Judaeo-Spanish

"We always fought for this," says Mr Cohen, whose grandparents belonged to well-off families in Istanbul, and grew up speaking Ladino, or Judaeo-Spanish, the Romance language derived from Old Spanish and traditionally spoken by Sephardic Jews.

Applicants must be certified by Spain’s Federation of Jewish Communities and prove their Sephardic roots by speaking Ladino, a medieval Judaeo-Spanish language still used in parts of the Sephardic liturgy.

Cohen's materials are the Hebrew folksongs and poetry he heard as a child in Israel, the Judaeo-Spanish Ladino songs of the Sephardic tradition, classical music and jazz.