Spanish Jews

“ THE JEWS IN SPAIN As we have seen in a previous chapter, the lot of the Spanish Jews under Mohammedan rule was supremely enviable. Their condition in the Christian parts of the Iberian Peninsula was less uniformly prosperous. We there find two forces at work, one favourable to the children of Israel and the other the exact opposite. The people and the Church were ill-disposed towards them; the princes and the nobles protected them. ”

“ Stately Spanish Jews, grave blue-blooded Portuguese, hitherto smacking of the Castilian hidalgo, noble seigniors like Manuel Texeira, the friend of a Queen of Sweden, erudite physicians like Bendito de Castro, president of the congregation, shed their occidental veneer and might have been seen in the synagogue skipping like harts upon the mountains, dancing wild dances with the Holy Scroll clasped to their bosoms. ”

“ Hence Spanish Jews could presume to play the rôle of masters, and frequently, in spite of their paucity of numbers, they dominated a majority speaking other tongues. In the century after their expulsion they are almost exclusively the leaders; the names of their spokesmen are heard everywhere; they furnished rabbis, authors, thinkers and visionaries, whilst German and Italian Jews occupied a humble place. In all countries, except Germany and Poland, into which they had not penetrated, or only as solitary individuals, the Sephardic Jews were the leaders. ”

“ In Spain Jewish life had participated in the general life, but the expulsion—while it dispersed the Spanish Jews in Poland, Turkey, Italy and France, and thus in the end contributed to the Jewish emancipation at the French Revolution—for the time drove the Jews within their own confines and barred them from the outside world. ”

“ The Spanish Jews, by reason of the peculiarities of their situation, the hostility of their rulers,—which their pecuniary resources and natural acuteness often baffled, yet never entirely overcame,—and their successive domination by races of different origin, faith, and language, were impressed with mental characteristics and peculiarities not to be met with in their brethren of other countries. Their rigid formalism was proverbial, and the Hebrew of Toledo observed more conscientiously the precepts of the Pentateuch and the Talmud than the Hebrew of Damascus or Jerusalem. ”

“ On the other hand, the Jewish immigrants are not only distinct in dress, dialect, and mode of living from these native Jews, but are amongst themselves divided by the barrier of language, the Spanish Jews being utterly unable to understand or to make themselves understood to their brethren from Northern504 and Central Europe, though they all employ the Hebrew characters in writing; and by manners, the Spanish immigrants, owing to their longer residence in the country, being more Oriental than the new-comers. ”

“ The Spanish Jews, whose misfortunes were of later date, did not neglect their unhappy co-religionists. More than once we find the still prosperous Jews of Spain sending sympathetic messages and substantial supplies to the persecuted Jews of France and Germany. And amongst Christians there was many a brave, good man who had the courage to be humane, and to stand out as an exception to the general line of conduct which was pursued towards the Jews. ”

“ They carried the Spanish tongue, Spanish dignity and distinction to Africa, Syria, and Palestine, Italy and Flanders; wherever fate cast their lot they cherished and cultivated this Spanish manner so lovingly,388 that it has maintained itself to this day in full vigor among their descendants. Far from being absorbed by the rest of the Jewish population in countries which had hospitably received them, they considered themselves a privileged race, the flower and nobility of the Jewish nation, kept aloof from others, looked down upon them with contempt, and not unfrequently dictated laws to them. ”

“ Spain was the motherland of these Jews. For centuries it had been the home of their ancestors, and they held it in the affection implanted in the heart of each of us for the country which is his own. They must depart out of it, into exile in some foreign land, and the only terms upon which they could obtain immunity from that harsh decree was by the sacrifice of something dearer still, something as dear to them as honour itself. They must be false to the faith of their fathers and forswear the God of Israel. ”

“ These facts were well known to the Spanish Jews who had, amidst the multiplied catastrophes afflicting their race, survived the effects of Visigothic tyranny. Notwithstanding the successive persecutions of which they had been the object, they were still numerous in the Peninsula. The phenomenal vitality of a people which, from time immemorial, has preserved its integrity under the most adverse conditions, enabled it to defy the malice of courts and the edicts of councils whose office and pastime was the pitiless extirpation of heresy. The Jews flourished in defiance of bloodthirsty laws. ”

“ As everyone may well know, no inconsiderable part of the Spanish population consisted of Jews, many of whose ancestors had taken refuge in that country, or had settled there for purposes of commerce, ages before the birth of our Lord, and their number had been increased from time to time, in consequence of imperial edicts which drove them from Italy, or by the attractions of honor and wealth in Spain. They were the most industrious and therefore the most wealthy people in those kingdoms, and had possessed great influence. ”

“ The secret Jews, or as they were officially termed, the Judaizing Christians, could not tear Judaism out of their hearts. The Spanish Jews, surrounded as they were by perils of death, early learnt the art of remaining true in their inmost soul to their religion, and of escaping their Argus-eyed foe. They continued to celebrate the Jewish festivals in their homes, and to disregard the holy-days instituted by the Church. Desirous of putting an end to such a state of things, the representatives of the Church issued a decree, which aimed at depriving this unfortunate people of their home life ”

“ As the Spanish Jews turned portions of European and Asiatic Turkey into a new Spain, the German Jews transformed Poland, Lithuania, and the territories belonging thereto, into a new Germany. For several centuries, therefore, the Jews were divided into Spanish and German speaking Jews, the Italian speaking members being too small in number to count, especially as in Italy the Jews were compelled to understand either Spanish or German. The Jews settled in Poland gradually cast off their German awkwardness and simplicity, but not the language. ”

