Searching for my Sephardic Self

Year: Senior

Locations: Spain: Toledo, Segovia, and Barcelona Portugal: Porto, Lisbon

Dates: July 13-24, 2022

Before starting my project, I researched all the important places for Sephardic history in both Spain and Portugal. Upon my arrival, I visited the sites, researched the sites and their historical and cultural importance, and then took photos. After each location visited, I took notes on my initial reactions. Once I finished traveling, I then applied the social theories of Galtung and Bourdieu to better understand the historical and modern impact of Sephardic history.

Each town that I visited during my time in Spain and Portugal had a Jewish quarter which is called a Juderia. Going to the Juderia in each place I visited helped me to better understand the Jewish history of the place.

Here are two short videos to help understand the two sociological concepts I will be applying to the Sephardic Jewish history in Spain and Portugal. The first theory is Galtung's theory on the three types of violence and the second theory is Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Capital.

In this section, I will be looking at the History I learned and applying it to Jewish History. There are also photos of two historical synagogues I visited in Toledo (Synagogue of El Tránsito and Synagogue of Santa María la Blanca). I chose these two Synagogues because I wanted the viewer to see them from the outside and inside to understand how they have been preserved over time. I made plans to include a few other Synagogues, but many were closed due to reconstruction efforts.

One thing that I noticed while walking through the Jewish quarters was how the inquisition erased Jewish culture. Coming from a sociological background, I ended up focusing on the impact of structure and cultural violence in relation to the social capital the Jewish people faced during the inquisition. I found it interesting that many Sephardic people work in positions of power, often under the King. Although the Jewish people had social and economic capital working for royalty and were educated, they did not have cultural capital. The Jewish population before the inquisition often faced hate crimes from people around them, and Jewish life was unstable as the capital Jews faced depended on who was in power at the time. Looking closely at Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, the Jewish population before the inquisition lacked the objectified state, maintaining their embodied state. The institutional state of cultural capital is harder to analyze because the Jewish population was othered by the society they lived in, yet through government connections, they were able to build connections with people in power positions. However, the institution capital Jews had was dependent on who was leading the country, and also they further lacked institution capital due to laws set in place to further other them like increased taxes. The inquisition in Spain and Portugal altered the cultural capital Jews once had by further othering them and forcing them to either covert or leave the country, causing them to lose the capital they once had. The lack of cultural capital Jews faced during and after the inquisition also led to the types of violence they faced.

Throughout Jewish history in the Iberian Peninsula, Jews faced a lot of direct violence. Before the inquisition, many genocides and hate crimes took place and caused the Jewish people to be excluded from society. During the inquisition, the Jewish population faced a lot more direct violence. However, one thing that stood out was the cultural and structural violence Jews faced during and before the inquisition. As Galtung mentions in his theory, structural violence is how groups are hindered by society, while cultural violence is the existence of prevailing norms that make structural and direct violence possible. The use of structural and cultural violence was prevalent before the inquisition through laws that were placed on the Jewish population, like taxation. Another form of structural violence that stood out to me while doing my research was that in both Spanish and Portuguese history, there were laws in which the Jewish population was required to wear yellow cloth, further othering them from society. The othering of the Jewish people was also seen in the inquisition by how it hindered and prevented the Jewish population from existing within society. However, the violence put in place goes a lot further and has had a modern impact on the Sephardic Jewish population.

Traveling to Spain and Portugal and learning about my heritage was an extremely valuable opportunity. I am for the generosity of the Keller family for giving me the chance to understand better and explore my culture. Going on this trip was something I had always dreamed of being able to do, and seeing the history my ancestors lived helped me better understand my identity. In the future, I hope to continue the research I started during my Venture Grant by going to other historically Jewish sites in Spain and Portugal, like Seville and Granada, to understand better the impact of the inquisition and Jewish life before the inquisition. I also plan to visit Greece, where my family settled for hundreds of years after the inquisition, so I can better understand what happened to them after the inquisition and before they came to America.