Genealogies of Sepharad (“Jewish Spain”) edited by Daniela Flesler, Michal Rose Friedman and Asher Salah Issue 18, December 2020 QUEST. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History Journal of the Fondazione CDEC QUEST 18 Editors Guri Schwarz (Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy – Editor in Chief), Elissa Bemporad (Queens College of the City University of New York, USA), Laura Brazzo (Fondazione CDEC, Italy), Tullia Catalan (Università degli Studi di Trieste, Italy), Cristiana Facchini (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy), Gadi Luzzatto Voghera (Fondazione CDEC, Italy), Dario Miccoli (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy), Michele Sarfatti (Fondazione CDEC, Italy), Marcella Simoni (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy), Ulrich Wyrwa (Universität Potsdam and Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung der TU Berlin, Germany) Editorial Assistants Matteo Perissinotto (Univerza v Ljubljani, Slovenia – Managing Editor), Chiara Renzo (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy), Piera Rossetto (Universität Graz, Austria) Book Review Editor Miriam Benfatto (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy) English Language Editor Language Consulting Congressi S.r.l. Editorial Advisory Board Ruth Ben Ghiat (New York University, USA), Paolo Luca Bernardini (Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Italy), Dominique Bourel (Université Paris-Sorbonne, France), Michael Brenner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and American University Washington D.C., Germany and USA), Enzo Campelli (La Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy), Francesco Cassata (Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy), Marco Cuzzi (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), Roberto Della Rocca (Dipartimento Educazione e Cultura – Ucei, Italy), Lois Dubin (Smith College, USA), Jacques Ehrenfreund (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland), Katherine E. Fleming (New York University, USA), Anna Foa (La Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy), Ada Gigli Marchetti (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), François Guesnet (University College London, UK), Alessandro Guetta (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, France), András Kovács (Central European University, Hungary-Austria), Fabio Levi (Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy), Simon Levis Sullam (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy), Germano Maifreda (Univesità degli Studi di Milano, Italy), Renato Mannheimer (Istituto Pubblica Opinione, Italy), Dan Michman (International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, Israel), Michael Miller (Central European University, Hungary-Austria), Liliana Picciotto (Fondazione CDEC, Italy), Marcella Ravenna (Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Italy), Milena Santerini (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy), Perrine Simon-Nahum (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France), Francesca Sofia (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy), David Sorkin (Yale University, USA), Emanuela Trevisan Semi (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy), Christian Wiese (Goethe-Universität, Germany) Direttore Responsabile ai sensi della legge italiana (Legge 47/1948), Stefano Jesurum QUEST. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History Journal of the Fondazione CDEC ISSN: 2037-741X via Eupili 8, 20145 Milano Italy Reg. Trib. Milano n. 403 del 18/09/2009 P. IVA: 12559570150 tel. 003902316338 – fax 00390233602728 www.quest-cdecjournal.it [email protected] Cover image credit: Daniel Quintero, La noche de la Mimona (The Night of Mimouna), oil on cloth, 89 x 180 cm, 1998, Private Collection (Courtesy of Daniel Quintero). II QUEST 18 Contents FOCUS: Genealogies of Sepharad (“Jewish Spain”) Daniela Flesler, Michal Rose Friedman and Asher Salah Introduction p. VI Paloma Díaz-Mas Sephardi Women in Ángel Pulido’s Correspondence p. 1 Allyson Gonzalez A History of Histories—of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Exchange: p. 34 Professor A.S. Yahuda and the International Trade of Antiquities, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, 1902-1944 Asher Salah Jews and Judaism in the Writings of Enrique Jardiel Poncela p. 66 and his Daughter Evangelina Jardiel Tabea Alexa Linhard A Tale in the Language of “My Mother Spain”: p. 96 Carmen Pérez-Avello's Un muchacho sefardí Harry Eli Kashdan Archives of the Sephardi Kitchen p. 121 Hazel Gold Pedagogies of Citizenship: Sepharad and Jewishness in Spanish p. 152 and Catalan Documentary Film and Television Daniela Flesler and Adrián Pérez Melgosa Spain’s Jewish Genealogies in the “Sephardi Portraits” p. 189 of Daniel Quintero Rina Benmayor and Dalia Kandiyoti Ancestry, Genealogy, and Restorative Citizenship: Oral Histories of p. 219 Sephardi Descendants