If archeologists are right, the Mediterranean Sea of today was once a small lake. When the last ice age ended, glacier melt poured into the oceans. Water burst through the narrow straits at Gibraltar, flooding much of what was then dry land around that lake. Thus was created the Mediterranean coastline we know today.
Our 50th wedding present to ourselves was a trip along part of that coastline, starting at Barcelona, Spain, then stopping in Italy at Palermo, Naples and Florence, and ending in Rome. Everywhere and nowhere were traces of the Jews who lived there for more than 2,000 years.
A walking tour of “Jewish Barcelona” began in St. James square, finding Jewish gravestones set into the walls of the palace. We saw a dent in the doorway where a mezuzah had been affixed. We visited an under-street room where, it is thought, a small synagogue once existed. Until 1492, Jews lived and worked and worshipped here before the terrible Edict of Expulsion drove them into the sea.
Ironically, Spain today is trying to lure Jews back, no doubt in part for their financial and entrepreneurial skills – no change from 500 years ago.
On around the Med we sailed, everywhere finding frescoes and glowing mosaics, testimony to the grandeur that was the Catholic Church. Golden saints and angels above and all around you are overwhelming: Palermo’s Norman chapel and the Martorana; the façade of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome; the Sistine Chapel, where David and the prophets vie for your attention that is inevitably drawn to the apocalyptic Jesus in judgment.
So where are/were the Jews? Everywhere and nowhere. In the mosaics of Palermo we saw our progenitors and prophets, beginning with Adam and Eve, Cain and his murder of Abel, not to mention King David and all the long line of prophets. Yes, they were intended as a lead-in to the main act of the messianic coming, but still. We were there.
Even more amazing was it to learn that in Palermo, for instance, a conglomeration of Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together and contributed to the might and glory of that kingdom, as they had in Spain and elsewhere along the inland sea. This mixture was purged when the Spanish arrived and “purified” the kingdom of its non-Christian populations.
So it went across the Mediterranean, wherever Jews had lived and worked and worshipped until driven north – or south – from Christian lands.
(Of course, Israel and the still-mighty French Jewish community exist to our glory. I am speaking of countries where Jews once flourished and no longer live.)
Our current travels ended in Rome, where half of Italy’s Jews – about 14,000 – still live, 2,200 years after their arrival in that city.
The ghetto, instigated in the 16th century, lasted in its squalor till 1860, when a unified Italy allowed freedom and Jewish life resumed in healthy and happier circumstances till the Nazi era. That pain is reflected in the glowing “stumbling stones” in front of each house where Rome’s inhabitants were deported.
But again today there is life, life everywhere.
Their magnificent synagogue was built in the early 20th century and escaped the Nazi purge, unlike many of Rome’s Jews.
A young woman guide walked us through Rome’s ghetto area and gave us insight into its past and present life. Dare I mention the delicious Roman Jewish kosher food available there? The square was alive with children from the nearby school and the old and young sitting in the sun, chatting in the cafes.
Finally, we visited the statue of Michelangelo’s aging Moses, looking away into the distance. Was he looking toward the Canaan he would never enter? Did he foresee the deaths and rebirths of his people Israel? Did he imagine that, 3,000 years after his death, Jews would live in Rome and in a reborn Israel?
We may have shifted our place along the Med, but we’re still here – and there.