Jewish Toledo - Spain's finest & worst eras

Intricately patterned wooden ceiling and stucco decoration

Toledo, capital city of Old Castile, started with the Romans. Jews have lived there at least since the C6th; in 589 CE, Council of Tol­edo pro­hibited Jews from marrying Christ­ians, hold­ing public of­f­ice or own­ing Christian serv­ants. Clearly the Jews suffered greatly under Ch­rist­ian­ity, especially when the 8th Toledo Council created even worse anti­-Semitic leg­islation in 652 CE. The rift between the two commun­ities led the Jews to befriend the new conquerors in the Muslim conquest of Toledo in 715 CE.

In 1252 King Alfonso X captured Toledo and declared it Christian again, yet this time he ensured that the Jews were treated as eq­u­als. Many Jews migrated to Toledo and rose to prom­inence, in pol­it­ics and government. Alfonso even named a Jewish physician as his royal appointment.

By mid-C13th, Toledo’s Archbishop grew concerned by the fin­an­cial and political prominence of the Jewish community, so he impos­ed a tax and housing tithe on every adult Jew. This didn’t work, since by 1290 nearly half of the town’s resources was still own­ed by Jews!

The commun­ity leader was the community’s rabbi; in 1305 Tol­edo Jews chose the learned nobleman Asher Ben Jehiel Abulafia (d1328) to lead them. In 1320 Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia was born, the Abulafias having led the Jewish comm­unity in Castile for decades. Sadly Samuel’s parents died of the plague, and as Samuel was too young to inherit their legacy, he was app­ren­t­iced to the Knight Juan Alfonso instead. Samuel rose quickly in society un­til he found vit­al positions in King Ped­ro I of Castile’s court. Samuel became town Mayor, Treasurer and fin­ally High Judge. It was as Treas­urer when he chose to build a synag­og­ue.

Toledo already had 10 synagogues, including Spain’s largest, but this one was Samuel’s own special house of worship. In 1357 the new synagogue opened, with Samuel Ab­ul­afia leading the prayers. To thank his comm­un­ity, Sam­uel also opened the synagogue as a hub for Jew­ish education. Note that in the C14th, Spain had actually decreed a ban on all new Jew­ish educat­ional institutes and synagogues. How­ev­er Sa­m­­uel’s close rel­at­ion­ship with King Pedro meant it was ok. Was it a royal apology for the persecution that Jews had faced in Toledo in the 1348 Black Death?

Samuel Abulafia ignored the regulations requiring synag­og­ues to be under-decorated and smaller than churches. The lav­ish­ly decorated rect­angular prayer hall had a 12m ceiling where Heb­rew in­sc­riptions ext­ol­led both King Pedro and Samuel Ha-Levi. Arabic inscript­ions and Psalm passages were also on the walls, next to the family coat of arms and fine windows. Over 2nd floor women's gallery,  the arches were layers of low-relief stucco tendrils, round­­­els, scallop shells, geometric interlacing & rows of blind arches.

The façade was built of brick and stone and was unad­orned, in order to draw less public attention. Only the tow­ering roof raised the whole synagogue above nearby structures.

Facade of the Synagogue and Sefardi Museum

 

This house was an active place of worship for many years, but anti-Semitism reappeared. Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia set out to pro­tect Jewish rights and freed­oms, but as the rift between the two men grew, King Pedro no longer de­f­ended him. Samuel was arrested on corr­up­tion and tortured to death. De­s­pite grow­ing attacks on Tol­ed­o’s Jewish com­munity, his house and synagogue rem­ain­ed, presumably from self-interest; it would be converted to a church.

By 1492, the Jews were given a final ultimatum: the Catholic monar­chs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, iss­ued the Alhambra Decree which gave Spanish Jews the choice to 1] con­v­ert to Catholicism, 2] leave Spain voluntarily or 3] be expelled. This Royal Decree showed their belief that the Jews’ presence was a threat to Spain’s relig­ious and cultural identity. The exp­ul­sion marked the end to centur­ies of Jew­ish pres­ence in their beloved Spain, and led to their forced mig­rat­­ion to Europe, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire.

As no Jews remained in Toledo, the synagogue was turned into a ch­urch; Ferd­inand and Isabella donated the building to the Order of Cal­atrava who made it a Benedictine priory. The name El Transito, honour­ing the Virgin Mary’s Assumption, was given to the building as a church. Ironically the name today is still Synag­ogue El Transito. Artist Juan Correa de Viv­ar paint­ed a mural of Mary’s Virgin Transit over the original Je­w­­ish wall engr­avings, but Vivar’s canvases were later moved and preserved.

