Found the biggest Synagogue of Medieal in Iberian Peninsula

The place is Utrera, near Seville, in Spain.

Archaeological work carried out in a 15th-century hospital in Utrera has brought to light the most important synagogal complex found in the Iberian Peninsula, references to which were made by the historian Rodrigo Caro around the year 1604.

As reported at a press conference by the mayor of the town, José María Villalobos, the archaeological complex has seen the light after works started in November 2021 in the house known as ‘Niño Perdido’, where the Hospital de la Misericordia was located; Rodrigo Caro already mentioned that it was built on the remains of a synagogue.

SEGOVIA, TOLEDO, CHURROS, MANCHEGO CHEESE AND WINE!!!

It has been a ver special weekend visiting SEGOVIA and TOLEDO with these two couples from Philadelphia. With a tight agenda we were visiting the cities, learning history, some shopping and some kosher local food…. a great combination.

Abarbanel House was also in our itinerary and we all enjoy with crossed stories.

Hope to see you soon here.

Sukkot In Ceuta

www.youtube.com/watch

Every year the Jewish Community of Ceuta invites to local authorities and representatives of the different cultures coexisting in this nice city(Hindu,Catholic and Muslim) to spend a Succa evening, enjoy and show to the rest of world what does coexisting consist of!!!

Some cities in Burgos(Spain) develop a sephardic itenerary in the province

http://www.lavanguardia.com/ocio/viajes/20170204/414004766309/pueblos-de-burgos-impulsan-un-itinerario-cultural-sefardi-en-la-provincia.html

castrillo-mota-de-judios

The Burgos municipality of Castrillo Mota de Judíos, which in 2015 got rid of its surname ‘matajudíos’, promotes a project to create a Sephardic cultural itinerary that makes Burgos a tourist reference for the Jewish community and values the shared history and Heritage and cultural heritage.

The province has a very extensive and interesting Jewish past, which can be a great tourist attraction, said the Mayor of Castrillo Mota de Judíos, Lorenzo Rodríguez.

In the municipality is worked to recover the settlement of La Mota, place to which the Jews expelled from the near village of Castrojeriz, origin of the town and its name.

On the other hand, in Castrojeriz remains of the synagogue and the walls remain, while Belorado stood out for its great Jewry, the same as Burgos or Miranda de Ebro.

Vestiges of the past of ancient Jewish communities are also found in Roa, Frías, Villadiego, Lerma, Aranda de Duero, Pancorbo, Pradoluengo, Medina de Pomar or Briviesca, for example.

For this reason, Lorenzo Rodríguez has proposed to these municipalities the possibility of creating a Sephardic cultural itinerary, as a “singular” tourist resource for the province of Burgos.

The aim is to become a benchmark of the international Jewish community, taking advantage of the thousands of Jews who visit Spain each year to visit prominent places in their community history.

The first meeting, of contact, was held days ago and was attended by fifteen towns, although they would be willing to join the initiative some more.

At the moment, Castrillo Mota de Judíos will be in charge of leading the project, accompanied by Castrojeriz and Pradoluengo.

The three localities will attend the call for aid for tourist infrastructure of Sodebur, the Development Society of the Province of Burgos, dependent on the Diputación.

It is to get economic support to elaborate a historical and archaeological project, explained the mayor of Castrojeriz, Beatriz Francés.

The most important thing is to document the Jewish past of the province and to define the preserved cultural and patrimonial resources, as well as the archaeological remains to be recovered.

Next, the tourist itinerary will be designed, marking each one of the historical or cultural landmarks, and will be promoted among the Spanish Jewish community.

The mayor of Belorado, and provincial deputy of Culture, Luis Jorge del Barco, bets to implicate in the project to the Diputación since it is a “challenge” for the municipalities.

De Barco recalled that the Provincial Institution studied a couple of years ago to develop a similar tourism resource, although the initiative did not materialize.

Now would be a good time to recover it, since the proposal of Castrillo Mota of Jews “is very exciting and accurate.”

Since the change of name in 2015, the town has strengthened ties with the international Jewish community and receives numerous visitors, who would be interested in knowing more about the Jewish past of Burgos.

Rodríguez has insisted that the province must recover its history shared with the Jewish people and put into value the inherited patrimonial and cultural wealth.

