In 1820, Heinrich Heine defined the Hebrew Bible as the ‘portable homeland’ of Jews while discriminatory acts of the Prussian government against Jews were being implemented. Respectively, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, scholars considered Yiddish as another form of ‘portable homeland’. Formation of the narratives of text and speech as substitutes of the material homeland was a common practice among Ottoman Jews also. On the eve of the dissolution of the territorial integrity, over a quarter of a million of Sephardic Jews lived in the the empire and İzmir was one of the cultural hubs with a lively Jewish literary activity. The imperial restructuring under the influence of modernization and Ottomanist policies to strengthen the central power had decisive results on the usage and depiction of Ladino in this port city where both commodities and ideas were exchanged constantly. Hence, regarding their diasporic condition, Jews conceptualized Ladino as the ‘portable homeland’ in which they wrote and to which they respond to policies of modern citizenship and centralization. How did cultural and political clashes of the period were performed within the realm of linguistics? Can we treat İzmirli Jews’ persistence of using Ladino as a form of resistance through the convoluted interaction between space and language? In terms of their diasporic condition, Jews conceptualized Ladino as an alternative sphere in which they wrote and which they respond to empire’s centralization aims. Hence, İzmirli Jews’ production of texts written in Ladino was peculiar, both at interpretative and behavioral levels since linguistic continuity was an important part of their ethno-religious identity. Through the analysis of shifts in the concepts related to identity politics in this historical community, this study examines how Jews of İzmir appropriated and adapted Ladino as an alternative linguistic space which imitated the material realm to feel belonging towards, on the eve of the trauma od dissolution. In this purpose, this study will focus on the local Ladino periodical Lah Boz del Pueblo to analyze the image of Ladino as a tool of resistance and a repository of sense of belonging and identity without any commitment to a material homeland. The stance of Jewish members of İzmir during dissolution of the territorial integrity of the empire, presents a complex picture of contested versions of modernity of the period and reveals the contradictions between the East and West, center and periphery, self and other.