Back to Tarragona

The president of Tarbut Sefarad-Jerusalem writes about returning to his ancestral home town in Spain.

By YOSSI BENDOR
Tarragona (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Tarragona
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
As is the case with many Sephardi Jews – who will be offered instant Spanish citizenship when the draft bill that has been in the news lately becomes law – my family chose to leave Spain 1492, rather than stay and convert to Catholicism.
Like others from the province of Aragon, who left via the port of Tarragona (a city close to Barcelona), changed their family name to “Tarragan.”
Thus, despite the expulsion, they preserved the family name – or more correctly, the memory of the city from which they had been expelled. For hundreds of years, they also continued to speak the language of their forefathers – Ladino – and they sang the songs and kept the proverbs and sayings.
In 1956, eight years after the establishment of the State of Israel, I was born in Jerusalem to a family of Spanish origin, veteran Jerusalemites. Since no documentation exists, it is impossible to know when my family came to Jerusalem.
It is known that the family lived in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and was one of the first families to leave the Old City and go live in the new neighborhoods outside the walls. In my parental home, they spoke Hebrew with an admixture of Ladino words, and of course, the prayer liturgy was Sephardi.
As an adult, I chose to engage in commerce with Spain. I learned Spanish, and during my visits there, I would hold conversations, unrelated to commerce, with the local people.
An interesting closing of a circle was a ceremony at the synagogue in Madrid on March 31, 1992, exactly 500 years after the Expulsion from Spain. Spain’s King Juan Carlos, standing before the congregants with a kippa on his head, annulled the cruel decree and called on the Jews to come live in Spain again. Afterward, I participated in a reception at the royal palace and even had the honor of shaking the hands of the king and queen.
DURING A visit to a Jewish-owned company in Madrid in 1990, I met a descendant of Marranos (“Anusim”) for the first time. He declared to me that he had been born in a village in northern Spain and made every effort to seek work with Jewish employers. Until that moment, I had known only a little about the phenomenon of those descended from Marranos, mainly through my school studies. The Spaniards I had known were Catholics, and some Jews (mostly from Morocco) who had returned to Spain in the mid-1950s. However, in due course, I met additional inhabitants who told me that Jewish blood flowed through their veins and who described themselves as sons of Marranos.
I got to know a range of such people: in Madrid, a security man and a sales promoter; in Valencia, a waiter, a stall owner on the seashore and a saleswoman in the market; in Alicante, an export manager; in Palma de Mallorca, a teacher; in Tarragona, a writer; in Cordoba, a doctor of chemistry; in Costa Rica, a sales manager.
Some of them reveal their secret, some of them make contact as if by chance, some of them seek your company without saying a word. These people represent the descendants who know something about their past. At the same time, other descendants of Marranos try to ignore their distant past, and some prefer not to deal with it at all.
The following stories are chance encounters I had with some of these people.
A MEETING with a waiter in Valencia: I entered a restaurant in the company of a kippa-wearing Israeli (in Spain, it is rare to see people wearing skullcaps; the religious Jews prefer to wear hats and not appear in public with kippot). The moment we were seated, a waiter (who looked Israeli) approached us. At the end of the meal, he turned to me and asked me to explain the significance of my fellow diner’s headcovering.
Once I explained to him what it signified, he told me, to my surprise, that he knew what a kippa was, since he had lived on a kibbutz for a few months.
I asked him why he had visited Israel (assuming that he was a descendant of Marranos and had come to Israel in search of roots), and he answered me that he was “a cosmopolitan.” I asked him which other countries he had visited, and he said he had not visited any other country.
