THE EXPULSION FROM SPAIN AND : THE JEWISH COMMUNITY'S RESPONSE

Background Papers for

Opening Session of the 25th Anniversary Meeting

of the Memorial Foundation

at Beit Hanassi,

July 3,1990 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

THE SPANISH EXILE AND THE HOLOCAUST: A STUDY IN JEWISH SPIRITUAL

RESPONSE TO CATASTROPHE, by Eliezer Schweid 1

JEWISH REACTIONS TO THE EXPULSION FROM SPAIN, by Moshe Idel 18

RELIGIOUS RESPONSES TO THE HOLOCAUST: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT, by Lord Jakobovits 26

-iii- JEWISH REACTIONS TO THE EXPULSION FROM SPAIN

Moshe Idel

The uprooting of Iberian Jewry from its native soil by the Catholic kings was a dramatic event for Spanish Jewry. Totally unexpected, it provoked a feeling of despair: deprived of most of their property, Iberian Jewry had to cope with the terrible situation of exiles forced to leave a territory which, for several centuries, had become a place where the developed a rich and creative culture. Also the fate of the exiles once they left Spain was only rarely better; many of the exiles died on their way to Northern Africa, and some lost their families or at least members of their family. No doubt, this dramatic expulsion was a traumatic one for most of those who underwent it. It can hardly be compared with the expulsions of the Jews earlier in the Middle Ages, from England or France for example, given the amplitude of the expelled Iberian community and its better economic situation.

Though unexpected in itself, the Expulsion was, nevertheless, part of a gradual deterioration of the situation of the Jews in Spain. Following the and the riots of 1391, Spanish Jewry never returned to its former glorious past. The sense that things are turning worse seems to have been part of a growing awareness on the part of Iberian Jewry long before the Catholic kings had made their sudden decision to expel the Jews. The Expulsion itself was a definitive separation between the Spanish and the Jews, a separation which in reality had commenced long before 1492. The continuous closure of the intellectual life of Spanish Jewry in the 15th century, the demonization of philosophy-including Jewish philosophy-and of Christianity evident in some Kabbalistic sources, are conclusive evidence that a gradual break had been taking place between the Jewish culture and that of the surrounding Christian civilization in Spain. This rupture is especially apparent when we compare the attitude of Jewish and Christian scholars toward Kabbalah on the eve of the Expulsion in Italy and Spain. In the case of Italian Jews and Christian scholars, there was sufficient openness to allow the emergence of a new branch of Christian thought, the Christian Kabbalah. Though not unrelated to missionary goals, the Italian Christian Kabbalah was a result of the readiness of some Christian intellectuals to study with Jews Hebrew and Kabbalistic treatises, and even to regard Jewish Kabbalah as a very important branch of theology, amongst the most sublime examples of human thought. On the other side, nothing similar to the influence of the Jewish Kabbalah on Christians in Italy can be found in Spanish culture.

Exactly during the same period when the young Italian count Pico della Mirandola was proposing his Kabbalistic theses in public debate, the Inquisition in Spain drastically prevented any similar type of religious syncretism. Christian Spain, the stronghold of the Jewish Kabbalah for more than two centuries, would not allow its intellectuals to absorb, even in a superficial manner, a Jewish lore despite the fact that it was substantially shaped in medieval Spain. In Italy, where the influence of Kabbalah was not so great even among the Jews themselves before the seventies of the 15th century, the relative openness of some Christian intellectuals permitted a new kind of relationship between Jews and Christians: some of the latter even became students of the former. In contemporary Spain this kind of relationship was hardly conceivable. Not only were Christian intellectuals indifferent, afraid, or hostile to the idea of establishing cultural contacts with contemporary Jews. The Jews themselves were also hesitant to acknowledge their debt to the influence of Christian thought even in the rare cases such an impact indeed informed Jewish thought. As the late Prof. S. Pines has remarked, among Spanish Jews there was a reticence in mentioning the names of Christian theologians; this reticence was very uncharacteristic of the much more open attitude of the Jews toward the Muslim philosophical authorities during the Muslim period and it remained unchanged in Christian Spain.

