יום חמישי י"ח באדר ב תשפ"ד 28/03/2024
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  • The Mission Continues

    As in the past so it remains today - we were and still are under the selfsame commitment to adhere to the directions of the Gedolei Yisrael, who stand guard against breaches of purity threatening our camp. When we were required to ask – we asked. When we were instructed to depart – we left. The moment we are summoned back to raise the flag, every other consideration is pushed to the side and we answer: We are ready!

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  • Harav Yisrael Friedman zy”a, the Rebbe of Husyatin

    מוטי, ויקיפדיה העברית

    The ancestral chain of Harav Yisrael Friedman, the founder of the Husyatin chassidic court, originates with the holy Baal Shem Tov. The Husyatin chassidus has its roots in Galicia and eventually came to Tel Aviv, during the turbulent years between the two World Wars.

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  • Maccabi'im Gravesite

    In honour of Chanukah, we will discuss a fascinating, ongoing investigation attempting to establish the place of burial of Mattisyahu Kohen Gadol and his family.

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Reflections

The Pogroms of the year 5151

These pogroms were against the Spanish Jews and caused many conversions to take place.

Motty Meringer 23/06/2009 08:00
The pogroms that were unleashed against Spanish Jews in the year 5151 by an incited Christian mob have come to be known as the ‘Decrees of 5151’. One of the results of the events that then took place was the forced conversion of many Jews, which in itself was a contributing factor to the later Expulsion.

Already more than a hundred years before the Decree of Expulsion of Spanish Jewry, which was enacted on the 3rd of Nissan 5252, Jews who found themselves living under Christian Spanish rule were suffering persecution. During this period, the southern segment of Spain was still under the control of extremist Muslim tribes, who were in a perpetual state of war with their northern Christian rivals, who sought to expel them from Spanish soil. This period is known to historians as the Reconquista; it is also the period during which the condition of Spanish Jewry began to decline, and many harsh and degrading decrees were enacted against them. Amongst these decrees was one that declared that a person who murdered a Jew would not be executed or imprisoned, but would merely have to pay a monetary fine as punishment for his deed. Aside from such judicial measures taken against the Jewish population, Spaniards were also being constantly incited against their Jewish countrymen by the priests and other members of the clergy, who sought to make the Jews objects of intense hatred.

In the year 5151 King Johann of Castile died and his son Hetzar inherited the throne. The new King was still young in years and did not have the wisdom to quell the rising wave of hatred against the Jews. On Rosh Chodesh Tammuz 5151 riots broke out against the Jews, led by Christians, in towns all across Christian Spain, pogroms that were later to become known as the ‘Decrees of 5151’. The background to these attacks was a dispute between the Spanish aristocracy and the peasantry; the peasants wished to extract themselves from their status of being perpetually indebted to the Jews, whereas the aristocracy had other interests at heart.

The first riots broke out in the town of Seville. Shortly prior to this, an evil-minded priest had arrived there from the town of Massicha, by the name of Firand Martinez. This priest incited the masses against the Jews, publicly calling for pogroms against them. On Rosh Chodesh Tammuz the riots began in Seville, in the course of which twenty-three beautiful synagogues of the Seville community were set on fire and more than forty thousand Jews were murdered al kiddush HaShem, after having refused the mob’s demand to convert out of their faith. Many men and women were sold as slaves and maidservants to the Muslims in southern Spain and many other Jews who found themselves unable to withstand the terrible test succumbed to the pressure and outwardly converted. These Jews then began a new life, in public acting as Christians whilst secretly they continued to practise the mitzvos as religious Jews. This was the beginning of the phenomenon of ‘anusim’ (forced ones) in Spain, Jews who had been forced to convert and had no other option than to maintain a façade of adherence to their ‘new religion’.

During the month of Tammuz the riots spread to other cities over Castile and then to other provinces of Spain. All over Spain Jews were given the stark choice; convert or die. Entire communities of Jews were murdered in the cities of Valencia, Barcelona, Cordoba, Madrid, Toledo and others.

Then the riots reached the city of Valencia where Don Martin, the younger brother of King Juan, the King of Aragon was staying. Don Martin was the head of the army regiment which was then stationed there, numbering several hundred soldiers; this regiment was supposed to be shortly going out to war against Sicily, but the rioters succeeding in inciting Don Martin against the Jews, and he, together with his soldiers, then surrounded the Jewish quarter which was locked and bolted against them. The rioters demanded that they open the gates in order that they should be able to enter and protect the few Christians who lived within the Jewish quarter, who were supposedly in fear of the Jews. The Jews, knowing that the moment that they opened the gates, their fate to be slaughtered was sealed, refused to open the gates, and instead took refuge in a few of the Christian houses, the owners of which had agreed to protect the Jews. A small number of other Jews succeeded in various different ways to escape, including Rav Yitzchak bar Sheshes, the Rivash. All too soon the soldiers managed to break open the gates to the Jewish Quarter and more than two hundred and fifty Jews were mutilated and murdered al kiddush HaShem.

The next day, after the rioters had spent their rage against the Jews, they began to make plans to set upon the Muslims living in the city, intending to make a pogrom against them as well. However, Don Martin now intervened and forbade them to harm the Muslims. At Don Martin’s command the head of the rioters was hanged at the gate to the Muslim quarter in order that all should see and fear to raise a hand against the Muslims.

