Yitzhak Navon, scion of Spanish Jewish exiles, explores Jewish landmarks in Spain. He discovers that the inhabitants of La Guardia still believe in “blood libel.” In the Jewish quarter of Saragossa, he discovers the house where his ancestor Jacob Naon (Navon) lived 600 years ago. “I travel through this vast country and often get this strange sense that 500 years after the sudden and complete destruction of the Jewish existence, their spirit still hovers over all these places. The power of memory is immense,” says Navon.
In Cordova, birthplace of the Golden Age, Navon happens upon a street celebration. He attempts to bridge over a thousand years, and find parallels with the Cordova days of the prominent Jewish poets as Shmuel Hanagid; the Minister of State of Granada, its Minister of Treasury and its Chief Army General – and those who came after him, as Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Moses Ibn Ezra and the most prominent of all, Judah Halevi. This duality of sanctity and secularity, spirituality and sensuality, terror of death and joy of life can still be felt in the contemporary Andalusian atmosphere.
The Christian conquerors of Spain invited the Jews to populate the occupied territories, and participate in the development of Spain. There was hardly a monarch who did not have a Jewish doctor, political or financial advisor. The Jews played a vital role in the scientific renaissance of the West in the 12th and 13th Centuries, and within their success laid the seeds of evil. In 1391, religious inciting coupled with economic jealousy caused the eruption of riots in the Jewish Quarter of Seville, spreading throughout all the Spanish Jewish communities.
In 1391, a third of Spain’s Jews were murdered and a third became Christians. This marked the beginning of the Marranos and the Inquisition – a reign of terror lasting 300 years whose aim was to eradicate Jewish heresy. Nowadays there is no commemoration anywhere of the existence of the Inquisition in Spanish history. But in Granada the crew comes upon an exhibition of tools of torture that were used by the Inquisition, and in Toledo, in a gallery of contemporary art which used to be an Inquisition prison, the crew filmed the torture dungeons.
This was the year of the discovery of America and the exile of the Jews of Spain. Navon meets Spaniards who see themselves as descendants of these Jews. He traces the footsteps of Don Avraham Seneor, the Royal Rabbi, most prominent of the Jewish apostates of 1492. He uncovers the role of the Marranos in the discovery of America and tackles the question that concerns so many Spaniards: Was Columbus a Jew? Navon seals his journey with a visit to the Marranos of Portugal.
The Marranos of Majorca are not Crypto-Jews – their forefathers abandoned Judaism three hundred years ago. Although they consider themselves to be steadfast and faithful Christians, they remain under the “curse of the eternal Jew,” not allowed to die but forbidden to live. Their neighbors still regard them as Jews, and. Majorca is the only place in Spain where the descendants of the first Marranos can be positively traced. Itzhak Levi had embraced Christianity in 1391 and changed his name to Bernardo Aguilo, and there are presently hundreds of Aguilos throughout the island. Nicolas Aguilo is the sole member of the Majorcan Marrano community to re-embrace Judaism, and immigrate to Israel.