Consequently, the physical uprooting of the Jewish communities from Spain and Portugal was hardly a forced dissociation from a friendly social and cultural environment; it was paralleled by a

-18- spiritual and religious alienation that haunted this Jewry for many decades before their Expulsion. If 16th century Italy had invented the institution of the geographical ghetto, it is in medieval Spain that the spiritual closure of the Jews had become visible as early as the 15th century. It is important to contrast the situation in Christian Spain, with the openness of Spanish Jewry in Muslim Spain to a whole variety of cultural activities, including composing poems in the vein of their Muslim neighbors, cultivating a new style of linguistics and exegesis, and especially developing the impressive trends of Jewish philosophy under the aegis of the Muslim philosophies. In general, it would be helpful to contrast the relative closure of West European Jewry since the 13th century to the intellectual developments in their environs with the greater openness not only of Italian, but also Oriental Jewry. There, the influence of Sufism, an Islamic mysticism, seems to be a dominant condition amongst the Jewish elite, and especially among the descendants of Maimonides; no similar phenomenon can be detected in the West. During the generation before the Expulsion, Spanish Kabbalists had composed a highly particularistic literature: the anti-Christian and anti-philosophical Sefer ha-Meshiv. By contrast, in Italy, a Spaniard like Yehudah Abravanel, the son of Isaac Abravanel, better known by the Christians as Leone Ebreo, wrote one of the best-sellers of the Christian Renaissance.

II

When discussing the repercussions of the Expulsion for Spanish Jewry we would do well to distinguish between the physical upheaval, with the terrible price paid by the Jews as individuals and as a collective, and the cultural renascence that immediately followed this event. Certainly, there can be no doubt as to the traumatic experiences that individuals underwent as the result of their uprooting, of the loss of members of their families, and of the sense that a significant part of their people preferred to convert rather than leave the Spanish soil. Nevertheless I have many doubts as to the direct contribution of such a trauma towards the creativity of the Jewish masters in the Sephardi Diaspora. The widely accepted theory that at least in the case of the new formulations of the 16th century Kabbalah there was a response, though sometimes a subtle and a covert one, to the catastrophe of the Expulsion, is indeed a very fascinating hypothesis. However, it has been too easily embraced by scholars, with very little evidence brought in its support. In the case of other flourishing genres of literature, the Halakhic, ethical, sermonic, philosophical and poetic, I am not aware of a similar claim. Though a voluminous literature was written after the Expulsion in fields other than Kabbalah, there is no similar claim-with the exception of the assumption that 16th century historiography was informed by the Expulsion-for a profound influence of the tragic events on the nature of that literature. It is in the domain of historical hypotheses, interesting but very speculative indeed, that the attempt to link the traumatic events and the peculiar formulations of elaborate brands of mystical literature is to be located. I myself am inclined to much more concrete kinds of argumentation. In lieu of assuming, as these scholars do, that a whole type of literary activity, in a great number of areas, written by different individuals who apparently had experienced the Expulsion differently yet, it is claimed, reacted (or accepted the reaction formulated by the others) in a similar manner, I would prefer to explain the literary effervescence following the Expulsion by means of other kinds of explanations. These include the following considerations:

A. Post-Expulsion literature was partly composed in order to commit to writing religious traditions which were circulated in some restricted circles long before the Expulsion. Jewish authors were afraid that these traditions might be lost as part of the vicissitudes of the exile. Indeed, this seems to be the fact in cases like Rabbi Abraham ben Shelomo Adrutiel's Kabbalistic work Avnei Zikkaron (Monuments of Remembrance); to a certain extent it is also true for the lengthy Zaphnat Pa'aneah of Rabbi Joseph ben Moshe Alashqar. Interestingly enough, these two works were composed in Northern Africa, a classical Sephardi community which was, nevertheless, only very rarely represented in the Messianic propaganda and eschatological computations which had emerged in other parts of the Jewish Diaspora. This fear of loss can also be considered a possible explanation for the flourishing of halakhic

-19- literature, which emerged as a major factor immediately after the Expulsion, but had been rather limited during the preceding period.

B. As part of the process of rebuilding Jewish life in new centers the need to supply religious guidance induced authors to write many more treatises than had been composed earlier in Spain. The more stable forms of communities that maintained traditional forms of life had disappeared, and instead it was important to contribute to the formation of newer centers. The very composition of new writings also served to establish the authority of the intellectuals as leading figures in the new communities.

