Old Synagogue of Toledo (Sinagoga Vieja)

סקירה

הסיפור של Old Synagogue of Toledo (Sinagoga Vieja)

Medieval Toledo had one of the largest Jewish communities in Castile and, by the fourteenth century, about a dozen synagogues. Only two still stand: the buildings known today as Santa María la Blanca and El Tránsito, which are not the subject of this entry. Among the lost ones, documents of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries repeatedly name a "sinoga vieja", the old synagogue, "near the butchers' stalls of the Jews". The historian Jean Passini has traced these documents and places the building on the block between the city wall above the Tagus and the former calle del Horno, today calle San Juan de Dios, close to where the Victorio Macho museum now stands.

According to Passini, the old synagogue was badly damaged in the riots of summer 1391; it is the second synagogue named in a Hebrew elegy written after that assault. The Jewish Encyclopedia says that when violence reached Toledo on 5 August 1391 houses and synagogues were sacked and many of the synagogues were torn down. The building did not recover its old role. After the expulsion of 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella authorised its sale in March 1494 to compensate the city councillor Fernando Dávalos, his brother Alonso and Fernán Suárez for income lost through the expulsion. Leased, divided and rebuilt as dwellings, it survived only as a name, "the houses called of the synagogue", into the seventeenth century. Its builder, date and appearance are unknown.

מיקום

Where it stood

Historic: block between the city wall above the Tagus and the calle del Horno, beside the Jewish butchers' stalls, parish of Santo Tomé, Toledo. Today: block along calle San Juan de Dios, 45002 Toledo (approximate).

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הקהילה היהודית

Toledo was the seat of a large and learned Jewish community. The Jewish Encyclopedia names among its leaders Asher ben Jehiel, chosen as spiritual head around 1305, and his descendants, the "Asherites". The community suffered heavy losses in 1355, when, the same source says, no fewer than 1,200 Jews were killed or wounded during the civil war, and Julio Porres Martín-Eleta attributes destruction in the Alacava quarter that year to the Trastámara forces. The Jews lived in several quarters, and the old synagogue stood in the upper part of the main Jewish quarter, in a cluster with the community's butchers' stalls, a hospital and the so-called old castle, described in a 1494 inventory of communal property. Jean Passini counts about a dozen synagogues destroyed in 1391; ten are named in a Hebrew elegy on that assault, and Francisco Cantera Burgos added two more. No source read names the members or officers of the old synagogue's own congregation.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

No description, plan, drawing or photograph of the old synagogue is known, and its builder, date of construction, size and style are unknown. What can be said comes from property documents studied by Jean Passini. The building lay on a sloping block on the edge of the hill, between the city wall above the rocky drop to the Tagus and the street then called calle del Horno. It adjoined the Jewish butchers' complex and was joined to it by a small gate, a postigo; a royal document of 1502 places a cattle corral, a small orchard and caves between the synagogue and the butchers' stalls. A lease of 1497 names its neighbours: houses of Fernán Álvarez de Toledo, the wall above the river and a corral of Salvador Valverde. The lease required the tenant to repair it and build new rooms within three years, which suggests that the structure was by then damaged or unsuitable as a dwelling. By the sixteenth century the site was known as the "casas hondas", the deep houses, a name that may reflect a building set below street level.

החיים בבית הכנסת

Nothing specific about worship, teaching or the officials of this synagogue has been found. The name "old synagogue" suggests that it was among the earliest houses of prayer of the Toledo community, and on one of his maps Passini labels its site "Aljama, Sinagoga vieja", linking it with the organised Jewish community, but neither point is documented in the sources read. A royal document of 1502 calls the same building the "sinagoga mayor", the main synagogue, though whether this was a formal title or a loose description is unknown. Its position next to the community butchers' stalls, where kosher meat was slaughtered and sold, and near a communal hospital, placed it at the practical centre of the quarter. The sources do not say whether services continued in the building after the damage of 1391; when it was sold in 1494 it was simply described as the old synagogue the Jews had had in the city.

הרס

The decisive damage came in the anti-Jewish riots that spread across Castile and Aragon in the summer of 1391. Jean Passini writes that the old synagogue was intensely damaged during the disturbances of that summer, relying on a Hebrew elegy on the assault edited by Francisco Cantera Burgos. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that the violence reached Toledo on 5 August 1391, when the city's nobles joined the mob in attacking the larger Jewish quarter, that houses and synagogues were sacked and many synagogues torn down, and that the chief rabbi Judah ben Asher and Israel ben Joseph Alnaqua were among those killed. It attributes the wave of violence to the preaching of Vicente Ferrer. No individual rioter in Toledo is named in the sources read. After the expulsion of 1492 the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, ordered the building sold in March 1494; it was leased as housing from 1497, divided among owners and absorbed into dwellings by the sixteenth century.

גורל הקהילה

The Jewish Encyclopedia calls the events of 1391 practically the ruin of the Toledo Jewry: many were killed and many more were baptised, so that in the following century the city's history is above all that of the conversos. Passini has also identified about twenty small synagogues in basements under courtyards, which he links to clandestine worship by converts after 1391. A reduced Jewish community survived. It still paid taxes in the 1470s, and Porres notes that its Caleros synagogue was ordered closed to worship in 1460 although the building remained community property. Conversos were barred from public office in Toledo in 1419 and were later targeted by the Inquisition. The Jews who remained were expelled from Spain in 1492, and the Crown then disposed of their communal property, including the old synagogue, the butchers' stalls and the other buildings around them.

האתר כיום

No part of the old synagogue is known to survive above ground, and the block has not been excavated as far as the sources read show. Its site lies, according to Passini, on the block between the old city wall above the Tagus and calle San Juan de Dios, the former calle del Horno, which leads to the Victorio Macho museum in the San Martín and Santo Tomé area of the old Jewish quarter. The building had become private houses by the sixteenth century, and the plot is built over today. Toledo's two surviving medieval synagogues, Santa María la Blanca and El Tránsito, stand a short walk away.

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