{"id":3282,"date":"2015-06-23T14:42:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T21:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=3282"},"modified":"2016-06-19T12:58:22","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T19:58:22","slug":"the-jews-of-girona-their-exile-and-bruce-springsteen-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/23\/the-jews-of-girona-their-exile-and-bruce-springsteen-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jews of Girona, Their Exile – and Bruce Springsteen (Seriously)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Girona<\/a><\/p>\n

This is Girona, home to a large,\u00a0prosperous, and effective Jewish community until a confluence of events took it all away.<\/p>\n

In a single year,\u00a0two historic moments\u00a0changed\u00a0western history and Jewish history, too. \u00a0It was 1492. \u00a0The very Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, partners in a marriage made to consolidate power, threw all the Jews out of Spain. \u00a0Immediately. \u00a0Convert or get out.<\/p>\n

At the same time, of course, these same “Catholic Kings” sent Christopher Columbus on his way to the “new world” and forever changed faith, power and geopolitics.<\/p>\n

The Jewish History Museum of Girona<\/a> beautifully documents much of this story:<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>
Two “JUDEI” – Jewish figures from the 1050 “Creation Tapestry”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The letters floating above these two little people say “JUDEI” – Jew.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Girona mikvah dating from 1465<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This 14th Century mikvah was found only recently. How haunting, especially with the recent mikvah scandal, to see before us evidence of how long women have honored this commitment.<\/p>\n

\"Words<\/a>
Words from a tombstone (see next picture)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tombstone\"<\/a>
Tombstone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For some reason, this just felt extra sad. \u00a0There are so many little boys in my life – and some big ones – so maybe that’s part of it. \u00a0Beyond that though, the humanness and loss felt so real, and the suffering of those times so much more concrete as I absorbed the words\u00a0of this one grieving parent.<\/p>\n

But what, you may ask, does any of this have to do with Bruce Springsteen? \u00a0Well, as I entered the lovely museum gift shop, attended by this equally lovely gentleman,\u00a0I heard Bruce on the radio. Gradually, I realized that he was singing My Hometown<\/em>. \"2015-06-23<\/a><\/p>\n


\n<\/a>\"BRUCE<\/a><\/p>\n

Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores<\/em>
\n Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more<\/em>
\n They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks<\/em>
\n Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back to your hometown \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed Talking about getting out<\/em>
\n Packing up our bags maybe heading south<\/em>
\n I’m thirty-five we got a boy of our own now<\/em>
\n Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around<\/em>
\n This is your hometown<\/em><\/p>\n

Exile and loss, pain and deprivation can be understood on so many levels. Just as the Jews were brutally ejected from the homes and community they had so painstakingly built, so were workers throughout this country as the factories and mines and mills that had sustained them for so long collapsed. Although on a different scale, they too lost everything they knew and the life they had loved, and were forced to find another, unknown place to call home. Although less brutally\u00a0required to depart, they had no choice, really.<\/p>\n

Loss of home, love, family and community is a hardship experienced by more and more people throughout the world. Hunger, terrorism, civil war, drought, economic collapse and religious, gender and racial discrimination\u00a0hurt in different ways and to different degrees, but the pain is the same in nature if not in degree. The only thing that changes is the faith, or class, or color of the refugees. \u00a0We still certainly don’t seem to have learned to care much more today when it happens to people who aren’t us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is Girona, home to a large,\u00a0prosperous, and effective Jewish community until a confluence of events took it all away. In a single year,\u00a0two historic moments\u00a0changed\u00a0western history and Jewish history, too. \u00a0It was 1492. \u00a0The very Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, partners in a marriage made to consolidate power, threw all the Jews out … Continue reading The Jews of Girona, Their Exile – and Bruce Springsteen (Seriously)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,27,42,7,8,9,98,78],"tags":[3332,3329,3884,3326,3327,224,3331,3334,3330,2621,2640,3282,2613,3328,3333],"class_list":["post-3282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-current-affairs","category-family","category-life","category-music","category-politics","category-religion","category-travel","tag-3332","tag-christopher-columbus","tag-culture-book","tag-girona","tag-jewish-museum","tag-jews","tag-king-ferdinand","tag-miriam","tag-queen-isabella","tag-seabourn","tag-seabourn-cruise","tag-seabourn-sojourn","tag-spain","tag-spanish-jews","tag-tapestry-of-creation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-QW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3282"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3302,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3282\/revisions\/3302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}