I introduced the subject by sharing how some scholars believe the name "Spain" evolved from the original name given to the Iberian Peninsula by Phoenicians who first visited the eastern shores of Spain, having navigated the Mediterranean Sea along the coast of North Africa, and up through the Strait of Gibraltar. Not realizing that the land mass was actually a peninsula, they believed it to be an island. The ancient Phoenician language is very closely related to Hebrew, and in both languages the word for island is "ee" (אִי). Along the shores of the Peninsula, they spotted a large number of rodent-like animals called hyraxes. The Phoenicians named the island after the Phoenician word for hyrax (again, the same as the Hebrew word), "shafan." So the earliest known name for the area we call Spain today was "Ee Shafan." Hundreds of years later, the Greeks colonized the area, and re-named it "Isfahan," and when, a few centuries later the Romans occupied the area, they re-named it "Hispaniola." In Spanish, the name is "España" - Spain in English. I shared that these scholars also believe that there is a very good chance that sailors from the maritime tribe of Israel, Z'vulun (Zebulon in English), may have been aboard the Phoenician ships. If that's true, then the ancestors of the Jews first settled on the Iberian Peninsula some 3,000 years ago.
We then looked at interactive maps on the "Heritage: Civilization and the Jews" dvd-rom program, so I could show how, beginning in the mid-5th century C.E. and following through to the late-9th century, the declining Roman Empire tried to fight off the onslaught of what they termed "barbarian" tribes coming from Eastern Europe, but ultimately failed. One of these tribes, the Visigoths (Western Goths) managed to make their way over the Pyrenee Mountain range from what is today France, into Spain, and established a Visigoth Empire. They had already been converted to Christianity before entering Spain, and proved to be very fanatic in demanding that all the peoples in their empire convert. This included the Jews who had already established trading communities on the Peninsula several hundred years before the Visigoths occupied it.
Life was quite unpleasant, to say the least, for these Jews, until the mid-8th century, when Arab Muslims conquered the area, coming up from North Africa. With these Arabs, came many more Jews, and it's here that I began to share a more detailed history of what was to become the "Golden Age of Spain" for its Jews. I shared this history using the "Heritage" program (from the start of the chapter called "The Crucible of Europe" to minute 9:20). In the discussion following my showing of the video, I stressed the fact that during the Golden Age of Spain, Sephardi Jews became the first Jews since the Roman Exile from Judea to be considered equals with the occupying people and culture. Like the tolerant and educated Arab Muslims who ruled over them, they studied the sciences and arts and philosophies of the ancient Greeks, and experienced a renaissance of their own Hebrew culture. This is an important point to remember, because after 1492, when those who refused to convert to Christianity were forced into exile, to live among other Jewish communities (edot), it should not be surprising that the Sephardim considered themselves superior to their fellow Jews, and established separate synagogues for worship and, ultimately, greatly influenced the culture of many of these non-Sephardi Jewish communities.
During our Hebrew Through Movement session this week, I focused on preparing the students for Pesach (Passover) vocabulary we'll be learning, by reviewing the blessings that we say over the candles, wine and bread. Fortunately, much of the Shabbat vocabulary that we had learned in the late fall, early winter, is the same that we use on Pesach. And once most of the students showed me that they could recite the blessings, I shared that for Pesach (as for other important holidays except for Hanuka and Shabbat), the candle blessing is the same as that we recite over the Shabbat candles, except that instead of ending the blessing with the words "l'hadleek ner shel Shabbat" (to light the Sabbath light), we say, "l'hadleek ner shel yom tov." (to light the holiday - literally the "good day"- light.)
During the second half of the session, we focused on learning to recognize the blessings in their written form by first determining how many words were in each blessing, and focusing on key words.
On Sunday, we will review the Golden Age of Spain, then focus on the great tragedy that befell the Sephardim during the "Reconquista" era and beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment