The Spanish Reconquista and Inquisition

We continued yesterday with our historical background study of the Sepharadim - Spanish Jews. After a brief review of the early history of this edah under the Christian Visigoths, followed by what Jewish historians have termed, "The Golden Age of Spain" under the Muslim Caliphate of Cordoba from the 11th to 13th centuries, we turned our attention to one of the blackest periods in Jewish history - the Reconquista (Reconquering) of Spain by the Christians and the introduction and consequences to the worldwide Jewish community and to Judaism of the Spanish Inquisition.

Again, I used the "Heritage:Civilization and the Jews" dvd-rom program (which our Temple Isaiah library has available!), to help me share this era of Jewish history with the students. I can share links in my posts to the video parts of this program; unfortunately, I cannot access the multimedia presentations and interactive maps sections on YouTube, which provide added information and enrichment to the students relating to information shared on the videos. Yesterday, we viewed segments of the "Crucible of Europe" (minutes 12:50-13:35; 28:56-31:08) and "Search for Deliverance" (from start of video to minute 8:05) video chapters, describing the Reconquista and the Spanish Inquisition (which focused largely on Jewish converts to Christianity who secretly continued to observe Jewish rituals). The video segment in the "In Search for Deliverance" video, describes how those Jews who left Spain and who made their way to Palestine in the Ottoman Empire, developed an entirely new philosophy - Lurianic Kabala - to explain why they had been exiled from Spain, and what their new roles in the universe would be, entirely redefining the relationship of Israel with God.

I also played several multimedia presentations which shared more information about the Jews who left Spain in 1492 rather than convert - explaining the influence these educated Jews had on the Jewish communities in the Muslim Ottoman Empire, including the community of Thessalonika (a/k/a Salonica), where Romaniote Jews had already established vital communities since the days of the Maccabean Revolt. This introduction of the Sepharadi exiles into the Romaniote community of Thessalonika is the subject of the novel I've been reading to the class at the start of each session - "A Shout in the Sunshine."

Another multimedia presentation shared the fate of the conversos (the term by which Jews who opted to convert and stay in Spain, yet who secretly continued to practice Judaism at risk of life and limb,  referred to themselves; the Spanish Church referred to them as "Marranos," a 14th-century Spanish term meaning "swine"). Sadly, it's the derogatory term which is used by most historians today to refer to these converts.

During our Hebrew Through Movement session yesterday, I reviewed Pesach (Passover) vocabulary which I had introduced in our previous session, then introduced vocabulary found in the first two lines of the "Mah Nishtana" section of the Pesach Haggadah - verses traditionally recited by the youngest child in the family. Since the very essence of the Hebrew Through Movement philosophy is the use of body movements to teach vocabulary, I first went over the words I had already introduced that were in the first two lines, and then taught body movements for the rest of the verses' vocabulary as follows:

Mah (What)  = raising the arms up in a questioning mode
Nishtana (literally, is changed) = rolling the hands around each other to signify turning over or changing
Ha'laila (the night) = pointing to a photograph of a full Moon I have hanging on the board
Ha'zeh (this) = pointing the index finger toward the ground
Mee'kol (from all) = sweeping both arms out in each direction in an inclusive gesture
Ha'leilot (the nights) = pointing to a photograph of different phases of the Moon, i.e. the plural form of night

These gestures, together with our HTM props of pieces of "chametz" (leavened bread) and matza, proved to be quite successful! By the end of our session yesterday, each student had successfully shown me he could understand the meaning of the first two verses of the "Mah Nishtana."

This photo can give you a pretty good idea of how large the "Mah Nishtana" poster is that we'll be using to learn the verses. I wrote the transliteration for each word on separate pieces of sentence strips, since I don't expect the students to be able to decode the Hebrew alphabet. Hopefully, by the time we go on Pesach break at the end of March, they will be able to recognize individual whole words, without the transliteration.

And here is a close-up shot of the two photos I mentioned above, representing the singular and plural of "night."