The Jew from Spain who triumphed in Portugal

http://www.diariodeleon.es/noticias/cultura/judio-leon-echo-triunfa-portugal_1137605.html

sabugal

It is not new concept or type of adventures of the collective. ‘People from Leon around the world’ seems to have been at least since the Middle Ages, with landmark cases in which many of the many civilians who today are scattered all over the continent, outside the Lion that did not give them the opportunity to work and live , They can be identified. And one of these unique cases must be tracked as five centuries ago: his name was Juda Corcoz, was a rabbi and doctor, and fled a kingdom in which Christianity was on the way to occupy all the religious and social space to find shelter in Sabugal, Portuguese town located in the line with the present provinces of Salamanca and Cáceres, where he became a neighbor of the most respected.

Corcoz is one of the historical figures around which revolves a new thematic center for the recovery of the Hebrew memory of Sabugal, which will be inaugurated at the end of this month of February. The mayor of the town, Antonio Robalo, explained that through a European cooperation project 170,000 euros have been invested in this center, which is located next to the castle of Sabugal, in a historic building acquired by the Own Town Hall.

It is a house where their former owners, when they rehabilitated it a little more than a decade ago, discovered that it was inhabited by a Jewish family, since there was a stone cupboard that they used to secretly celebrate the practice of lighting a candle at night From Friday to Saturday, as the Hebrew tradition says.

It will be the House of Jewish Memory of La Raya, specifically Robalo, who wants this center to be a strategic enclave of Jewish memory and a point of union of tourists who arrive in the Iberian Peninsula to discover Jewish history. An objective similar to that of the Center of Interpretation of the Three Cultures that the Consistory Leonese began to install in the church of Puente Castro without that of today it has been able to give a definite impulse to him.

“Sabugal, on the line of the oldest border in Europe, was a privileged town for the flow of many Jews who were expelled from Spain after the Reconquest,” recalled Robalo. And so the new center hides a work of several years of research by Portuguese archaeologists and historians who dug in the archive of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon to spin the first-person memory of the Jewish community that had this region .

And one of its referents has been the doctor who, as described in the documents, came to Sabugal from Leon along with other Jews “of modest condition” – as it is in the file – like Jaque Mel, that settled down in the Portuguese town of Tailors, or shoemaker Isaac Verdugo. Juda Corcoz, as well as a doctor, “was a figure of prestige and respect in his time”, acknowledged Sabugal archaeologist Marcos Osorio.

“It was clear that he was the leader of the community”, as he performed practices of the Hebrew tradition suitable only to rabbis, such as “circumcision of the frenulum in male babies”, he explained. The idea of this center as a reference point of Judaism is intended to complement, according to Antonio Robalo, as a place of historical recovery of names and events that occurred in Sabugal related to this culture and are not yet inventoried.

The two-storey building includes a museum project, already completed, where it will be possible to know by means of explanatory panels the intense relationship of Sabugal and of this whole border area with the Jews between the XV and XVIII centuries.

In addition, this House of Jewish Memory of La Raya will be integrated in the Jewish Network of Portugal, where there are some referring villages like Belmonte, also near the border with Salamanca – specifically, near the area of Ciudad Rodrigo -, whose Jewish Museum Receives an average of 80,000 visitors each year.

Apologizes from the Central Michigan University for nazis valentine´s card

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/02/09/a-hitler-valentines-day-card-was-handed-out-on-campus-university-officials-want-to-know-why/?utm_term=.e2d4989fd602

What happened on Feb 14th, 1349(France)?

http://www.laplazadelmercader.com/14-de-febrero-de-1349/

massacre-de-judeus-1349

On February 14, 1349, the St. Valentine Massacre takes place in Strasbourg. Two thousand Jews were burned alive accused of spreading the plague.

It is well known that Jews have always been persecuted in the history of mankind. They have been blamed for the great misfortunes, besides being considered usurers, murderers of children and even antichrists.

Such was the case of the Black Death, which peaked between 1347 and 1353. It is estimated that the Great Death (as it was known before the 19th century) killed 60% of Europeans.

The answer you gave to this deadly epidemic? They accused the Jews of poisoning fountains and wells for the sole purpose of exterminating Christians. The evidence was found in the false confession under torture of a Jew named Agimet in 1348, who acknowledged having thrown a poison into the well from which the people were supplied, under the command of Rabbi Peyret.

This motive was sufficient to begin the persecution towards the Jews, who were exposed to all sorts of barbarities.

And so, on February 14, 1349, two thousand Jews were taken to the cemetery of the French city of Strasbourg, where they were burned on a wooden platform, in addition to imposing a law that forbade to tread that land for 100 years to Jews who They got rid of the murder.

The persecution spread throughout Europe, to the point that in Spain, any Christian was forbidden to associate with any Jew, whom they imprisoned, exterminated and expelled from all parts of the continent.