During the riots, King Juan of Aragon was staying in the city of Saragossa. When the news of the riots in Valencia reached him, including the deeds of his younger brother, he hastened to dispatch a letter in which he admonished Don Martin for his actions and ordered him to cease harming the Jews. In addition, he allowed those Jews who had saved their lives by converting to Christianity to return to their faith. The King also commanded that synagogues were not to be turned into churches, but that they should be returned to Jewish hands. This letter arrived too late – by the time it arrived, little remained to be salvaged.

News of the pogrom in Valencia reached the ears of the council of Barcelona, and they began to take measures to preserve the peace in their own city. But it was not long before a ship arrived there, holding fifty rioters from the city of Seville, who began to incite the population of Barcelona against the Jews. On Shabbos Kodesh the fourth of Ellul 5151 the pogroms began in Barcelona. The rioters burned down the gates to the Jewish quarter and murdered around a hundred Jews within it. In the course of one day the rioters rampaged in the Jewish quarter, killed Jews and plundered anything that they found. A group of around a hundred Jews found refuge in the city’s fortress and were temporarily safe there. After this full day of rioting and plundering, the city council decided to intervene and arrested ten of the leaders of the rioters and sentenced them to death by hanging. On the next day, before the sentence had been carried out, an angry mob burst into the prison and freed the ten prisoners. From the prison the rioters then made their way to the fortress where the Jews had sought refuge and after a short skirmish the Jews were defeated and were slaughtered by the Christian mob. Among those who had sought refuge in the fortress was the son of Rav Chasdai Karashkash who was killed al kiddush HaShem by the rioters. In the Jewish quarter the pogrom then continued for a further week and the glorious Jewish community of Barcelona was entirely destroyed. More than four hundred Jews were killed, many others openly converted to Christianity and a tiny number managed to flee the city. Three days after the beginning of the riots in Barcelona the news reached King Juan and he hurried to the city in order to quell the unrest, in addition to dispatching in haste letters in which he requested the council to protect the lives of his close adviser, Rav Chasdai Karashkash, and his family. These letters only arrived after a long delay and were of no assistance whatsoever.

Rav Chasdai Karashkash himself accepted with love HaShem’s meting out of justice on him, and wrote; “many sanctified HaShem’s Name, including my only son, twenty years of age, a pure lamb who was offered up as a sacrifice. I fully accept HaShem’s judgement and I take solace in the fact that his portion will be a goodly one.” He further wrote; “from all our possessions, nothing is left except our very bodies, although our hearts quake within us – we have nothing but our Father in Heaven.”

On the seventeenth day of Tammuz the pogroms began in Toledo, the city of Rabbeinu Asher, the Rosh. Also here many Jews were killed and those few who were saved were only those who outwardly converted. Among those murdered al kiddush HaShem was Rav Yehudah, the grandson of the Rosh, who was killed together with his entire family after they refused to convert. Huge and beautiful synagogues were turned into churches or burned, and the entire Jewish community of Toledo disappeared.

News of the pogroms in mainland Spain reached its nearby islands too and on Rosh Chodesh Ellul the riots began on the islands of Majorca and Minorca. The ruler of these islands promised to protect the Jews there, since this was to his financial advantage – therefore, around eight hundred Jews took refuge in the ruler’s castle. However, many other Jews who sought to flee to north Africa were forced to return when the ruler ordered the ports to be closed in order to prevent wealthy Jews from leaving the islands. In the pogroms on these islands, around three hundred Jews were killed al kiddush HaShem.

In only a few towns did the ews manage to escape the fury of the mobs. In the town of Morvidera the Jews gathered in the royal castle upon the orders of the King and in this way they were saved. In Saragossa too the Jews were saved since the King, whose residence was at that time in that town, protected them.

The protection of the monarchy did not owe itself to any excessive love of the Jews, but rather originated from cold economic calculations; if the Jews disappeared from Spain, the royal coffers would be severely depleted. After the riots had subsided, the councils of the towns in which Jews had been killed were fined, the money going to the Crown as compensation for the King’s loss of income from Jewish taxation. However, very few of the leaders of the pogroms were ever brought to trial or hanged; most escaped all punishment. Even the great wealth that had been plundered from the Jews during the course of the riots was not returned to them but was instead confiscated by the King, and in the cases where the parents had been murdered, the children did not merit to inherit their parents’ possessions.

After the pogroms, many Jews left Spain, such as the Rivash who moved to north Africa and the family of the Abarbanel which moved to Portugal. Additional Jews attempted to re-establish their destroyed communities and received help from the monarchy, which wished to restore this source of wealth. One of these communities was that of Girona, which blossomed anew after the pogroms.

Over the course of the pogroms it is estimated that approximately one hundred thousand Jews were forcibly converted, who were to become known as ‘anusim’, Christians in public but continuing to live as Jews in private, suffering persecution from the Church and from the Inquisition which was established to ferret out such secret Jews. Around a hundred years later, in the year 5252, the Decree of Expulsion was enacted against Spanish Jewry, a contributing factor of which was the argument of the Christian Church that the Jews made it difficult for the ‘New Christians’ to conduct themselves as they should, as they would attempt to persuade them to return to open practice of Judaism. On Tisha b’Av of the year 5252 the Jews of Spain were expelled, and many anusim who remained on Spanish soil lost their last link to their Yiddishkeit and were eventually lost to their people. In recent years, from time to time awareness is raised of certain customs of Jewish origin being practised by Christian families in Spain; evidently, these Spaniards are descended from families of anusim.