The lost ark I realised was hidden in a former synagogue is found in a church in Seville

The lost ark of a synagogue has been found behind the statue of the Virgin Mary above the main altar of Santa María la Blanca in Seville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

It is four or five years since I visited the former Jewish Quarter in Seville and stayed for a few days in Las Casas de Judería in October 2018. I still think it was probably the most beautiful hotel I have ever stayed in.

Next door to the hotel is the Church of Santa María la Blanca, which gives its name to the street. The church, on the corner of Archeros street, was once one of the main synagogues in this area. But, after the Jews were expelled from Seville, the synagogue was converted into a church.

The doors that once served as the main entrance to the synagogue from Archeros street were closed throughout my stay in Seville, and the church too was closed every time I tried to visit it that week … until late one Friday evening as I was leaving the hotel for dinner.

It was a Friday evening … was I praying as a priest … or was I praying the prayers of Shabbas evening?

As I wandered around the church that Friday evening, I found I was wondering whether the ornate dome in the church had once stood over the tevah or bimah in the synagogue … whether the main altar had once been the place where the Torah scrolls were once kept in the Holy Ark or Aron haKodesh … whether the gallery over the main entrance had once been the women’s gallery.

The ornate dome in Santa María la Blanca … did this once stand over the tivah in one of the principal synagogues in Seville? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

So, understandably, I was interested to read in Jewish Heritage Europe yesyerday how experts who are now carrying out restoration work on the apse and main altarpiece of the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca in Seville have identified the site, long concealed by the elaborate altar, where the Ark had stood when the church was a synagogue in mediaeval times.

JHE quotes José María Rincón, the director of the restoration, telling local media that the site of the Ark had been concealed by the gilded, wall-sized baroque altarpiece, which was installed in the mid-17th century. The discovery, he said, represents ‘a unique opportunity to witness an element unseen for 350 years, soon to be veiled once more, likely never to be seen again.’ He told local media that the Ark was ‘in an exceedingly precarious state of conservation.’

The church was a mosque from the 11th century until the Catholic reconquest of Seville in 1248. It then became a synagogue, in the heart of the mediaeval Jewish quarter. After the massacre and forced conversion of the Jews in 1391, it became a Catholic church.

The church went through many architectural changes over the centuries, culminating in its Baroque transformation, with the main altarpiece built in 1657-1660. It is an ornate structure with twisted columns framing an image of the Madonna and child.

Archaeologists and restorers began work on the altarpiece and apse in the church in November 2013, dismantling the altarpiece for the restoration work. The project was organised by the Heritage and Urban Planning Department of the Andalusian regional government.

Ahead of the work, Rincon told local media that he suspected that remnants of the mediaeval synagogue could come to light. Historians had already supposed that the area behind the main altarpiece was once the location of the ark. The area will be hidden once again by the main altarpiece when the restoration work is completed.

The gallery in the Church of Santa María la Blanca beside Las Casas de Judería in Seville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

That Friday evening, I was conscious how one extnded branch of the Comerford family is descended from David de Mendoza (1650-1730), a Marrano or member of a Jewish family who had converted publicly to Christianity at the Inquisition but who continued to adhere to Judaism and who moved from Seville to Amsterdam, where he died in 1730; from his son Daniel de David Mendoza (1685-1758), who was born in Seville; and from Daniel’s wife Esther (1689-1774), who was also born in Seville.

That Friday evening four or five years ago, as I looked at the statue of the Virgin Mary depicted as Santa María la Blanca above the high altar, I imagined the Jewish Mary her looking down the full length of the former synagogue and up at what I saw as the former women’s gallery at the other end, and I could imagine her as one Jewish woman weeping at the death of thousands of other Jewish women in Seville on the night of 5 and 6 June 1391.

In the Pieta-like portrayals in the church, depicting the Virgin Mary weeping over the dead Christ, I thought of her weeping at the expulsion of so many Jewish parents and their children on the orders of the Spanish Inquisition at the end of the 15th century.

The Church of Santa María la Blanca was a mosque before it was given to the Jews of Seville in 1252 to use as synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Around the corner from the church and the hotel, at the Jewish Interpretive Centre on Ximenez de Enisco, many exhibits tell the stories of strong women who suffered in the pogroms and persecutions in Seville in the 14th and 15th centuries.

These stories include the legend of Susona ben Susón, the daughter of Diego Susón, a wealthy merchant and Jewish convert. Her intended fiancé betrayed Sosana, alleging a Jewish plot to overthrow the city and church authorities in Seville. Diego was burnt at the stake on the orders of the Inquisition, along with up to 20 of the other alleged conspirators.

