Widespread Consequences of the Expulsion—The Exiles—Fate of the Abrabanel Family—Leon Medigo—Isaac Akrish—The Pre-eminence of Jews of Spanish Origin—The North-African States: Samuel Alvalensi, Jacob Berab, Simon Duran II—The Jews of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis—Abraham Zacuto, and Moses Alashkar—Egypt: Isaac Shalal, David Ibn-Abi Zimra—The Jews of Cairo—Selim I—Cessation of the Office of Nagid—Jerusalem—Obadyah di Bertinoro—Safet and Joseph Saragossi—The Jews of Turkey—Constantinople—Elias Mizrachi: the Karaites—The Communities of Salonica and Adrianople—The Jews of Greece—Elias Kapsali—The Jews of Italy and the Popes: Bonet de Lates—The Ghetto in Venice—Samuel Abrabanel and Benvenida Abrabanela—Abraham Farissol—The Jews of Germany and their Sorrows—Expulsion of the Jews from Various Towns—The Jews of Bohemia—Jacob Polak and his School—The Jews of Poland.
1496–1525 C.E.
The expulsion of the Jews from the Pyrenean Peninsula, unwise as it was inhuman, forms in various ways a well-marked turning-point in the general history of the Jewish race. It involved not only the exiles, but the whole Jewish people, in far-reaching and mostly disastrous consequences. The glory of the Jews was extinguished, their pride humbled, their center displaced, the strong pillar against which they had hitherto leant broken. The grief caused by this sad event was shared by the Jews in every country which had news of it. They all felt as if the Temple had been destroyed a third time, as if the sons of Zion had a third time been condemned to exile and misery. Whether from fancy or pride, it was supposed that the Spanish (or, more correctly, the Sephardic) Jews were the posterity of the noblest tribe, and included among them descendants in a direct line from King David; hence the Jews looked upon them as a kind of Jewish nobility. And now these exalted ones had been visited by the severest affliction! Exile, compulsory baptism, death in every hideous form, by despair, hunger, pestilence, fire, shipwreck, all torments united, had reduced their hundreds of thousands to barely the tenth part of that number. The remnant wandered about like specters, hunted from one country to another, and princes among Jews, they were compelled to knock as beggars at the doors of their brethren. The thirty millions of ducats which, at the lowest computation, the Spanish Jews possessed on their expulsion, had melted away in their hands, and they were thus left denuded of everything in a hostile world, which valued the Jews at their money's worth only. At the same period many German Jews were driven from cities in the East and in the West, but their misery did not equal that of the Spanish Jews. They had known neither the sweetness of a country that they could call their own, nor the comforts of life; they were more hardy, or, at least, accustomed to contempt and harsh treatment.
Half a century after the banishment of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, we everywhere meet with fugitives: here a group, there a family, or solitary stragglers. It was a kind of exodus on a small scale, moving eastwards, chiefly to Turkey, as if the Jews were to approach their original home. But their very wanderings, until they again reached secure dwelling-places, and in a measure were settled, were heartrending through the calamities of every description, the humiliations, the contumely, sufferings worse than death, that they encountered.
The ancient family of Abrabanel did not escape heavy disasters and constant migrations. The father, Isaac Abrabanel, who had occupied a high position at the court of the accomplished king, Ferdinand I, and of his son Alfonso, at Naples, was forced, on the approach of the French, to leave the city, and, with his royal patron, to seek refuge in Sicily. The French hordes plundered his house of all its valuables, and destroyed a choice library, his greatest treasure. On the death of King Alfonso, Isaac Abrabanel, for safety, went to the island of Corfu. He remained there only till the French had evacuated the Neapolitan territory; then he settled at Monopoli (Apulia), where he completed or revised many of his writings. The wealth acquired in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish courts had vanished, his wife and children were separated from him and scattered, and he passed his days in sad musings, out of which only his study of the Scriptures and the annals of the Jewish people could lift him. His eldest son, Judah Leon Medigo Abrabanel, resided at Genoa, where, in spite of his unsettled existence and consuming grief for the loss of his young son, who had been taken from him, and was being brought up in Portugal as a Christian, he still cherished ideals. For Leon Abrabanel was much more highly accomplished, richer in thought, in every way more gifted than his father, and deserves consideration not merely for his father's, but for his own sake. Leon Abrabanel practiced medicine to gain a livelihood (whence his cognomen Medigo); but his favorite pursuits were astronomy, mathematics, and metaphysics. Shortly before the death of the gifted and eccentric Pico de Mirandola, Leon Medigo became acquainted with him, won his friendship, and at his instigation undertook the writing of a philosophical work.
