she began to cry, and I...to laugh.
Her tears were so beautiful and so luminous that one could say that they had their own light. So then, to break the ice, I told her that the chair would be repaired tomorrow. A tomorrow that would be eternal. She was not Raquel, but a great consolation for all the previous departures from her, and for those which were to come.
Seville, 1391. They attacked with the cry: “Christianize, or die! Christianize, or die!” When anyone doubted, they burned their house. And I shouted to Sara: “Woman, come on! Let’s live! It makes no sense to die for this.” But she stayed, sitting in her father’s chair that I had repaired for her, not wanting to move, and I tried to grab her by the hand to take her with me to the church.
“Don’t take the children!” she shouted. “Not the children. Better that they should die as Jews than to live as Christians. Death is better than to be slaves to the Bastard!”
And then the house began to burn and I pulled on her and the flames approach and quickly she says
“Grab the children so they can live!”
And while I was going to the church with the children, she went up in flames and became Saint Sara.
Perhaps she did the right thing. I can’t tell you. It may have been better to have had a righteous death there and not to have to live so many years and to put up with this perverted world for so long.
And 1391 was not the end either. Then there were the converted, the “Marranos” former Jews, and Jews, living all among each other and struggling against third parties. Maybe 1492 was the lightest with respect to the dispute between the the semi-Jews - the ones who converted- and those who were contrite who had lost everything. One hundred years, as though someone would think that the situation would again become what it had been, as if something could go back to being what it once was. There, in Seville, I understood that the Sefarad, Sephardic territory, (the Iberian peninsula) had been finished. There, Spain began but the Sefarad, where Jews had participation and inheritance, had disappeared. Among all the Diasporas, Sefarad was our territory. Only in Sefarad were we part of it, four hundred years, perhaps fewer. Later the situation calmed down a bit and up to 1492 perhaps it was possible to hope that something would change. But it was the new Christians who wanted to expel the Jews who had remained Jews. And the “Marranos”, since here and there some continued in their same positions and competed for the same royal duties and in the same commercial areas. “Were they Christians then?” The fact is, in Sevilla, almost everyone converted to Christianity, a few were martyred and another very few somehow continued being Jews. Sometimes the controversy occurred within the same family. Some felt very guilty.
From Brazil I went to Texas where I fought in the war against the Mexicans and where there was a large Jewish community. The Jews had already arrived there in 1880, from Poland and Germany. We fought against the barbarity of the Mexicans and that is how the Republic of Texas was born, which, for a decade existed as an independent state.
There I was very prosperous. I had a flourishing furniture business, since then people were again beginning to enjoy a comfortable economic situation.
It was hot in Texas. When they joined the United States, I decided to return to Brazil, and from there, to Spain. In that time, very few Jews were returning to Spain. I was among the first to arrive in Málaga. There was religious freedom but anti-Semitism was so entrenched that it could be felt everywhere. It was anti-Semitism by those who had formerly been Jews! That was the hardest. I worked with three Benarroch brothers, very well-established textile merchants. It seems that the son of one of them was the first of those from Tetuán to marry a Christian and convert. He kept his name and that is why today you can see Christian families named Benarroch.
Her tears were so beautiful and so luminous that one could say that they had their own light. So then, to break the ice, I told her that the chair would be repaired tomorrow. A tomorrow that would be eternal. She was not Raquel, but a great consolation for all the previous departures from her, and for those which were to come.
Seville, 1391. They attacked with the cry: “Christianize, or die! Christianize, or die!” When anyone doubted, they burned their house. And I shouted to Sara: “Woman, come on! Let’s live! It makes no sense to die for this.” But she stayed, sitting in her father’s chair that I had repaired for her, not wanting to move, and I tried to grab her by the hand to take her with me to the church.
“Don’t take the children!” she shouted. “Not the children. Better that they should die as Jews than to live as Christians. Death is better than to be slaves to the Bastard!”
And then the house began to burn and I pulled on her and the flames approach and quickly she says
“Grab the children so they can live!”
And while I was going to the church with the children, she went up in flames and became Saint Sara.
Perhaps she did the right thing. I can’t tell you. It may have been better to have had a righteous death there and not to have to live so many years and to put up with this perverted world for so long.
And 1391 was not the end either. Then there were the converted, the “Marranos” former Jews, and Jews, living all among each other and struggling against third parties. Maybe 1492 was the lightest with respect to the dispute between the the semi-Jews - the ones who converted- and those who were contrite who had lost everything. One hundred years, as though someone would think that the situation would again become what it had been, as if something could go back to being what it once was. There, in Seville, I understood that the Sefarad, Sephardic territory, (the Iberian peninsula) had been finished. There, Spain began but the Sefarad, where Jews had participation and inheritance, had disappeared. Among all the Diasporas, Sefarad was our territory. Only in Sefarad were we part of it, four hundred years, perhaps fewer. Later the situation calmed down a bit and up to 1492 perhaps it was possible to hope that something would change. But it was the new Christians who wanted to expel the Jews who had remained Jews. And the “Marranos”, since here and there some continued in their same positions and competed for the same royal duties and in the same commercial areas. “Were they Christians then?” The fact is, in Sevilla, almost everyone converted to Christianity, a few were martyred and another very few somehow continued being Jews. Sometimes the controversy occurred within the same family. Some felt very guilty.
From Brazil I went to Texas where I fought in the war against the Mexicans and where there was a large Jewish community. The Jews had already arrived there in 1880, from Poland and Germany. We fought against the barbarity of the Mexicans and that is how the Republic of Texas was born, which, for a decade existed as an independent state.
There I was very prosperous. I had a flourishing furniture business, since then people were again beginning to enjoy a comfortable economic situation.
It was hot in Texas. When they joined the United States, I decided to return to Brazil, and from there, to Spain. In that time, very few Jews were returning to Spain. I was among the first to arrive in Málaga. There was religious freedom but anti-Semitism was so entrenched that it could be felt everywhere. It was anti-Semitism by those who had formerly been Jews! That was the hardest. I worked with three Benarroch brothers, very well-established textile merchants. It seems that the son of one of them was the first of those from Tetuán to marry a Christian and convert. He kept his name and that is why today you can see Christian families named Benarroch.
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