A couple of weeks ago I took a field trip to Toledo, a city just south of Madrid. Though Spain had a very strong Jewish presence in its history, it was not until I arrived in Toledo that I got any sense of this. While Muslim architecture, language, and even music can be found embedded in Spanish culture, Jewish culture, as far as I have seen, has left a much smaller footprint.
According to our guide, Toledo was one city in Spain where the Jewish community was able to flourish. In fact, Toledo is one of the few cities in Spain that had more then one synagogue, due to the peaceful relations between the Jewish community and the city elite. This being said, an audacious church lies right in the middle of the Jewish quarter, a not so subtle reminder as to who truly had control and possession of the city. While the Jewish community enjoyed moderate freedom of worship in Toledo, in 1492 they, along with the entire Spanish Jewish community, were forced into exile.
All that remains of the once large Jewish community of Toledo is a badly kept synagogue and a devastating attempt at a Jewish culture museum. This “museum” was a room off the synagogue that had two Sephardic outfits on mannequins, a couple of coins, and a menorah. I, along with many of the Georgetown students who were also on the trip, was somewhat horrified that the Spanish tribute to a people who had been there for thousands of years was, well, just a room.
An incredibly interesting story, however, came out of the museum. Our guide told us about a Jewish professor who came to Toledo a few years back to do research. The professor was dead set on finding a very specific house that supposedly existed in Toledo back in the fifteenth century. Though the street names had changed, the streets remained virtually the same as they had 500 years early. Using old maps, they were able to find the street’s modern day equivalent. When the professor arrived at the street he opened his Torah, a Torah that had been handed down from generation to generation, where an address had been written on the inside cover. Upon locating the house, he pulled out a set of keys with which he was able to open the front door. The house was the one his ancestors had left behind when they were forced into exile, and his family had always kept the keys and the address in their Torah. Apparently, his was neither the first nor the last Jewish descendant to make his way back to his ancestral home.
It is rather sad though that it has taken Jewish descendants over 500 years to return to what was once home. After the Franco regime, and the reinstatement of religious freedom, the Spanish government instituted a policy that allowed any Sephardic Jew to claim Spanish citizenship. This, however, has proven ineffective. Sephardic Jews are specifically those that came from the Iberian Peninsula, and yet today Spain has only the twelfth largest Sephardic Jew population. Today, only 3,500 of the 3 million inhabitants of Madrid are Jewish, and only six synagogues are in existence. Many Spaniards I have talked to about this confess that they have not even met a Jewish person and are ignorant about basic Jewish holidays and traditions. I've always learned about the reconquista of Spain, but it was not until I was here that I got to see how profound an effect it had on the Spanish culture and on the lives of those it displaced.
All that remains of the once large Jewish community of Toledo is a badly kept synagogue and a devastating attempt at a Jewish culture museum. This “museum” was a room off the synagogue that had two Sephardic outfits on mannequins, a couple of coins, and a menorah. I, along with many of the Georgetown students who were also on the trip, was somewhat horrified that the Spanish tribute to a people who had been there for thousands of years was, well, just a room.
An incredibly interesting story, however, came out of the museum. Our guide told us about a Jewish professor who came to Toledo a few years back to do research. The professor was dead set on finding a very specific house that supposedly existed in Toledo back in the fifteenth century. Though the street names had changed, the streets remained virtually the same as they had 500 years early. Using old maps, they were able to find the street’s modern day equivalent. When the professor arrived at the street he opened his Torah, a Torah that had been handed down from generation to generation, where an address had been written on the inside cover. Upon locating the house, he pulled out a set of keys with which he was able to open the front door. The house was the one his ancestors had left behind when they were forced into exile, and his family had always kept the keys and the address in their Torah. Apparently, his was neither the first nor the last Jewish descendant to make his way back to his ancestral home.
It is rather sad though that it has taken Jewish descendants over 500 years to return to what was once home. After the Franco regime, and the reinstatement of religious freedom, the Spanish government instituted a policy that allowed any Sephardic Jew to claim Spanish citizenship. This, however, has proven ineffective. Sephardic Jews are specifically those that came from the Iberian Peninsula, and yet today Spain has only the twelfth largest Sephardic Jew population. Today, only 3,500 of the 3 million inhabitants of Madrid are Jewish, and only six synagogues are in existence. Many Spaniards I have talked to about this confess that they have not even met a Jewish person and are ignorant about basic Jewish holidays and traditions. I've always learned about the reconquista of Spain, but it was not until I was here that I got to see how profound an effect it had on the Spanish culture and on the lives of those it displaced.
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