El Transito remained a church until the Sp­anish War of Independence against Napoleon broke out in 1808. Despite heavy resistance, 10,000+ French troops and horses took up resid­ence in Toledo. The Spanish fought back, and the defens­ive lines of both arm­ies often fell there. The Spanish revolutionaries and fighters needed barr­acks, and the spacious Church of El Transito was perfect.

Beautiful Old Toledo and the Tagus river

Things to do in Toledo

Although other heritage sites were lost in battle, by late in the war the synagogue-church-mil­itary barracks had become a symbol of Spain’s succ­ess and indep­endence. Surprisingly (to me) their mil­itary prowess meant El Transito Church became a National Monument.

In the C19th, Spanish Jewish communities began to slowly re­build. So historians and world heritage staff explored the site, and re­cog­nis­ed how important it had once been for the Jewish comm­un­ity. First they res­tored the holy Torah Ark. 14 latt­ices required fix­ing and the Hebrew inscrip­tions had to be carefully restored, letter by letter. Then work on interior walls and the women’s gallery.

Women's gallery on the first floor

Arturo Mélida y Alinari was head architect of the project, focusing on the old roof and outside walls. Before WW1 it was gifted to the commun­ity as a Museum of Sephardi Culture & His­t­ory. A deb­ate arose over whether to also restore the church feat­ures, and eventually they decided to pay homage to the church years. Thus the choir stage and other Christian features were returned to their former glory. Lastly some new features were added to the site eg a large Jewish library and a new Centre for Hebrew Studies.

Main prayer hall in the old synagogue

facing the Holy Arc with velvet curtain and Torah scrolls

The Sefardí Museum was created in 1964, located in the key medieval Hispanic-Jewish building in Spain. Now called the Nat­ional Museum of Hispanic-Jewish Art, the museum opened to the pub­lic, the rooms occ­upying the old ar­chive of the mil­itary ord­ers. The exh­ibition dis­plays Jewish cult­ure in Spain, from before the tragic expul­sion to the development of the Sephardic communities across the world. Many thanks to Mia Amran, and to my daughters-in-law whose parents came from Sephardi Damascus and Alexandria.

 Location of Toledo in Spain

Credit for the images: Sinagoga El Transito

State killings: Saudi Arabia, USA & Victoria

Saudi authorities beheaded a Pakistani in Feb 2014 for smuggling drugs.
Photo credit: Newsweek.

This article was written by the journalist Phillip Adams and published in The Weekend Australian (27-28 Sep 2014).  What has changed since?

When it comes to beheadings, ISIS are rank amateurs. In the past year the despotic Saudi Arabian regime has decapitated dozens. Enjoying favoured status as a US ally and provider of the good oil, this brutality has aroused no criticism. In Saudi, you can get the chop for everything from adultery to sorcery and minor drug dealing. We are talking public executions. Beheadings are a popular entertainment.

In 1995, Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk reported how 12 women of various South East Asian ethnicities had been executed after callous trials, including a mother and daughter who were beheaded in front of a male audience for murdering the woman’s abusive husband. Last year it was reported that more than 45 foreign maids were on death row in Saudi Arabia. The response from the West and its diplomats? As ever, deafening silence.

Phillip Adams became concerned by Saudi justice in 1980 when seeing the British film Death of a Princess screened, over Saudi protests and the regime’s threats of economic sanctions. A young member of their royal family and her lover had been executed for adultery. His praise for the doco-drama resulted in his first-ever death threat. No sooner had the broadcast began than the tv station received a bomb threat; the discussion continued on tv with the bomb squad and their dogs searching around.

But let’s not be eager to take the high ground. The huge death toll suffered in Iraq as a result of the Bush-Blair-Howard invasion, for example. But at least Australia (1973) and UK (1965) abandoned the death sentence. Not so the US where Texas leads the charge, having killed 600 people by lethal injection since 1982. Meanwhile 31 other US states continue to carry the death penalty, as leaders follow the example of former Texas governor George W Bush in demonstrating their Saudi-style manliness.

execution chamber Georgia Diagnostic Prison, Jackson. 2020

NBC News

Those executions are as political and cruel as the ISIS. And they serve as public entertainments for ultra conservative voters, in the proud tradition of American lynchings. And so often the chemical cocktail fails to do its job, leading to a death that is agonisingly slow. The US government is keen to talk up the savagery of the ISIS beheadings, but while many U.S states employ the death penalty so often, so arbitrarily and so clumsily, and in light of the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and in secret rendition locations, the High Moral Ground seems totally inappropriate.

