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May 16, 2003/Iyar 14 5763, Vol. 55, No. 38
Seder in Grazalema
FLORENCE ECKSTEIN
Publisher
More than 2,000 years ago, Jews first wandered into the Iberian Peninsula, the area of southwestern Europe that is now Spain. For 781 years, from 711 to 1492, Judaism, Islam and Christianity flourished side-by-side there. Sephardic Jewish scholars, scientists, philosophers, courtiers, merchants and poets - among them Judah Halevi, Abraham ibn Ezra and Moses Maimondides - contributed importantly to both the Jewish and larger communities.
The Inquisition destroyed Judaism's long, proud history in Spain. In the spring of 1492, the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Fernando of Spain ordered Jews to convert to Christianity or leave the newly unified nation. An estimated 50,000-100,000 converted and 100,000-200,000 fled. It was the final, fatal blow to 1,500 years of Jewish life in Spain.
Almost 380 years later, the 1869 Constitution of the new Spanish republic affirmed Catholicism as the state religion but guaranteed "the exercise ... of any other religion ... to all foreigners resident in Spain," including Jews. Sadly, Spain provided refuge for few Jews escaping the Holocaust, and at the end of World War II, only 600 remained there, writes historian Jane S. Gerber in "The Jews of Spain," an absorbing history of Sephardic Jewry.
The Spanish government at long last repealed the 1492 expulsion edict in 1968, and in 1992, 500 years after its issuance, King Juan Carlos symbolically rescinded it.
Today, an estimated 14,000 Jews live among 40 million Spaniards. Most are immigrants from Morocco, Latin America, the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe.
In April, my husband Paul and I participated in a Pomona College Alumni Association tour of Andalucia, the region in southern Spain that had been the heart of Sephardic Judaism. Tempering the disappointment of being away from our family on Passover was the prospect of traveling with a small group in the company of a medieval history professor, Kenneth Wolf, who would lecture on Andalucian religious life from 711 to 1492; two lectures would focus on Judaism under Muslim and Christian rule.
Since Paul and I customarily have hosted our family's seder, it seemed fitting that we host a seder this year as well. And so, on the evening of April 16, our group of 17 gathered in a private dining room of the Puerta de la Villa in Grazalema, one of Andalucia's white villages. Prof. Wolf and our guide, Peter Watson, prepared a beautiful seder plate, including Sephardic haroset; the matzo and Haggadot we'd shipped ahead arrived intact.
Mindful that we were the only Jews at the table and that it was everyone else's first seder, Paul carefully explained each symbol and ritual. We recited the Four Questions in Hebrew, English and Spanish.
It was a sweet celebration in a place once rich in our tradition but now nearly empty of Jews. The memories linger, and also the hope.
Contact the writer at flo_eckstein@jewishaz.com.
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