Nina Pinto-Abecasis

Nina Pinto-Abacsis was born and raised in Ashkelon, to a Haketia-speaking family, which originates from Tetouan in northern Morocco . Her father was a civil engineer and her mother a bank clerk. She graduated from the Hebrew University . At the same time as her studies, she pursued a media career; from 1995 to 1996, she wrote and presented the literature radio program, "Karati Sefer" on the Voice of Israel.

From 2001 to 2008, she was a lecturer in the Department of Israeli Literature and Hebrew Expression Studies at Ashkelon Academic College . She wrote her doctoral thesis, "Humor in pronouns among Haketian-speaking Titouan Jews: private identity versus collective identity", in the Department of Hebrew Literature and Jewish and Comparative Folklore at the Hebrew University, under the supervision of Galit Hazan Rokam and Ya'akov Ben Tulaila. She was awarded the Raphael Patai Award from the Hebrew University and the Ben Zvi Institute Award for a Doctoral Thesis. Beginning in 2009, she taught courses in the field of folklore at the "Selty" Center for Ladino Studies in the Department of Literature with the People of Israel at Bar-Ilan University. Beginning in 2012, she was Research fellow. In addition, she taught courses and was a teaching coordinator in Hebrew literature and cultural studies for a qualified degree at the Open University of Israel.[2]

Pinto-Abacsis' main field of expertise was the study of the folklore and language of the Sephardic Jews of Morocco, while examining their way of life in the countries of origin, with their migration.[3][4] She contributed to the presence of Haketia in Israel and was one of the only researchers in this field. Other areas of research she has dealt with are the humorous folklore practiced among Israeli Arabs and the life stories of Ladino speakers, including Holocaust survivors from Greece. Starting in 2015, she served as a consultant to the Council of the National Authority for Ladino Culture .

In 2014, she published her book, "The Peacock, the Iron and the Half-Woman: Nicknames, Humor and Folklore in the Everyday Discourse of Haketia-Speaking Titouan Jews".[5] The book is a comprehensive study about the Jews of Northern Morocco, which in the process presents the circumstances of the formation of ethnic humor with unique local and universal signs, while focusing on the Hachitian language and culture of the Jews of Titouan. Hakitia is the dialect of Ladino spoken by descendants of Spanish deportees in northern Morocco, which is spoken by several thousand Jews scattered in Israel, in South Americaand in the western countries. As part of the research, Pinto Abecasis documented many oral traditions, thereby contributing to the preservation of the Hachitian language and culture, which are in the process of disappearing due to the dispersion of the Hachitian speaking communities and the re-Hispanization process that began among them as early as the 19th century (in which many Jews abandoned or downplayed the use of Hachitian in favor of modern Spanish).[6]

Following the discovery of cancer in the gastrointestinal tract, Pinto-Abacsis wrote a collection of stories "I'm going tomorrow" that tells about dealing with the cancer. In 2017, Pinto-Abacsis won the Prime Minister's Award for Writers for her book "Intimate Stories".[7] Based on the book, an intimate narrative play was written . The stories are about a young woman, starting with her childhood and youth in Ashkelon, her first loves and later marriage and parenthood and mourning and dealing with her mother's cancer.

A Symposium in her name was held at the University of Alcalá .[8]

• הטווס, המגוהץ וחצי האישה: כינויים, הומור ופולקלור בשיח היום-יום של יהודי טיטואן דוברי החכתייה, ירושלים: מכון בן צבי, תשע"ד - 2014.
• סיפורים אינטימיים, הוצאת דביר, 2017.
• מחר אני הולכת, כנרת זמורה דביר, 2019.
• טיטואן: אתר של מגעים בין תרבויות, מכון בן צבי, 2021