Jaen(Spain): Jewish trace

http://www.ideal.es/jaen/culturas/201702/06/vida-judios-jaen-20170206145130.html

jaen-documento-judios-kNOH-U211940784834wpF-575x323@Ideal.JPGThe Provincial Historical Archive shows, through the initiative ‘The Document of the Month’, four documents on the life of the Jews in the city of Jaén between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, on the occasion of the celebration of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims Of the Holocaust, which was celebrated on 27 January and condemned, by resolution of the United Nations Assembly, all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or Religious beliefs, wherever they take place.

“We talk about an exhibition in which, through four documents, visitors are going to hear about four episodes about the life of the Jewish community in the city of Jaén where they are staged as the coexistence of Jews with Christians, What was the economic activity they developed, as well as the persecution to which they were subjected, “said the delegate of the Government, Ana Cobo.

Also, the delegate highlighted, during the inauguration of the exhibition ‘Jews in the Remembrance. Documentary evidence of his presence in Jaén, in which the territorial delegate for Culture, Tourism and Sports, Pilar Salazar, the Director of the Provincial Historical Archive, Juan del Arco, and the president of the Iuventa association, Rafael Cámara, participated. Sephardic Jew, Ricardo Djaen, descendant of members of the Jewish community who lived in the streets of the city of Jaén. “I want to welcome Ricardo to a city that is his city, and a city where we can enjoy the legacy left by his ancestors and that today is one of the main tourist claims of our province,” he said.

The Provincial Historical Archive, which has already addressed the Jewish presence in Jaén on the occasion of the commemoration of the 1100th anniversary of the birth of Hasday ibn Shaprut (Ben Saprut) at the end of 2015, has organized a sample centered on the presence of Jews in Jaén around Three main aspects. On the one hand, in the coexistence between Christian and Jewish cultures, on the other hand, in the economic activity developed by the Jews and, moreover, on the persecution to which the Jews were subjected, first, after the expulsion in 1492, his descendants, the converts.

As an example of the coexistence between the Christian and Jewish communities in the Old Kingdom of Jaén during the Middle Ages, this exhibition exposes the Law of Iznatoraf, where in one of its laws or sections regulated the use of public bath both Of Christians as Jews, establishing exclusive days for their use in each community.

On the other hand, in relation to the economic activities that the Jewish community performed in the Kingdom of Jáen is represented with a note of a deed by which Sushi of Abraham buys two slaves for 25,000 reais and with another document where the obligation of Marín But, neighbor of Jaén, to pay Martín Abraham, member of the Jewish community, the amount of 8780 maravedis.

This exhibition, which will be open until February 24, also includes references to the persecution suffered by the descendants of the Jews who converted to Christianity, the converts. Among them, the Document of the Month shows the request that Antón Rodríguez de Amores, Diego de Córdoba, Juan de Jaén Morocco, Lope de Fernández Chinchilla and other landlords of the rent of the alcabalas of the city of Jaén request to the queen that exempts them Of the charge imposed by the great pestilence and mortality, the great sterility of the year and by the Holy Inquisition since there are prisoners many merchants and traffickers.

Rab Yosef Caro: born in Toledo

http://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/380611/jewish/Rabbi-Yosef-Caro-The-Master.htm

rab-yosef-caro

Author of the Shulchan Aruch

Rabbi Yosef Caro, 5248-5335 (1488-1575 CE), is most famous as the author of the Shulchan Aruch, the Code of Jewish Law. He was born in Toledo, Spain during the Inquisition years and fled from that country at the age of 4, with his family together with myriads of Jews who were banished from Spain in the year 5252 (1492 CE). His family wandered from city to city, from country to country, not finding a safe haven until they settled in Constantinople (Kushta), Turkey.

Yosef was first educated by his father, Rabbi Ephraim, a scholar in his own right, who was later appointed chief rabbi of Nikopol, Bulgaria. Later Rabbi Yosef would quote many teachings he heard from his father. After his father passed away, he grew up in the home of his uncle, Rabbi Yitzchak Caro, who adopted him as his own son.

It was soon realized that Yosef was destined for greatness, and even at a young age he was regarded as a great sage and many turned to him for halachic rulings. He eventually moved from Constantinople to Adrianople, where he married the daughter of a scholar named Rabbi Chaim ibn Albalag. He soon established a Beit Midrash in Adrianople, and at the age of 34 he began to write his monumental commentary Beit Yosef on the entire ArbaahTurim.

Together with his great assiduousness in Torah study, Rabbi Caro lived a somewhat ascetic life of numerous fasts and self-infliction.

It was in Adrianople that he met the kabbalist Rabbi Shlomo Molcho, who was burned at the stake by the church for his “heretical beliefs.” Rabbi Caro was greatly affected by Rabbi Shlomo’s charismatic personality and even expressed the wish to die in the same way — al kiddush Hashem (as a holy martyr). It was here, too, that Rabbi Yosef met Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, author of the mystical hymn Lecha Dodi. It is possible that one of them introduced Rabbi Yosef to the study of Kabbala.

(To find our series explicating the prayer Lecha Dodi, click here)He came to be regarded as the leader of the entire generation.

After his first wife died at a young age, he married the daughter of Rabbi Yitzchak Sabba. For a short while he lived in Nikopol, Bulgaria, but decided to make his way to the Holy Land so that he could immerse himself in its sanctity and complete his written works. Passing through Salonica, he met the great kabbalist Rabbi Yosef Taitatzak. He continued his journey to the Holy Land via Egypt and eventually settled in Safed.

He was soon appointed a member of the rabbinical court of the city in the Beit Din of the famous Rabbi Yaakov Beirav. When the latter re-instituted semicha (official rabbinical ordination), which had been in abeyance for over 11 centuries, Rabbi Yosef was one of the first he ordained. Here, too, Rabbi Caro established a yeshiva and taught Torah to scores of eager students. Among Rabbi Caro’s more famous students were the renowned darshan (sermonist) Rabbi Moshe Alshich, the kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Galanti and the renowned kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (the Ramak).

When Rabbi Yaakov Beirav, the leading sage of Safed, passed away, Rabbi Yosef Caro was regarded as his successor, and he and Rabbi Moshe of Trani (the Mabit) headed the Rabbinical Court of Safed. In fact, by this time, the Rabbinical Court of Safed had become the central rabbinical court in all of Israel, and indeed of the Diaspora as well. Thus there was not a single matter of national or global importance that did not come to the attention and ruling of the Safed Beit Din. Its rulings were accepted as final and conclusive, and Rabbi Yosef’s halachic decisions and clarifications were sought by sages from every corner of the Diaspora. He came to be regarded as the leader of the entire generation.

Rabbi Yosef merited to be instructed by a maggid a private angelic teacher who revealed to him many kabbalistic teachings.

Although he rarely touched upon kabbalistic matters and customs in his legal writings, he was nevertheless very involved in the study of kabbala. Together with his close friend Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, he set out to explain some of the more difficult passages in the Zohar. In his famous kabbalistic work Pardes Rimonim, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero cites several innovative kabbalistic teachings of Rabbi Caro, who was his master in the revealed teachings of the Torah.

In a dramatic testimonial, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz testified that in Salonica Rabbi Yosef became one of those rare individuals who merited to be instructed by a maggid – a private angelic teacher who revealed to him many kabbalistic teachings. The maggid exhorted Rabbi Yosef to sanctify and purify himself, and he revealed to him events that would take place in the future. It should be noted that in Shaarei Kedusha, Rabbi Chaim Vital explains that visitation by a maggid is a form of Divine Inspiration (ruach hakodesh). The teachings of the maggid are recorded in his published work titled Maggid Meisharim, although the Chida (Rabbi Chaim David Azulai) notes that only about one fiftieth of the manuscript was ever published (see Works). However, in numerous places in Maggid Meisharim it is stated that, “I am the Mishna that speaks in your mouth,” indicating that the Oral Torah itself (of which the Mishna is the fundamental part) spoke within him. (However, these two explanations are not necessarily contradictory — in the merit of the Mishna Rabbi Caro constantly reviewed, he was worthy of an angelic teacher).

The maggid promised him that he would have the merit of settling in Israel, and this promise was fulfilled. Another promise, that he would merit to die a martyr’s death sanctifying God’s Name like Rabbi Shlomo Molcho had merited, did not transpire for an unspecified reason.

The kabbalistic teachings found in Rabbi Yosef’s Maggid Meisharim are in the style of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero’s kabbala, rather than the style of Rabbi Yitzchak Luria (the Arizal). Nevertheless, Rabbi Chaim Vital, the chief disciple of the Arizal, extolled the greatness of Rabbi Yosef’s soul, saying that it stemmed from the soul of the great Tanna Rabbi Yehuda bar Ila’i and had an affinity with the souls of Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet (the Rashba), Rabbi Aharon Halevi (the Raah) and Rabbi Vidal di Tolouse, author of Maggid Mishna, an important commentary on MaimonidesMishneh Torah.

In the year 5324 (1564 CE) Rabbi Yosef’s second wife, who had borne him his son Shlomo, died. Following the dictate of the Sages that a man should not live without a wife, he married again, despite his age. His third wife was the daughter of Rabbi Zecharia ben Shlomo Zavasil Ashkenazi, one of the sages of Jerusalem. When he was in his ninth decade, his wife bore him another son, Yehuda.