C. In some new centers of Spanish Jewry there were confrontations, well-documented in the extant sources, between the autochthon customs and types of religious thought on one hand, and Sephardi customs and religious thought on the other. This was the case in regard to difference in customs between Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the new arrivals from Spain, or with regard to the encounters between the Spanish Kabbalah, with its particularistic tendencies, and the Italian Kabbalah, which was much more inclined to philosophy. Such a confrontation is obvious in the writings of one of the most important Spanish Kabbalists, R. Yehudah Hayyat, who wrote his only Kabbalistic book Minhat Yehudah, in Mantua, trying to implement the classical, 13th century Sefardi Kabbalah in reaction to the amalgam of philosophy and Kabbalah, including ecstatic Kabbalah, which he found dominant in Northern Italy. Or, to take another example, in the 16th century centers of Kabbalah in the land of Israel, Jerusalem and Safed, the Spanish Kabbalah, grounded as it was in the mythical worldview of the book of the Zohar encountered the ecstatic Kabbalah that was more speculative and mystical. The friction between the different types of mystical trends contributed, in my opinion in a substantial manner, to more productive literary activity in those new centers of Kabbalah. These confrontations were, inter alia, fertile catalysts for the creative period of the Safedian Kabbalah, especially as it was presented in the writings of Rabbi Moses Cordovero. The sociological approach outlined above, which addresses questions related to phenomena of mass migrations, involving as they did the need for adaptation and appropriation, inner changes and spiritual confrontations, should be considered central to the explanation of the cultural effervescence that characterized Sephardi Jewry after the Expulsion. Interestingly enough, it seems that just when the Expulsion became part of the glorious past and Sephardi Jewry became well-established in its new environs, that a gradual process of cultural stagnation started. I would, therefore, not invoke the ghost of the traumatic Expulsion to cultural leaders whose main objective was to plan a saner future. Traumas only rarely energize individuals and collectives; more often they paralyze creativity rather than spur it. More mundane processes, such as those discussed above, informed by more quotidian factors, apparently played a much more important role than a traumatic event in the explanation of the developments of Sephardi Jewry after the Expulsion. As I shall propose below, an exclusive indulgence in historical and conceptual approaches to fateful processes which involve deep restructurings of whole communities, must be complemented by a more comprehensive attitude to the religious and cultural facets of the human subjects who had to suffer during these processes.

Ill

One crucial issue that recurs in modern scholarship concerning the Expulsion is the presumption that a strong form of messianism surged during the first generations following this dramatic event. According to some modern scholars, as a result of the trauma of the Expulsion messianism invaded Jewish religious literature and contributed, at the same time, to a surge of intensive messianic propaganda. This messianic hypothesis is amongst the most quoted in recent Jewish historiography. A putative organic link between messianic stir and Expulsion came to be established, and became part of the legacy or the vision of some historians. However, it seems to me that this hypothesis has yet to be demonstrated and for the time being cannot be regarded as

-20- sufficiently documented. Here, I would like to offer some observations concerning another aspect of this issue.

First and foremost, it should be mentioned that several important messianic phenomena indeed played a certain role on the Jewish scene immediately after the Expulsion. The voluminous writings of Don Isaac Abravanel include also extensive eschatological treatments; the messianic activity of Rabbi Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi and Rabbi Asher Lemlein; and last, but not least, the propagandist^ activity of Rabbi Shelomo Molkho, the Portuguese converso, altogether indicate indeed a certain increase in messianic tensions. However, it would be very simplistic to relate all these messianic phenomena to the Expulsion from Spain and Portugal. Such a link seems very implausible in the case of an Ashkenazi-Italian figure like Asher Lemlein. It is also unclear to what extent the Expulsion played a significant role in the case of Rabbi Abraham ha-Levi's writings, since he had indulged in messianic speculations already in his youth, before the Expulsion. Moreover it seems that even before 1492 there were substantial messianic tensions amidst Spanish Jewry, a fact that obviously complicates our evaluation of the peculiar contribution of this historical drama. In my opinion, there can be no doubt that part of the messianic themes and drives of the post-Expulsion period stem from Kabbalistic writings and circles which preceded the Expulsion. The most important of them, the circle of Kabbalists related to Rabbi Joseph della Reina and the anonymous author of Sefer ha-Meshiv, testifies as to the depth of the messianic expectation in the generation preceding the Expulsion. On the other side, it can be demonstrated that significant aspects of post-Expulsion speculation were informed by the writings from this circle.

