Thoughts from Iberia

Jan 22, 2024

Thought Number One: "Hm. It's much warmer here than in Prague."

My gratitude for this was never-ending and eternal. The antidepressant I'm currently on has the unfortunate side effect of appetite suppression. This resulted in me losing what was apparently the layer of fat that's kept me warm all these years in the snowy realms of Salt Lake City, Wisconsin, and now Boston. Now, my sensitivity to cold is through the roof. I can't shrug it off or suck it up like I used to. I also have permanent frostnip in my fingers from a decade of outdoor work. So as you can imagine, going from 24 degrees Fahrenheit to 60 degrees Fahrenheit was absolutely wonderful. 

The trip started in Toledo, which is not Southern Spain, as my Spanish friends have made abundantly clear. Despite being not Southern Spain, Toledo has a great deal of remaining Jewish history, more than any other Spanish city I researched. Two whole synagogues! And an entire Sephardic Jewish museum inside one of them. 

Toledo is one hour south of Madrid by train, which leaves hourly from Puerta de Atocha Station. I stayed two nights in the Old City, in a very small room inside a former convent converted into a hotel. I loved this room and this hotel very much, I think it's the best place I stayed in Europe. If you're ever in Toledo, look up Hotel Santa Isabella. Lovely place with excellent rates. 

I visited Synagogue of El Tránsito on my first day in Toledo. This synagogue was built in 1357 with the blessing of the Castilian rulers. To me, this was pretty wild. The Christian overlords of yore didn't typically allow their Jewish constituents to have good stuff, let alone something as beautiful as the Synagogue of El Tránsito. 

But don't worry! The Jewish man who patroned the construction, Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia, was put to death only three years after the synagogue's completion when he fell out of favor with the king. So business as usual.

This museum contained massive amounts of history about the Jews of the Iberian peninsula, stretching back all the way to Roman and Visigoth times. With my schoolgirl Spanish, I deciphered the signage on all of the exhibits and relics. This took an embarrassingly long time and I'm sure I missed things, despite my best efforts. But at the very least, I know what I need to Google.

After El Tránsito, I went to Synagoga Maria la Blanca. There was no museum inside. Just a very large, very empty, very cold expanse. Moorish designs covered the floors and the ceiling, which was held up with white plaster pillars. A gentleman was giving a tour in a English to a group of students. Through this, I learned that the Jews who converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition continued to practice their rituals and holidays in secret. To this day, there are Spanish families in Southern Spain who light menorahs in December. And they don't know about Hanukkah! They don't know why they're lighting the candles. Only that it's an important practice passed down in their families for hundreds of years.

That's the most Jewish thing I can imagine, really. Convert us all you want, but you'll pry our traditions from our cold, dead hands.

Next stop on the trip was Córdoba, another old Spanish city with a smattering of Jewish history. Had to double back to Madrid and take another southbound train, this one two hours. Córdoba, like every other place I went to, was stunning and full of history. That said, there was much less surviving Jewish history there than in Toledo. I went to just one very small synagogue. Built in 1315, this synagogue is known simply as Sinagoga de Córdoba. The reason for this is that every other synagogue in the city was destroyed during Spain's many religious persecutions. This synagogue is the only one left.

In the small square outside of the synagogue is a bronze statue of Moses ben Maimon, commonly known as Maimonides. From this, I learned that the suffix "-ides," in Greek, is a patrynomic indicator," similar to "ben" in the Hebrew tradition. Very interesting! And Maimonides himself is a fascinating figure. A rabbi, scholar, philosopher, and physician during the Middle Ages, Maimonides was nothing short of prolific, producing dozens of works of scholarship on Judaism, medicine, and logic that are cited to this day. I've been taking a deep dive into his life and work for the past week, and it's possible there will be a similar individual in whatever work of fiction I produce with the inspiration garnered from this adventure.

In addition, I visited the bridge from Game of Thrones. I don’t watch Game of Thrones, but this was my family’s first question when I told them about Córdoba. “Did you see the bridge, Claire? Did you walk across the bridge??”

Yes. Yes, I did. Twas very beautiful.