They included Pedro Fernández de Benadeva, the cathedral butler, Juan Fernández de Abolafia, a lawyer known as the ‘perfumed one’ for his tendency to overdress, Adolfo de Triana, a wealthy merchant, and others who were Christians from families that had converted from Judaism in the previous century.

Needless to say, Susona was abandoned by her erstwhile lover, and she later lived a mysterious and hidden life that gave rise to many mysteries and legends.

There are parallels with story of Susanna (שׁוֹשַׁנָּה), also called Susanna and the Elders, in Daniel 13. This is the story of a woman who is accosted and falsely accused. She refuses to be blackmailed and she is arrested and about to be put to death for promiscuity when Daniel interrupts the proceedings to prevent the death of an innocent woman.

When the former Ark in the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca in Seville is concealed once again after the current restoration work on the main altarpiece is completed, I hope that story of the former synagogue is not forgotten and the stories of the women of Jewish women of Seville do not slip into oblivion.

A modern image of Susona ben Susón in the Jewish Interpretive Centre on Ximenez de Enisco street in Seville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Ten countries I have visited in 2018

Gondolas tied up and waiting for the tides to fall at Rialto Bridge, just a five minute walk from the Palazzetto San Lio in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

In previous years, in my end-of-year reviews at the end of December, I have often summarised the year’s events in my life, as well providing my own commentary on the year in news, sport, and church life.

However, newspapers and television stations provide substantial summaries of the past year at this time of the year, and the consequences of ‘Brexit’ and the Trump presidency have been devastating and depressing at one and the same time throughout 2018.

Instead, I have decided to end the year on note of celebration over the next few days, looking back at ten countries I have visited this year, ten cathedrals I have visited in Ireland, ten synagogues I have visited across Europe, and ten places I have visited in Ireland this year.

The wisteria was already fading in Hall Court in Sidney Sussex College when I visited Cambridge this summer (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

1, England:

As with every year, I have visited England throughout the year. I have stayed twice in London during two-day residential meetings of the trustees of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel): at the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine in Limehouse in the East End in January, and in November in the Kairos Centre in south-west London, close to the campuses of Roehampton University and overlooking Richmond Park.

I was also in London for meetings of USPG’s trustees in May and September, and at the meetings of USPG trustees and council and the annual USPG conference at the High Leigh Conference Centre near Hoddesdon in July, and a regional meeting of USPG volunteers and supporters in Birmingham at the end of November.

I also visited Lichfield three times this year: for two days of retreat and reflection and to celebrate my birthday in January, to lecture on the Wyatt architectural dynasty in April at the invitation of Lichfield Civic Society, and again in November, for a short visit to Lichfield Cathedral and the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital.

I missed the annual summer school organised in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, but I had a short visit to Cambridge in early July, while some of the fading wisteria could still be seen in the courts of Sidney Sussex College.

The arcades around the bailey seen from the Chapel of Saint Sebastian in the Fort de Salses, near Perpignan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

2, France:

In May, I spent a few days in the south of France, staying in Sainte-Marie-la-Mer, a coastal town near Perpignan. Although I had been to Paris half-a-dozen times or more in the past, this was my first time back in France since 2006, and my first time to visit the South of France.

In Perpignan, I visited the Palace of the Kings of Majorca (Palais des Rois de Majorque), the Cathédrale St-Jean, with its Gothic architecture, its wrought-iron bell tower and its cloistered cemetery, and the statue of the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí facing la Gare de Perpignan, which Dalí proclaimed it to be the ‘Centre of the Universe’ after he experienced a vision of cosmogonic ecstasy there in 1963.

Beyond Perpignan, I visited Collioure on the Côte Vermeille, close to the French border with Spain at the Pyrénées. Collioure, with its typical Mediterranean bay, attracted several Fauvist artists who made it their centre in the early 20th century. They were inspired by the colours of Collioure, its castle, mediaeval streets, and the lighthouse converted into the church of Notre-Dame-des-Anges. Almost 100 reproductions of works by Matisse and Derain are exhibited around the port and harbour in the very same place where they painted the originals in the early 20th century.

I also visited the hills and narrow streets of Elne, including the Cathedral of Sainte-Eulalie-et-Sainte-Julie, and the Fort de Salses, also known as the Forteresse de Salses, an impressive and massive Catalan fortress 20 minutes from Perpignan, off the road to Narbonne.

Tucholskystraße is close to the New Synagogue in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

3, Germany:

I passed through Frankfurt Airport twice (4 and 9 April), on my way to and from Thessaloniki to experience the celebrations of Orthodox Easter in the northern Greek city.

