Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 28, 2021

Before the Spanish Inquisition, the island of Mallorca had a sizeable Jewish community. Every fall, the island became dotted with the leaf-roofed huts that Jews are commanded to erect during the holiday of Sukkot.

But that all changed under the Inquisitions campaign of persecution that began in 1488 (four years before it started on Spains mainland) and was only officially abolished centuries later in 1834.

This year, however, the islands tiny Jewish community in the capital Palma was determined to reintroduce its Sukkot tradition with a public statement. Ahead of the holiday, the Jewish community along with the municipality of Palma erected what organizers are calling the islands first public sukkah since the Inquisition, situated in the citys former Jewish Quarter.

Its one of several firsts for the Jews of Mallorca, and its especially meaningful because it restores something from this communitys past, said Dani Rotstein, founder of Limud Mallorca and secretary of the Jewish Community of the Balearic Islands.

To be fair, Palma has seen its share of sukkahs since the Inquisition. The city and the island, which is a popular vacation destination off of Spains eastern shores, for decades has had a small but active Jewish community of about 100 members, plus several Jewish expats. They are celebrating the 50th anniversary since British expats founded the community in 1971. Palma also has a synagogue, a small Jewish museum and a resident rabbi.

But this years weeklong holiday of Sukkot will mark the first time that a sukkah will be built on public grounds with funding from the local municipality. Jews and non-Jews will be able to enjoy cultural programming, including lectures in the sukkah and tours of the area, over the course of two weeks.

The public sukkah is part of a European-wide initiative European Days of Jewish Culture, a series of events celebrating Jewish heritage in dozens of cities in Europe each year in September and October.

This development is the latest in a series of moves by Rotstein and others designed to commemorate the pre-Inquisition presence of Jews in Mallorca, who became known as chuetas, the local name for anusim or those who were forcibly converted to Christianity during the Inquisition.

On Rosh Hashanah, local Jews hosted a festive service and musical concert to celebrate the new Jewish year, with the cooperation of a local Catalan cultural center, in its garden located in the old Jewish quarter.

It was symbolic to participants because of a painful chapter in the history of Mallorcas Jewish community. In 1677, local crypto-Jews, who risked their lives by practicing their faith while pretending to be Christian, held a Yom Kippur service in secret in a garden outside the city walls.

Local Jews say that when Spanish rulers learned about the service, they salted the gardens soil to ensure that nothing could ever grow there again, and doubled down on eradicating Jewish celebrations from the island.

In recent years, authorities have made an effort to acknowledge and atone for such atrocities.

In 2018, local authorities unveiled a memorial plaque at the Palma square where 37 crypto-Jews were publicly burned in what was once known locally as the bonfire of the Jews.

In 2015, the city helped build a small Jewish museum in what used to be the Jewish quarter and that same year the parliaments of Spain and Portugal passed laws that give descendants of Sephardic Jews the right to citizenship. Millions of dollars in public funds are being invested in preserving and developing Jewish heritage sites in those countries.

Ironically, societys exclusion of chuetas proved to be the key to Judaisms revival in Mallorca, historians say: because they were not allowed to intermarry freely with the Christian population, chuetas married among themselves.

In recent years, chuetas who returned to Judaism and converted have taken the communitys reins.

Iska Valls, a chueta returnee to Judaism, Its a victory [over] the Inquisition and proof that we are like a phoenix, rising once more from the ashes.

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For Mallorca's Jews, first 'public' sukkah is a triumph over the Spanish Inquisition - jewishpresstampa

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