On the other hand it would be pertinent to reflect on the possible relationship between trauma and messianism on the basis of some examples that are easier to understand since they come from our more recent history. The Holocaust indeed created traumas for those who suffered from the horrors. However, this trauma was not translated, to my knowledge, into a substantial messianic literature. It seems that only with the creation of the state of Israel did some messianic voices, and very moderate ones, become part of the Jewish public scene. Even then, this was not so much an answer to the Holocaust, as it was a strong conviction about the relevance of the teachings of R. Abraham Isaac Kook, a charismatic mystic who died long before the Holocaust. It was only with the extraordinary military victory of the Six Day War that the soil was prepared for the messianic effervescence that became a social and political force in the last two decades. Not the trauma of the Holocaust, but the victory in the war generated the messianic surge. Similarly, the great success of the Hasidic movement of Habad [Lubavitch] provoked more recently certain messianic apperceptions. However, these can be related only very slightly to a prior trauma.

It should be mentioned here that it seems that in other cases, messianic expectations were fueled by great events like the victories of the Muslim tribes in the 7th century and the fears of the invasions of the Mongols in Europe and in the Near East in the middle of the 13th century, which had an impact on Kabbalistic messianism. In the same manner, we may try to understand the messianic effervescence before the Expulsion. The victories of the Turks in the East over Christianity, symbolized by the capture of Constantinople in 1453, aroused Jewish expectations that the defeat of their oppressors meant more than one additional confrontation between the two superpowers, that they are part of a greater divine scheme of redemption. It is reasonable to attribute to such an expectation a central role in the messianic expectations of Jews, especially in Spain before the Expulsion, and in the case of Rabbi Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi, also after the Expulsion. The drama of hope may incite the religious imagination no less than that of suffering; self-confidence is as good a prescription for envisioning an even better future as despair may be.

On the other hand, an inspection of the huge post-Expulsion corpus of the Spanish rabbis suggests that messianic aspirations did not play a crucial role in their written teachings. The conspicuous marginality of messianic discussions in the writings of the Kabbalists whose exceptional productivity was discussed above, indicates that interest on the part of contemporary historians in the messianic elements of this period is an overemphasis, motivated by a special concern with certain kinds

-21- of historical phenomena that haunts the historical consciousness of modern scholarship. Only by ignoring the thrust of the voluminous literature and concentrating on the more liminal phenomena, could a characterization of the Jewish literature of the period as infused with messianic aspirations dominate the modern intellectual scene. In fact, the literary creativity of the first generations of exiles seems to be motivated not by a trauma that must be overcome by indulging in messianic speculations and computations, but by the necessity to recreate Jewish life and communities in new places. This hypothesis can explain why messianism played only a limited role in the voluminous literature. In reality, the Utopian and anarchic elements of messianic speculations are counterproductive for a community which strives to establish itself in new places. It is the integrative role of the Jewish religion rather than its apocalyptic-messianic aspects that contributed to the establishment of the newly-created Jewish centers in Northern Africa, Italy and the Ottoman Empire.

IV

From the point of view of the attitude of the Jews themselves after the Expulsion in comparison to that of the Jews after the Holocaust, it seems that we can discern basic affinities as well as crucial differences between them. The affinities are much more conspicuous in the case of the Orthodox communities, which dedicated their major efforts to the immediate reconstruction of their spiritual and communal lives. In both cases, it was not an indulgence in theological speculation about the significance of the upheaval that helped them to overcome the effects of the terrible experiences. Rather it was the strenuous effort to return to the previous way of life. These efforts constitute the real reaction to the terrors of the uprooting. One major way to cope with a trauma is not to be fixated on the past, but to overcome it by re-implementing the modus vivendi ante quem. The basic response was not the rational or the mystical explanations offered for the historical event, and even not memorializing them as part of the sacred history of the people. It was a therapeutic suppression of the past that ensured the spiritual sanity of the people, especially in those cases when a structured modus vivendi could support individuals and communities in restoring their lives using traditional patterns.