Both stopovers allowed time to eat, but I was back in Germany later in the year (11 to 14 September), when I spent three or four days in Berlin. I stayed on a corner of Tucholskystraße, around the corner from Oranienburger Straße and the Neue Synagoge or New Synagogue, built in 1859-1866 as the main synagogue of Berlin’s Jewish community.

The visit included a day at the former concentration camp in Sachsenhausen and a four-hour walking tour of Jewish Berlin’s destruction and rebirth.

I also visited the Pergamon Museum, the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and the site of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) and a number of historic churches, including the Marienkirche and Sophienkirche, and strolled along Unter den Linden.

Travelling over the Alps, somewhere above Austria, on my way between Dublin and Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

4, Austria:

After experiencing Easter in Thessaloniki, it took three flights to get back to Dublin in April: a flight to Vienna, a flight to Frankfurt, and from there to Dublin. For the travel weary, some say you cannot count being in a country if you have not stayed overnight. Most agree that it does not count if you only touch down for a refuelling or to change flights. But for me, the safe definition is if you have to pass through passport control and have at least a cup of coffee.

In the past, I have stayed in Vienna in 2002, when I was on a panel at a seminar organised by the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and stayed over twice in 2005 on way to and from China for Church visits.

This time there was time for no more than a cup of coffee in the airport … but I suppose that still counts.

On one of the many daily walks on the beaches of Georgioupoli in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

5, Greece:

I was in Greece twice this year, and stayed in three places. I stayed in Thessaloniki from 4 to 9 April, experiencing Orthodox Easter, but also visiting the city’s only surviving synagogues, the old Jewish quarter, the Jewish Museum, some surviving Jewish mansions on Vassilisis Olgas Avenue, and the Jewish Holocaust Memorial at Liberty Square, a bronze sculpture by Nandor Glid that has been desecrated a few times this year.

In Thessaloniki, there was time for meals with friends, walks along the seafront, visits to churches, cathedrals and a few quiet hours in the Monastery of Vlatadon which is perched like a balcony above the city and the harbour, as well as a full-day visiting Mount Athos.

Later, I spent two summer weeks (6 to 20 June) back in Crete, with one week in Rethymnon, staying at Varvaras Diamond Hotel near the beach in Platanes, and a week at the Corissia Princess Hotel in Georgioupoli.

There were days strolling through the labyrinthine back streets of Rethymnon, long lingering dinners with friends, and days on the beaches in Platanes and Georgioupoli, visits to cathedrals, churches and icon workshops, visits to Chania in the west of Crete, to mountain villages, through gorges and across the White Mountains, to Hora Sfakíon and Frangokastello on the south coast, to the Monastery of Saint George in Karydi, and to villages and olive groves in the mountains.

Las Casas de la Judería, a Seville hotel that is worth visiting … just for itself (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

6, Spain:

With a new passport in my hands from August, I visited Spain at the end of October, and spent four nights in Seville (23 to 27 October. I stayed in the Hotel Las Casas de la Judería de Sevilla, an unusual hotel complex made up of 27 traditional houses, where the 134 different rooms are linked through 40 patios, courtyards, gardens and a labyrinth of small passageways, balconies and Roman-style tunnels.

The hotel takes its name from its location in the heart of the old Jewish quarter of Seville, just minutes away from the main landmarks in the city.

As well as visiting the Cathedral, the Real Alcazar and the other sites every tourist tries to visit in Seville, I also visited places in Seville and Tarifa associated with the extraordinary life of Josefina de Comerford, Doña Josefa Eugenia Maria Francisca Comerford MacCrohon de Sales (1794-1865), who was involved in Spanish political intrigues in the early 19th century.

These include the Convento de la Encarnación, where she was confined after her death sentence was commuted to life in a convent, and the Corral del Conde (the Count’s Yard), where she lived out most of her later years.

In a side street in Tangier, once known as a city of spies and smugglers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

7, Morocco:

My visit to Seville also offered the opportunity to visit Tangier in Northern Morocco (25 October). Tangier once had a reputation as a safe haven for spies and their spying activities. It played host nests of spies throughout the Cold War and before that during World War II, and the association of Tangier with spies and their secretive lifestyles has made the city a location for many books and films.

Gondolas at the Palazzo Ducale, with San Giorgio Maggiore on the other side of the canal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

8, Italy:

Some important dates in the family calendar were marked with a few days in Venice near the end of the year (5 to 9 November 2018). I stayed at the Palazzetto San Lio in the heart of Venice, between the Rialto Bridge and Saint Mark’s Square. It is at the end Calle del Frutariol in the sestiere or district of Castello, and just a stone’s throw from Rialto and the Grand Canal.

