My children are all geniuses. No really, I know all parents think that their kids are bright but mine are so smart that they wear smarty pants. What I mean really is that they are smart-allacks and by that I mean they make fun of my love for searching for Jewish life in the past when we travel. I know this post seems like one big kvell, and maybe it is, but I have been doing both for years, kvelling about my kids and looking for Jewish life from the past.
We traveled to Paris, France one year for Spring break when the girls were in grade school and there we celebrated Passover. Since they could sing all the verses of the Manesh Tanah, or the 4 Questions traditionally asked by the youngest at the table, my girls volunteered to chant them in Hebrew in front of hundreds of families from various countries who were traveling that year, along with the Jewish community of Paris. I don't know if they remember this but I know I will never forget it. We traveled again last year and had Passover in Dublin, Ireland. Since they were now young twenty somethings, my daughter did the 4 Questions in sign language, after a game our host played called "How many different languages can we chant the 4 Question in" and then proceeded to go around the room and sing them in about twenty different languages. These are life experiences that make you a Jew of the world not just of your home community.
I like to hunt for Jews of the past. Jews who lived in communities in neighborhoods that do not really exist anymore. My smart-alleck, sign language speaking daughter calls it a Jewcation. For example, we recently came back from a family vacation on a cruise in the Mediterranean, which was lovely. I feel bad that I did not do my research better before I left town. At every port we searched for the local synagogue and sadly most local tourist information personnel are young and not aware that Jews had a vibrant past in their country. Internet, in the form of free WiFi is still intermittent in Europe, except of course, at the local McDonald's, or if you buy something at a cafe thus doing research on the run is difficult.
So we look around for clues to Jewish life in the past in words or building structures such as old churches that did not have a lot of Christian ornamentation on them or back alleys that seemed deserted but you got the aura that seemed comfortable to a Jew. In Sicily we found an odd looking statue that had angels wings and Hebrew letters in a glass case (along with a bullet hole and graffiti in Italian), that looked totally out of place and decided it must be a Holocaust memorial or a symbol for the Archangel Michael. I am doing research to figure out what it represents but so far no luck.
When our ship stopped in Palma de Majorca we found a street named El Temple which was in fact home to a Jewish Ghetto during the times when the Arabians first invaded the island and the entire Iberian Peninsula in 711. Jews lived pretty well under the Muslims and flourished in trades such as gold and silversmiths. By the late Middle Ages, though, the takeover of Spain and Southern Italy by Christian King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his marriage to Isabella I of Castile completely expelled, converted or killed the Moors of Granada along with the Jews prior to 1492 and completely by 1493.
These are just a few of the adventures of our Jewcation and as we go through the photos we will find many more clues to Jewish life in the past. There are nowadays more Jewish tours through old towns throughout Europe east and west. As modern ideas find their way into ancient towns the restrictive mores are going away and a rebirth of the Jewish life that was once there is beginning to show. It is just there to find and as long as my brilliant kids are willing to travel with me we will continue to discover our Jewish past as a family. For after all it isn't just the kvelling that my girls want to travel with me that is important, the real blessing is that we are together.
