Friday, March 24, 2023

Remembering How Spain Treated Jews While Buying a Spanish Passport: Spain Changed

 Nadene Goldfoot                                      

    Christopher Columbus, born in Italy  between 25 August and 31 October 1451, probably was  an Italian Jew in 1492, who became a Marrano. He could write in Hebrew. His native language is presumed to have been a Genoese dialect (Ligurian) as his first language, though Columbus probably never wrote in it. He would have received a Jewish  education if any including Hebrew reading and writing.  His name in 16th-century Genoese was Cristoffa Corombo, in Italian, Cristoforo Colombo, and in Spanish Cristóbal Colón.   His father was Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver who worked in Genoa and Savona and owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. He had three brothers—Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo (also called Diego)—as well as a sister, Bianchinetta. Bartolomeo ran a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood.
Rabbi Josef Colon Trabotto (Maharik) Schoenblog.com 

Jewish Encyclopedia has an article on the Italian Talmudist, Joseph Colon (1420-1480).  He was a Rabbinic scholar.  Born in France, he served as rabbi in several Italian communities.  His responsa constitute a rich source of information on halakhic problems as well as on contemporary conditions in Italy.   Rabbi Colon declared that a person could not be compelled to appear in a foreign rabbinic court when there was a local court available. When false accusations against the Jewish community of Regensburg lead to a heavy fine and the need to raise funds, Rabbi Colon held that the surrounding communities were required to contribute, as they could also soon find themselves facing similar accusations and fines.

Rabbi Colon was famous for his ability to establish broad principles that would apply not only to the case at hand, but to future disputes. He ruled that a parent’s objection should not prevent a child’s marriage to an appropriate spouse, because a child was not obligated to suffer the pain of marrying an undesired spouse in order to honor his parents. Colon had “an inflexible regard for right and justice,” and was not swayed by bias toward or against any individual person. He chastised a respected German rabbi for adjudicating a dispute in which he himself was a party. Driven by false rumors to attack Rabbi Capsali in Turkey for laxity in matters of divorce law, Colon later recanted and on his deathbed sent his son Perez to deliver an apology to Capsali.

Also, there was a French musician, Jules Colonne *(1838-1910) They are related to Halfon, Treves, Trabot, so there are Jews bearing Columbus's Spanish surnme of Colon.  There is also the surname of Colombo, and EJ has  2 biographies from 19th-20th century Italy of Jewish family.    Then there is our Kalonymus family so close to the spelling of Colon.  They were 8th century Italian Jews of Italy who branched out by 10th century in Germany.  Colon/Kalon  so close.  

Italy contains some of the oldest Jewish Communities in Europe. Jews arrived in South Italy after the destruction of the First Temple and
later thousands of Jews lived in Rome already before the Christian era. At Roman  time there were ten-fifteen synagogues in Roma (Rome).

Whether fact or legend, there are those who say that Columbus set out  with the expelled Jews because he had stalled his voyage, originally
 set for August 2, by one day; that year, August 2 was the commemoration of Tisha B’Av, a fast day of mourning for the fall of
 the Jewish Temples.

 Columbus began his voyage on 3rd August 1492 from Palos de la Frontera, Spain, with a fleet of three ships. After he discovered the Americas, the Spanish Crown gave him 17 ships for colonizing Hispaniola.  That date is close to Rosh Hashana, the Jewish birthday of the world.  By the time Passover would come in the Spring, Jews would have to hide the fact that they would not eat bread for those 8 days, or their 2 Passover seders, celebrating dinners of remembering the Exodus.  

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, goes the line to remember his date.  Why this was important to some Jewish Spaniards was that they were told they had to leave the country or convert to Catholicism.  Jews were the target of this doctrine that came from the Church through Queen Isabella and king Ferdinand. . Columbus had purchased 3 ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Marina.  An interesting man, he was an Italian who had gone to the Spanish royalty to get the financial backing for this journey.  Many Jews lived in Italy.                                   

Columbus saying good-bye to son, Diego.  

Recently, a number of Spanish scholars, such as Jose Erugo, Celso Garcia de la Riega, Otero Sanchez and Nicholas Dias Perez, have concluded that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing.