I'm going to skip over Sevilla since I was only there for one night. From what I saw, it was a lovely town! Not much Jewish history, just a place to go after the preceding two places. Sevilla was meant to be the last leg of the trip. Two nights in a hostel, then back to Madrid. But I ended up changing my itinerary due to the advice of a British expat I met in Toledo. She owned a small jewelry store that sold traditional gold-plated pendants and earrings. We got to talking (in English!) and I told her my plan: Toledo, Córdoba, Sevilla. She raised an eyebrow and said, "Not Granada?"

Granada was her favorite city in Southern Spain. She waxed profound about its loveliness for several minutes. Given she'd lived in Spain for fifty-three years, I figured her advice was credible.

It was.

If I had to recommend just one city out of all of the ones I went to on this trip, it would be Granada. Nestled in a valley just west of Sierra Nevada, a huge snow-capped mountain, Granada's old town is exactly what would come to mind if you were to picture a classic Mozarabic Spanish city. Narrow passageways, old stone buildings, cobblestone paths, small trinket shops. It felt a lot like the souks of Marrakech, except I wasn't getting catcalled every five seconds. I could have walked around the centro historico for weeks without getting bored. Not only that, but a friend from a fandom Discord lives in Granada! Carmen showed me some of the featured sights of the city and we had tapas at a local tapas bar. So lovely! Cities are much more fun when you do them with friends.

And here's a plug within a plug. The Alhambra. The Nasrid Palace, as they call it formally, the former seat of the centuries-long, pre-Middle Ages Nasrid kingdom. One of the greatest surviving examples of Western Islamic architecture on Earth. On a whim, I went and toured the fortress after getting off the train for my Granada overnight.

I wish I had the words to describe it. Four decades from now, when I'm seventy years old with half a century of writing experience under my belt, I still won't have the words to describe it. I’ve pointedly not put any pictures of it here because none of them come close to doing it justice. God, the beauty and craftsmanship of this millennia-old palace. Perfectly planed marble courtyards and clear fountains. Delicate honeycomb plasterwork composing the ceiling of each tower and alcove. Geometric patterns, tesselations, and Arabic poems carved into the walls, some over thirty feet high. 

Not painted. Carved. 

I haven't been moved to tears by a piece of artwork in many years. But multiple times on my hours-long walk through the Nasrid Palace, I found myself stopping to blink away the sting in my eyes. Pausing to sit in the rickety wooden chairs they put in each room for elderly visitors. Breathing. Staying still. Understanding, with gratitude and with loss, that I would never in my life see this place for the first time again. After the tour of the palace, I sat on one of the ramparts of the south-facing fortress and watched the sun go down over Granada. 

Sometimes you experience something that makes you wonder why you let your old life take you to the point it did. Sometimes you see an ancient wonder of the world high above a city with a friend in it, Spanish sun setting over the distant mountains, and you tell God, "Okay. Okay. I'll stay alive."

These "Thoughts from..." writeups of my Jewish Europe findings can't be concluded without acknowledging the massive, tragic elephant in the room; the most pressing, urgent thought I had for the entirety of the two week trip. Every Jewish thing that I saw in Prague and in Southern Spain was historical. There was almost nothing contemporary in either of these two places. No prizes for guessing why. In Prague, the vast richness of Jewish life declined severely in 1945 because of the Holocaust. In Southern Spain, the timelines of the museums and synagogues go up to around 1500 AD, when the Spanish Inquisition hit its stride and the Jews either left Spain or converted to Catholicism. There's lasting remnants in both places, of course. The hamsa and Evil Eye as powerful spiritual icons of the Iberian peninsula. The golem of Prague. Touchstones of Jewish culture remain in the collective conscience of Europe. And of course, there are still Jews and Jewish communities around. But it's nothing like what might have been, had these two devastating exterminations not occurred.

This got me thinking...what if history was different?

What if the Inquisition was stopped before hitting its stride? What if the Holocaust never happened? What might these thriving, ancient Jewish communities look like today? What would modern Europe look like if Judaism hadn't been torn up by its roots and driven to near-extinction?

I've thought about this a lot, actually. On the eight hour flight from Lisbon to Boston, I opened a Word Document and began my usual drafting process when I have an idea for a new project. Ten pages of thoughts, plans, and musings, and growing fast! I already have a draft open in another window so I can tell you all about it. I'm stoked! I can't wait to share this new idea with you.