The Moors ruled Spain for centuries in medieval times and greatly influenced Spanish culture.
'Spain's medieval Jewish Golden Age came to an abrupt halt with the 1492 expulsion decree by Isabel and Ferdinand, whose inquisition turned the Iberian peninsula into a bastion of anti-Semitism and religious intolerance for centuries to come.'
'Only after the legalization of non-Catholic faiths in the 19th century did Jews begin to trickle back to Spain. Today's community numbers around 14,000, mostly Moroccan Jews who immigrated in the 1950s, along wit expatriates from the Americas and some Spaniards rediscovering their Jewish roots.'
A few years ago, my wife Shirley and I were in Gerona, Spain and during our wanderings, we found the old synagogue and mikva'ot'oth in the old, hilly part of town. There, you will find the Catalan Museum of Jewish Culture.
This area is referred to as "The Call" and probably the name came from the Hebrew word Kahal, meaning community. "The Call" was an autonomous government within the city, which had no jurisdiction over the Jews.
Gerona is about 40 miles by train from Barcelona and is a very well worth day trip. The train is comfortable and once you arrive in Gerona, you will quickly see how the Jewish residents lived before 1492. You'll walk in streets so narrow that your shoulders will literally touch the walls of the buildings on both sides of the twisted and turning "streets" ... better to call them paved paths.
"Stones of Silence," recounts the visit to the medieval Jewish quarter of Gerona, Spain, some resources, history and more by author Schelly Talalay Dardashti. Full story at: www.jpost.com
Nat Reiss reiss@rci.rutgers.edu in a message on JewishGen dated 4/6/99 stated in answer to a question from Menna Megan Kearns "Why do many Sephardic surnames seem quite Italian ... or at least sound like it?"
"Your observation is correct, and I know of at least two good reasons. First, some ethnically-Italian areas - Sardinia and Sicily - were under Spanish control at the time of the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and the Jews living there were in a similar situation to those living on the Iberian Peninsula;"
"Second, and probably more importantly, at the time of the Spanish expulsion, most areas on the Italian peninsula were accommodating to Jewish immigration. However, this changed drastically over the next decades and centuries as persecution of Jews became common, forcing many Jews to leave."
"The Islamic Ottoman Empire, which then included most of the eastern Mediterranean, was close-by and welcomed the Jews. It was the logical place for them to go. Many Jewish families from Turkey were of Italian origin and many kept their Italian citizenship. Turkish Jewish families often have names of Italian towns including Cori, Taranto, Pontremoli, Modiano/Modigliano, etc."
Jews have been living in Spain from before Christ. More and more Sephardic sites are appearing on the web. Those links that I am aware of at this time are available below, but I can assure you that as more sites are discovered, they will be added to my site.
Names and lots of personal information about Jews who lived in Spain prior to 1492 can be found in the Notarial records of Spain, of which there are about 2-3,000 per town per year and in which Jews are clearly mentioned as such. Extracts of these Notarial records are found in books such as Leon Tello's 2 volume book "Los Judios de Toledo" and several others.
Most books, CDs, etc. can be ordered through my link to Amazon.com by clicking here > Jewish Genealogy
"History of the Jews in Aragon, Regesta and Documents 1213 - 1327" authored by Jean Regne and published in Jerusalem in 1978
"Jews in the Notarial culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350" - authored by Robert I. Burns and published in Berkeley by the University of California Press in 1996.
"Les nomes des Israelites en France" authored by Paul Levy in Paris in 1960
General Spanish Genealogy Jewish woman in Tangiers Information
Argentinean Jews - significant numbers of Argentine Jews are moving to Israel and America, but ironically a number are also moving to Spain in an ironic twist of history -- cultural similarities, a common language and economic prosperity.
ETSI - Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Society - The purpose of "ETSI" is to help people interested in Jewish Genealogical and Historical Research in the Sephardi World. "ETSI's" field of study covers the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, Greece, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Egypt); North Africa (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia); Spain, Portugal, Italy and Gibraltar. The study of every Sephardi community or family who lived in other regions is equally within the society's aim. Email laurphil@wanadoo.fr http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321
Global Gazetteer is a great web site. It is a directory of 2,880,532 of the world's cities and towns, sorted by country and linked to a map for each town. A tab separated list is available for each country. www.calle.com/world/
Aventuriel - site of the Jewish culture in Murcia, Spain in Spanish, but if you use Google, it will translate into English http://www.iespana.es/heberg/
Barcelona - the capital of Catalonia. Jews lived here as early as the 9th century. The better, well-off among them settled at the foot of the Montjuic (Jewish Mountain) where a Jewish cemetery stood already in the first half of the 10th century and can still be seen. More info can be found at http://www.geocities.com/shl_gur/Catalonia-engl.htm
The city has a Jewish community today, that numbers about 3,500, with two synagogues (the Chabad at 27 Joan Gamper Street and the other synagogue at 24 Avenir Street), a Jewish school, a Jewish Community Center on Avenir Street, and roots that indicate a thriving pre-1492 Jewish past. In the heart of the old Call (a Hebrew diminutive for Kehilla [Community] is the narrow Marlat Street. At number five is a small space with lots of history for you are at the oldest synagogue in Europe - the Synagogue Mayor, built in the sixth century and rebuilt in the 14th century. A document from 1267 shows that King James authorized the restoration and elevation of the height of the Roman medieval synagogue. It wasn't until the 20th century before the site was explored, excavated and restored.
Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives and other archive sites are located at the University of Arizona by following links from: http://www.state.az.us/education.html
Castile - Don Pedro I ruled this area some 600 years ago and was known as a good friend to the Jews. His Jewish minister of Finance was Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir Abulafa. The Rabbi was such an efficient government minister that Don Pedro became one of the richest kings in all of Spain. When a civil war broke out among the populace and Don Pedro was imprisoned, the insurgents made sure his Jewish minister was jailed along with him. Rabbi Shmuel ransomed not only himself but also the king for a huge sum. Don Pedro was restored to the throne and Rabbi Shmuel resumed his duties as head of the Royal Treasury.
In 1360, the Rabbi became the target of a libelous plot, in which his enemies accused him of revealing state secrets to a foreign power. The Jewish minister was arrested, his wealth confiscated and he was tortured to death at the age of 40.
Catalonia - Shlomo Gurevich talks about his visit to places where the prominent Spanish rabbis - the ancestors of the Horowitz family resided: Barcelona, Gerona, Narbonne, Montpellier, Lunel http://www.geocities.com/shl_gur/Catalonia-engl.htm
Cordoba - once an important Sephardic-Jewish city in the Middle Ages - Maimonides was born there.
Crypto Judaic Studies - this society unites descendants of Crypto-Jews with scholars who study them. Most Jewish descendants of the Southwest trace their ancestry to secret Jews who arrived in what was then a remote corner of New Spain in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. www.cryptojews.com
Hispanic Genealogical Society of New York - can be contacted by writing to Murray Hill Station, PO Box 818 New York, NY 10156-0602 http://www.hispanicgenealogy.com
Jewish Communities Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain Madrid 28010, Spain
Jewish Network of Spain - during the 16th to the 18th century, there were important communities of Conversos in Spain. These towns included Toledo, Gerona, Cordoba and others. If you can read Spanish, Felipe Aira has pointed me to his web site at www.cidadesdixitais.org
The site asks for a password, but I suggest you just click on one of the names and read further. Felipe's email address is AIRAPARDO@terra.es
Jews and Gypsies - "During the Inquisition in Spain, the Jews, Moors and Gypsies were all persecuted. Many took refuge together in the mountains. The most notable byproduct of this cultural mixing is flamenco. If you listen to the pure flamenco singer you might think you are in shul listening to a cantor. Surely, there was more going on among the cultures than just music!" Marshall Kandell from a posting on JewishGen
Madrid - this is the capital city of Spain, and it is the home for more than 800 Jewish families. There are four synagogues , but Beth Yaakov is the largest.
National Association of Sephardic Artists, Writers and Intellectuals - site for those of Sephardic, Mizrahi and Crypto background http://www.ivri-nasawi.org
ThePortuguese Jewish Community in Tunis offers quite a bit of interesting information and a link to Marriage Licenses issued from 1788-1823 & 1853-1878. I suggest you start at Bob Cassuto's web page and just follow the links. http://www.bobcassuto.fr.st/
Sarajevo Haggada
The lavishly illustrated manuscript that
was hand written in Spain
in the 14th century and brought by a circuitous route to
Bosnia after the expulsion of the
Jews in 1492
Sephardic Family Site - a wonderful amount of Sephardic Information as well as information on the Malka-Gelfand family created by Jeff Malka. http://www.orthohelp.com/geneal/sefardim.htm
Sephardic mikva'ot'oth Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, established in 1659 as the oldest synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. The original building dates from 1732 and was dedicated in 1763. This congregation aided financially in the building of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York in 1729 and the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island in 1763.
This information is confirmed in the book "Precious Stones of The Jews Of Curacao" by Isaac Emmanuel and in the 1984 edition of the "World Guide For The Jewish Traveler" authored by Warren Freedman.
"According to Jacob R. Marcus in "The Colonial American Jew 1492-1776", a synagogue was established in Curacao by 1659. Marcus says that they built another in 1692 which replaced a wooden house where services had been held since 1651, and both were superseded by the fourth synagogue in 1703 which apparently still exists, "the oldest extant Jewish sanctuary in the Western Hemisphere." This is the one which was named mikva'ot'oth Israel-Emanuel; Marcus doesn't give a name for the earlier one. Maybe the 1702 structure was considered to be a rebuilding of the 1659 structure."
"Marcus also notes that there were synagogues in the Sephardic community in Recife, Brazil when it was governed by the Dutch in the mid 17th century. There were two synagogues probably dating from the 1630s and had at least one rabbi including Isaac Aboab de Fonseca. The Portuguese, however, recaptured the colony, bringing with them the Inquisition. He claims that this was the largest Jewish community in the Americas until the 19th century, but it survived little more than two decades. Some of those that fled subsequently settled in the Guianas, the West Indies, and of course, New York City."