Leon Medigo, in a remarkable manner, entered into close connection with acquaintances of his youth, with Spanish grandees, and even with King Ferdinand, who had driven his family and so many hundred thousands into banishment and death. For he became the private physician of the general, Gonsalvo de Cordova, the conqueror and viceroy of Naples. The heroic, amiable, and lavish De Cordova did not share his master's hatred against the Jews. In one of his descendants Jewish literature found a devotee. When King Ferdinand, after the conquest of the kingdom of Naples (1504), commanded that the Jews be banished thence, as from Spain, the general thwarted the execution of the order, observing that, on the whole, there were but few Jews on Neapolitan territory, since most of the immigrants had either again left it, or had become converts to Christianity. The banishment of these few could only be injurious to the country, since they would settle at Venice, which would benefit by their industry and riches. Consequently the Jews were allowed to remain a while longer on Neapolitan territory. But to exterminate the Spanish and Portuguese Marranos who had settled there, Ferdinand established the terrible Inquisition at Benevento. Leon Medigo for over two years was De Cordova's physician (1505–1507), and King Ferdinand saw him when he visited Naples. After the king's departure and the ungracious dismissal of the viceroy (June, 1507), Leon Abrabanel, having nowhere found suitable employment, returned to his father, then living at Venice, whither he had been invited by his second son, Isaac II, who practiced medicine first at Reggio (Calabria), then at Venice. The youngest son, Samuel, afterwards a generous protector of his co-religionists, was the most fortunate of the family. He dwelt amidst the cool shades of the academy of Salonica, to which his father had sent him to finish his education in Jewish learning. The elder Abrabanel once more entered the political arena. At Venice he had the opportunity of settling a dispute between the court of Lisbon and the Venetian Republic concerning the East-Indian colonies established by the Portuguese, especially concerning the trade in spices. Some influential senators discerned Isaac Abrabanel's correct political and financial judgment, and thenceforth consulted him in all important questions of state policy. But suffering and travel had broken his strength; before he reached seventy years, he felt the infirmities of old age creeping over him. In a letter of reply to Saul Cohen Ashkenasi, an inhabitant of Candia, a man thirsting for knowledge, the disciple and intellectual heir of Elias del Medigo, Abrabanel complains of increasing debility and senility. Had he been silent, his literary productions of that time would have betrayed his infirmity. The baited victims of Spanish fanaticism would have needed bodies of steel and the resisting strength of stone not to succumb to the sufferings with which they were overwhelmed.
We have a striking instance of the restless wanderings of the Jewish exiles in the life of one of the sufferers, who, though insignificant, became known to fame by his zeal to raise the courage of the unfortunate. To Isaac ben Abraham Akrish, a Spaniard, a great traveler and a bookworm (born about 1489, died after 1575), Jewish literature owes the preservation of many a valuable document. Akrish said, half in joke, half in earnest, that he must have been born in the hour when the planet Jupiter was passing through the zodiacal sign of the Fishes, a nativity which indicates a wandering life. For, though lame in both feet, he spent his whole life in traveling from city to city, on land and on sea. When a boy, Akrish was banished from Spain, and at Naples he underwent all the sufferings which seem to have conspired against the exiles. Thus he limped from nation to nation, "whose languages he did not understand, and who spared neither old men nor children," until in Egypt, in the house of an exile, he found a few years' rest. Who can follow all the wandering exiles, with sore feet, and still sorer hearts, until they somewhere found rest, or the peace of the grave?