I had visited Venice in the past while staying in other p;aces in northern Italy. But this was my first time to stay in Venice itself. Palazzetto San Lio is a Venetian palace built in the 17th and 18th centuries, and has been owned by an old Venetian family for generations.

During those few days, there were visits to Saint Mark’s Basilica and Saint Mark’s Square, many of the great churches of Venice, the Ghetto and its memorials and synagogues, boat trips along the Grand Canal, and visits to islands in the lagoon, including Murano, Burano and Torcello.

The railway station at the Slovenian side of Europa Square, the crossing point between Italy and Slovenia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

9, Slovenia:

While I was staying in Venice, I visited the divided town of Gorizia, both Gorizia and Nova Gorica, crossing the border between Italy and Slovenia a number of times, arriving and leaving from one railway station in Italy, and having lunch in another railway station in Slovenia.

The frontier dividing Gorizia remained in place until Slovenia became part of the Schengen Agreement on 21 December 2007.

Today, the border between Italy and Slovenia is almost invisible, an artificial line that runs between Gorizia in Italy and Nova Gorica in Slovenia. The most celebrated border crossing is at Europa Square, an open pedestrian square in front of the Transalpina railway station. But there are other border crossings between Gorizia and Nova Gorica, for the border is a straight line that ignores the natural contours and bends in the streets and buildings, still seen in the remains of a fence that once ran across streets and even divided gardens.

Today, the two towns form one conurbation that also includes the Slovenian municipality of Šempeter-Vrtojba. Since May 2011, these three towns are joined in a common trans-border metropolitan zone, administered by a joint administration board. As I stepped between three towns and two countries, no-one asked me for a passport, no one asked me to take my place in a queue, asking for identity, or my opinion on who should be in the European Union and who should be out.

Cherry blossoms at the City of Armagh Hotel during a break at the General Synod this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

10, Ireland:

Of course, most of the year was spent in Ireland, but I visited all four provinces, stayed in places in both the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland – in Armagh during the General Synod – and visited each of the cathedrals in the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe.

This year, 2018, was a year that I was blessed with opportunities to take part in baptisms, weddings and funerals, ecumenical services, and the ordinary, every-day life of a parish that brings me many blessings. There was community engagement too, and I was invited to lift two All-Ireland cups this year: the Sam Maguire Football Cup when it visited Ardagh, Co Limerick, as part of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the Ardagh Chalice; and the Liam McCarthy Hurling Cup, when the Limerick Hurling Champions visited Askeaton.

But, most of all, I was blessed this year by the people I love and the people who love me.

Hands across the border at Europa Square, at the border between Slovenia and Italy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This Evening: Ten places I have visited in Ireland in 2018.

A stroll through the souk of Tangier, once the haven of spies and their intrigues

Tangier on the coast of Morocco was an English colony in 1662-1684 and an international zone in 1924-1956 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Tangier once had a reputation as a safe haven for spies and their spying activities. It played host nests of spies throughout the Cold War and before that during World War II, and the association of Tangier with spies and their secretive lifestyles has made the city a location for many books and films.

Because of its political neutrality in the mid-20th century, Tangier became a centre for spying and smuggling and attracted foreign capital. During World War II, a British bank in Tangier discovered the first samples of high-quality forged Bank of England banknotes produced by Nazi Germany in ‘Operation Bernhard,’ and US spies used Tangier to plot a landing in the ‘Torch Operation.’

Tangier was a centre of spying and intrigue for centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Tangier stands on the north-west coast Morocco, at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. This too is where Europe and Africa meet, where the Islamic and Christian worlds find the frontier and meeting point of tolerance.

These all combine to give Tangier its unique international flavour. And so, during a brief stay in Seville – before winter began to close in in Ireland – I took the short ferry journey between the ‘Pillars of Hercules,’ from Tarifa in the south of Spain to Tangier on the north African coast.

In the Caves of Hercules … Hercules was said to have slept here before completing his Twelve Labours (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

‘The Door of Africa’

Because of its location, Tangier is known to Moroccans as Boughaz or ‘the Bride of the North’ and ‘the Door of Africa.’ Tangier has been shaped across the centuries by many civilisations and cultures. It was fought over by Berbers, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines and Arabs, and in more recent centuries by the Portuguese, English, Arabs, French and Spanish.

This legacy can be heard in the Souks and the Medina and seen in the architecture and the streets of the city, which still has its French, Spanish, British and American quarters – the golf course and race track are in an area known as California.

Arabic is the language of the people, but everyone seems to understand French, and Spanish and English are widely understood too, from the cafés and restaurants to the market stalls and tourist shops, and even among the traders and children in the souks and on the streets.

