring a well-known Ladino saying ‘Purim, Purim, Purim Lanu, Pesah a la Mano’, meaning ‘Purim is upon us, Passover is near.’ This phrase in turn became the opening line of ‘Pesah a la Mano’, a beloved Ladino song by Flory Jagoda (1923-2021).

Flory Jagoda was a Bosnian-born Jewish American guitarist, composer and singer-songwriter. She was known for her composition and interpretation of Sephardic songs in Ladino and the Bosnian folk ballads. Her most famous song is the Hanukah standard, ‘Ocho Kandelikas’ (Eight little candles).

Flory Jagoda was born Flora Papo in Sarajevo on 21 December 1923 and grew up in the Bosnian town of Vlasenica and in Sarajevo. She was raised in the Sephardic tradition, in the musical Altarac family.

When the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, she, her mother and her step-father Michael Kabilio escaped on a train to Split and from there to islands off the Croatian coast and then to Bari in Italy. There she met an American soldier, Harry Jagoda, and she moved to the US as a war bride in 1946.

Her recording Kantikas Di Mi Nona (‘Songs of My Grandmother’) includes songs her grandmother, a Sephardic folksinger, taught her as a young girl. Other albums followed, including Memories of Sarajevo, La Nona Kanta (‘The Grandmother Sings’), and Arvoliko: The Little Tree (2006), remembering the tree in Bosnia said to be the only marker of the mass grave of 42 massacred members of the Altaras family.

Flory Jagoda died aged 97 on 29 January 2021.

Purim, Purim, Purim lano
Pesah, Pesah ala mano
Laz masas’si stan faziento
Loz japrakis si stan koziendo

Aman aman...

Il Dio bendico muz da mazal.

Purim, Purim, Purim lano
Pesah, Pesah ala mano
La nona sta diziendo aloz njetos
Alipja il puelvo, kantoniz i loz tecos

Aman, aman...

Il Dio bendico muz da mazal.
Purim, Purim, Purim lano
Pesah, Pesah ala mano
Il Singjor Rubi diso a laz tijas
No kumer il pan oco dijas
Aman, aman...

Il dio bendio muz da mazal.

Now that Purim is over,
it is time to prepare for Passover.
The Matzohs are being baked,
the stuffed leaves prepared.

Grandmother leads her troops
against every crumb,
every drop of dust,
even the ceilings are not safe.
And then comes the Rabbi
to inspect our efforts,
and to remind old aunts
not to eat bread for eight days.
Purim is over and Passover approaches.

May Almighty God give us good fortune.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

Chag Pesach Sameach, חג פסח שמח‎

The Comerford-Kneen family and a genealogical search that begins in Alexandria

The Obelisk in Alexandria in the early 20th century … the Comerford-Kneen family lived in Alexandria for four or five generations (William Henry Goodyear, Brooklyn Museum Archives)

Patrick Comerford

I recently came across the story of a branch of the Comerford family that passed on the Comerford name to a family that lived in Alexandria in Egypt for four or five generation in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

It is a story that begins with a marriage in Limassol in Cyprus in 1882, and that brings the Comerford name to Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, Limassol in Cyprus, Kavala and Thessaloniki in northern Greece, Nairobi in Kenya and to Mexico City and Australia. There are hints of minor aristocracy in Croatia and Slovenia, of descent from families in Romania and Lebanon, and of Egyptian, Syrian, Maltese and Jewish heritage. But it also involves places from the Isle of Man to Liverpool and through many parts of England.

It is a family whose story has inspired the Australian writer Krissy Kneen in her semi-biographical stories of Slovene women who became the nannies of choice for the wealthy Italians of pre-war Alexandria in The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen: Travels with My Grandmother’s Ashes, a new book published earlier this year (May 2021).

I am still researching this story of the Comerford and Comerford-Kneen family, and I remain uncertain of many of the genealogical details. But it begins with Helen Pauline Comerford who is in Limassol when she marries John Bernard Kneen from Liverpool who is living in Liverpool in 1882, and I thought it was worth sharing some of my research at this stage.

John Bernard Kneen (1841-1894) was born in Liverpool on 9 December 1841, the son of William Kneen (1813-1891), originally from the Isle of Man, and his wife, Jane Rowan (1821-1885). Kneen was married twice. He married his first wife, Sarah Ann Blunn, in Sheffield in 1864. They soon moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where they were living by 1867. He worked in Alexandria as a ‘foreign correspondent.’

Sarah and John Kneen were the parents of four children:

1, John William Kneen (1867-1870), born in Alexandria 1867, died in Liverpool 31 May 1870.
2, Amy (1868-1895), born in Alexandria ca 1868, died 1895.
3, Edith (1873- ), born in Alexandria ca 1873.
4, Edward Justin Kneen (1878-1933), born in Alexandria ca 1878.