The unusual response to a crisis on the scale we discussed above in terms of institutionalizing the memory of the upheaval is characteristic of modern times. It is part of an attempt to build up, or to reinforce national and/or individual "weakened" identities which could especially benefit from a ritualistic invocation of the dramatic past. In the case of the Holocaust it is obvious that the need to preserve its memory was instrumental both in regard to fostering the claims of the Jews for their homeland, and, in the case of diaspora Jews, of establishing a new pattern of relationship with the alien, basically Christian world. It is as important to use the memory of the Holocaust in showing the Christian world the worst of its attitudes towards the Jews, as it is to use that memory as constitutive of modern Jewish identity. If the traditional memory is rooted in religious ritual, the modern, or the secular, one is generated by history. For the religious, the basic religious response to a crisis is to restore the true relationship between man and God, which the religious conceive as deteriorated by the improper behavior prior to the crisis. For the secular, it is the socio-political situation that is addressed as the result of a national catastrophe. One of the major explanations of the religious meaning of the Expulsion was formulated as a theodicy, the sins of the people of Israel provoked the suffering of the new exiles. As such the Expulsion was integrated into the sacred historiography of the Jewish people. The religious renascence that followed the Expulsion can be understood also as triggered by this consciousness of sin and the need for beginning a new page.

V

Finally, it would be pertinent here to distinguish between two different approaches to a complex phenomenon like the Holocaust: The academic approach, both from the historical and

-22- philosophical points of view, is the prerogative of pure academic research. The cultural-communal approach, on the other hand, is concerned with the Jewish nation as an entity, and deals not only with the past as it "was", if indeed it is possible to reconstruct such a past, but with the future and, in our specific case, with the impact of the past on the future. If the approach of the academicians is, at least in principle, supposed to be "objective", the approach of those who decide on the spiritual avenues to be opened for the collective, is, naturally, much more subjective. They must be concerned with what may be healthier from the psychological point of view rather than with what is more accurate from the historical point of view. These two points of view do not necessarily coincide; from time to time they may even contradict each other.

If the historical approach strives to understand the factors that determined the horrors by reconstructing as accurately as possible the picture of an insane epoch, another type of attitude to the future must be based on what I would like to call "creative memory". Such an approach may be concerned not only, or at least not so much, with the process of destruction and its terrors, but also with what was destroyed. After all not only living persons lost their life as individuals, but also whole communities lost their way of life and culture, including their uniqueness and idiosyncrasies. Historical research, based as it is upon analyses of political, technical and military aspects of destruction, may easily lose what I believe is the essential element of this terrible process: the identity, or identities, of the victims. Moreover, the short span of time that passed since the Holocaust has taught us very convincingly that the traditional way of life which preceded the Holocaust was only marginally touched by the destruction; it had the power to survive and guide the lives of the survivors and their descendants. At the stake was not only the physical destruction, which seems to be so prominent in modern scholarship, but also the cultural one. It is this subject, more complex and perhaps from time to time even imponderable, which must preoccupy us if we seek a more balanced vision, which may inform the future in a more creative manner. Not only the Jewish people survived the Holocaust, but also a variety of Judaisms, which helped the survivors to survive. Such a creative reading of the events is necessary not only for a "re-creative" contribution but also for a better understanding of what happened.

Unfortunately, despite the extraordinary quantity of historical discussions on the Holocaust, concerned mostly with the technical details of the extermination and the ideology which informed it, the victims seem to loom only rarely in their full status. The biographical material found in the scanty autobiographies of those who perished, or survived the horrors, should be understood only as the tip of an iceberg; in order to understand them better we need a much more comprehensive approach to the lives of those people prior to what was intended to be the . The departmentalization of the study of the Jewish people into modern history and the different branches of Maddaei ha-Yahadut, the various "sciences of Judaism", is emblematic of this categorical alienation between the cultural structure of the Jewish people prior to the war, and the historical approach concerned as it is more with the atrocities of this period. Indeed, the goals of the historians are different from those who are more concerned with the background of the victims and the preservation of their culture.