Tangier has been fought over by competing civilisations for centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The city’s name is said to come from Tingis, the daughter of Atlas, the mythical supporter of the heavens. However, it is more likely the name derives from the Semitic word tigisis, meaning ‘harbour.’ The Greeks said Hercules slept on the coast south of Tangier, in the Caves of Hercules, before completing his twelve harbours.

But the beginnings of Tangier can be traced to the fifth century BC, when the Berbers made it a strategic town, followed by Phoenician colonists from Carthage, who made it a trading centre.

The commercial town of Tingis came under Roman rule in 146 BC and was a colony under Augustus. Originally, the city was part of the Roman province of Mauretania Caesariensis, spread across much of North Africa. Later the province was subdivided, with the area around present-day Tangier named Mauretania Tingitana. Under the Emperor Claudius, the colony was known as Colonia Julia from 38 BC.

In the early Christian period, this was the scene of the martyrdom on 30 October 298 of Saint Marcellus of Tangier, a centurion who refused to take part in sacrifices to the Roman gods on the birthday of the Emperor Maximian, and of Saint Cassian, who was beheaded a few weeks later on 3 December.

Tingis was still the main Roman city in Mauretania Tingitana in the fourth century, experiencing a new wave of political and commercial development. But the Vandals captured Tingis in the fifth century, and from here they swept across the Maghreb.

A century later, Tangier fell to the Byzantine Empire in 534-682 before coming under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate in 702-703.

Three Irish Governors

Tangier first developed its reputation as a city of spies and smugglers when it was an English colony (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

When the Portuguese began their colonial expansion across the globe in the early 15th century, they failed to capture Tangier in 1437, but finally took the city in 1471. Portuguese rule lasted until 1662, when Tangier was given to King Charles II of England as a wedding present when he married the Portuguese Infanta, Catherine of Braganza.

The English gave Tangier a garrison and a charter that made it equal to English towns. During this brief period, English Tangier had three Irish-born governors.

Colonel Sir John FitzGerald, who was lieutenant governor in 1664-1665, was descended from a branch of the FitzGerald family of Glin Castle, Co Limerick, who were Knights of Glin.

William O’Brien, 2nd Earl of Inchiquin, was Governor in 1675-1680, and commanded the Tangier garrison during the Great Siege in 1679-1680. He was succeeded by a third Irish governor, Thomas Butler (1634-1680), Earl of Ossory. He was born at Kilkenny Castle, the eldest son of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond. However, Lord Ossory died before he could move to Tangier. His son, James Butler, succeeded as the 2nd Duke of Ormond in 1688.

Tangier first developed its reputation as a city of spies and smugglers during this short period as an English colony. The English planned to improve the harbour so that Tangier could play the same role that Gibraltar in later British naval strategy.

Sultan Moulay Ismail ibn Sharif of Morocco failed to seize Tangier in 1679-1680. But the unwillingness of Parliament to continue funding the English presence and a crippling blockade by the Sultan’s Berber troops finally forced the English to withdraw. Before they left in 1684, they destroyed the town and its port facilities.

The old walled city is a complex labyrinth of narrow streets and colourful alleyways (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The city was partly rebuilt under Sultan Moulay Ismail. A century later, in 1777, Morocco was the first country to officially recognise the newly independent United States. But by then Tangier was in decline, and by 1810 it had a population of no more than 5,000. In 1821, Sultan Moulay Suliman gave the US the Legation Building in Tangier, the first foreign property owned by the US government. It is still standing today and is a popular tourist attraction.

Tangier is a melting pot of languages and cultures (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

But Tangier became a pawn in the hands of the European powers in the early 19th century. Britain blockaded the port in 1828 in retaliation for piracy; in 1844, it was bombarded by the French under François d’Orléans, Prince of Joinville; and Giuseppe Garibaldi lived in exile here in 1849-1850 after the fall of his revolutionary Roman Republic.

Later, Tangier gave its name to Tangerine oranges, first exported from Morocco through the port by Major Atway of Palatka, Florida, the first person to grow and cultivate the fruit as a distinct crop in the Americas.

Oranges were first exported from Tangier to Florida in the mid-19th century, giving Tangerines their name (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

International intrigue

By 1856, Tangier was the largest port in Morocco, and its location made it a centre for international intrigue from the late 19th century. By the opening of the 20th century, it had a population of about 40,000, including 20,000 Muslims, 10,000 Jews and 9,000 Europeans.

The city increasingly came under French influence. Morocco was partitioned between France and Spain in 1912, with Spain occupying the far north and far south, and France declaring a protectorate in the rest of the country. The last Sultan of independent Morocco, Molulay Abdelhafid, was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother, Moulay Yusef, and was sent into exile in Dar el Makhzen, a palace in the Kasbah in Tangier.

