Bevis Marks Synagogue in London or at Shearith Israel in New York, once headed by Rabbi David de Sola Pool. Some had belonged to S&P congregations in southern Africa and Gibraltar.
In Jerusalem
Abraham Rabinovich
SOMETHING COMMON in their past had brought them together, but the guests eyeing each other in the handsome living room seemed uncertain about the thread that links them now. They had arrived early and took places in the circle of chairs with a nod at the others. By 8.30pm, the chairs were filled. Isaac Benabu looked at his watch.
We've always had a reputation for promptness", he said.
The host, a genial rabbi from America named Harris Guedalia, opened the proceedings: "Perhaps we ought to introduce ourselves and explain why we think we're Spanish and Portuguese".
It was the first "cultural evening" of the newly formed Spanish & Portuguese Congregation in Jerusalem. What was remarkable was that this was the first S&P Congregation ever formed in the holyland.
The S&Ps have traditionally regarded themselves as an elite group, set apart - they would be too genteel to say above - from other "edot" or communities in Judaism. The top hats and morning coats worn by synagogue officials, their distinguised lineage and "high church" decorum, have evoked an aristocratic glamour that has lured many a pure-blooded Ashkenazi into their congregation.
Some of the participants in the Jerusalem meeting this month belonged to the S&P "mother synagogue" in Amsterdam. Others had prayed at the famous Bevis Marks Synagogue in London or at Shearith Israel in New York, once headed by Rabbi David de Sola Pool. Some had belonged to S&P congregations in southern Africa and Gibraltar.
It was to become apparent during the evening that in their long history of migrations, the Spanish and Portuguese had never arrived in sufficient numbers in Eretz Yisrael to establish a congregation. A visitor could not escape the vagrant thought that this strange abstinence was not unconnected with the poverty that long accompanied the holiness of the land.
Why do you think you're Spanish and Portuguese?" someone in the room asked his neighbour with mock seriousness.
"I know why I'm Spanish & Portuguese", the neighbour responded. "Why do you think you are?"
A man identified as Rabbi Toledano, said "I can trace my family back to the Inquisition."
"Well" said another participant "My name is della Fuente".
There was also an Ibanez, a Perez and other suitably Hispanic names. In one corner sat Ezra Gorodetzky, who had been affiliated with an S&P congregation in Philadelphia but did not attempt to establish his own Iberian bona fides. Some of the participants spoke of grandparents who had married Ashkenazim and were greeted with expressions of commiseration, which seemed to carry as much sincerity as jest.
THE CONGREGATION had its origns a year ago in a talk between Harris Guedalia and Martin van den Bergh, a former minster (a cross between a cantor and rabbi) in Manchester's S&P congregation and a grandson of a former chief rabbi of the Amsterdam synagogue.
Locating other S&Ps, they began holding monthly weekday prayers on Rosh Hodesh. As the circle widened, they decided last summer to pray together during the High Holydays. The Sephardi Council in Jerusalem offered them the use of the Istambuli Synagogue, one of the complex of four Sephardi synagogues in the Old City.
The new congregation had the fortune to obtain the services of one of the most esteemed cantors in the S&P world, Avraham Beniso, a merchant of Gibraltar, who has sung at Bevis Marks and many other S&P syngagoues. He was in the country to visit his daughter living in Rehovot. The liturgy he sang carried echoes of early Spanish and Italian-Renaissance music.
The top hats worn by Van den Bergh and Gorodetzky were probably the first cylinders seen in Jerusalem since the British Empire slipped out of Haifa Bay. When Gorodetsky walked home in it, there was not a head along the way that did not turn.
Deciding to instituionalise, the leaders of the new-born congregation compiled a list of some 50 families in Jerusalem with an S&P background. Invitations were sent for the meeting in Harris Guedalia's home, about 20 showed up. The infant congregation was becoming a community.
"Do we have customs that distinguish us from other edot?" Guedalia asked the others in the room. "How many here eat rice on Passover? I didn't until I married Judy. She's an Ashkenazi but she's the one who insisted."
Guedalia had been one of the five rabbis serving New York's Shearit Yisrael before heading his own congregation of Syrian Jews in Los Angeles.
Gibraltar-born Benabu, who lectures on Judeo-Spanish liguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, noted that S&P were punctilious.
"One of our traditions is that all our services are timed", he told the circle. "We always knew when zmirot would be sung", said Guedalia: "In New York, we always started five minutes early. You had to be in the know to know."
The principal guest of the evening was an Ashkenazi, Dr Yosef Kaplan a lecturer in the department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University and an authority on Iberian Jewry. He had been invited to explain to the assembled S&Ps how they differed from so-called Sephardi Jews. Most of those present did not seem to be sure.
There are after all distinguished families in Jerusalem, like the Eliachars, which trace theri ancestry back to the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and yet are not considered Spanish and Portuguese but Sephardi.
Dr Kaplan made the distinction clear. The S&Ps are not descendants if the 1492 expelees. They are the descendants of those who stayed behind and became New Christians. Some of thse ancestors may have been Marranos who secretly practiced Judaism. Others may not have been.
In any case, some four or five generations passed before these families left Portugal and Spain, mostly for Amsterdam, where they returned once again to Judaism. Many of these families had been among the 100,000 Jews who fled to Portugal from Spain in 1492 and had been forced to convert five years later.
The expelees, said Kaplan, carried with them into exile a 15th century Judeo-Spanish which would remain part of their culture to this day as Ladino. They also brought with them a vibrant Jewish culture. They had not concentrated on Talmud as had the Ashkenazim elsewhere in Europe, but they taught Hebrew to their children and were the first to develop Jewish philosophy and kabbalah in the middle ages. They were also open to influences from the rich Moslem and Christian worlds around them. The expelees spread around the rim of the Mediterranean and the Balkans.
The New Christians who reached Amsterdam two centuries later spoke 17th century Spanish or Portuguese and knew little about Judaism. They brought with them a cultural heritage from Catholic Europe which they now tried to replace with Jewish content.
Many of those who had converted to Christianity in 15th century Spain and Portugal had been prosperous merchants who had clear economic reasons for not wanting to leave. Many of their descendants who left for Amsterdam two centuries later were, likewise, well-to-do merchants who already had trade links with Amsterdam. The Netherlands had once been ruled by Spain.
By the end of the 17th century, Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam owned a quarter of the shares of the East India Company and were engaged in industry and trade ranging from India to the Americas. The great Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, until today one of the sights of Amsterdam, was dedicated in 1675. The community was not only prosperous but an intellectual focus graced by figures like Baruch Spinoza.
The group establishing the Jerusalem congregation was motivated by the common instinct to associate-with-one's-own-kind. "Every other group has its own congregation here", says Guedalia. "We're entitled to exist as well".
There is however a deeper motivation. "We want to establish a foothhold in Israel because we fear the tradition is slipping in other parts of the world", says Benabu. 'As with all Jewry, we have assimilation too". We want to give our nusach (liturgy) 'continuity'. We believe every Jewish trend should be centered in Israel."
It seems unlikely that Jerusalem S&Ps will adopt the striped trousers and morning coats worn by their fellows abroad. Although the top hat was introduced in the Istambuli Synagogue by van den Bergh and Gorodetsky, other members of the congregation who have been keeping similar hats in the darkest parts of their closets since their bar mitzvah hope that S&P unctiliousness will not oblige them to put them on.
This page sponsored by Esek.com
This page prepared by Pinchas Richard Wimberly, webwright.
August 21, 1999