Jews in Toledo. Sketch.

Many books have been written and even more stories have been told about the magical city whose walls rise above the turbulent waters of the Tagus River.

The chroniclers called it a paradise garden, where "the pomegranate blossom is as big as the fruit itself", where there is "an abundance of food and innumerable riches". They also wrote that "pearls and precious stones were freely sold in the market. The tablets of Solomon decorated with emeralds could also be found there".

The name of this city is Toledo. Many legends surround the mystery of its birth.

According to the Old Testament legends, long before the birth of Christ, during the time of King Solomon, the Jews came to the Iberian Peninsula. Prophet Obadiah speaks of Spain - Sephardi, prophet Jonah visited the Tartessians - an ancient people of Spain. They say that the gates to Solomon's temple were covered with gold, brought from here. So, the Jews settled here a thousand years before our era. And the most ancient community on the granite rock, which is skirted by the Tagus River, was created by the descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin shortly after the destruction of the First Temple. So claimed the great Abrabanel. Even the name of the city of Toledo sounds ancient language - "taltela" (wandering); "toldot" (genealogy).

Our short story will be about this restless and talented people who inhabited Toledo, their ups and downs, about the waves of unruly history.

"On the fourth day of creation, God created the sun and placed it directly above Toledo, so their city is older than the rest of the earth. The city is ancient, there are many proofs of this. It was still in the possession of the Carthaginians, then for six hundred years - the Romans, three hundred years - the Christian Goths, four hundred years - the Arabs. Now for a hundred years, since the time of the glorious King Alfonso, it has again been in the possession of the Christians and will be in possession until the Last Judgment."

Lion Feuchtwanger "Spanish Ballad"

The life of the Jews in Toledo during the period of Roman rule can be called generally prosperous. Fertile lands, hot sun and abundance of water created excellent opportunities for agriculture, and the development of cities and trade relations of the empire contributed to crafts and trade. And the Sephardim succeeded in all this. Roman chronicles note the mass migration of Jews to such an attractive Spanish land.

Centuries pass, and the Empire falls. The city, which became an outpost of the Roman Empire, rich and decorated with ancient temples and theaters, is destroyed by hordes of barbarians. In the fifth century AD, Toledo becomes the capital of the young Visigothic kingdom and the center of political, cultural and religious life. Toledo is still rich.

"The city experienced an era of greatness and prosperity ... during the reign of the Christian, Visigothic rulers, whose descendants they, the knights, are. At that time, Toledo was the richest, most magnificent city in the world. King Athanagild gave his daughter Brunhilda treasures worth three thousand times a thousand gold maravedi as a dowry. King Reccared had the table of the Jewish king Solomon, carved from a giant single emerald and set in gold, and King Reccared also had a magic mirror in which one could see the whole world."

Lion Feuchtwanger "Spanish Ballad"

Christian Visigoths built numerous temples from stones and slabs of Roman buildings. And while the Visigoths preached Arianism, everything was generally fine. Smart and enterprising Jews even occupied high government positions.

Everything changed when the Visigoths adopted Catholicism. Aggressive and uncompromising. And already in 616 a royal decree was issued, according to which all Jews had to be baptized. Oppression, regular robberies and pogroms began. In fairness, it must be said that the Visigoths treated all conquered people very arrogantly, they despised the local population. The invaders gladly robbed and killed the natives, considering all their property and themselves to be their property. This behavior of theirs served as the reason that when the Muslims came to the Iberian Peninsula, the locals surrendered one city after another without a fight, welcoming the invaders as liberators. It is believed that the Jews of Toledo also accepted the Muslims as saviors. But urban legends claim the opposite. As if the inhabitants of Toledo, among whom there were many Sephardim, desperately resisted. And the Caliphate had no subjects as restless as the Toledans. But they, too, resigned themselves. Moreover, highly educated Jews from North Africa appeared in the Jewish community. They came together with the Muslims. And the Jewish community flourished.

The Jews always had problems with the Arabs. Their emirs did not initially demand that the Sephardim renounce their faith: they only had to pay double taxes, like the Christians.

"The society created by the caliphs in Spain was extremely unjust," says historian Cesar Vidal. "The Jews, who paid exorbitant taxes just to save their lives, could not always achieve this goal. Thus, the ninth century was characterized by constant massacres in Cordoba. The Arab court clans, who were competing with each other, took their anger out on the murders of Jews. So, the life of the infidels was always hanging by a thread and depended only on the mood of this or that caliph or other rulers." And yet, the centuries of the Muslim

dominion is recognized by many historians as the golden age of Jewry.