Reclaiming Spanish and Portuguese Nationality III QUEST 18 DISCUSSIONS Francesca Trivellato, The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society by Oliver Schulz p. 252 by Germano Maifreda p. 261 Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism by Zoltán Kékesi p. 271 by Joanna Michlic p. 281 REVIEWS Christoph Jahr, Paul Nathan. Publizist, Politiker und Philanthrop 1857-1927 by Johann Nicolai p. 289 Martin Goodman, Josephus’s The Jewish War: A Biography by Steve Mason p. 293 Ian S. Lustick, Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality by Menachem Klein p. 297 Antonella Salomoni, Le ceneri di Babij Jar. L’eccidio degli ebrei di Kiev by Simone Attilio Bellezza p. 300 Mark L. Smith, The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust by Daniela Ozacky-Stern p. 303 Paul Mendes-Flohr, Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent by Enrico Lucca p. 309 IV QUEST 18 David Kowalski, Polens letzte Juden. Herkunft und Dissidenz um 1968 by Beate Kosmala p. 313 Dafna Hirsch, ed., Encounters: History and Anthropology of the Israeli- Palestinian Space by Tamir Sorek p. 316 V QUEST 18 – FOCUS Genealogies of Sepharad (“Jewish Spain”) Introduction by Daniela Flesler, Michal Rose Friedman and Asher Salah Genealogy is gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary. It operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over and recopied many times.1 On January 14, 2019, King Felipe VI of Spain received the Chief Sephardi Rabbi of Jerusalem Shlomo Moshe Amar, a native of Casablanca (1948-), at the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid. The purpose of Rabbi Amar’s visit was twofold: he petitioned the king to extend the deadline for applications for Spanish citizenship on behalf of descendants of those Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492, under the special 2015 Spanish immigration law meant to “correct” the “historical mistake” of the expulsion, as well as to ease some of its requirements, specifically that of Spanish proficiency. Amar moreover appealed to King Felipe’s “great influence in the world among leaders,” asking him to intervene on behalf of the Jews of France, who he contended, were facing hostility and therefore were unable to enjoy a level of “openness” of Jewish life.2 Such a statement uncannily evokes the historical paradigm of the so-called “royal alliance”—the historical tendency of Jews in the diaspora since ancient times to forge vertical alliances with the highest power of the State, first noted by Salo Baron and 1 Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, la généalogie, l'histoire,” in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite, eds. Suzanne Bachelard et al. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 145-172; “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, Counter-memory, Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. D. F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139-164. 2 “R. Shlomo Amar se reúne con Felipe VI,” SFARAD.es El Portal del Judaísmo en España, January 14, 2019. Accessed December 11, 2020, https://www.sfarad.es/r-shlomo-amar-se-reune-con-felipe-vi/. VI QUEST 18 – FOCUS later elaborated by Yosef H. Yerushalmi.3 It also signals that Spain today is once again perceived as a possible place of settlement for Jews, and suggests the continued power of the idea of Sepharad for Jews in the diaspora and Israel.4 The statement moreover conveys how the relation of Jews to Sepharad is mediated in relation to the Spanish nation state, as well as the central role of the modern Spanish nation as an arbiter in the transactions of reclaiming and (re)envisioning and defining Sephardi history and heritage. While we assembled the essays for this volume in the fall of 2019, the time period allotted for the submission of applications for naturalization through the law of nationality for descendants of Sephardi Jews, reached its end. This law, granting an expedited path to citizenship to the descendants of those Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, had first been presented to the public in the fall of 2012. At the time, Spanish minister of justice Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, and minister of foreign affairs José Manuel García-Margallo, both of the then-ruling conservative Popular Party, described it as a reparation of a historical wrong: García-Margallo explained how it was meant to “recover the memory of a long-silenced Spain,” while Ruiz Gallardón celebrated it as a “re-encounter with all those that had been unjustly deprived of their nationality, who, from now on, can claim Spain as theirs.”5 In March, 2014 the law was passed by the lower house of the Spanish Parliament and went into effect in October, 2015. The law eliminated a two-year residency requirement and proof of financial resources, as well as a stipulation that the applicants renounce their current citizenship. By October 2, 2019, one day after the application deadline,