“ Beyond stood a group of Spanish Jews. * * * Besides these there are Jews from every quarter of the world, who had wandered back to Jerusalem that they might die in the city of their fathers, and be buried in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, under the shadow of the Temple Hill. The worshipers gradually increased in number until the crowd thronging the pavement could not be fewer than two hundred. ”

“ Thus Spain became in many ways the center of Judaism. Several apparently accidental events contributed to this result, and the aroused self-importance of the Spanish Jews did not allow this supremacy to depart from their midst; in fact, they took the greatest pains to assert and to deserve it. The prosperity of the Cordova Jewish community made it possible for them to make the Andalusian capital the center of all undertakings. Cordova numbered several thousand rich families, well able to vie with the Arabs in display. ”

“ The Spanish Jews had such widespread repute, and their expulsion had made so much stir in Europe, that crowds of ships were ready in Spanish seaports to take up the wanderers and convey them to all parts, not only the ships of the country, but also Italian vessels from Genoa and Venice. The ship-owners saw a prospect of lucrative business. Many Jews from Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia desired to settle in Naples, and sent ambassadors to the king, Ferdinand I, to ask him to receive them. ”

“ In the cohesion in a foreign land of this people that cannot keep together as a nation, and in their extraordinary commercial acuteness, lies the strength 75 of the Jews. They grew wealthy by their industry and thrift, until they were in a position to purchase those privileges which in Christendom are the birth-right of every Christian. Their numbers, too, made it difficult in Spain to treat them with contumely; for upon the reasoned estimate of Amador de los Rios39 there were close upon a million Jews in Castile at the end of the thirteenth century. ”

“ How far the banishment of the Jews was conformable to the opinions of the most enlightened contemporaries, may be gathered from the encomiums lavished on its authors from more than one quarter. Spanish writers, without exception, celebrate it as a sublime sacrifice of all temporal interests to religious principle. The best instructed foreigners, in like manner, however they may condemn the details of its execution, or commiserate the sufferings of the Jews, commend the act, as evincing the most lively and laudable zeal for the true faith. ”

“ These Spanish Jews, better instructed and more cultivated than their African brethren, have exercised a dominating influence, exhibited to-day in their names, their customs and their language. The Jew of the South is scarcely to be distinguished from the nomads among whom he lives. ”

“ The Spanish Jews who perished by one of the most excruciating deaths rather than forswear their faith may be numbered by thousands, and those who preferred exile and spoliation to apostasy, by hundreds of thousands. ”

“ Although they often carried their investigation to the borders of unbelief, yet there is scarcely one of the Jewish-Spanish thinkers who crossed these bounds, nor did extravagant mysticism find favor with them during the flourishing period. No wonder, then, that the Jews of Spain were looked upon as superior beings by their uncultured brethren in other lands—in France, Germany, and Italy—and that they gladly yielded them the precedence which had formerly been enjoyed by the Babylonian academies. Cordova, Lucena, and Granada soon took the place of Sora and Pumbeditha. ”

“ Talent, activity, and prosperous civilization passed with them from the country. The smaller towns, which had derived some vitality from the presence of the Jews, were quickly depopulated, sank into insignificance, lost their spirit of freedom and independence, and became tools for the increasing despotism of the Spanish kings and the imbecile superstition of the priests. ”

“ There are a great number of Hebrew families here: they all speak Spanish, being the descendants of those unfortunate Jews who were expelled from Spain at the time of the expulsion of the Moors in the reign of Don Felipe III surnamed el Discreto, who was determined not to suffer either a Jew, Mahometan or heretic in all his dominions. This barbarous decree was the ruin and destruction of a number of industrious families, thousands of whom died of despair at being exiled from their native land. In return for this what has Spain gained? ”

“ At Gibraltar, which has become heretic since the English occupy it, there are a great number of Jews, who have either been driven away, or looked on with an evil eye by the Spanish, who, if they have no more religion, still possess superstition. They walk about the streets, displaying their hooked noses, thin lips, and yellow, polished foreheads surmounted by rabbinical caps, placed on the back of the head, and their threadbare, narrow, sombre-coloured robes. ”

“ On this point they contrasted with the German Jews, who despised pure and beautiful speech, the very thing which constitutes a true man, and considered a corrupt jargon and isolation from the Christian world as proofs of religious zeal. The Sephardic Jews attached importance to forms of all kinds, to taste in dress, to elegance in their synagogues, as well as to the medium for the exchange of thought. The Spanish and Portuguese rabbis preached in their native tongues, and laid great stress on pure pronunciation and euphony. ”

“ Spanish is slightly understood in Tangier and its vicinity, and is well understood by the Jews. The houses are generally built of chalk and flint (tabia) on the ground-floor, and of bricks on the upper story. Moorish bricks are good, but rough and crooked in make. The houses inhabited by Jews are obliged to be coated with a yellow wash, those of natives are white, those of Christians may be of any colour. The Jews are made to feel that they are a despised stock, and yet with Jewish subtlety and perseverance they have managed to get and keep the trade of the place in their hands. ”

“ The Spanish and Portuguese Jews kept themselves proudly and distinctly aloof from the German Jews, refusing even to intermarry with them. The Sephardim and Ashkenazim45 Jews of Holland were, from the very first, entirely separate communities, worshipping in different synagogues, learning in different schools, supporting each their own charities, and using each their own prayer-books, with not even the pronunciation of the ancient language in common. ”

“ It seems, too, that Provençal romances were heard, and their great poets welcomed, in the houses of Jews, who did not scruple occasionally to use their melodies in the synagogue service.
National customs, then, took root in Israel; but that Jewish elements should have become incorporated into Spanish literature is more remarkable, may, indeed, be called marvellous. Yet, from one point of view, it is not astonishing. The whole of mediæval Spanish literature is nothing more than the handmaiden of Christianity. Spanish poetry is completely dominated by Catholicism ”