I agree with everything Adams said, except for the arbitrary nature of capital punishment in Saudi Arabia and in those American states that execute criminals. Saudi Arabia uses executions specifically to get rid of its problematic populat-ions: single women, married women who talk to men-not-their-husbands, foreign women, people who use guns to kill and drug dealers. Texas (to use Adams’ example) uses executions specifically to get rid of its problematic populations too: young black men, older black men, people who use guns to kill and drug dealers.

And one more statistic to make sense of. The 3 main countries that sent troops to invade Iraq in March 2003 were, as Adams noted, the USA, Britain and Australia. In the 3 weeks taken to complete the air strikes, 7,500 Iraqi civilians were killed by us Westerners, according to The Guardian. The 345 civilian executions in Saudi Arabia, carried out from 2007-10 by public beheading, seem puny in comparison.

Tens of thousands of people protested against the imminent execution of Ronald Ryan

Melbourne, 1967

Photo credit: Herald Sun newspaper

I recommend Dick Hamer: The Liberal Liberal written by Tim Colebatch and published by Penguin Books in 2014. Rupert Dick Hamer (1916-2004) was Premier of Victoria in the critical years from 1972 to 1981. This sympathetic biography was drawn from members of the Hamer family who shared with the author their stories, documents and photos. Colebatch also included details from personal and political diaries that Hamer wrote when he was a very young politician (1939-41). Since I am a paid up member of the Labour Party, it was incredible for me to have admired a conservative. But under this leader of the conservative party, abortion and homosexuality were decriminalised, anti-discrimination laws were introduced and protection of the environment emerged for the first time in legislation. What was there not to love?

Of all of Hamer's achievements listed in the book, focus on Hamer's strength on the abolition of capital punishment. Although opinion polls indicated that some Victorians still supported capital punishment, at least for particularly heinous crimes, Hamer allowed state MPs a free vote; he successfully legislated to abolish capital punishment in Victoria in 1975. This had been a risky move - in 1967 his predecessor Premier Henry Bolte had brutally ordered the execution of the last man in Australia to face the hang man. Ronald Ryan's execution devastated the state; remember the protest marches that brought the City to a standstill.

Was Victoria a leader of  Australian states in abolishing capital punishment? Hardly. Only W Australia (1984) and New South Wales (1985) were slower bringing in their legislation.

Goudstikker: stolen art returned to Holland

Jacques Goudstikker's gallery, 1927-40

Amsterdam. Wiki

Jacques Goudstikker (1897–1940) was born in Amsterdam, son of a Jewish art dealer. He studied at the Commercial School in Amsterdam, then in Leid­en and Utrecht. In 1919 he joined his fath­er's Amsterdam gallery, remodelled it as a pub­lic limited liab­ility company with himself as the director, and created an inter­nat­ional style.

He was becoming a connoisseur and scholar whose expertise was admired across Europe. Goudstikker's taste extended to the des­ign of his catalogues, minor works of art in them­selves, and close ties with art historians and col­lect­ors. His clients eg Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza shared this mix of connoisseurship and scholarship.

Post-WW1, Amsterdam was a centre of inter­nat­ional trade where top galleries flourished. In 1927 he moved to a larger gallery and presented works from the Dutch Golden Age, alongside panels by Dutch, Flemish, German and Italian artists, mixing paintings, sculptures & carpets. His Old Masters coll­ection included Lucas Cranach, Jan Steen, Adriaen van Ostade, Isaac van Ostade & landscapers Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael. Goudstikker had fine paint­ings by Jan van der Heyden at his country home Nijen­rode Cas­tle where he ent­er­tained clients. Plus some still-lifes eg Jan van Huysum in National Gallery, and figure painters eg Ferdinand Bol and Aert de Gelder.