Relative tolerance on the part of Muslims quickly gave way to repression. Shai Shemer says: “The Jews have always had problems with the Arabs. But at first, the conquerors were attracted by the knowledge in various fields that the Sephardim possessed. And they used it in their state. True, persecution began very soon: the Jews were forced to move north, to areas conquered from the Arabs by the Spaniards during the reconquista. The Christian kings were more tolerant of the Sephardim at that time.”

Historian Shai Shemer is convinced that Jews moved to places where they were more tolerated: “They were engaged in various crafts, architecture, trade, finance, sciences – especially medicine and philosophy – and art. Among the Sephardim there were not only excellent artisans, for example, jewelers, but also outstanding scientists. It must be said that in terms of any knowledge, the Spaniards at that time were weak. After all, for several centuries they lived only by wars. Therefore, knowledgeable, educated people were valued by them.” And already by the 11th century, taking advantage of the fact that the Spanish King Alfonso VI granted the Sephardim many rights, Jews poured into Toledo. Very soon the Jewish population became the majority.

Jews have long settled in the neighborhood, trying to stick together in communities. This is how the Jewish quarter arose, which extended to the Jewish Gate. Since 820, the quarter was surrounded by a fortress wall and had its own citadel, where residents of the quarter could hide. In fact, it was a city within a city. Moreover, during turbulent periods, Christian kings hid their royal offspring in this citadel. After all, in order to get to them, it was necessary to storm the city, take the Jewish quarter - another fortress, and then the citadel. Difficult, right? And the Jews were considered excellent warriors. They defended their homes to the last drop of blood.

There was another Jewish quarter in Toledo, called Alcana, it was located near the Catholic cathedral and was not fortified.

In the 13th century, the situation of the Jews in Spain was favorable thanks to King Alfonso X the Wise. This educated monarch, a poet and philosopher himself, gathered scholars, writers and artists of different faiths at his court and created a translation school in the then capital of Spain, Toledo, where, in particular, the Bible was translated into Spanish - from the original, not from Greek, the Talmud and Kabbalah. King Alfonso issued a law that recognized freedom of faith for all citizens of the country and prohibited forced baptism. Saturday was declared an official holiday for the Jews, on this day it was forbidden to force them to work or summon them to court.

Subsequent kings either deprived the Jews of all rights or called them to serve the crown. No one managed financial affairs better than the Jews. The wisest kings took advantage of this.

I

The community of Toledo soon became the most important in Castile and one of the largest in Spain; at times, its number exceeded ten thousand people (about a third of the entire population of the city). As evidenced by the business papers of the Jews of Toledo, in the 11th-13th centuries they owned arable land, vineyards and pastures (which were sometimes rented out), slaves, houses and shops. The Jews of Toledo were engaged in trade, including the purchase and sale of real estate, credit business and many crafts; commercial transactions and financial operations were often carried out in partnership with Christians. The most wealthy and influential members of the community (for example, representatives of the Feruziel family, tracing their genealogy back to King David) farmed out the collection of royal taxes in Toledo, its environs and throughout Castile, and sometimes (together with Christian contractors) taxes for the benefit of churches and monasteries. Wise Jews became advisers to kings.

King Alfonso VIII unfortunately fell in love with the daughter of one of them, Ibrahim ibn Egra, Raquel. The Jewess was so beautiful that people called her Hermosa - the beautiful. The chronicles of King Alfonso X preserved this story.

“And then King Alfonso, at the beginning of his reign, married Donna Leonor, but according to what we have heard, he became infatuated with a Jewess whose name was Hermosa and forgot his wife. He amused himself with her for a long time. He could not leave her for a moment, nor did he do anything else, and this lasted for almost seven years. The nobles agreed that it was necessary to save the kingdom, and decided to kill her and blame their sovereign for what they had lost, and having agreed on this, they went to the king, and while some were talking with him, others entered the sacred royal chamber and killed her, and many who were near her. The king’s passion was so great that he was beside himself with grief. The vassals carried the king away from Toledo to a place called Illiescas. There they talked with him, while the others were busy with the Jewess. There an angel appeared to the king and said: Alfonso, you have sinned with a Jewish woman and the Lord has given you the punishment you deserve. The king began to pray to the Lord for mercy. And the angel said to him: fear the Lord, it is true that he demanded that your sin be so unceremoniously interrupted. You must rule the kingdom that you do not rule, you must take care of your line of succession, by what you have done you have caused the great wrath of God. The king was very sad and said: I will do what the angel commanded. From that moment on, he always feared the Lord and did only good, and during his life he accomplished many good deeds and feats, which I will tell about later in this chronicle."

Everyone knows this story. Lope de Vega wrote a play. Lion Feuchtwanger wrote a wonderful book. What can I say, the story is beautiful. But isn't it just an excuse for the numerous military failures of the king nicknamed the Noble and the Good? Someone must be to blame? Who else, if not the Jews?