Columbus, who was known in Spain as Cristóbal Colón and didn’t speak Italian, signed his last will and testament on May 19, 1506, and made five curious – and revealing – provisions..Two of his wishes – tithe one-tenth of his income to the poor and provide an anonymous dowry for poor girls – are part of Jewish customs. He also decreed to give money to a Jew who lived at the entrance of the Lisbon Jewish Quarter.  On those documents, Columbus used a triangular signature of dots and letters that resembled inscriptions found on gravestones of Jewish cemeteries in Spain. He ordered his heirs to use the signature in perpetuity.

According to British historian Cecil Roth’s “The History of the Marranos,” the anagram was a cryptic substitute for the Kaddish, a prayer recited in the synagogue by mourners after the death of a close relative. Thus, Columbus’ subterfuge allowed his sons to say Kaddish for their crypto-Jewish father when he died. Finally, Columbus left money to support the crusade he hoped his successors would take up to liberate the Holy Land.

 He could have been one of them because it's known that he wrote to his son in Hebrew, and why?  Was it his mother language, or so that no one else could read it. His native language is presumed to have been a Genoese dialect (Ligurian) as his first language, though Columbus probably never wrote in it. His name in 16th-century Genoese was Cristoffa Corombo, in Italian, Cristoforo Colombo, and in Spanish Cristóbal Colón. A few of his shipmates were Jews, getting out of Spain, their mother country.  On August 3, 1492, just three days after the deadline given to Spain’s large and vibrant Jewish community to convert to Christianity or leave the country for ever, three ships - the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria - set sail from the port in Palos de la Frontera West.


                                                     
                                          My Dad            
                                             My own Ashkenazi line of Goldfus/Goldfoot stems from the Kalonymus Jewish Italian line.  Kalonymos or Kalonymus (Hebrewקָלוֹנִימוּס Qālōnīmūs) is a prominent Jewish family who lived in Italy, mostly in Lucca and in Rome, which, after the settlement at Mainz and Speyer of several of its members, took during many generations a leading part in the development of Jewish learning in GermanyAmong the population that inhabited Lucca in the medieval era, there was also a significant presence of Jews. The first mention of their presence in the city is from a document from the year 859The jewish community was led by the Kalonymos family (which later became a major component of proto-Ashkenazic Jewry).  The family is according to many considered the foundation of Hachmei Provence and the Ashkenazi Hasidim.  My Dad has been taken for an Italian many times.   Could be we're related to Columbus!

 Jews had lived in Spain since the 1st Temple of Solomon had been destroyed in 597 BCE.  The bible refers to Spain as Sepharad.  Jews were mentioned in 1st century records in the canons of the 1st Council at Elvira in the year of 312.   Jewish tombstones have been found from the Classical period.  

The Visigoths, when they were following the Arian form of Christianity, liked Jews and treated them well, but in 589, they embraced Catholicism, there was a reaction towards Jews.  By 612, a relentless persecution took place from the Councils of Toledo.  They prohibited Judaism!  Arianism is often considered to be a form of Unitarian theology in that it stresses God's unity at the expense of the notion of the Trinity, the doctrine that three distinct persons are united in one Godhead.  The Visigoths were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is known as the Migration Period.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFbHVzIkmiY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFbHVzIkmiY

The Arabs invaded in 711 and brought the Jews freedom of religion. Spain became the center of Jewish life.  However, their communities were of course Arabized in language like English is today.  It affected also their nomenclature and outlook; but at the same time-Islam was prescribing a rigid   anti-Jewish discrimination.  Even so, skill won over their government and a few Jews rose to positions of great influence like Hasdai Ibn Shaprut of Cordova and Samuel Ibn Nagrela, vizier to the king of Granada.  

During this period, Hebrew literature of all fields was being shared with the rest of the world.  Classical science by Jewish scientists living in Spain reached out to Christian Europe.  

      Almohades Army

In 1136, the Almohades invaded brought a reaction to Jews.  Again, the practice of Judaism was forbidden in Andralusia !!  In the north, expanding Christian kingdoms kept their more tolerant policy towards Jews.  They felt Jews were quite useful as diplomats, financiers, and even as agricultural colonists.  That's how the great centers of Jewish life were found under Christian rule.  Almohads, Arabic al-Muwaḥḥidūn (“those who affirm the unity of God”), Berber confederation that created an Islamic empire in North Africa and Spain (1130–1269), founded on the religious teachings of Ibn Tūmart (died 1130).                                     

