Rediscovering Sephardic Catalonia: Heritage and the Museum of Jewish History in Girona

Rediscovering Sephardic Catalonia: Heritage and the Museum of Jewish History in Girona James Nadel University of Michigan University of Michigan Working Papers in Museum Studies: Future Leaders, Number 2 (2016) Museum Studies Program Charles H. Sawyer Center for Museum Studies University of Michigan Museum of Art 525 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1354 Office phone: 734-936-6678 Fax: 734-786-0064 www.ummsp.rackham.umich.edu [email protected] © 2016 The Regents of University of Michigan All rights reserved The University of Michigan Museum Studies Program’s series of “Working Papers in Museum Studies: Future Leaders series presents emerging research from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, all focused on the multiple concerns of the modern museum and heritage studies field. These papers feature the work of current and former U-M undergradaute students who are making a significant contribution to the growing field of Museum Studies. James Nadel majored in history at the University of Michigan, where he also minored in Museum Studies. This paper has its roots in an independent study he pursued for his Museum Studies minor and grew into undergraduate honors thesis in History. That thesis was honored by the University of Michigan Honors Program with the Terrence J. MacDonald Prize for Archival Research, for the “finest thesis making substantial use of archives or museums.” James can be reached at [email protected]. Rediscovering Sephardic Catalonia: Heritage and the Museum of Jewish History in Girona James Nadel, University of Michigan 1 The Museum of Jewish History in Girona, Spain is This description fills the Call with invisible, yet imagin- occupied by living ghosts. Upon entering the museum’s able, specters: “law,” “tradition,” “ancestors,” “remem- first exhibit room, the visitor gets a glimpse of a preserved brances,” “breath,” “inner life,” “silence.” The museum’s section of the former Jewish quarter, “the Call.” The spot curators encourage the visitor to imagine the Call as filled has lain empty since the city’s Sephardic population was with the actions and thoughts of the people who once officially and completely expelled from Spain in 1492. lived there. With this suggestion, the museum seeks to Now, it consists of moss-covered stones and overgrown provide its visitors a weighty experience that calls to mind ivy. Yet, the entire wall opposite the window that looks out centuries of past activity. Joaquim Nadal, the long-time onto this site holds a description (in Catalan) that mayor of Girona, called attention to this experience when describes what is not visible to the naked eye: the museum officially opened saying that the Call was “a window to history” and “the best history lesson—a living In the heart of the call, or Jewish Quarter, in Girona court- museum” (Nadal 2003a). Moreover, when presenting to yards like this one maintain the Jewish breath of life of past the European Association of Jewish Studies in 1995, the centuries, in space overflowing with familiar odors, with director of the museum, Silvia Planes, referred to the silence that one can be grateful for, with an inner life. It is museum as a “living memorial to the Jewish past of the a place shared with the Law and tradition, with ancestors, country” (Planes 1995: 3). Although the Call is empty, it is with remembrances…. A place called the call [is]…made overflowing with life. from the refuge of ancestral rites and eternal traditions.2 Figure 1: A facsimile Torah and wall-sized representation of a medieval synagogue and rabbi (Courtesey of Patronat de Call) UM Working Papers in Museum Studies: Future Leaders, Number 2 (2016) 1 Of course, speaking of Sephardic Jews as “living” in In some ways, Girona perfectly fits Harrison’s descrip- modern-day Girona—and in all of Spain for that matter— tion of the heritage boomtown. In the early 1980s, Giro- inevitably sounds hollow. Other than international na’s government started to conserve structures from the tourists, the only Sephardim left in the city are on the city’s past. The heritage sites restored were various and walls of the museum, which are decorated with life-sized numerous enough to appear as an indiscriminate accu- enlargements of medieval paintings and manuscripts. In mulation, encompassing everything from the medieval the same opening room, an image on the wall opposite a city walls to a 1930s bomb shelter to the Museum of Jewish case of ceremonial dishes for the Shabbat dinner shows History itself. That said, the city government, with Nadal a Sephardic family sitting for the same meal. Similarly, at the helm, developed a considered and ideology-driven liturgical items used by Jewish communities around the program of conservation with a specific goal: to redis- world – including the Torah – are complemented by the cover and promote a regional Catalan and local Gironan image of a medieval synagogue and rabbi (Figure 1). These identity after their repression under the 40-year dictator- life-size representations of Sephardim accompany museum ship of General Francisco Franco. I