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Friday September 7, 2001

Spain says 'bienvenidos' to those exploring Jewish past

BEN G. FRANK
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

GIRONA, Spain -- "Sepharad is your home."

Those soothing, welcoming words were pleasant to hear, especially from a non-Jewish Spanish official, the head of tourism in the small town of Castello d'Empuries in Catalonia in Spain's northeastern corner.

"Spain is your home," the official had said, using the Hebrew word "Sepharad," a symbolic reminder that 500 years of exile had not dimmed the memory of Spain's Jewish past.

An hour's drive from Castello d'Empuries lies the bustling, hilly town of Girona, where the cathedral bells toll the hour in a manner reminiscent of a Hemingway or Orwell novel. At the same time, near the cathedral walls -- and in the open courtyard of a recently opened Jewish study center and museum on the site of a 13th-century synagogue -- a panel of Catalan journalists, writers, professors and an Israeli consul discusses "Poetry, Literature and Hebrew Letters in the 20th Century."

A few towns away, in the medieval village of Besalu -- which appears to have stepped out of the pages of "King Arthur and his Knights of the Roundtable" -- hundreds of tourists walk each day down a flight of dark and damp steps to what may be the only ancient mikvah in Spain. Unused now, the bath once served a ritual function in a country that during the Middle Ages contained several hundred thousand Jews, half of all world Jewry.

In Besalu, the Spanish guides explain the story of what most Jews already know as "The Golden Age of Spain." It is of that age, especially in small towns, that the Jewish experience, presence and places of worship are being revived and restored.

About 14,000 Jews, mostly in Madrid or Barcelona, still call Spain home. There are no Jews, however, in Castello d'Empuries, Girona or Besalu.

Spain is no exception to the European phenomenon whereby non-Jews care for and preserve Jewish sites. Driven and organized in most cases by non-Jews -- and financed by municipalities, Madrid's main government and the European Union -- the rediscovery includes not only uncovering a mikvah, but also discovering former Jewish homes. By detecting the carved doorpost niches where mezuzot once hung, collecting and preserving tombstones, or saving and restoring 500-year-old Hebrew parchments, history is being located and preserved.

Officials hope that restoring Jewish sites will attract Jewish and non-Jewish travelers interested in learning about Spain's Jewish past.

But that is not the only reason for the country's interest and expenditure in rediscovering its Jewish past.

Spain still is struggling to understand its own history, including recent fascist decades, its bloody civil war of the 1930s, the terror of the medieval Inquisition, the Jewish expulsion of 1492 and the battles with the Moors.

In other words, reconciliation is the word in 21st-century Spain.

In booklets and documents, Spanish officials point out that "their history would be incomplete without the history of the Jewish community."

To that end, 10 Spanish municipalities recently formed a network that declared that the "Jewish legacy constitutes one of the basic pillars of their history and a characteristic element of their heritage."

Barcelona and Madrid soon will be added to the network.

The organization is known as "Red de Juderias de Espana -- Camino de Sefarad," or "The Network of Jewries of Spain -- Paths of Sepharad," and is known popularly as the "Red Network."

Mere mention of the names of these towns -- Caceres, Cordoba, Girona, Hervas, Oviedo, Ribadavia, Segovia, Toledo, Tortosa, Tudela -- recalls the former life in the Juderias, or Jewish neighborhoods, throughout Spain.

These networks have uncovered gravestones, a mikvah, Hebrew letters inscribed in church walls, former sites of synagogues, and hundreds of Jewish streets. They have erected plaques and statues to Jews who thrived here and contributed much to Spain as teachers, writers and poets, among them Maimonides, Nachmanides and Judah Halevi.

In terms of Jewish history and Jewish preservation, Girona is the pearl in the oyster. At the top of its list of accomplishments and goals is the rebuilding of its Jewish quarter, or Call, which means an urban area inhabited by Jews.

A labyrinth of alleyways and narrow passages extends from a cobblestoned street once the main thoroughfare of the Jewish quarter, also known in the 14th century as "Carrer Major del Call."

Girona was the first kabbalist center in Spain and eventually became the most important philosophical center of Western Europe. Known also as "the Mother Town of Israel," it was home to the great 13th-century sage Nachmanides, or Rabbi Moses Ben Nachman. Known by the acronym Ramban, he was the most outstanding kabbalist and talmudic authority of his day.

Some might say that the work now being done in Spain goes a long way toward honoring those nameless Jews exiled in 1492.

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