THE JEWS IN SPAIN With thanks to the many contributors to this feature in Spain, the UK, the USA and Canada and particular thanks to Michael Alpert and Dominique Tomasov Blinder for the advice they provided. 11 JEWS IN SPAIN TIMELINE MICHAEL ALPERT CHRISTIAN SPAIN JEWS RETURN TO SPAIN 13th century There is rapid Christian 1834-5 Lionel de Rothschild is invited to conquest of Islamic Spain and attempts to Madrid to organise Spanish finances. limit the administrative role of Jews. 1859-60 Spain reconnects with its exiled 1263 Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Jews in Morocco. A Jewish community (Nahmanides or the Ramban) defends established in Seville. Judaism at Disputation of Barcelona. 1865 Statutes of ‘Purity of Blood’ 1348 The Black Death unleashes attacks abolished. on Jews who are thought to be responsible 1924 Spain allows Sephardim to acquire for the epidemic. Spanish nationality. June 1391 Violent attacks on Jewish 1931 The Constitution of the Second communities. Many Jews accept Republic allows public practice of Christianity. Judaism. 1413-1414 Disputation of Tortosa between 1936-75 The Franco regime impedes the Jewish leaders and converts leads to practice of Judaism but slowly comes to general weakening of Jewish solidarity and tolerate it. mass conversion. However, many converts From late1940s There is a wave of (New Christians) continue to practise immigration of Moroccan Jews. Judaism secretly. 1967 Law of Religious Liberty allows the 1449 Statute of Toledo marks the open practice of Judaism in Spain. beginning of ‘Purity of Blood’ 1970s/ 80s Jewish immigrants arrive from discrimination against Jewish converts to South America, mostly from Argentina, Christianity, reflecting suspicions that the fleeing the oppressive regime and, later, latter still live as Jews. economic hardship. 1449-1474 Widespread rioting against New 1992 King of Spain abrogates the Edict of Christians. Expulsion. 1480 Isabel of Castile and Fernando of 2008 There are an estimated 35,000 Jews Aragon, joint monarchs, establish the living in Spain, about 20,000 affiliated to Inquisition to investigate religious conduct congregations. of converts and their descendants.. 6 February 1481 In Seville, the first Auto Statue of philospher and poet Ibn Gabirol in Malaga de Fe ceremony takes place in which Michael Alpert is Emeritus Professor Born Málaga about 1021; died about 1058 in Valencia heretics confess and are reconciled to the of the Modern and Contemporary History PRE-ISLAMIC SPAIN Church, or are burnt at the stake if of Spain, University of Westminster. 1st and 2nd centuries CE Following the impenitent . destruction of the Temple and the defeat of 1481- Intense inquisitorial activity. Previous page: Sinagoga Córdoba Jewish rebellions, Jewish exiles reach 31 March 1492 Edict of Expulsion of all A Hebrew inscription indicates 1350 as the Roman Spain. unconverted Jews. date of the synagogue’s construction. The 586 The Visigothic king of Spain tries to Summer 1492 Tens of thousands of Jews interior features exquisite Mudéjar stucco force Jews to adopt Christianity. leave Spain for Portugal, North Africa, tracery of plant motifs. The women’s gallery Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Many others still stands, and in the east wall is the ark ISLAMIC SPAIN 8TH-13TH CENTURY accept Christian baptism. where the sacred scrolls of the Pentateuch were kept. With the expulsion of the Jews it 711 Muslims conquer Spain: the Golden 2nd August 1492 Columbus sets sail in became a hospital and in 1588 a Catholic Age for Jews begins. search of India with converts in his crew. chapel. Today it is a museum. 915-970 Hasdai ibn Shaprut, a Jew, 1580-1640 Inquisition takes energetic steps becomes Chief Minister of the Caliph of against secret Jews. 16th-17th centuries Spanish and Right: Sinagoga del Tránsito in Toledo Córdoba. Founded around 1356 by Shmuel HaLevi Portuguese New Christians leave Iberian 993-1064 Shmuel ibn Nagrela, the Jewish Abulafia, member of a prominent Jewish Peninsula for Bayonne, Bordeaux and poet and military leader, becomes Chief family and treasurer and advisor to King Italy, and establish communities in Minister of Granada. Pedro I of Castile. It defied all the laws about Amsterdam, Hamburg, the Caribbean, synagogues being smaller and lower than Poets, grammarians, Bible commentators New York and London. and philosophers include Dunash ibn churches, and plain of decoration. Featuring Nasrid-style polychrome Labrat, Menahem ibn Saruk, Shlomo ibn THE END OF THE INQUISITION Gabirol, Abraham ibn Ezra and Rabbi stucco-work and Hebrew inscriptions of the Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides or the 1768 Last Auto de Fe with Jews in Spain. names of God, it is one of the best surviving examples of mudéjar architecture. Rambam). 1834 Spanish Inquisition is abolished. After the expulsion of the city’s Jews it was converted into a church and is now a Museum of Sephardi culture. 