Inside a mosque in Tangier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

An international treaty signed in Paris in 1923 made Tangier an international zone administered jointly by France, Britain and Spain. Italy, Portugal and Belgium were added to the international administration in 1928, and they were joined by the Netherlands in 1929.

The international zone had an area of 373 sq km and by 1939 a population of about 60,000. Legally it not a part of Morocco, and Moroccans needed a passport to enter Tangier. But none of the international powers enforced a strict administration, and the port became attractive to spies and smugglers.

Spanish troops occupied Tangier on 14 June 1940, the day Paris fell to Nazi Germany. Despite calls by Spanish nationalists to annex ‘Tánger español,’ Franco claimed the occupation was a temporary wartime measure. When he abolished the city’s international status in November 1940, a diplomatic row erupted between Britain and Spain.

Eventually Spain guaranteed British rights and promised not to fortify Tangier, and the city became an international zone once again at the end of World War II in 1945.

Tourists clamber on camels at Achakkar beach, south of Tangier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The protecting powers met in Rabat in 1952 and agreed to abolish the zone’s international status. Tangier was integrated into the rest of Morocco when full sovereignty was restored in 1956.

With its reputation for refined nightspots and loose living, Tangier attracted European and American writers and artists like Henri Matisse and William Burroughs, as well as Timothy Leary, Yves Saint Laurent, and Paul Bowls and a later generation of ‘Beat’ writers, as well as the Rolling Stones.

Tangier continued to be a hotbed of spies through the Cold War and it became a popular location for spy films, from My Favourite Spy (1951) and Espionage in Tangier (1965) to The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), starring Matt Damon, and the Bond film Spectre (2015).

An illustration of tolerance

The Rue Es-Siaghinie in the centre of Tangier … the Rue Synagogue and the Spanish Mission Church are to the right (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

At the heart of Tangier is the Medina or old walled city, a complex labyrinth of narrow streets and colourful alleyways leading down to the port. The centre of life in the Medina is the Petit Socco, a square once the haunt of drug dealers and prostitutes. Today it is lined with hotels, cafés, restaurants and tourist shops.

Because of its Christian past, Tangier remains a titular see in the Roman Catholic Church. A Spanish mission founded in 1630 was entrusted to the Franciscan friars. The city also has an Anglican church, Saint Andrew’s.

Rue Synagogue is a colourful side street beside the Spanish Mission Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

After lunch in the Mamounia Palace, I went strolling through the old Medina and the Rue Es-Siaghinie, lined with cafés and bazaars, jewellers’ shops and an arts centre. I tried to find my way into the Spanish mission church, built in the 1880s. Instead, I ended up finding two synagogues on ‘Rue Sinaguogue,’ a colourful back street beside the church: the Rebbi Akiva Synagogue and the Moshe Nahon Synagogue.

The churches and synagogues of Tangier illustrate an openness and tolerance that many visitors do not expect in Islamic-majority and Arab-speaking countries in North Africa and the Middle East.

A colourful arch on Rue Synagogue, beside the Rebbi Akiva Synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Tourists are distracted by the snake charmers, the stalls in the soukh, the camel rides on the beach and the stories of the Caves of Hercules. But Tangier is also benefitting from rapid development and modernisation, with new tourism projects, a modern business district, a new airport and a new football stadium.

A snake charmer with his snakes in the Kasbah (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Tangier’s economy is also set to benefit from the new Tanger-Med port, a global logistics gateway on the Strait of Gibraltar connected to 174 ports worldwide, with handling capacities of 9 million containers.

The colonnade of a modern mosque near the new port in Tangier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This feature was first published in the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) and the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory) in December 2018

Tangier is at the meeting point of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, of Europe and Africa (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A day in the Ghetto in Venice, the first and oldest ghetto in Europe

Inside the Scuola Spagnola in Venice, founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on images for full-screen resolution)

Patrick Comerford

For generations of English-speaking people, our images of the Jewish community in Venice have been coloured indelibly by Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock and his daughter Jessica in The Merchant of Venice.

During my visit to Venice earlier this month, I spent the best part of the day in the Venetian Ghetto, which is the oldest and the original ghetto in Europe. It was a return visit to the ghetto, and I visited the Jewish Museum, a number of synagogues, shops, restaurants and memorials, and strolled through the squares and side streets, over the bridges and along the sides of the canals.

The English word ‘ghetto’ is derived from the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, which was set up by a decree of the Venetian government over 500 years ago, on 29 March 1516, when the Jews of Venice were compelled to live in a segregated area. In mediaeval times, this part of Cannaregio housed a getto or foundry, and from the 16th century this was the Jewish quarter of Venice, so that the word acquired a new meaning.

