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Samuel ha-Levi Statue

Samuel ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia was a public figure, the treasurer of king Pedro I “the Cruel” of Castile and founder of the Synagogue of El Transito in Toledo, Spain.

He was a member of the powerful Abulafia family, who provided leadership to the Jewish community of Toledo and Castile more generally since around 1200. Samuel’s parents died of plague shortly after arriving in Toledo. Subsequently, he worked as an administrator to the Portuguese knight Juan Alfonso de Alburquerque, but soon became recognized enough to achieve employment at the court of Pedro I of Castile, first as camarero mayor (chamberlain), later as almojarife (treasurer), and as oídor (judge). His employment came to an end when the enemies of Pedro I, led by Henry of Trastámara, organized a pogrom against the Toledan Jewry, enabling them to assume possession of the royal treasures. The king, accompanied by Samuel Ha-Levi, marched to Toro to demand the return of his belongings. Following this, Samuel Ha-Levi supported the King in reclaiming Toledo for the crown, and in the establishment of a peace treaty with the Portuguese at Évora in 1358.

In Toledo, he lived in the palace that is today the Museo de El Greco, and with the considerable riches bestowed upon him by his employer he founded the Synagogue of El Transito between 1355 and 1357. The building, still around today, was one of ten synagogues serving Toledo’s large Jewish population. The building is architecturally exquisite and has features in common with the Muslim architecture of King Pedro’s palace in Seville and the Alhambra palaces in Granada, even including inscriptions in Arabic as well as Hebrew. Its construction was opposed by the Catholic church, but King Pedro permitted it. The King was constantly criticized by his rivals for his permissive stance towards Jews, compelling him to turn against Samuel, having him incarcerated and tortured on suspicion of embezzlement in 1360. He died under duress of torture.

The prominence of Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia at Pedro’s court is cited as evidence of his supposed pro-Jewish sentiment, but Don Samuel’s success did not necessarily reflect the general experience of the Spanish Jewry in this period which was often marked by discrimination and pogroms. Even Samuel’s career showed that the opportunities for Jews were restricted to certain offices and positions whereas other forms of advancement were denied to them.

San Andres Gate

San Andres Gate has also been known as the Puerta de la Judería or the Puerta del Socorro, and it is located on the south side of the walls of Segovia. It has two towers, one square and one polygonal, an arch, a gallery of irregular windows, loopholes, cornices, pyramidal battlements and heraldic shields. It is located in a strategic position overlooking the Río Clamores. It has been speculated that its construction could have been carried out by the master stonemason Juan Guas.

By the end of the 19th century, the wall tower had deteriorated and part of it had collapsed, and it was still in ruins until 1947. It was later restored back to its original appearance. On 3 June 1931 it was declared a historic and artistic monument, through a decree published in the Gaceta de Madrid signed by the President of the Provisional Government of the Second Spanish Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, and the Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, Marcelino Domingo. It is currently classified as a place of cultural interest.

Jewish Quarter Educational Centre

The home of Abraham Seneor, located in the Jewish quarter, gauged half a block. The property was surrounded by a wall, the Puerta del Sol. The home contains three separate buildings, but only one is visible, the Educational Center of the Jewish quarter, since it belongs to the City Council. The goal of the Educational Center is to convey the history of the Sephardic Jews in Segovia. With its facilities and annual activities, the Center promotes the understanding and illustration of the essence of the neighborhood that was home to the largest Jewish population of the Crown of Castile.

Old Main Synagogue

The Old Synagogue appears documented for the first time in 1412, a year in which it was granted by the guardians of King Juan II to the convent of St. Mary of Mercy to compensate for the plots which this community had handed over for the segregations of the Jews. The guardians of Juan II specified that the monks had to set up at the building of the old synagogue a hospital to shelter the poor but there is no record that they did so. At present nothing remains of the Old Synagogue; the plot taken up by the convent of Mercy was used in the 19th century to open a square opposite St. Andrew´s Church. Alongside the Old Synagogue at the current Merced (Mercy) Square there stood one of the two religious schools of Segovia. In 1412 it starts belonging to convent of St. Mary of Mercy, as well as the synagogue. The synagogue has since been transformed into the church of the Corpus Christi convent.

Jewish Cemetery of Segovia

The Jewish Cemetery is located behind the Clamores River in the current municipal park of Pinarillo, displaying the presence of the Hebrews in Segovia. Traveling to the Jewish Cemetery of Segovia allows tourists to acknowledge the process of how the ancient Jews honored their own. The Jews took advantage of the limestone rocks of the Clamores River Valley in three ways, by conditioning the caves formed by nature, working with rocks corresponding to anthropomorphic pits, and creating a square or bathtub shape out of the rocks. Researchers noticed that where the Jewish Cemetery was, there are remains that have not been found yet, giving the Jewish Cemetery of Segovia its historical meaning.