will argue here that visitors throughout their visit. the Museum of Jewish History was instituted to serve this same central purpose of re-cementing the local identity of No Sephardic Jews reside in Girona, but the museum the city. evokes their lives and their presence—through depictions, the evocative description of the Call and other techniques The significance of the Museum of Jewish History emerges discussed later in this paper. Medieval Sephardim remain from the distinction between a haphazard gathering of in the city, despite their absence. The recreation of the traces from the past and a selective curation of local iden- past in the present—what Sharon Macdonald (2013: 1) has tity through heritage preservation. Harrison states that the called “past-presencing”—seeks to remind museum visi- key to “active memory” is a “regular revision and review to tors of “histories that might otherwise be lost” in the face see if it [heritage] continues to meet the needs of contem- of such absence. porary society” (Harrison 2013: 198). Why and in what ways might Gironan citizens and officials have found the As Macdonald argues, these evocative techniques have heritage of a historical community such as the medieval come to dominate many landscapes in Europe, turning Sephardim valuable? The museum’s objective, according the continent into a series of “Memorylands” (Macdonald to Article 4 of its constitution, written by the local 2013: 15). This trend results from what Rodney Harrison government of Girona in 1992, was to promote “cultural has recently labeled a “crisis of accumulation” or the “heri- activities related to the city of Girona, the Girona region tagisation of society.” In his Heritage: Critical Approaches of Catalonia and the cultural contributions of the Jewish (2013), Harrison tracks the exponential increase in the community throughout its history” (Patronat 1992: 2). number of demarcated heritage sites over the last 45 years. This constitution gave and continues to give the museum He proposes that societies have responded to the disruptive a local prerogative, as the museum concentrates not on factors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries—namely the Jews throughout medieval Spain, but rather those who globalization and neoliberal economic policies— by fever- lived in Catalonia. In this paper, I consider the motiva- ishly salvaging all historical items deemed important and tions—expressed by city officials and others involved in at risk. Once these objects and sites were added to lists of the creation of the museum—for conserving Sephardic world or national heritage, they were promised perpetual heritage in a city with no Sephardim. protection from the rapid alterations of modern settings. Breaking with heritage studies convention, Harrison I first argue that the recovery of the medieval Sephardic argues that this expansion has actually undermined “the culture of Girona was just one variation on the larger role of heritage in the production of collective memory” goal of rediscovering Catalan and Gironan identity. I (Harrison 2013: 166). Heritage would play a much more will begin by discussing the general movement to recap- “integral role” in contemporary society, he contends, if ture cultural heritage and “place identity” in Girona citizens and officials “actively” considered which sites were after the fall of Franco. Next, I examine the promotional valuable to them and which could be “forgotten.” Inac- material produced from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s tivity threatens to disassociate heritage from the lives of by the museum’s parent organization, the Bonastruc ça the people and citizens that protect it. Put simply, Harrison Porta. Finally, I conduct a museological analysis of some advocates that societies should “prune” their heritage of the exhibit rooms in the museum itself, based on my lists to better understand themselves, and to consciously field research in Girona and interviews with officials. “generate the individual and collective memories that will The museum, in part, is dedicated to the story of the bind us together in [the] future” (Harrison 2013: 231). Sephardim who lived in Girona during the Middle Ages, UM Working Papers in Museum Studies: Future Leaders, Number 2 (2016) 2 including their arrival to Girona, their cultural produc- tations of cultural revitalization. Regulation and restric- tion, and their eventual expulsion. Throughout this anal- tion of the over-expansion experienced during the 1960s ysis, I will enumerate and explain the ways in which that was tantamount to re-asserting Catalan identity. The history is also used to discuss the identity of those actually 1977 constitution of the Congrés de Cultura Catalana, an living in Girona today and argue that Girona’s Museum of organization of several Catalan culture societies, noted the Jewish History equates the preservation of the symbols and connection between tourism and Francoist domination: stories that constitute Sephardic heritage with the protec- “the term tourism has been converted into a synonym for tion and proliferation of Catalan existence.

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