An 18th century ‘Megillath’ or Scroll of Esther, used in the Italian Synagogue at Purim and now in the Jewish Museum in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

But, while many people know that the ghetto of Venice is the first of its kind, few realise that the Jewish presence in Venice long predates the ghetto.

Jews were trading in Venice as early as the tenth century, and there is evidence that Jews had lived in the Giudecca quarter – formerly called the Spinalonga – in the 11th to 13th centuries. Oral tradition in the Venetian Jewish community holds that there were two synagogues in the Giudecca, although these were demolished as late as the 18th century, and a plaque with a Hebrew inscription was found in the Giudecca near the church of the Zitelle in the 19th century.

Despite common prejudice and anti-Semitism, the mediaeval authorities in Venice realised that Jews could bring invaluable commercial ties with the Near East and important revenue into the city state.

The Venetian Senate invited German Jewish moneylenders to move to the city in 1385. This was followed a year later by a grant of land on the Lido for a Jewish cemetery.

But, while Jews were allowed into the city, this was only for fixed times and they were obliged to wear a yellow circle sewn onto their coats.

Following the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, Iberian Jews began arriving in Venice in the decades immediately after. Among them were marranos or converted Jews who had secretly maintained their traditions, and these Spanish and Portuguese Jews were known as Levantini because many had made their journey through Constantinople, Thessaloniki and other parts of the Levant or Near East.

Increasing numbers of Jews arrived in Venice in the first decade of the 16th century, stimulating an increase in bigotry flamed by the some religious. The Ghetto was decreed in Venice in 1516, and the Papal State – not to be outdone – instituted another version of the ghetto in Rome in 1555.

The Ponte de Ghetto Vecchio leads into the Campo de Ghetto Novo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The ghetto in Venice is divided into three areas: the Ghetto Vecchio or Old Ghetto, the Ghetto Novo or New Ghetto, and the Ghetto Novissimo or ‘Newest Ghetto.’ Paradoxically, and to add to the confusion of visitors, the Ghetto Novo is the oldest Jewish ghetto area in Venice. The ‘old’ and ‘new’ adjectives have nothing to do with the historical dating of the areas but indicate the age of the former foundry or getto.

When the German-speaking Ashkenazim arrived in Venice from Central Europe, their guttural pronunciation changed the Venetian term from getto into ghetto, creating the word we still use today for places where minorities are marginalised.

The Scuola Grande Tedesca or German Grand Synagogue, founded in 1528 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Ghetto was connected to the rest Venice by two bridges that were only open in the day. With the decree in 1516, Jewish lenders, doctors and clothing merchants could take part in the commercial life of Venice by day, but at night and on Christian holidays they were locked into the gated island of the Ghetto Novo.

When Jewish families fleeing the Spanish Inquisition arrived in Venice in 1541, there was no place to build in the Ghetto except to build up. Around the Campo del Ghetto Novo, upper storeys housed new arrivals, synagogues and publishing houses.

The Scola Levantina … founded by Levantine Jews who brought different customs of worship and dress (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Levantine Jews who arrived by the mid-16th century brought different customs of worship and dress that contrasted with the more modest Ashkenazi communities. They were followed by Roman Jews in 1575 and Sephardic Jews in 1589.

Although the Ghetto was home to a large number of Jews, they never integrated to form a distinct, Venetian Jewish identity, and the names of the five synagogues reflected the linguistic and geographical origins of the community:

● the Scuola Grande Tedesca or German Grand Synagogue, founded in 1528;

● the Scuola Canton, built as a private synagogue for four Ashkenazic families of French origin who funded its construction in 1531;

● the Scola Levantina, founded in 1541 by the Levantine Sephardi communities;

● the simple, rooftop Scuola Italiana or Italian synagogue, built in 1575 by newly-arrived, destitute Italian Jews who had fled Spanish-occupied southern Italy;

● the Scuola Spagnola, founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews.

The Scuola Spagnola was founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

In addition, Venice also has a large population of Lubavitcher followers of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson of Brooklyn, who died in 1994. They run a kosher food shop, a restaurant and a yeshiva, and have their own Chabad synagogue.

In the heart of the Ghetto in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The Jewish community of Venice was intellectually and culturally distinguished for centuries. The leading figures include Elia Levita (grammarian), poetess Sara Copio Sullam, and the rabbis Leone da Modena and Simone Luzzato. Venetian Jews were allowed to study at the prestigious Università di Padova and Venice became a centre of Jewish scholarship and, with the arrival of Daniel Bomberg from Antwerp, the printing trade.

Meir Magino was a famous glassmaker from the ghetto, while Margherita Grassini Sarfatti was a noted journalist, critic, patroness of the avant-garde – and Mussolini’s mistress.