VI

However, it seems that the difference in goals and methods is not the only obstacle to a more comprehensive approach to the cultural description of the different communities. It seems that the obvious discrepancies between the ideology which informs most of the modern study of the Holocaust and the religious attitudes of many of the groups who paid the heaviest price for their Jewishness, is still a stumbling block. Understanding the anti-Zionist factions of the Hasidic movement, for example, is part of a much more comprehensive Weltanschauung, which remained beyond the scope of modern scholarship. Just as in the case of the study of the Expulsion, so too with respect to the study of the Holocaust, a more comprehensive approach will have to include not only mention of the bare historical factors and events, but also a study of the cultural infrastructure of the communities which were

-23- involved and which reacted as they did. It would be better, in both cases, to pay special attention not to one crucial component which will guide the analysis of such complex phenomena, but to be open to a more multifaceted explanation, which will integrate local aspects of a certain center with the common denominators of the exiles and of the survivors. Did the Andalusian Jews react to the Expulsion in the same manner as their brothers from the Christian Spanish provinces? Does a German, or Austrian, assimilated Jew who lived in a great city experience the ordeals of the war just like someone who came from a traditional Polish or Russian small town?

There are some similarities between the responses to these two events: in the two cases significant numbers of Jews moved from Europe to the Orient and such movements, which only very marginally can be called messianic, did help, each one in its different way, to establish, later on, the independent state of the Jews. Similarly, we can discern the first emigration of the Jews and conversos to the newly discovered continent, a phenomenon that established there the first Jewish presence. The two major upheavals in Europe had pushed the Jews outside of the old continent. The two major experiences of the Jews with the Christian superpowers had ended in attempts by the respective nations to get rid of the Jews in the name of a greater religious or nationalistic ideal, which implied the achievement of a more monolithic entity.

This achievement involves more than a dislocation of the Jews, or even more than their extermination: it was part of a cultural and religious clash. Jewish contributions to the respective civilizations notwithstanding, the inner "logic" of the crystallization of a nation provoked a disentanglement of the majority and the minorities. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to see today, just as in the 16th century, the nostalgia for the good old days and attachment of intellectual Jews to the cultures which repudiated them as an ethnic minority. The Ladino of the and the German language of the "Yakes" in Rehaviah bear testimony to the deep involvement of their ancestors in the alienated environment in which they lived generations ago. While preserving the old flavor of the different types of communities, the anachronistic attachments may become stumbling blocks to the creation of a more unified type of Jewish culture. The more recent fashion of exploring one's "roots" by visiting Spain, Poland, Morocco or Turkey, bears evidence that too abstract, and from the point of view of Judaism even void, entities still play an important role in the self-definition of Jews. The "monumental" type of tourism, involving visits to places where only "trees and stones" remain from the vanished Jewish past, betrays a deep cultural or religious vacuum. In any case, it seems that the traditional manner of commemoration by spiritual creation, the "Monuments of Remembrance" to use the title of the Kabbalistic treatise mentioned above, is only a secondary avenue for modern secular Jewry. Apparently the precarious plight of the transmission of Jewish contents in traditional ways, by books and by direct imitation of a religious modus vivendi, has given way to a museum memory, which immortalizes the victim as much as the killer.

It is the continuous process of de-textualization of the Jews, as pointed out by Harold Bloom, their slow but rather constant tendency to lose contact with the original language and canonic texts of the Jewish culture, which is part of an assimilation to the cultures of the majorities, that induced a transition from commemoration by creation, which combines simultaneous conservation and innovation, to the museum-monumental approach. If this museum-monumental effort has something to tell about the past, and indeed there is no question that material visualization of the past can contribute something to a better understanding of it, it has very little to say about the future. The overemphasis on historical events, which are ex definitio, and especially so in our case, exceptional, can help only for a short period of time. Studying or teaching the history of a certain event alone only rarely creates communal or religious values; they emerge rather as results of the creative efforts of individuals, be they religious or ideological thinkers, who dare to formulate new vistas for their nations or communities. In order to be able to achieve this in our era, it is incumbent upon us to learn from the creative strategies of the post-Expulsion Sephardi Jewry: to create even more than their predecessors had before the crisis, to study even more diligently the legacy of the past in order not to enter into a disruptive relationship with that legacy. The safeguard of the 15th century legacy and the way it was perpetuated in the 16th century are powerful examples for a positive and creative

-24- relationship to the past by individuals who underwent traumatic experiences without losing their organic link to the traditions of their ancestors.

-25-