But the very enormity of the misery they endured raised the dignity of the Sephardic Jews to a height bordering on pride. That they whom God's hand had smitten so heavily, so persistently, and who had undergone such unspeakable sorrow, must occupy a peculiar position, and belong to the specially elect, was the thought or the feeling existing more or less clearly in the breasts of the survivors. They looked upon their banishment from Spain as a third exile, and upon themselves as favorites of God, whom, because of His greater love for them, He had chastised the more severely. Contrary to expectation, a certain exaltation took possession of them, which did not, indeed, cause them to forget, but transfigured, their sufferings. As soon as they felt even slightly relieved from the burden of their boundless calamity, and were able to breathe, they rose with elastic force, and carried their heads high like princes. They had lost everything except their Spanish pride, their distinguished manner. However humbled they might be, their pride did not forsake them; they asserted it wherever their wandering feet found a resting-place. And to some extent they were justified. They had, indeed, since the growth of the tendency among Jews towards strict orthodoxy and hostility to science, and since their exclusion from social circles, receded from the high scientific position they had held, and forfeited the supremacy they had maintained during many centuries; yet they far surpassed the Jews of all other countries in culture, manners, and also in worth, as was shown by their external bearing and their language. Their love for their country was too great to allow them to hate the unnatural mother who had cast them out. Hence, wherever they went, they founded Spanish or Portuguese colonies. They carried the Spanish tongue, Spanish dignity and distinction to Africa, Syria, and Palestine, Italy and Flanders; wherever fate cast their lot they cherished and cultivated this Spanish manner so lovingly, that it has maintained itself to this day in full vigor among their descendants. Far from being absorbed by the rest of the Jewish population in countries which had hospitably received them, they considered themselves a privileged race, the flower and nobility of the Jewish nation, kept aloof from others, looked down upon them with contempt, and not unfrequently dictated laws to them. This arose from the fact that the Spanish and Portuguese Jews spoke the languages of their native countries (which by the discoveries and conquests of the sixteenth century had become the languages of the world) with purity, took part in literature, and associated with Christians on equal terms, with manliness, and without fear or servility. On this point they contrasted with the German Jews, who despised pure and beautiful speech, the very thing which constitutes a true man, and considered a corrupt jargon and isolation from the Christian world as proofs of religious zeal. The Sephardic Jews attached importance to forms of all kinds, to taste in dress, to elegance in their synagogues, as well as to the medium for the exchange of thought. The Spanish and Portuguese rabbis preached in their native tongues, and laid great stress on pure pronunciation and euphony. Hence their language did not degenerate, at least not in the first centuries after their expulsion. "In the cities of Salonica, Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo, Venice, and other resorts of commerce, the Jews transact their business only in the Spanish language. I have known Jews of Salonica who, though still young, pronounced Castilian as well as myself, and even better." This is the judgment of a Christian writer about half a century after their expulsion.
The contempt which even Isaac Abrabanel, mild and broken though he was, entertained for the barbarous jargon spoken by German Jews is characteristic. He was surprised to discover in a letter, sent to him by Saul Cohen of Candia, a native of Germany, a finished Hebrew style and close reasoning, and freely expressed his astonishment: "I am surprised to find so excellent a style among the Germans (Jews), which is rare even among their leaders and rabbis, however gifted they may be in other respects. Their language is full of awkwardness and clumsiness, a stammering without judgment." This superiority of the Jews of Spanish descent in culture, bearing, social manners, and knowledge of the world, was appreciated and admired by other Jews, especially by German Jews, with whom they everywhere came into contact. Hence Spanish Jews could presume to play the rôle of masters, and frequently, in spite of their paucity of numbers, they dominated a majority speaking other tongues. In the century after their expulsion they are almost exclusively the leaders; the names of their spokesmen are heard everywhere; they furnished rabbis, authors, thinkers and visionaries, whilst German and Italian Jews occupied a humble place. In all countries, except Germany and Poland, into which they had not penetrated, or only as solitary individuals, the Sephardic Jews were the leaders.
The northern coast of Africa, and the inhabitable regions inland, were full of Jews of Spanish descent. They had congregated there in great numbers during the century from the persecution of 1391 to their total expulsion. From Safi (Assafi), the most southwestern town of Morocco, to Tripoli in the northeast, there were many communities, of varying numbers, speaking the Spanish language. Though mostly hated, arbitrarily treated, and often compelled by petty barbarian tyrants and the uncivilized, degenerate Moorish population to wear a disgraceful costume, yet prominent Jews found opportunities to distinguish themselves, to rise to high honors and acquire widespread influence. In Morocco a rich Jew, learned in history, who had rendered important services to the ruler of that country, was held in high esteem. At Fez, where there existed a community of five thousand Jewish families, who monopolized most trades, Samuel Alvalensi, a Jew of Spanish descent, was greatly beloved by the king, on account of his ability and his courage, and so trusted by the populace that it accepted him as its leader. In the struggle between the two reigning families, the Merinos and the Xerifs, he sided with the former, led one thousand four hundred Jews and Moors against the followers of the latter, and defeated them at Ceuta. A very numerous Jewish community of Spanish descent occupied the greater portion of Tlemçen, or Tremçen, an important town, where the court resided. Here Jacob Berab (born 1474, died 1541), fleeing from Spain, found a refuge. He was one of the most active men among the Spanish emigrants, and the most acute rabbi of his age. At the same time, he was a crusty, dogmatical and quarrelsome man, who had many enemies, but also many admirers. Born at Maqueda, near Toledo, Jacob Berab, after passing through many dangers, suffering want, hunger and thirst, reached Tlemçen, whence he went to Fez, the Jewish community of which chose him, a needy youth, for their rabbi, on account of his learning and sagacity. There he conducted a college until the fanatic Spaniards made conquests in northern Africa, and disturbed the quiet asylum that the Jews had found there.