Jews were found guilty of absolutely everything. When the plague broke out. When the townspeople owed a lot of money and did not want to pay it back. When the crown did not want to pay off its debts. There were many reasons to take away a Jew's property or kill him.

In 1391, Toledo, like many other cities in Spain, suffered bloody pogroms (according to Jewish chroniclers, they began on 17 Tammuz , i.e. June 20; according to Christian sources, on August 5). Hundreds of Jews died, including prominent members of the community, many were baptized, and large groups of new Christians formed in Toledo. The pogromists burned or demolished almost all of the city's synagogues and beth midrashim . These events led to a profound economic and spiritual decline in the Toledo community, which continued until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

As royal decrees of 1397 and 1408 attest, the Jews of Toledo were unable to pay taxes; even in 1439 the community was able to contribute only seven thousand maravedis to the treasury. At the same time, even at the end of the 14th century and in the first half of the 15th century, there were still some Jews in Toledo who owned large fortunes and farmed out taxes. In the first years of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, there were also Toledo Jews among the courtiers and large tax farmers.

Queen Isabella was a fervent Catholic. It was her reign that produced the infamous fanatical inquisitor Torquemada. The crown also owed a huge amount of money to the Jewish community, which financed her campaigns to conquer the throne of Castile.

And so, being in Toledo in 1480, Ferdinand and Isabella decided to carry out an anti-Jewish policy; the Cortes convened here approved the corresponding decrees.

After Ferdinand and Isabella issued the decree on March 31, 1492, expelling all Jews who professed Judaism from Spain, some Jewish families living in Toledo were baptized, while others left the city.

Ferdinand and Isabella commissioned their representative R. del Mercado to draw up a register of the property of the Jews of Toledo, including land, houses, shops, public buildings and religious buildings (by the end of the 15th century there were 10 synagogues and five beth midrashim in Toledo), left in the care of the city authorities or private individuals. Subsequently, the real estate owned by the Jews (including synagogues) was sold by the treasury or transferred to the church, monasteries and members of the nobility. Even the tombstones from the Jewish cemetery were put up for sale.

The new Christians of Toledo initially lived mainly in the Jewish quarter, and from the 1480s - in all parts of the city. The entire 15th century was illuminated by bonfires where new converts were burned, denunciations, falsifications and the famous Inquisition trials flourished. By the 18th century, Christians with Jewish blood had finally dissolved into the population of Spain. At that time, approximately seven million people lived in Spain. The number of Sephardim fluctuated between six hundred and eight hundred thousand. About a third of them were baptized, and two-thirds left the country. "It is believed that now, thanks to the Sephardim who accepted Christianity, more than 40% of the population of Spain has Jewish roots."

What was the fate of the exiled people?

Sephardic history researcher Shai Shemer says: "After the expulsion of the Sephardim from Spain, there were many countries where they were well received. The reason is the same - they did not ask for land and at the same time mastered many crafts and sciences, and were also specialists in trade and finance. In the same Ottoman Empire, a long period of fairly peaceful existence began for them."

Almost all the Jews from Castile went to Portugal. Those who lived in Catalonia and Aragon went to the Balkans – to today’s Greece, the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria; Andalusian Jews – to North Africa and Turkey. The Ottoman Empire showed the greatest tolerance to the Sephardim.

It was especially difficult for those who ended up in Portugal. They were given asylum for only 8 months and then expelled, leaving behind children under 13 and forcibly baptized. Many were put on ships and landed on the coast of Guinea in Africa and on the island of Sao Tome and Principe. Here you can still meet dark-skinned people with Semitic features and hear legends from the Old Testament.

The worst fate befell the Sephardim who moved to Romania, Bulgaria and the Balkans. Few of them survived the Holocaust. In the Nazi camps, Jewish girls from Romania sang national songs set to Spanish folk melodies. More fortunate were those Sephardim who managed to move to Holland, where a large colony of them eventually appeared.

There is a legend that the Sephardim who left Toledo took the keys to their homes with them. These keys are still kept in Jewish families and passed down from generation to generation as the greatest treasure. As a symbol of hope that the highest justice will prevail and the Jews will return to flourishing Toledo.

We will leave our Toledo as it was seen in the 12th century by Yehudan Ben Shlomo al-Jari.

"I have arrived in the vast city of Toledo, the capital of the kingdom, which is clothed in the charm of dominion and adorned with learning, showing its beauty to the peoples and princes. Because the tribes of the Lord have migrated there. How many palaces are there within, making the luminaries run after the splendor of their beauty and magnificence! How many synagogues of incomparable beauty are there! There the whole soul glorifies the Lord. Among them is the congregation of the holy seed, whose adornment is justice, as numerous as the flowers of the field."