From
Babylonia to Barcelona: Uniting of East and West
by
Shelomo Alfassa
Sephardic Image Magazine, April 2005 & Israel
National News 11 March 05
People in the Jewish
world often argue about who is "Sephardic." But what many
people forget, is that the Jews of both Iberia (Spain and Portugal)
and the Mizrahi lands such as Babylonia, developed, and still share,
common religious and cultural bonds. The shared religious traditions
that the Sephardim developed and came to possess, were based upon unique
religious traditions, collective ideals and customs that has been nurtured
from the Iberian/North African Atlantic seaboard to the eastern portion
of the Fertile Crescent for at least 1,500 years.
Little more than
six decades after being liberated from the bonds of Christendom, the
Jews of what is today modern Spain, were greeted by Rav Natronai who
had traveled from Babylonia. In 772 CE he spread the teaching of the
Babylonian Talmud to his Hebrew co-religionists who had been hungry
to learn. Through his actions, Natronai was able to bring the standard
practice of Judaism, as it was in Babylonia to the budding Jewish centers
of Torah in Spain. It can be said, because of his actions, that the
communities of the East and West were forever linked, and Sephardic
Jewry proceeded to advance.
Thriving on the
new lessons taught by Rav Natronai, the Spanish Jews realized there
was much more to be learned, and later reached out from Al-Andalus (Spain)
to Gaon Amram ben Sheshna (c. 850 CE) in Babylonia for assistance. In
the West, the demand for a written guide to prayers had been desperately
needed. A proper written guide of the accurate oral blessings and prayers
had to be developed, because Judaism as it was being practiced throughout
entire communities was at risk of being lost due to ignorance. Initially
this was a problem, as there had been a prohibition in the East on writing
down sacred blessings, but this was about to change and with it-the
practice of Judaism would perpetually be revolutionized. Contact with
Gaon Amram was initiated by Rav Isaac bar Simeon, head of the Jewish
community in Al-Andalus. Isaac had directed a great many questions which
effected his community to the Gaonim around 850 CE. His numerous inquiries
were answered with a surprising response which forever changed world
Jewry. Isaac was sent a written guide book on prayers which Amram assembled
for them. The book which was known as the Seder Amram, (Order of Prayers)
came with a dispatch that read:
"
By
God's mercy may there be much peace on you and your children, on all
scholars and students, as well as on all our Israelite brethren living
there. Greetings from us and from Rav Zemah, the president of the
judicial court, from the teachers and sages of the Academy, from its
pupils and from the city of Sura! All are well
We think of your
welfare and keep you in our memory
"
Up until this time,
there were no prayer books, and many Jews understood there was merely
a rabbinic ruling to recite a list of 100 blessings daily. Although
Natronai had provided earlier directives to the thriving Jewish community
on this issue, it was the Seder Amram which helped the community really
understand day to day Judaism as it was being practiced in Babylonia,
and how the sages thought it should be practiced elsewhere.
Amram was the first
to compose a logical arrangement including prayers for the whole year
as well as the pertinent laws. This book filled with ancient tefillah
(prayers), is the oldest surviving one which had been handed down, one
developed from much earlier rabbinical scholars of the Tannaim and Amoraim
period. The Seder, Yesod ha-Amrami, was sent to the community of Barcelona.
This book was interspersed with decisions from the Talmud and with notes
of customs prevailing in the yeshibot of Babylonia. This hand written
volume contained morning and afternoon prayers, evening prayer (without
the Amidah), the bedtime Shema, prayers for Shabbat, Yom Tov, and many
others prayers. The book was a success, and reached popularity among
the Jews all over Spain, and even beyond into France. It was this very
Babylonian prayer book which originally was sent to Spain, then copied,
that became the standard in the West. At the time when Ashkenazi Jewry
was still in its infancy in dark age Europe, this book went on to develop
into the later framework which would become the subsequent German/Polish
liturgies.
A catalyst for
further expansion of the traditions as they were practiced in the East
to the West, belongs to Rav Hasdai ibn Shaprut (915-970 CE) the principle
Jewish leader of Muslim Spain. While the Chinese were inventing playing
cards and the Vikings were exploring desolate Greenland, Muslim Cordoba
was thriving as Europe's intellectual center and the world's most populous
city. There, Hasdai appointed Rav Moshe ben Enoch to the head of the
Talmud school of Cordoba. With this action by Hasdai, the Jews were
able to detach themselves from their intellectual dependence on the
East. Even the Muslim leader, the caliph, considered this a favorable
shift, as he wanted to be independent from anything to do with the East
himself, even if this was not necessarily an Islamic matter.
Rav Moshe ben Enoch
was a young man, one of the four scholars that traveled from Sura (in
Babylonia), in order to collect contributions for their yeshibot. Traveling
to raise funds was a common, but potentially dangerous Jewish practice.
A traditional story tells of Moshe's arduous ordeal. While sailing on
the Adriatic Sea near the coastal city of Bari, he, together with his
wife and young son, as well as their traveling mates, were captured
by Islamic pirates. Legend holds that the Muslim captain became lustful
for Moshe's beautiful wife, but she would entertain nothing of the sort.
In a moment of anguish, she asked her husband whether those who were
drowned in the sea could look forward to the Resurrection when the Mashiach
arrives, and when Moshe answered her in the positive saying: "The
Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back
from the depths of the sea," she jumped overboard, drowning herself
in the depth of the ocean.
The centuries lend
to a variation of the story, but it has been told over generations that
Moshe was taken to Cordoba with his young son Enoch to be sold as slaves.
There they were redeemed by the Jewish community about 948 CE. Soon
after, Moshe went to a house of learning, took a seat in the corner,
and listened quietly to a Talmudic discourse by Nathan, a dayan (judge)
of the Cordoban Bet Din (court). Moshe, a stranger dressed in rags,
made remarks which attracted attention of the men in the room. His further
detailed explanation of the passage which Nathan had quoted-as well
as his swift answers to all questions addressed to him, astonished the
entire assembly. Nathan was so overwhelmed with Moshe's wisdom, he was
said to have voluntarily resigned that same day, and considered from
then on himself as a pupil of Moshe. The affluent community of Cordoba
treated Moshe with great respect and honored him immediately by electing
him as rabbinical leader of the community. At the time, Moshe was still
under the eyes of his captors. But after intervention by Shaprut (who
was said to be rejoicing because of Moshe's election), he was able to
intercede on his behalf to the caliph, Abd al-Rachman, who soon ordered
the bail dropped, even though his captives wanted increasingly more
riches after finding out their prisoner was a learned Jewish man. According
to Rav Ibn Daud (1110-1180 CE), because of Moshe ben Enoch, Spanish
Jews obtained independence from the Babylonian Yeshibot, and became
the, "chief diocesan authorities for the majority of Jews in the
Islamic world."
Over a period of
400 years, while the majority of world Jewry were living under Muslim
rule in both the East and West, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry grew, and
a shared intellectual tradition framed around Halacha (law) and Minhag
(tradition) flourished. Although music, food, and folklore are all important
ties, the tie that binds Jews from both traditional Mizrahi and Sephardi
lands is one that is based upon a historic epoch of history in which
religious framework served to unite communities of people, who by geography,
had been separated. Torah is what brought them together then, Torah
is what keeps us together now.
This
article is based upon a forthcoming book on the historic development
of Sephardic Jewry. All footnotes have been removed for this Internet
ready edition. This article may not be removed and posted on another
Website without permission. © 2005 Shelomo Alfassa.