JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

arcelona
some professionals, such as physicians, translators, and interpreters.
The Decline
Around 1367 the Jews were charged with desecrating the
*Host, several community leaders being among the accused.
Three Jews were put to death, and for three days the entire
community, men, women, and children, were detained in
the synagogue without food. Since they did not confess, the
king ordered their release. However, Nissim Gerondi, Isaac b.
Sheshet, Ḥasdai Crescas, and several other dignitaries were
imprisoned for a brief period.
The community gradually recovered after these misfortunes.
Jewish goldsmiths, physicians, and merchants were
again employed at court. After Isaac b. Sheshet’s departure
from Barcelona and Nissim Gerondi’s death, Ḥasdai Crescas
was almost the sole remaining notable; he led the community
for about 20 years. The main element in the Barcelona community
was now the artisans – weavers, dyers, tailors, shoemakers,
carpenters, blacksmiths, and coral-workers. These
were organized into confraternities and now demanded their
share in the communal administration. After the long period
in which the ruling oligarchy had been exercising their authority
to their own advantage, the 1327 charter was abolished
by royal edict in 1386. A new charter was approved by which
representatives of the two lower estates, the merchants and
artisans, shared in the administration.
During the persecutions of 1391, the city fathers and even
the artisans of Barcelona tried to protect the Jews of the city,
but without success. The violence in Barcelona was instigated
by a band of Castilians, who had taken part in the massacres
in Seville and Valencia and arrived in Barcelona by boat. News
of the onslaught on the Jewish quarter in Majorca set off the
attack on Saturday, August 5. About 100 Jews were killed and a
similar number sought refuge in the “New Castle” in the newer
and second Jewish quarter. The gate of the call and the notarial
archives were set on fire and looting continued throughout
that day and night. The Castilians were arrested and ten were
sentenced to the gallows. The following Monday, however,
the “little people” (populus minutus), mostly dock workers
and fishermen, broke down the prison doors and stormed the
castle. Many Jews were killed. At the same time, serfs from the
surrounding countryside attacked the city, burned the court
records of the bailiff, seized the fortress of the royal vicar, and
gave the Jews who had taken refuge there the alternative of
death or conversion. The plundering and looting continued
throughout that week. Altogether about 400 Jews were killed;
the rest were converted. Only a few of them (including Ḥasdai
Crescas, whose son, newly married, was among the martyrs)
escaped to the territories owned by the nobility or to North
Africa. At the end of the year John I condemned 26 of the rioters
to death but acquitted the rest. In 1393 John took measures
to rehabilitate the Jewish community in Barcelona. He allotted
the Jews a new residential quarter and ordered the return
of the old cemetery. All their former privileges were restored
and a tax exemption was granted for a certain period, as well
as a moratorium on debts. Ḥasdai was authorized to transfer
Jews from other places to resettle Barcelona, but only a few
were willing to move. The project failed. Reestablishment of a
Jewish community in Barcelona was finally prohibited in 1401
by Martin I in response to the request of the burghers. Thus
the Jewish community of Barcelona ceased to exist a hundred
years before the expulsion.
The Conversos
While Jews no longer resided in the city, the *Conversos,
those forcibly converted during the massacres, continued to
live there. The renewed prosperity of Barcelona during the
15th century should be credited in part to the Conversos, who
developed wide-ranging commercial and industrial activities.
Despite protests by the city fathers, in 1486 Ferdinand
decided to introduce the Inquisition on the Castilian model
in Barcelona. At the outset of the discussions on procedure
the Conversos began to withdraw their deposits from the
municipal bank and to leave the city. The most prosperous
merchants fled, credit and commerce declined, the artisans
suffered, and economic disaster threatened. The inquisitors
entered Barcelona in July 1487. Some ships with refugees on
board were detained in the harbor. Subsequently several highranking
officials of Converso descent were charged with observing
Jewish religious rites and put to death. In 1492 many
of the Jews expelled from Aragon embarked from Barcelona
on their way abroad.
20th Century
At the beginning of the 20th century a few Jewish peddlers
from Morocco and Turkey settled in Barcelona. After Salonika
came under Greek rule in 1912 and the announcement by
the Spanish government of its willingness to encourage settlement
of Sephardi Jews on its territory (1931), Jews from Turkey,
Greece, and other Balkan countries migrated to Barcelona.
Other Jews arrived from Poland during World War I, followed
by immigrants from North Africa, and by artisans – tailors,
cobblers, and hatmakers – from Poland and Romania. There
were over 100 Jews in Barcelona in 1918, while in 1932 the figure
rose to more than 3,000, mostly of Sephardi origin. After
1933 some German Jews established ribbon, leather, and candy
industries. By 1935 Barcelonan Jewry numbered over 5,000,
the Sephardim by now being a minority. During the Spanish
Civil War (1936–39), many left for France and Palestine. Some
of the German Jews left the city after the Republican defeat in
1939, but during and after World War II Barcelona served as a
center for refugees, maintained by the *American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee, and others returned to resettle.
The Barcelonan community, consisting of approximately
3,000 people in 1968 and 3,500 in 2000, is the best organized
in Spain. The communal organization unites both Sephardi
and Ashkenazi synagogues. There is also a community
center, which includes a rabbinical office and cultural center.
The community runs a Jewish day school and Chabad is
active in the city. Youth activities include summer camps
144 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3