12 JEWISH RENAISSANCE JULY 2008 Photos: Courtesy Turespaña COMMUNITY The Golden Age MARION NINA AMBER celebrates a period when “coexistence was a fact of life” It could have been a warm spring day, Kamen, The Disinherited) who hadn’t the kind full of promise. It was seasonal converted by 1492. But the Edict warns, for apricot trees to be in bloom, massing ‘conversos’ aren’t trustworthy. Actually, white flowers against a clear blue sky. neither fleeing as Jews nor staying put Absorbing their lightness and perfume, as Christians were particularly one could almost have hoped the viable choices. situation would improve. There had probably been a Jewish But then, perhaps the wind picked presence on the Iberian Peninsula from up; flowers floated to the ground, dogs Roman times. In 711, Jews had chased their tails, wild children ran...the supported and accompanied the wind blew down from the direction of conquering Moors to this western the palace, high on the cliff. The frontier. A synthesis of Jews from message it carried could not have different traditions and Arabs had forged surprised, only stunned affected ears. a civilisation rich in scholarship, culture “King Fernando and Queen Isabel, by and commerce known as the Golden the Grace of God...to the prince Lord Age. Coexistence, or convivencia, was a Juan...and all good men,...and to the fact of life for the multi-ethnic residential quarter of the Jews,...and to community. barons and women...Salutations and Key to the melding of peoples during Statue of Maimonides in Córdoba Photo: Courtesy Turespaña grace.” The year was 1492. this period was the Jewish capacity to The Edict of the Expulsion of Jews separate religion and culture. Religion translated into Hebrew and finally into goes on. “Wicked Christians who was private; the Jewish public face was Latin, it greatly influenced Christian and Judaized” (new Christians who followed international. Jews functioned as the Jewish religious thinking. The philo- any Jewish practices) were blamed for courtier class between the Muslim and sophical and intellectual work done in maintaining contact with Jews. It was felt Christian communities. Multilingual, they Spain eventually supported the that contact made it easier to re-convert also translated for local consumption the Renaissance in Italy. them. Jews had therefore been isolated classical philosophy that Arabs had The stage for this period was mostly into separate neighbourhoods. carried west. Jewish thinkers also in southern, subtropical Andalusia, But the Inquisition judged this didn’t benefited. Ibn Gabirol wrote a Neo- specifically within the triangle of remedy the situation. Hence the Edict, Platonic work, Mekor Hayyim, The Córdoba, Seville and Granada. which reads to its final solution. “Those Source of Life, that was read in Economic prosperity was the Caliph’s who perturb the good and honest life of monasteries throughout the Middle Ages. goal and Jews participated. They had cities and towns by contagion can injure Kabbalah, first put into written form in vines and produced fine wines; they others...therefore we...resolve to order the Spain, came to incorporate Neo-Platonic manufactured textiles, particularly silks, said Jews and Jewesses of our kingdoms to thinking as well. as well as being skilled at yarn dyeing depart and never to return...” As for Aristotelian thought, and tanning leather. They made Jews who wished to convert were Maimonides, son of a Córdoban rabbi, jewellery and weapons. They excelled as welcome to stay, although there were wrote of faith and reason in his Guide to doctors, mathematicians and scientific actually only about 50,000 Jews (Henry the Perplexed. Published in Arabic, researchers, while continuing as scholars, translators and court Jews. They were also international traders. Never before had Jews operated from such a broad base. It was through speaking Arabic that Jews reconsidered the merits of Hebrew, remembered its past literary use and began to write Hebrew poetry. “Send a carrier pigeon/Though she cannot speak/With a tiny letter/Attached to her wings/Sweetened with saffron water...” (Nagrela). Spain might have been far from the centre of the world, but there were lines of communication. Jewish poets were cognizant of crusader chaos in the Holy Land. “My heart is in the East and I in the JEWISH RENAISSANCE JULY 2008 13 JEWS IN SPAIN utmost West,/How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me?/How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while MUSIC AN yet/Zion lieth beneath the fetters of Edom, and I in Arab chains?...” (Yehuda Halevi, tr. JUDITH COHEN Nina Salaman). And the Crusades were just one of the came to be used for secular as well as stressors; the pendulum swings. Time was religious poetry. Learned poets often running out for the Jews of Spain. “...like an known as the ‘rabbi courtiers’ produced Ethiopian woman in raiment of gold/And of both secular, often quite earthy, poetry in blue inset with crystals./And the stars are Hebrew and Arabic, as well as religious confused in the heart of the sea/Like poetry: Sometimes an ageing poet strangers driven out of their homes;...And renounced secular genres and devoted the sea appeareth as a firmament–/They are himself to religious compositions.