rosh hosanna at the end of the world (an observation)

Rosh hosanna at the end of the world.

Galicia, for those of you map lovers, is that little piece of Spain that sticks out over
Portugal, and the rest of you can go to google maps. At any rate this northwestern tip of
the Iberian peninsula, at the very sunset edge of Europe, is a long, lost rugged
cape, known locally since the beginning of time as cabo Finiesterr "the cape at the end of
the world".

Now you all must know that the Spanish Monarchs, the Catholic Kings, Fernando and
Isabella went deeply along with the church and ordered all Jews from Spain in 1492. And
even up until recently it was illegal to be Jewish here.

So to make a long story short there aren’t many Jews living in northwest Spain today.
But let me explain my first contact with the Jewish community here in Galicia to perhaps
shed some light on the minuteness of our local Jewish population.

It all started when my wife read in the paper about a lady who’d opened a Jewish bakery
shop in the old Jewish quarter of a small nearby town which once had a very large and
prosperous Jewish community. One deeply connected to one of Galicia’s most important
wine producing regions.

So one day Ana and I decided to visit the old town of Ribdavia and stop by the Jewish
baked goods store. The lady, Carmiña, 0% Jewish, was very nice and explained how she had
worked for a wealthy Jewish family in Caracas in her youth, and had learned to make
Jewish pastries. Later of course she returned home to Galicia, to Ribadiva and thought
it would be a good idea to open a Jewish bakery in the old ghetto that had been becoming
somewhat of a tourist attraction in recent years.


Yes, Carmiña and her Jewish pastries, very good actually, great with coffee. . . So
Carmiña mentioned that she keeps a visitor’s book in which other Jews had written their
vitals, and looking through it I could see a total of 6 or 8 names, one of whom was an
Israeli soccer football player who was with the first division team in Vigo, Galicia’s
largest city. And then Carmiña pointed out the name of the guy she said was sort of the
informal leader of the Jewish community in Galicia. Mario Zareceansky.

And eventually Mario and I got into contact. He of course was of Ashkenazi origins but from
Buenos Aires, married to a Galician Argentine woman, (there are millions of Galicians in
Argentina and hundreds of thousands of Jews, a mixed marriage between the two groups
seems almost inevitable). But yes, Mario put me in touch with Assaf, one of the main
organizers of our celebration, a Galician guy, who was always fascinated with the fact that his grand mother possessed a menorah, had heard distant rumors of a possible Jewish past and
one day decided he wanted to be Jewish; and with Haguit an Israeli woman whose parents had
to escape from Iraq, lord have mercy a real Babylonian Jew at our Rosh hosanna
celebration.

Actually Haiguit was the religious supervisor of the gig, which was cool, as I know so
little about how the rivers of Babylon survivors make a joyous noise unto the lord. I
loved that Haiguit kept nudging me and giving me instructions and explaining: "now you
must do this (or that) for you are the man of the house!" coo00ool

Let's see who else was there at our Galician Jewish new year's? There was Chema the
artist from Orense who is 100% sure his father’s side of the family were serious
"marranos", (literally "pigs"). It's a term used to classify the Jews who had
decided they wanted to stay in Spain after the 1492 expulsion and superficially
converted to Catholicism. The Marranos, what a trip! Imagine the guys from the
inquisition riding your house and checking to see if they can catch a circumcised baby.
Lord have mercy! When I was in Equator in the mid 70s the Indians with whom I lived
told me they had been taught by the catholic priests that Jews rob and eat Christian
babies. The church has had some strange ideas about major Jewish hobbies. 1000
years of Catholic anti-Semitism.

And I just can't forget about my visit to Wittenberg, the town where Martin Luther lived
and wrote about the evil lying Jews, and seeing a stone relief on the main church
depicting a rabbi helping two Jewish women as they sucked the milk from a sow’s utters.
Nice work Lutherans.

Ah.. but back to the party: The people at the Rosh Hashanah at the end of the world.
There was Illuminada , Illu, (the illuminated one), a lovely friendly young woman with
some specked marrano blood, but all very hidden... And then there was Luisa, of German
Jewish father and Galician mother, and there were other strange storied half breed Jews
with their goyum spouses. A lovely girl named Maria whose father had been a prisoner at
Auschwitz. Etc. etc.

And there we were a most astonishing blend of Jewish blood and love and thought,
celebrating a Babylonian Rosh hosanna in the farthest Western corner of what was once the Roman Empire!

Oh by the way, my Spanish German wife, interestingly enough the person most responsible
for energizing the celebration, Ana, has become a great Jewish cook herself... She makes
very good homemade bagels, (which anyone who's ever tried will know ain't easy), and also
a pretty mean matzo ball soup.

And somehow sharing a celebration with this lost and lingering tenuous strand of the
chosen here at the end of the world set between Babylonian blessings of pomegranates
and eating lox and bagel, and experiencing the magic of matzo ball soup . . . well it
all seems like something about which I am glad to have told you.