“Qualitavely Jews are not a minority”

The president of the association Be Sepharad-Legado Sefardí, Pepa Rull, said that the Jews have contributed much to the history of Spain and its culture. In order to understand this fact, “we must review the history they have told us, because it is impossible to understand Spanish history without understanding that of the Jews.” “It is true that Jews were a minority, but quantitative, qualitatively speaking they were not a minority, since they were the administrative structure of the state, cultural and intellectual structure, scientists, thinkers, or traders,” he added.

In this sense, Pepa Rull explained that many Jews were in the service of the Spanish kings, who always had these within their staff. However, “for historical reasons, in the fifteenth century, all this ended in a radical way and we wanted to make believe that there was only one religion and one people, something that is not true, because we come from three different cultures. An essential part, so that I encourage the rewriting of the story. “

Rull directs the course History and culture of the Jews of Sefarad, which ended yesterday within the framework of the XV edition of the summer courses of the University Pablo de Olavide de Carmona. The Jews of Sepharad are the ones who lived for more than 1,500 years in the peninsula. Sefarad is the peninsula, Spain and Portugal. The Jews lived in this place as more Spaniards until, at the end of the fifteenth century, they were expelled and had to go elsewhere. “When they leave the peninsula, they are known as Sephardic Jews.” While they were here, they were Jewish-Spanish, “Pepa said. For the Sephardi, Spain is its origin. When they left, many of them believed that this situation was going to be fleeting and that they would return relatively soon. “But they have never stopped being from Spain really, although that culture before the fifteenth century have been enriched with the cultures of the countries where they have been settled,” says the president of the association.