He then told me that his brother had also stayed on a kibbutz, had met a Jewish woman of Polish extraction there, had married her, and today teaches Hebrew at a university in Buenos Aires. During the entire conversation, he did not say what I had expected to hear: “I am a descendant of Marranos!” IN 1990, I arrived in a village near Valencia. I had information about a Jewish community that had lived in the village 500 years ago. I met some inhabitants and told them that I had come from Israel, and I asked for their help in getting to the oldest church in the village. An elderly woman volunteered. When we reached the church, a tumult arose, apparently engendered by my visit to the village. I looked at my “escort” and saw that her earrings consisted of a circle with a Star of David inside it. I asked her if she knew what it meant. She answered that as a child, she had received the earrings as a gift from her grandmother... and disappeared.
A SENIOR Spanish government official was asked to bring know-how to Spain in the field of seawater desalination, which is found in three countries: the US, Singapore and Israel. He had no doubt that he would choose Israel. He had always had the feeling that he was a descendant of Marranos, and even called himself “the lost brother.”
During a working visit to Israel, he claimed that he felt at home, that his heart swelled, that he felt good here. At a bar mitzva ceremony he witnessed at the Western Wall, his eyes filled with tears, since according to him, he identified the psalms and tunes.
He told me that in the Scout movement, it was permitted to teach foreign songs, and so the youth in his native city, Cordoba (where Maimonides lived), learned melodies from psalms in the Hebrew prayers. He also told me that in his city, the Marranos had been forced to open their shops on Saturday, but nobody could force them to sell on Shabbat. So when a customer arrived – almost certainly a Christian – the salesman would disappear into the back of the shop, ostensibly to look for goods, and would not serve the customer.
ONCE, ON the train in Madrid, I was talking to my son in Hebrew. One of the passengers, who had the appearance of an Indian, addressed me and said he recognized the language and knew I was speaking Hebrew.
He added that he had ultra-Orthodox relatives living in Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim neighborhood and Indian relatives living in the jungle region of Mexico.
A DESCENDANT of Marranos living in Costa Rica came to Israel on a visit and told me that he was a Jew, even though according to the Halacha he was Christian for all intents and purposes. He had singlehandedly built a big wooden, seven-branched candelabrum and carried it from his home to Israel, and he gave it to me as a present. He informed me that on the eve of Shabbat, he prayed close to a synagogue, because as a Christian, he was not permitted to enter and participate in prayers. Nonetheless, he is very knowledgeable about the prayers and knows the words almost by heart.
IN 2010, during one of my trips to Spain, I first heard about the existence of the Tarbut Sefarad organization. These two Hebrew words, although written in Latin characters, are meaningless in Spanish. It seemed strange to me that in a Christian country there was an active organization bearing a distinctly Hebrew name. I had the feeling that I had come across an organization made up mostly of descendants of Marranos. In retrospect, I became aware that while some of the members were indeed descendants of Marranos, the majority were Christians who were interested in the Jewish religion.
I made the acquaintance of the organization’s founder, Mario Saban, an Argentinean-born Jew from a Sephardi family of Turkish origin, living in Barcelona.
After I explained my activity to him, he appointed me president of Tarbut Sefarad in Jerusalem.
On July 4, 2010, Tarbut Sefarad members from the city of Tarragona organized a special event to which I was invited, during which they presented me with the key to that city.
The day began with a ceremony close to the ruins of the ancient synagogue of Tarragona, Cal la Garsa, and in it, as a scion of the Tarragan family, I received the key, which was designed by a master craftsman from the city. In my speech to the gathering, I noted that it was possible that my forebears and theirs had prayed together, here in this synagogue. In the background waved the flag of Catalonia, and in addition to those present (about 200 people), representatives of the municipality and the media made appearances. The event was very moving: Not a dry eye remained in the audience, and I was unable to read my short speech without pausing for long intervals between sentences.
I was also accorded the honor of unveiling the marble plaque placed close to the synagogue, which read, in Hebrew and Catalan (the local language), that the expellees of Tarragona were invited to return to the city: “In memory of the Tarragonians who were forced to flee their homes in 1492 solely for being Jews. In honor of their descendants in the whole world, the city of Tarragona and its citizens are always awaiting them and are ready to receive them back.”