Sarah Kneen died in Alexandria on 16 November 1881.

John Kneen married his second wife, Helen Pauline Comerford, in Limassol, Cyprus on 14 April 1882. She was born in Alexandria in 1861 and they were the parents of six children, four sons and two daughters:

1, John Albert Comerford-Kneen (1881-1931), of whom next.
2, Paul Bernard Comerford-Kneen (1884-1930), of whom after his eldest brother.
3, Hilda Helen Kneen (1881-1931). She was born in Alexandria 11 January 1888, and was married twice: firstly in Alexandria in 1908 William F Draycott, and they were the parents of a son, William DJBA Draycott (1921- ), born in Alexandria 1921, later married twice in England; Hilda married secondly in Alexandria in 1933 Percy George Crosbye Farrell (1896-1990), and they later lived in Chersey, Surrey.
4, Henry (Harry) Philip Kneen (1889-1963), of whom after his elder brothers.
5, Victor Comerford-Kneen (1892-1953), of whom after his elder brothers.
6, Gladys Mary Comerford-Kneen (1893-1973). She was born in Alexandria 1 June 1893, was married, and died in Leicester in March 1973.

John Bernard Kneen died in Alexandria on 10 January 1894. The eldest son of Helen (Comerford) and John Bernard Kneen was:

John Albert Comerford-Kneen (1881-1931). He was born in Alexandria 16 November 1881. He married Georgiana Naoum-Cassir (1895-1960) in Alexandria in 1913. He died in Alexandria in 1931; she died in Sussex on 3 March 1960. They were the parents of three sons:

1, Charles Albert Comerford Kneen. He was born in Aleaxandria and lived in Egypt (1939), Blacktown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (1963-post 1980). He married Dragitca (Dragica) Marušič, born in Miren, near Nova Gorica or Gorizia in Slovenia, 13 December 1916, daughter of Perina and Carlotta (née Mozetic) Marusic. He worked at the British Embassy in Cairo. They fled Alexandria in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Crisis with other expatriates, and lived in England before moving to Australia. In Australia, Dragitca was known as Lotty Kneen, and died in 2014. They were the parents of two daughters: Sheila; and Wendy, who is the mother of the Australian writer Krissy Kneen.
2, Wilfred J (Bunny) Comerford-Kneen (1920-2010). He was born in Alexandria on 5 March 1920, and died in Worthing on 19 October 2010. He was married twice: first in Cairo in 1946; secondly in Fulham in 1958 to June Rosemary Smythe (1934-2011). There are surviving children.
3, John Anthony (Jackie) Comerford-Kneen (1928-1982). He was born in Alexandria on 8 May 1928, and died in Crawley, Sussex, in June 1982. In March 1961, he married in Horsham, Sussex, Ansley M (Mollie) Summerfield (1933-2005).

The second son of Helen (Comerford) and John Bernard Kneen was:

Paul Bernard Comerford-Kneen (1884-1930). He was born in Alexandria in 1884. He worked as a quarantine officer with the Egyptian government. He married in Alexandria in 1908 Edith Ellen Mabel Elsie Draycott (1889-1966). She was born in Cyprus on 14 November 1889, and died in Ormskirk, Lancashire, on 20 March 1966; he died in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, in March 1930. They were the parents of two children, a daughter and a son:

1, Helen Alice Pauline Comerford-Kneen (1910-1976), of whom next.
2, John Bernard Paul Kneen (1912-1937), born Alexandria, born 3 September 1912, died in Alexandria 28 October 1937.

The Comerford name was continued among the children of the only daughter and only surviving child of Edith and Paul Comerford-Kneen:

Helen Alice Pauline Comerford-Kneen (1910-1976). She was born in Alexandria on 12 June 1914, and died in Norwich in December 1976. She was married twice. She married first in Alexandria on 12 January 1935 Paul P de Relya (1912-1981), also known as Paul Ivo Ritter von Relya Ohmucevic (or Reglia von Ohmucevic). He was born in Kavala, east of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, on 2 October 1912, into a family of Croatian ancestry, and died in Hounslow in December 1981. They later moved to Liverpool and were the parents of six children, three daughters and three sons:

1, Patricia Paul Alice Ivana von Relya Ohmucevic (or Reglia von Ohmucevic) (1935-1937), born Alexandria 28 November 1935, died 25 September 1937.
2, Pavo (Paul) Patrick Denis Cyril Reglia von Ohmucevic (or de Relya) (1938-1970), travel consultant, born Alexandria 21 July 1938, died in a car accident in Mexico 7 March 1970.
3, Dalice (Dalys) Paule Roxellane Marguerite Patricia John Ma de Relya, born Liverpool 13 March 1948, married in Liverpool December 1973.
4, Mark Godfrey Patrick de Comerford von Kesmark (1949-2019), born 17 March 1949, lived in Norfolk from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and from 2017; died in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, 7 February 2019.
5, Michael Anthony Ernest Sebastian Paul Dereyla d’Ohmucevic, born Liverpool 10 July 1973.
6, Ann.