Surnames (Jewish) in Valladolid, Guadalajara and its province, Cuenca, Teruel and Valencia - from a posting to JewishGen by Laurent Germanaud on July 16 2000
With this LingvoSoft smart dictionary software on your computer, you can easily switch between English and Yiddish, for prompt translations of 400,000 words both ways! Download Free Trial now
Translating - there are many translating services, some for free, available to help with your translating needs in most languages including Spanish and Portuguese. One of these sites is http://www.dictionaries.travlang.com/
Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department. They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English. A nominal fee is usually charged.
"It might be of interest that when I was in Majorca 15 years ago, it was said that a third of the current Majorcan population was of Jewish origin. Conversos in Majorca are known as Chueta (i.e. pig)*. I was staying in a pension and I noticed that there was an amulet on the wall which contained Hebrew lettering."
"I then went to a nearby religious and philosophy bookshop where I came across a book in Spanish of sights/sites of Jewish interest across the whole of Spain whose title I can supply. From a posting on 9-5-03 by Nick Landau N.Landau@btopenworld.com
which discusses the whole matters of Conversos in Spain.
There are plans for a rabbi and a Jewish studies center in Majorca, where many Jewish descendants live.
Portugal
Jewish History in Portugal ended in 1496, when the Jews of Spain who had fled to Portugal in 1492 and those Jews who had been living in the country, were forced to flee from the Inquisition. There are about 300 to 900 Jews living today, mostly in Lisbon.
They do not have a Rabbi, kosher food, nor can hold a Minyan, except for holidays, but they do have two synagogues - one is the Sephardic Shaare Tikva and the other is the smaller Ashkenazi Ohel Yaacov. Portugal is about the size of the State of Maine.
The capital city, Lisbon, is interesting to visit, especially the Alfama quarter where large numbers of Jews settled in the 15th century. There is still remnants including the Rua da Judiaria, which is found among the narrow streets. At 8 Beco das Barrelai, you will find a site of an ancient synagogue.
In the financial section, known as Baixa, there were two Jewish quarters - the Judiaria Grande, which is close to today's Sao Nicolau Street, and the Judiaria Pequena, created in the 13th century in the place where today, the Bank of Portugal stands.
In the Archeological Museum in the Chiado quarter, you will find the "Mochique Stone" with inscriptions written in Hebrew.. And in the center of Lisbon, there is the Shaare Tikva Synagogue (Gates of Hope) at 59 Rua Alexandre Herculano which was built by several groups of Sephardic Jews from Gibraltar.
Books
Most books, CDs, etc. can be ordered through my link to Amazon.com by clicking here > Jewish Genealogy
Belmonte - in the 1990s, the 180 Jews returned to Judaism after 500 years of outward Catholicism and secret Jewish practice. An interesting story can be found in the December 2002 issue of Hadassah Magazine about the Kehilat Beit Israel congregation's Rabbi. The town is just up the road from Covilha.
Belmonte's Jews stem from a tiny community that preserved Judaism in secret after Portuguese king Manoel in 1496 ordered all Jews to convert to Christianity. The community is now free to practice its faith openly, but many members of the community have left in search of jobs and Jewish life elsewhere.
Covilha - like many towns and villages near the mountainous Spanish-Portuguese border,Covilha also is though to have a significant population of descendants of 'New Christians', descendants of Jews who converted under duress after a royal decree in the late 15th century. Kosher wine is now being produced in a local winery.
ETSI - Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Society - The purpose of "ETSI" is to help people interested in Jewish Genealogical and Historical Research in the Sephardi World. "ETSI's" field of study covers the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, Greece, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Egypt); North Africa (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia); Spain, Portugal, Italy and Gibraltar. The study of every Sephardi community or family who lived in other regions is equally within the society's aim. Emaillaurphil@wanadoo.fr http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321
Jewish Community of Lisbon Lisbon 1200-280, Portugal
Lisbon - the President of the Shaare-Tikva aka Lisbon Synagogue, is Jorge Sampaio, It is the first synagogue built in Portugal after the 1497 expulsion of the Jews. (inSpanish) http://www.cilisboa.org/sin_cent.htm
Porto - On the Costa Verde, the town of Porto has a long history and traditions of a flourishing Jewish community. In 1386, the Jews of the town were given land to build a village and a synagogue was located on the Escadas da Vitoria, a set of steps that the local people still refer to as 'Escada da Esroga (the steps of the synagogue) and where today you will find a plaque with that name. In the center of Porto, there is a synagogue that was built in 1929 called Mekor Haim (Fountain of Life)
In the 14th and 15th centuries, in the ancient town of Pointe de Lima, famous for its Roman bridge, medieval towers and beautiful manor houses, there was a Jewish Quarter. The Jews of the town were the originators of the local fair which continues each month, to this day.
The Portuguese National Tourist Office, 590 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10036 offers a free brochure titled "Journey to Jewish Portugal". Phone 212 354 4403
With this LingvoSoft smart dictionary software on your computer, you can easily switch between English and Yiddish, (or Spanish or Portuguese and many other languages) for prompt translations of 400,000 words both ways! Download Free Trial now
Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department. They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English. A nominal fee is usually charged.
Books
Map of Portugal