Rabbi Yosef continued to preoccupy himself with Torah study and writing important works and fulfilled his duties as the head of the Rabbinical Court in Safed for the remainder of his extremely productive life. He passed on to the World of Truth on the 13th day of Nissan 5335 (1575 CE) at the venerable age of 87. His loss was mourned by the entire Jewish world.

The author of Shenei Luchot HaBrit, Rabbi Yeshayahu Horowitz 5320-5390 (1560-1630 CE) (the Shelah HaKadosh), writes that one Friday night, Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan in the year 5365 (1605 CE), Rabbi Yosef, thirty years after his passing, appeared in a dream to a certain sage living in Safed. He reported that he saw Rabbi Yosef “sitting on a very majestic throne in the presence of innumerable world-renowned rabbis. His face was shining like the brightness of the sky… and he taught the meditations applicable to kedusha.

After 600 years, there is again a Jewish Cemetery in Valencia (Spain)

http://www.valenciaplaza.com/600-anos-despues-el-cementerio-de-valencia-vuelva-a-dejar-espacio-para-los-judios

valencia-jewish-cemetery

VALENCIA. The witer José Hinojosa Montalvo tells in his article ‘The Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia during the fifteenth century’. It was May 26, 1394. By royal privilege of John I, the Hunter, was authorized the creation of a new cemetery to the Jewish aljama of Valencia. It was like compensation, recognition. Three years earlier the city’s Hebrew quarter had suffered the revolts and assault of the angry mobs.
“After the assault of 1391 the old enclosure was abandoned and a new one was found,” Hinojosa writes. “In the middle of 1393 the Jews were authorized by John I to transfer the bones of their ancestors to the new enclosure, and the 26 of May of 1394 the king authorized the creation of the same one”. The new cemetery hardly lasted a century. On its lot was built in 1491 the convent of Santa Catalina of Siena. The following year, the Jews were expelled from Spain, by order of the Catholic Kings.
The convent had better fortune, but did not reach the five centuries. Nothing is eternal. It was demolished in the late sixties to build there the first of the department stores of El Corte Inglés in Valencia, that of Pintor Sorolla. One God, Yahweh, was replaced by another, the God of Christians. And in the last quarter of the twentieth century, this was replaced by the divinity who can: money.
This Thursday, in the mayoralty of Valencia closed this story that covers six centuries. And it was done with a simple signature on paper, on a glass table. The mayor of Valencia, Joan Ribó, signed in a joint act, the agreements for the provision of religious assistance in the General Cemetery to the Catholic, Muslim and Israeli communities. The three agreements have a duration of four years.
Historical date for the Hebrews
Isaac Sananes, president of the Israelite Community of Valencia, recalled that, unlike Catholics and Muslims, in that it was a renewal of an agreement, “for the Jews of Valencia this is a historical date because 600 years ago We had a graveyard, “he said.
“This is the first time we have been able to sign an agreement that has been brewing for many years. Today’s signature will be a milestone that we will all remember, and we want to thank your support to the City Council’s managers to achieve this. For us this is the second cemetery. The former was from the fourteenth century and this is the twenty-first century. We had been waiting for a few centuries, so thank you very much, “he said.
The object, in the case of the Muslim and Israeli communities, is to provide them with burial units specific to the practices of each of these confessions, while in the case of the Catholic Church, religious assistance is specified in the chapel of the Cemetery General.
But the General Cemetery of Valencia will not only be closed to the people of the Book, and will also give space to other religious denominations by means of a symbolism of “neutral character” so that “each confession can place its own symbols” and “all can be developed with total Freedom and the same rights “.
Freedom for all beliefs
In an event witnessed also by the Councilor for the Environment, Pilar Soriano, and the regional secretary of inclusion, Alberto Ibáñez, Ribó took advantage of the launching of a proclamation for tolerance. “Valencia is increasingly a city that welcomes all people assuming their religious beliefs, and that is why we want all religious beliefs to develop with total freedom and all people can have the same rights regardless of their religion or not religion” , He said.
The agreement was signed by Ribó with Vicent Fontestad, Vicar General of the Archbishopric of Valencia; Abdul Rahim Yaghmour, president of the Islamic Community of Valencia, and Isaac Sananes, president of the Israeli Community of Valencia, and serves, as they pointed out from the City Hall, “to guarantee the rights of people and the plurality of all the major religions represented in Valencia”.
“Today,” said Ribó, “it is a beautiful day in which we take one more step to make Valencia a welcoming city for all people with all their beliefs and their cultures, and for anyone living in Valencia to enjoy all rights”.