Carlos Talvi had a party in his honor recently, celebrating his 50 years as secretary of the Jewish Community of Barcelona. In keeping with tradition, the happiness of the occasion was mixed with a measure of sorrow. “It looks like a sad future,” Talvi said, “in Barcelona, and in all Spain.”
The Jewish community is declining. Ironically, the decline has set in at a time when the Jews never had it as good as they do today in Spain.
And, double irony, it comes at a time when Jews all over the world are reviving an interest in Spain of the Middle Ages and in the Jews’ history and culture there.
The most direct measure of this revival is in tourist activity, and the most dramatic recent indicator is in Israel. From 1975 to 1979, the annual number of Israelis visiting Spain doubled, and doubled again from 1979 to 1982, according to Charles Ocheletree of the Spanish National Tourist Office.
And this year alone the number is almost redoubled, to 60,000, according to Tourism Minister Enrique Baron. In a large measure this reflects the opening of direct airline service between the two countries for the first time, along with improving official relations between the two governments.
CULTURAL HERITAGE ATTRACTS FOREIGN JEWS
In the United States, “the Jewish market” is being assiduously cultivated as Jews become conscious of their Spanish cultural heritage. Toledo, with its two surviving medieval synagogues, Seville, with its Maimonides statue, and Barcelona, with its ancient Hebrew inscriptions and its “Mountain of the Jews” called Montjuich are getting the full treatment in travel literature. Until two years ago there was only one organizer of “Jewish-oriented” tours to Spain; now there are six.
South America and North Africa are also places sending lots of Jews, but most have gone to Spain for shelter from anti-Semitism in their home countries as much as for recreational travel. According to Talvi, as many as 10,000 Argentine Jews came to Barcelona during the years of political troubles there, just as thousands of Moroccan Jews came in earlier years for the same reason.
But they have done very little to strengthen the resident Jewish community, Talvi said. Some Moroccans did join, but the South Americans keep to themselves in expatriate clusters and look to return to their native lands as pressures there ease off.
A COMMUNITY IN DECLINE
Talvi by himself is a complete repository of the “Jewish experience” in modern Spain. He was born in Salonica and emigrated to Barcelona as a youth, married, had two children, and now has six grandchildren. He is the first and only secretary the Jewish Community ever had, from the time it was organized half a century ago. He has seen it grow, from a few refugees to a vigorous and promising community of 5,000 persons, and then reverse down to maybe 450 families, maybe 1,000 active members.
In 1954, Barcelona proudly opened the first synagogue to be established in Spain since the 15th century when Judaism was forbidden and all Jews were expelled. The new Jewish community acquired a five-story building as their center and operated two synagogues, one for Ashkenazim, one for Sephardim.
Today the decline is reflected in the dwindling of the Sephardic congregation although they still muster a minyan for most services, while the Ashkenazic synagogue didn’t even open for services on the High Holy Days this year.
From Spain’s largest Jewish community, Barcelona has dropped behind Madrid, but even there, the community leaders observe a decline with no reversal in sight. Twelve other cities with organized Jewish communities have been tiny and no longer are expected to grow.
All this has happened while Spain was growing into a model of tolerance and well being for Jews. There is now complete religious and political freedom, civil rights, equality and economic opportunity. Anti-Semitic incidents from fringe groups in the past were promptly attended to by police. The economic recession has hurt all Spaniards, but at the Jewish Community Center officials report there are no special problems of Jewish poverty or unemployment.
REASONS FOR THE DECLINE
The reason for the decline is the attraction of Israel, leaders of the communities in Barcelona, Madrid and Seville agree. The young people with Jewish awareness simply find Israel more exciting, and their elders upon reaching retirement are also emigrating. Add to this the attrition from those who choose assimilation into the secular world, say the community leaders, and the living Jewish presence will gradually fade from Spain.
But it will not disappear. There will always be for visitors a romantic glow from the past, the “Golden Age,” the great medieval poets and philosophers, and the tales of the Jewish financiers who managed the affairs of royalty, and bankrolled the discovery of America.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
