Less than a month ago I spent a most unusual Shabbat. While traveling through Spain, we ended up getting a real bargain at a hotel in the lovely and quaint walled city of Ledesma, about 20 miles away from Salamanca. Presently less than 2,000 people live there. We stayed at a rural house, inside the walls, called “Las Murallas de Ledesma” a 13th Century former priests’ residence, where Don Pepe and Dona Teresa fussed over us and scolded us if we did not eat all of their deliciously prepared homemade food!
In the city’s little museum and interpretative center we learned that the area has been inhabited since Neolithic times. In ancient Roman times it was called Bletisa and was a big regional center. Later it was conquered by Muslims and nowadays it is just a cute little Spanish town.
The museum exhibit does mention Old Christians, a code word for individuals of “pure” Christian origins but it is silent about Jews or New Christians (or Conversos). My curiosity was piqued. I learned from one of my rabbinical school teachers, Dr. Jacob Rader Marcus, that “wherever a Jew goes, he can count on there having been another Jew there before.”
When I asked the museum attendant, she kindly pulled out a huge book of the town’s history from a shelf to tell me about the Jews in Ledesma. Indeed up until 1492, there had been a Jewish community in town. The book mentioned the part of town near the fort where the Jews used to live, the Juderia. A quick online search revealed that Ledesma was the birth place of at least one of the Jewish sailors that joined Columbus on his very first trip to America!
I am a deep believer in my friend Robert Uhllman’s theory that says that if there are two Jews in a room, they will somehow find themselves out. So, I set to try to look for the part of town that used to be the Juderia. I quickly found it by identifying the ultimate sign of a former New Christian community: crosses drawn in the doorposts where normally a Jew would place a mezuzah. I believe this was done by the New Christians to prove their total allegiance to their newly accepted faith. Ancient crosses and signs are quite common in Spain. Yet, I was disappointed because I could not find a single real sign of the past Jewish presence that I knew had existed there.
That evening, after discreetly reciting the Kiddush in the hotel’s dining room, I decided to walk around town. That happened to be an exciting evening in Ledesma, because they were having a rock concert at the ancient fort.
As I walked through the stone streets in the dim light of the evening, I noticed that in the shadows reflected from the ancient walls one could almost see Hebrew characters on the textured stone walls. It seemed as if the walls had a recollection of all the Jews that once lived there!
I thought about the many centuries since Hebrew words, prayers and songs had been uttered close to those walls in the Juderia, so I started chanting quietly to myself the Shabbat service: Shalom Aleichem, Lecha Dodi, Barechu, etc. ... As I chanted, I walked through the mostly deserted town that Shabbat evening. The only place in town that seemed to have some activity was the fort. I ended up walking in that direction.
As I approached the entrance of the fort I found him! Well, I really did not find the fellow Jew I sought in Ledesma, but I found his grave: someone placed a huge medieval matzevah, where the name Yaakov bar Yedidia could be discerned. That finding really made my Shabbat complete. It was a Shabbat service of sorts and an encounter with the local community! On that beautiful Shabbat night, I realized how faith and history connect Jews through time and space. I felt very grateful to be able to be yet another link in the Jewish chain of tradition.