AFTER THE ceremony, we traveled to the port of Tarragona and set out on a voyage that reconstructed the journey the Jews made in 1492. The Jews had arrived at the port from all over Aragon, and they were taken in ships to the port of Barcelona, where they were finally expelled outside the borders of Spain. Though the Marranos did not sail with them 500 years ago – instead remaining in Spain and being forced to convert – their descendants were on board for our voyage.
On the deck, a musical trio playing Israeli songs welcomed us, and throughout the whole five-hour voyage, Hebrew songs from all epochs could be heard. The organizers took care that the lunch served to the passengers (most of whom were not Jewish) was kosher. When the ship left the port, they raised the Israeli flag on its mast, and some of the passengers put on hats bearing the Israeli flag or revealed under their shirts a hidden chain with a Star of David or “hai” pendant. One of the passengers, reaching into his pocket, took out a key holder with the Hebrew prayer for travelers and asked me to read it aloud to the audience. At the same time, he drew out a kippa, telling me that he hid the kippa and the prayer text in his bag, and they accompanied him wherever he went. I read the Tefilat Haderech prayer in Hebrew, and it was translated into Spanish and Catalan.
We reached the port of Barcelona and made our way to the city’s Maritime Museum. On the stage in the museum auditorium, a choir of some 125 singers performed songs in Hebrew to words from the liturgy. At the end of the event, the choir sang “Hatikva.” Our throats choked with emotion, my friend and I sang along – and the whole audience of Marranodescendants stood at attention as they heard the anthem of the Jewish state.
AT THIS event, I became acquainted closely with the day’s initiator and organizer. He himself lights three candles in his home every day and cannot explain why. Possibly this custom was rooted in him from long past. From research he conducted on his family background, it emerged that they had engaged in commerce in a village where most of the inhabitants were farmers. Recently he told me that one of his cousins had renovated the ancient family home in the village and discovered beneath it the remains of a mikve (ritual bath). Even without these “clues,” he feels that he belongs to the Jewish people, and it disturbs him that when the time comes for him to leave this world, a cross will be placed on his grave.
By profession, he is a writer and a journalist. A few years before he initiated this event, he wrote a book in Hebrew and Catalan in which he described the ancient Jewish quarters in Catalonia. A strong friendship developed between us, and he visited me in my home in Israel a number of times. He learned the country through both its geographical and human landscapes, and soon a bookofhisonthehumanIsraelimosaicwillappear. He devotes much of his thinking to Judaism, is interested intraditionandseekstoknowmore.
Among other things, he has managed to persuade me of the need to renovate the Cal la Garsa Synagogue in Tarragona. The place stands desolate near a built-up residential neighborhood and awaits a redeemer.
The building was discovered when a building above it collapsed, revealing the remains of the synagogue.
The architect of Tarragona explains that “Cal la Garsa was built around the 12th century and is the only testimony of the active Tarragona Jewish community prior to the 1492 Edict of Expulsion issued by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.”
Despite its complexity, I became involved in this rare project of renovating a synagogue in a Catholic country that had expelled the Jews and caused great suffering to the Marranos and their descendants.
The project is still in its infancy; the cost of renovating the synagogue is very high, and considerable thought is necessary to determine the character of the place and its running once it is established.
To this day, Jewish residents of Spain do not openly display Jewish signs of identification, and in my experience, descendants of Marranos do not openly admit, “I am of Jewish origin.” The Catholic Church has succeeded in instilling a great fear in them, and they require a lot of spiritual strength to declare their Marrano heritage in public. Such a declaration sometimes comes at the cost of losing friends, and perhaps even of financial damage.
However, the establishment of the State of Israel, and subsequently its embassies and delegations throughout the world, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries, was a major event in these people’s lives.
The knowledge that the State of Israel is strong and successful has instilled a new spirit of pride in the descendants of the Marranos.
Some of them even express their desire to return to the Jewish fold.
Translated from Hebrew by David Herman.