Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory by Tabea Alexa Linhard (review)

The Hebrew term Sepharad, meaning Spain, has a profound meaning among a substantial part of the world Jewry. The concept is first mentioned as a geographical reference in the Hebrew Bible and has since taken on a strong poetic and symbolic meaning throughout centuries. Some scholars have argued that the name concept suggests the colonization of the Iberian Peninsula by Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, which led to the Jewish obliged dispersion (galut) to various parts of Europe. Although a “Jewish Spain” never existed, the Sephardim—Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin—formed a rich and diverse community that spread among the Christian kingdoms of Iberia until their forced exile in 1492. Then, the Sephardic diaspora sought shelter in the Ottoman lands, making the Mediterranean world their new home. The relationship between Spain and the Sephardim after their expulsion faded away for centuries, until it gained interest in the nineteenth century by various politicians, and most recently in current times. In 2015, the Spanish government approved way for citizenship for thousands of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors were expelled from the country in the fifteenth century. This historical scenario serves as study for Tabea Alexa Linhard’s work Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory. The book collects a comprehensive analysis of Sephardic life in twentieth century Spain from different angles and perspectives of cultural memory: biographies, films, memories, and literary texts. Although there is not an emphasis on the medieval Iberian Jewry, since it focuses on contemporary times, it does reflect part of this legacy in the themes and subjects exposed throughout the stories.

The book opens with an analysis of Jewish exile in transit to Spain as reflected in modern Spanish narrative. In chapter one, titled “Mapping Nostalgia: Velódromo de invierno and Sepharad,” Linhard selects two novels as an example to “reflect on what a nostalgic invocation of Sepharad means” in parallel to the current “memoria histórica” and the narrative portrayals of Holocaust survival (33). Juana Salabert’s Velódromo de invierno and Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sepharad depict two Jewish characters who escape from the Nazi deportation and make their way in life, passing through Spain. Their expectations, however, and the dreams they hope to build in Sepharad prove to be futile. Linhard accurately shows the values of nostalgia and trauma of the Holocaust condensed by their protagonists from the authors’ Spanish perspective blended within the historical scenario of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s regime. This setting serves to reveal in both main characters that the painful “idea of a return to a lost home is not only meandering and often misleading, it is never to be realized” (64).

The symbolic uses of the Jewish exile in Spain during World War II and the return to a mythical Sepharad are examined in two novels, Trudi Alexy’s memoir The Mezuzah in the Madonnas’s Foot and Martine Berthelot’s Memorias judías: Barcelona 1914-1954. Linhard analyzes the intertwined relationship between the terms “Holocaust,” “Sepharad” and “survival” from a narrative contemporary perspective. This triple correlation allows the establishment of a series of “contradictory circumstances that made surviving the Holocaust in Spain possible” (66). In The Mezuzah in the Madonnas’s Foot, its main protagonist, named Alexy, describes her own exile from Nazi Germany to Spain in 1942 (Holocaust), her family’s safe stay in Spain (Sepharad) and conversion to Catholicism (survival), their move to the United States, and the eventual return to her Jewish faith. Linhard compares Alexy’s journey to that of the Marranos and crypto-Jews experienced in Spain five centuries earlier, providing the main protagonist’s choice of myth over history to make use of this context for her own story. Berthelot’s Memorias judías gathers a series of testimonial stories of Holocaust survivors who found shelter in Spain. Linhard’s approach to both works permits the exploration of the similar experiences of Jewish voices collected in Berthelot’s book and Alexy’s memoir; at the same...