Jewish Life Developing Again in Spain, Barcelona Rabbi Says

There is room in republican Spain for at least 100,000 Jewish refugees to settle, Rabbi Ferdinando Nissan Friedman, spiritual head of the Barcelona Ashkenazic community, declared in an interview with the Jewish Daily Bulletin.

Rabbi Friedman, who came to this country for the purpose of raising a fund of $125,000 to carry on work among the thousands of German Jewish refugees flocking to Spain, also ministers to small congregations in Seville and the Balearic Islands.

The Jewish community in Barcelona numbers about 6,000, most of them recent arrivals, who came to the city penniless and live in extreme poverty, Rabbi Friedman said. The community was officially organized in February, 1933, under the official title, Sinagoga Central de Israelita Ashkenazi-Barcelona. Rabbi Friedman is the first rabbi to hold such a post in Barcelona since the Jews were driven out of Spain in 1492.

RECOGNIZED BY GOVERNOR

The community was officially recognized by President Francesco Macia of Catalonia, the governor of the city and the Spanish government. Rabbi Friedman bears a letter from the Catalonia president, in which he declares that he is sympathetic with the request of the Barcelona Jews and takes great pleasure in granting permission to form a Jewish community.

Rabbi Friedman bears letters of endorsement from the Spanish government, the autonomous Catalonian government, Spanish consuls in various countries, and from the rabbinate in Palestine, Egypt and Italy. Chief Rabbi A. I. HaCohen Kook of Palestine warmly endorsed Rabbi Friedman’s mission and urged Jews to further the work.

The money is necessary, Rabbi Friedman declared, in order to build schools, synagogues and to feed and shelter incoming refugees, who come to Barcelona without funds and require help until they are able to establish themselves.

RENEW JEWISH LIFE

“Already,” Rabbi Friedman said, “Jewish life in Barcelona, which came to such a tragic end in 1492, is beginning to flourish there again. We have a Talmud Torah with sixty Jewish children enrolled. Kashruth is being observed and we have several Jewish butchers. We even have a Jewish cemetery now, the first one in Spain since the time of the dreaded Inquisition.

“But the community is desperately poor. We worship in a hall which we rent from a Gentile. We need a permanent synagogue and we must have funds to take care of the new immigrants who come into Barcelona every day.

“The Barcelona Jewish commutes of sympathy by the Spaniards.”

Were there any signs left of the nity is growing fast. For the first time in hundreds of years Jews are permitted to enter Spain as immigrants. There is room for at least 100,000 refugees from European countries, in which anti-Semitism reigns, in Spain today. They will not grow rich quickly, but they can make a living there and they will have assurances of peace and protection, for the newcomers are treated with the great-medieval Jewish community in Barcelona? Rabbi Friedman was asked.

“None at all,” he answered. “When I first came to the city, I searched for mementos or reminders of the old Jewish community. I could find none. Time has done its work too well. I did, however, find one house, inhabited of course, by a Gentile family in which, according to tradition, a famous medieval rabbi had lived and from which he had gone to his doom at the hands of the Inquisition. Somehow the memory of this martyr had survived and even in modern Barcelona the house was pointed out to visitors.”

Rabbi Friedman, a Hungarian by birth, was educated in Hungarian and German seminaries. Since his ordination he has lived in Barcelona.