Some of Goudstikker’s Dutch and Flemish paintings, including 5 van Goghs, 2 van Dongens and a Mondrian, went to NY’s Anderson Gall­ery in 1923, organised by the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce. Between the wars, Goud­stikker was the ?most important Dutch dealer of Old Master paintings, even though the Depression badly affected art trade. None­theless Goud­­­stikker could still organise a Rubens ex­hib­ition in 1933. And a classy ex­hib­ition of Italian Paint­ings in Dutch Col­lect­ions at the Amsterdam Stedel­ijk Mus­eum in 1934. 

Floris van Schooten,

Still Life with Cheeses, c1620

Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco

Cottages by the Can­al

by Jan van Goyen, 1630

National Museum, Gdańsk

His fine works included the Ferry Boat with Cattle on the Riv­er Vecht by Salomon van Ruysdael, Judgment of Paris by Fran­çois Boucher and Christ Car­rying the Cross by Hieronymous Bosch, now in Vienna’s Kunsthis­tor­isches Museum. Young Girl with a Flute by Vermeer was later pur­chased by Joseph Wid­ener to donate to National Gallery in Wash­ington DC. A large altar­piece, Assump­t­ion of the Virgin with Sts Michael & Benedict, is in Metrop­olitan Mus NY.

In 1937, Goudstikker married Viennese opera singer Désirée von Halban Kurz, daughter of famed Jewish soprano Selma Kurz. They had a son, and in 1939, with the imminent German occupation of Netherlands, Goudstikker applied for American visas. As the Germans advanced on Ams­terdam in May 1940, the family fled. While escap­ing via the English Channel aboard SS Bodegr­aven, Goudstikker fell into an open hatch on the deck, broke his neck and died. His widow Désirée and only child Edo both got safely to North America.

In June 1940, Goudstikker's employee Arie ten Broek became company dir­ector; then in July two of Goudstikker's employ­ees were paid to sell all the remaining works of art to Reichsmarschall  Hermann Goering. Goering took c800 of the most valuable works back to Germany where they were displayed in several residences. The art gal­l­­ery went to Goering's man German banker Alois Miedl who paid to acquire title to the J Goudstikker trade name and to Goud­stikker's real estate in Amsterdam and elsewhere.

With Goudstikker's respected trade name, Miedl made a fortune marketing art in Nazi Germany. Parts of the collection were taken over by East Prussian gov­ernor Erich Koch and one of these paint­ings, Cottages by the Can­al by Jan van Goyen, is still in the Gdańsk National Museum.

After WW2 the Allied forces recovered many treas­ures from Ger­many and gave them to the Dutch government to ret­urn­ them to their right­ful owners. The Dutch recorded 3,000+ plundered works that came back to the country post-war.

From 1946 the widow Désirée Goudstikker asked the Dutch government for the family coll­ection. In Aug 1952, after a 7-year legal battle, the widow received some works of art while the rem­aining objects, classed as Dutch National Property, were divided amongst the State museums.

In 1996-8, Dutch investigative journal­ists drew int­ernational att­ention to the post-war restit­ution of stolen art and the ignored rights of the legal owners. Eventually the issues were docum­ented in Pieter den Holl­ander’s 1998 book, The Goudstikker Case. The Goudstikker heir, his widowed daughter-in-law Marei von Saher, then sued for possession of the works. Unfortunately her claim was rejected by the State Sec­ret­ary of Education, Cult­ure and Science.

Ferdinand Bol,

Louise-Marie Gonzaga de Nevers, 1645

The Jewish Museum, Manhattan

Salomon van Ruysdael

River Landscape with Ferry, 1649
Nat Gall Art, Washington

Netherlands was long considered a leader in returning Nazi-looted art. But official in­vestigations confirmed some mis­hand­ling of postwar restit­ut­ions; as a result, the government created the Dutch Restit­utions Committee in 2002. It reviewed claims to art treas­ures in the govern­ment’s possession and to oversee efforts to ret­urn such works. In Dec 2005, the Committee DID restore 202 out of 267 paint­ings taken by Goering to the rightful heir, Marei von Saher, including Salomon van Ruysdael’s River Landscape with Ferry, once held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum.

Some pieces were not restored to von Saher in 2006 because the Dutch government no longer had them. Von Saher sued unsuccessfully in a US court for their return. None­the­less in gratitude, von Saher donated one returned painting, van der Helst’s 1645 Child on Deathbed, to the Dutch state.

NB 1,000+ works from this collection remain to be found.  