   Beginning in the 12th century and continuing for hundreds of years, the Spanish Inquisition is infamous for the severity of its tortures and its persecution of Jews and Muslims. Its worst manifestation was in Spain, where the Spanish Inquisition was a dominant force for more than 200 years, resulting in some 32,000 executions.    The Inquisition has its origins in the early organized persecution of non-Catholic Christian religions in Europe. In 1184 Pope Lucius III sent bishops to southern France to track down heretics called Catharists. These efforts continued into the 14th Century.  During the same period, the church also pursued the Waldensians in Germany and Northern Italy. In 1231, Pope Gregory charged the Dominican and Franciscan Orders to take over the job of tracking down heretics. Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization.   That defines forced baptism on Jews who didn't want to convert, and those who allowed baptism knowing they did so only to remain unharmed in Spain for personal reasons.        

In the court of Alfonso the Wise of Castile (1252-1284) , the Dark Ages, Jews were a part of the intellectual growth as translators and astronomers.  Samuel Abulafia of the 14th century and Isaac Abravanel in the 15th century were important financiers.  From the north developed a more intolerant spirit towards Jews again.  In the middle of the 13th century, the Dominican Order initiated constant anti-Jewish propaganda as shown in the Disputation of Barcelona, conversionist sermons (many still go on today in USA),and  the implementation of the persecutory code of the 4th Lateran Council including some scattered physical outbreaks like pogroms.    Example, in 1391 a wave of massacres beginning at Seville swept through the entire Peninsula, as a result of which very large numbers of Jews accepted baptism in order to escape death.  This was repeated in the following years.  

As a result of the Alhambra decree and persecution in the years leading up to the expulsion, of Spain's estimated 300,000 Jewish origin population, a total of over 200,000 had converted to Catholicism to remain in Spain, and between 40,000 and 100,000 remained Jewish and suffered expulsion. An unknown number of the expelled eventually succumbed to the pressures of life in exile away from formerly-Jewish relatives and networks back in Spain, and so converted to Catholicism to be allowed to return in the years following expulsion.

These New Christians were labeled Marranos, ostensibly Christians but Jewish at heart and they attracted jealousy through their remarkable social and economic programs, henceforth constituted a serious problem.  After a series of popular outbreaks against them, the Inquisition of the Church was introduced in 1478.  this procedure against the secret Jews, for they kept their Judaism hiding in their celebrations, encouraged further action against those remaining true to their faith who were alleged to have provoked the other element to infidelity.   The Inquisition is known to have tracked down Jews who escaped to Mexico.  They have been unrelenting.   

  In 1492, the Jews were therefore expelled from the country by an edict by Ferdinand and Isabella.  The number of exiles is reckoned at 150,000 who found refuge mainly in North Africa and the Turkish Empire, but first , those who could, sailed to Portugal.  Their descendants are called the Sephardim. 

Recently, history came full circle when over 100,000 descendants of Sephardim around the world applied for Spanish citizenship under legislation aimed at repatriating a population expelled over 500 years ago. They squeaked in ahead of Spain’s September 30, 2019, deadline, but the citizenship process in Portugal is still open for individuals who can prove their Sephardic Jewish lineage.

The closing of the application window for Spanish citizenship marked an opportune time for the October 24 screening in Madrid’s El Centro Sefarad of a new documentary about the past, present and future of the Sephardim: “Children of the Inquisition,” by award-winning filmmaker Joseph Lovett.

The Power was in the Church's hands.  Ferdinand and Isabella were carrying out orders.  It was in The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion; Spanish: Decreto de la Alhambra, Edicto de Granada) was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon.  It spread throughout most of the known world by turning away Jews.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus

The new Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree#:~:text=The%20Alhambra%20Decree%20(also%20known,Crowns%20of%20Castile%20and%20Aragon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalonymos_family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-jews-expelled-from-spain-forged-a-diaspora-with-ties-to-25-of-latin-america/

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2014-10-05/ty-article/the-first-jew-in-the-new-world/0000017f-e5f9-d97e-a37f-f7fd924d0001

Book: Finding Our Fathers by Dan Rottenberg

https://schoenblog.com/?p=2943

https://www.timesofisrael.com/christopher-columbus-the-hidden-jew/



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