‘Nuestros judíos’: Judaic Studies in Modern Spain(in progress)

Abstract:

Following the 1978 disestablishment of national Catholicism, Spain has seen a renewed interest in its national Semitic cultural legacy. Spanish scholars have studied Judaism and Hebrew continuously since the expulsion of Spain’s Jews in 1492, but there exists no monographic study of the discipline during the modern period. Nuestros judíos, Judaic Studies in Modern Spain will be the first intellectual history of Judaic studies in modern Spain. Based at the University of Oviedo’s Department of Romance Languages, I will spend the fellowship period consulting the personal collections and libraries of several prominent Spanish scholars of Hebrew and Judaic studies.

Full project description:

Who gets to be Spanish? Depending on whom you ask, Spain’s Jews were either ‘Spanish Jews’ whose cultural legacy is a valued part of Spanish national patrimony, or ‘Jews who lived in Spain,’ a rich but ultimately foreign culture. Is Judaic Studies in Spain like Ethnic Studies, celebrating the contributions of minority populations to national cultural history, or a domestic Orientalism that studies the monuments of foreign civilizations that once thrived on Spanish soil?

The answer has much to do with how modern Spaniards understand their own culture as they strove to define it in the European context during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Spain is heir to an important Jewish cultural legacy. The history of Judaic Studies in Spain —how Spaniards have undertaken the study of this legacy— is a window onto their modern nation-building enterprise, a form of self-study or reflection on the national culture (Rivière-Gómez 2000).

Jewish culture flourished extravagantly in medieval Spain: the philosopher-rabbi Maimonides (12^th century) and the poet Judah Halevi (11^th-12^th century) epitomize the achievements of Jewish intellectuals in Spain during the Middle Ages. While the cultural monuments of Spain’s Jews are studied in Spanish universities and occasionally celebrated in museums and public events (Flesler, et al.), Spain’s relationship with its Jewish and Muslim past is best characterized as a blend of ambivalence and forgetfulness.

In 1492, the ‘Catholic Monarchs’ Ferdinand and Isabella famously ended Jewish life in Spain, expelling Jews from all Spanish territories and ordering the conversion to Catholicism of all Spanish Jews who wished to remain in their homeland. For hundreds of years, policies and discourses of national identity determined Spanish as Catholic and Castilian. National Catholicism prevailed with little disruption up to the death of the military dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

Since Franco’s death and the subsequent disestablishment of official Catholicism in 1978, Spain has been undergoing a reevaluation of its national cultural and religious identity. Voices across the political spectrum simultaneously celebrate and suppress various aspects of Spain’s Semitic legacy (Fanjul 2004; Vidal Manzanares 2004, 2006; Subirats 2003). Like Arabic and Islamic studies, Hebrew and Judaic Studies in Spain is heir to a problematic and ambiguous ideological legacy.

Though generations of Spanish Christian scholars have celebrated the cultural achievements of Spanish Jews, the study of Spanish Hebrew literature has remained largely compartmentalized, segregated from the Peninsula’s Romance literatures (Wacks 2008, Rivière Gómez 2000). This alienation from the national Semitic legacy also characterizes how Spaniards represent their nation’s Muslim past (Goytisolo 1999; Fuchs 2007).

Today Jewish life is returning to Spain. For the first time since 1492 there is a community of Spaniards who practice Judaism and contribute to the institutions of Jewish life: synagogues, schools, and publications.  In light of this renewal (and of the dramatic growth in the Muslim community) Spain is reappraising its Semitic cultural legacy. Spain’s membership in the European Union, which espouses multicultural, multilingual, and multiconfessional policies, has accelerated the process and has given the discussion of Spain’s Semitic heritage a modern European political context. There has been an explosion of interest in Spanish Jewish and Muslim themes both in Spain and abroad (Flesler and Pérez Melgosa 2008, 2010), but the story of what Spaniards have written about the sources of Jewish culture in their own country has yet to be told.

Spain is not alone in addressing its neglect of Judaic studies; the international discipline of Judaic Studies needs reevaluation. In 1994, the American Judaic studies scholar David Biale was still able to declare “there is no greater task than to criticize the field of Jewish studies for both its antiquitarianism and conservatism.” In 2001, Spanish Hebraist Ángel Sáenz-Badillos decried a field dominated by a “perspective weighed down by ideological and nationalist baggage.” But, as the 1960s tourism slogan went, “Spain is different.” More than in any other country, Judaic studies in Spain is not in dialogue with a local Jewish community. Whereas the majority of Hebraists in the US or England have been Jews, Spanish Hebraists since 1492 have been almost exclusively Christian.

There is very little scholarship on modern Judaic studies in Spain. There is a scattering of critical essays (Prado 1956; Gonzalo Maeso 1956; Sáenz-Badillos 2001), but most of what has been published consists of homages and bio-bibliographies written by Spanish Hebraists for their own teachers or their teachers’ teachers (García 1918; Anonymous 1950; Pascual Recuero 1986; García Jalón de Lama 2006). A comprehensive and critical overview of Judaic studies in Spain is still wanting. Nuestros judíos will be the first comprehensive critical intellectual history of Judaic studies in Spain grounded in the European, national, and institutional politics of the times.

The case of Judaic studies in Spain is hardly unique. Nearly every modern nation state has had to articulate policies on the role of cultural or religious minorities in national life. In many cases, the role of higher education is critical in setting and disseminating narratives and attitudes that have far-reaching consequences for real people in their everyday lives. In the US, the establishment of programs in Ethnic Studies, and in specific disciplines such as African-American Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Native American Studies, has had a significant impact on public discussion and policy regarding the extent to which political identity influences governmental policy and institutional practice. While US higher education underwent a profound moment of reflection and self-criticism during the 1960s and 1970s, Spain’s university culture, and especially Judaic studies has not yet been thoroughly questioned. My project will continue the work begun by scholars such as Sáenz Badillos in providing a sustained critical look at Judaic studies in Spanish universities.

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