Helen Alice Pauline Comerford-Kneen married secondly Ernest Wilson (1924-1999), a former flying officer in the Royal Air Force. She died in Norwich in December 1976.

The third son and fourth child of Helen (Comerford) and John Bernard Kneen was:

Henry (Harry) Philip Kneen (1889-1963) was born Alexandria 1889. He married in Alexandria in 1913 Elvira Katherine Varzon (1893-1996). She was born 14 September 1893, and died in Milton Keynes in October 1966; he died in Leicester 24 July 1963. They were the parents of one son:

1, Herbert George Kneen (1917-2011), born Alexandria 19 December 1917, married in Alexandria 1948 Blanche Simone Daoud (1925-2006). She died in 2006; he lived in Milton Keynes and died in Nuneaton 17 December 2011. They were the parents of one child.

The fourth and youngest son and fifth child of Helen (Comerford) and John Bernard Kneen was:

Victor Comerford-Kneen (1892-1953). He was born in Alexandria in 1892, and was married twice. He married firstly in Alexandria on 8 November 1913 Victoria Mallia and they were the parents of:

1, Gerald Denys Kneen (1932-1995). He was born in Alexandria 15 November 1932, and died in Thanet, Kent in June 1995.

Victor Comerford-Kneen married a second time before he died in Nairobi, Kenya, on 20 June 1953.



Last updated: 4 June 2022; 20 April 2023.

Yugoslavia consigned to history, replaced by Serbia and Montenegro

By Patrick Comerford
Foreign Desk Editor

The Yugoslav parliament voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favour of a plan to abolish the Balkan federation and replace it with a looser union between its last remaining members, Serbia and Montenegro.

The move clears the way to work out the details of a new constitution from the blueprint, negotiated by the EU in March. The west is keen to head off a drive by Montenegro for independence that it fears would destabilise the region.

The parliaments of Serbia and Montenegro already had approved the plan, which would consign Yugoslavia to history after more than seven decades of existence in various forms. But analysts and diplomats still expect protracted negotiations over the details. The upper house passed the plan by 23 votes to six against and the lower house approved it by 74 to 23.

“Many people will see this day as the day when Yugoslavia died, because the name is no longer mentioned in the agreement - the new state is called Serbia and Montenegro,” the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Yugoslav deputy, Mr Zarko Korac, said.

The two republics would have broad autonomy within one internationally recognised state with its own president, parliament, cabinet and army to replace the federal institutions.

The original plan, signed on March 14th in Belgrade, envisaged a new constitution would be ready for approval by the three parliaments by the end of June. However, many analysts, diplomats and politicians say interpretations of the blueprint and ambitions for the new union already differ so widely that the prospect of agreement by then is remote.

The Speaker of the Lower House, Mr Dragoljub Micunovic, said he expected the new draft constitution to be finished by the autumn. Yugoslavia would cease to exist when it is adopted.

Pro-independence Montenegrin parties, for whom the scheme is at best a necessary evil to retain Western favour, set great store by a clause that allows them to revive independence plans in three years. But pro-Yugoslav parties there want close links to Serbia, and a directly elected parliament with a strong mandate.

For now, at least, the EU and NATO Secretary-General Mr Javier Solana have headed off Montenegrin independence. They feared that a planned breakaway referendum would encourage further violent redrawing of borders in the Balkans.

Yugoslavia – meaning southern Slavs – was formed at the end of the first World War, itself triggered by the independence aspirations of the south Slavs of the Balkans, with Serbia leading a unification movement.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo triggered the first World War. At the time, the only independent south Slav states were Serbia – then incorporating Macedonia – and Montenegro. Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina were under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which crumbled at the end of the first World War. In 1915 Serbia and Montenegro were overrun by the Central Powers and Serbian troops retreated to the Greek island of Corfu.

In July 1917 representatives of the south Slavs proclaimed a kingdom under Peter I of Serbia, and Montenegro adhered in 1918. In December 1918, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed, and it was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.

Yugoslavia joined the Axis pact in 1941, and Germany soon invaded. After the second World War, Tito came to power, but Yugoslavia was expelled from the Moscow-led Cominform in 1948.

Yugoslavia later became a leading light in the international non-aligned movement. After Tito's death in 1980, a collective presidency was introduced. In 1991 the Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared independence. With the rapid departure of four of Yugoslavia's original six constituent republics, the remaining two - Serbia and Montenegro - formed a new federation in 1992. Now the name “Yugoslavia” is being consigned to history, replaced by the new Federation of Serbia and Montenegro.

• This news report was published in The Irish Times on Saturday 1 June 2002.