Segovia Museum

The Museum of Segovia opened its doors in 1842, in the episcopal palace, under the tutelage of the Provincial Commission of Historical and Artistic Monuments, to preserve the collections of art objects from the Disentailment. Throughout its history it will appear under various names: Museum of Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Provincial Museum, and currently, the Museum of Segovia.

Already in 1845 the headquarters of the Museum moved to San Facundo. However, since the second half of the s. XIX, the collections would be progressively dispersed to various venues, for exhibition or storage (San Facundo, San Juan and School of Arts and Crafts, Casa del Hidalgo and Chapel of the Old Hospital for Old People), until it is installed and reunited again complete in the Casa del Hidalgo and the adjoining building, in 1967

In 1981 the management of the museum passed to the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León, although the ownership continues to be state-owned. In 1991 the collection moved to the Casa del Sol, a building ceded to the State by the City Council, where the permanent exhibition finally opened to the public in July 2006, after years of restructuring the building.

Toledo Jewish Quarter

Rightly regarded as a true city within a city, the madinat al-Yahud, or city of the Jews, constitutes a broad urban space which occupies almost ten percent of walled Toledo. The Jewish quarter of Toledo is divided into different districts, each corresppnding to the different stages of expansion, creating an intricate maze that needs to be marked out in order to gain a real overview of how the Jews of Toledo acted and they lived for at least eleven centuries. Although the oldest written documents date their presence back to the 4th century, in the context of the Roman Toletum, the Sephardi goes further back and relates the Jews to the very mythical origin of the city, deeming it likely that the first Jews arrive in the Iberian Península at the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles in the 8th to 6th centuries B.C.

Sephardic Museum of Toledo

The Sephardic Museum in Toledo, Spain, housed in the former Convent of the Knights of Calatrava is attached to the Transito Synagogue. It hosts many vestiges of Jewish culture in Spain.The Sephardic Museum displays historical, religious, and customs of the Jewish past in Spain, as well as Sephardic Jews, the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula until 1492.

Transito Synagogue

The Transito Synagogue (Synagogue of El Tránsito), also known as the Synagogue of Samuel ha-Levi or Halevi, is a historic synagogue, church, and Sephardic museum in Toledo, Spain. It was built as an annex of the palace of Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia, treasurer to King Peter of Castile, in 1357. The synagogue was converted into a church after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. It was briefly used as military barracks during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s. It became a museum in 1910. Today it is formally known as the Sephardi Museum. The building is known for its rich stucco decoration, its Mudejar style, and its women’s gallery.

The synagogue was built in around 1357, under the patronage of Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia. His family had served the Castilian kings for several generations and included kabbalists and Torah scholars such as Meir and Todros Abulafia, as well as another Todros Abulafia who was one of the last poets to write in the Arab-influenced style favored by Jewish poets in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Spain. The synagogue was connected to Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia’s house by a private gate and was intended as a private house of worship. It also served as a center for Jewish religious education, known as a yesibah or a yeshiva.

Some scholars suggest that Peter of Castile assented to the construction of the synagogue as a token of appreciation for ha-Levi Abulafia’s service as councillor and treasurer to the king. Peter may also have allowed it to compensate the Jews of Toledo for destruction that had occurred in 1348, during anti-Jewish pogroms that accompanied the arrival of the Black Death. Samuel ha-Levi eventually fell out of favor with the king and was executed in 1360.

After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the synagogue was converted to a church. It was given to the Order of Calatrava by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. The Order is said to have converted the building into a church serving a priory dedicated to Saint Benedict. It was from its time as a church that the building acquired the name “El Tránsito,” which refers to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In the 17th century the church’s name changed to Nuestra Señora del Tránsito: the name derives from a painting by Juan Correa de Vivar housed there which depicted the Transit of the Virgin.

Hebrew Inscriptions in the Cathedral Treasure

On January 12th, 1493, Fernando the Catholic expelled the Jews from Sicily. The Cammarata synagogue on the island had to shed itself of those assets which were hard to transport. This included two worked silver Rimonim, of Gothic tradition and bearing Hebrew inscriptions. According to the historian Gabriel Llompart, these were sold by some Jews to the Majorcan merchant Francesc Puig, who in 1493, sent them as an offering to the Virgin of the cathedral of Majorca. The merchants who took part in the purchase-sale were Francesc Puig, Anthoni Serra on behalf of the Cathedral´s chapterhouse. Once on the island, some long silver bars were added, which are those which can be seen today. They were thus Christianised, becoming scepters of Primicerius or singer in certain solemn Cathedral acts. For instance, in 1634 the Rimonim that were converted into scepters, were used for the chanting of short responsories which were carried out at the end of the Little Hours and carried out by two capitulants. The Rimonim had various Hebrew inscriptions. The inscribed words include six which are precisely the six names that give psalm 18 (19) to the Law of God, in its second part: Torat, Hedut, Piqqude, Misvat, Yrhat, Mishpete. The candlestick holders of the headers bear the legend: En la sinagoga de los judíos de Cammarata / el Señor la guarde. Amén

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