Dutch officials established a pro­cess for dealing with heirless art or work whose owner is unident­if­ied. Such piec­es would be returned to a Jewish heritage institution. And Neth­er­lands’ Minister of Education, Culture and Science said the Dutch government is also aiming to repatriate objects from its holdings that were plundered from former colonies.

Read the excellent book Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goud­stikker by Peter Sutton, 2008 

Eastbourne UK bandstand and pleasure pier

entertainment facilities on Eastbourne Pier

Like other coastal towns, Eastbourne began to grow rapidly as the medicinal and leisure benefits of sea air and sea bathing became well known. Locals scrambled to provide a wide variety of facilities and amusements for the thousands who flocked to Eastbourne each summer. My favourite would have been Devonshire Park which was first designed in 1874 with terraces, walks and a cricket ground. As the money flowed in, the owners added tennis courts and a roller skating rink. Very sensibly they located Devonshire Park next to the baths, the Winter Gardens and the Theatre. 

In this post, I am interested in publicly funded facilities. There were many pleasure piers built around the coastal resort towns of Britain, and then in other countries. The earliest was probably Ryde’s on the Isle of Wight (1813) although the majority did not start until the late C19th. Early pleasure piers were made of wood; iron structures only became more popular with the construction in 1855 of Margate Jetty. The National Piers Society suggests that only 55 seaside piers survive today in England and Wales, the oldest extant iron pier being in Southport (1860).

Eastbourne's pier was designed by Eugenius Birch in 1865 and built by the Eastbourne Pier Company for £15,000. Originally a landing stage for steamers, it soon became a "pleasure pier" because it enabled the gentry to walk over the water and to participate in the social life there.

Spouse and I loved the pier when we first lived in Britain. But decades later it was starting to look just a little bit old fashioned. The only innovation that I remember was The Victorian Tea Rooms which  specialised in Sussex Cream Tea and attractive table settings.

Agatha Christie's story, The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan, was set in Brighton but partially filmed in Eastbourne. Just as well the film was finished in 1993. Firstly the owners put Eastbourne Pier up for sale in 2009; included were Victorian tea rooms, an amusement arcade, bars and a nightclub. Secondly Eastbourne Pier experienced a fire in July 2014 that burned through a large amount of the central domed building. The two-thirds of the 305-metre pier that were not destroyed ...were quickly reopened.

Even more popular than pleasure piers, re leisure time activities, were the bandstands built in the UK, Australia and other countries in the world. Presumably they too resulted from changing social life in late Victorian & Edwardian years.

Normally bandstands were built in the centre of a public park, surrounded by lawns & gardens where families strolled or sat on portable chairs. The old practice of military bands marching through built up areas in town, surrounded by scruffy children and hangers-on, was no longer acceptable.

Each coastal town sought to unify the pleasure activities in the centre of the town’s beach area. Many towns liked to choose from amusement arcades, theatres, restaurants, tea rooms, striped deck chairs, slot machines, lunar park rides, fishing sites, fairground stalls and walking areas. What was less common was a bandstand being located right next to a beach, very close to that coastal town’s pleasure pier.

Eastbourne bandstand, pleasure pier and beach

This East Sussex town had its bandstand by 1893, standing on cast iron stilts right on the seafront. Decades later, as a part of the town’s plan to improve its resort facilities, a newer Eastbourne Band stand went up. The 2nd bandstand, built in 1935, had a rather special semi-circular design, Orientalist blue domed roof and silver finial. Still today, see its main arena with middle and upper balconies seating 3,500 people.

Ten thousand people attended the three concerts given in that special summer of 1935.

For many years Eastbourne bandstand ran a daily programme of military bands, at least until the end of each summer season. But new audiences don’t necessarily love what their grandparents loved. So in 2010, the 75th anniversary of the new bandstand, big band nights, rock 'n' roll and Last Night of the Proms were added to the programme. The concert music ended triumphantly with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture, accompanied by a spectacular firework display.

Clearly the organisers are making the programme more relevant for modern audiences and the bandstand is having a new lease on life. Some 150 concerts are now held per year in Eastbourne (pop 90,000).

Eastbourne bandstand and concert

One last thought that I have raised before - a connection between bandstands and the Titanic. See a commemorative plaque at the rear of the original Eastbourne bandstand, in memory of a local  bands-man who was playing on the Titanic when it sank in April 1912. That plaque was transferred to the newer, 1935 bandstand.

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne

I hope you enjoy Eastbourne History Tour by Kevin Gordon, Amberley Publishing, 2019.