Setbacks were common too. The Counter-Reformation proved particularly difficult, and when Pope Julius II ordered the destruction of the Talmud in 1553, the Venetian authorities responded with a mass bonfire in Saint Mark’s Square. The bubonic plague struck Venice on several occasions, and a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery on the Lido is marked simply: ‘Ebrei 1631.’

The messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi in the mid-17th century divided the Jewish community of Venice and by 1737 the community was forced to file for bankruptcy.

In 1797 Napoleon’s army captured Venice, dissolved the Venetian republic, and ended the ghetto’s segregation from the city. The Jews of Venice experienced six months of freedom before the Austrian administration restricted them to the Ghetto once again.

When Venice was integrated into the modern Italian state in 1866, the Jews of Venice gained full emancipation, but even that was short-lived.

The fascist racial laws introduced in September 1938 deprived Jews of civil rights, and the Jewish community entered a difficult period under the leadership first of Aldo Finzi and then from June 1940 of Professor Giuseppe Jona.

In September 1943, the Nazis started a systematic hunt for Jews in Venice. On 17 September 1943, Giuseppe Jona died by suicide rather than hand over a list of Jewish community residents. In November 1943, Jews were declared ‘enemy aliens’ to be arrested and their property seized.

The Chief Rabbi of Venice, Adolfo Ottolenghi (1885-1944), chose to stay with his people during the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Some Jews from Venice escaped to neutral Switzerland or Allied-occupied southern Italy, but 200 or more Jews were rounded up between 5 December 1943 and late summer 1944, and were deported, in most cases, to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those arrested later in 1944 included 20 residents of a Jewish convalescence home, 29 patients from a Jewish hospital, and the Chief Rabbi of Venice, Adolfo Ottolenghi (1885-1944), who chose to stay with his community.

Most of those arrested that summer were detained in Risiera di San Sabba, a concentration camp near Trieste.

The Jewish population of Venice in 1938 had numbered 2,000; by the end of the war, their numbers were reduced to 1,500 or, according to some sources, 1,050. Only eight Jewish people from Venice survived the death camps.

The old people’s home in heart of the Ghetto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Today the Jewish Community in Venice numbers about 450. Few of these people actually live in the Ghetto, but many return to the Ghetto for religious services in the two synagogues that are still used – the other three synagogues are open for guided tours organised through the Jewish Community Museum.

But the Ghetto is now a lively and popular district of the city where the religious and administrative institutions of the Jewish Community alongside the synagogues. The community maintains the synagogues, as well as social facilities, a kindergarten, old people’s home, kosher guest house, kosher restaurant and a bakery. The Ghetto also has a yeshiva, and several Judaica shops.

The memorial sculptures by Arbit Blatas commemorate the victims of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Memorial sculptures by Arbit Blatas commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. These harrowing bas-reliefs line two walls in the Campo del Ghetto Novo, with the names and ages of the people murdered in the Holocaust. Close-by, Chief Rabbi Adolfo Ottolenghi is commemorated in a memorial tablet.

The Jewish Museum of Venice, in the Campo of the Ghetto Novo, between the two oldest synagogues, was founded in 1954. One area of is dedicated to the cycle of Jewish holidays and the liturgy. It displays books and manuscripts, precious objects and textiles from the 16th to the 19th century and objects of religious life. A second area tells the story of the Ghetto and the persecution of the Jews, from its origins to the concentration camps in World War II.

The Jewish Museum of Venice is open from 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., 1 October to 31 May, and until 7 p.m. from 1 June to 30 September. Hourly guided tours of the synagogues (in Italian and English) start at 10.30 (museum admission, €4; museum and synagogue tour, €10). The museum is closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays.

After visiting the Ghetto, we had a late lunch in Gam Gam, the Chabad-run restaurant in the Ghetto, with a table looking out onto the Cannaregio Canal and views of the Guglie Bridge near the Grand Canal.

Words from the Book of Job in the Jewish Museum … a chilling reminder of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Links:

The Jewish Community of Venice : http://www.jvenice.org/

The Jewish Ghetto Map: http://venice.jc-r.net/campi/ghetto.htm

The Jewish Museum of Venice: http://www.museoebraico.it/en/museum/

Kosher in Venice: http://www.jvenice.org/en/jewish-life/kosher-venice, a page with links to Ristorante Ghimel Garden, the Giardino dei Melograni guesthouse, and Panificio Volpe Giovanni, a bakery and grocery shop.

Bancorosso: http://www.bancorosso.org/, where the ‘Red Bench’ allows you to relive the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

Las Casas de la Judería, a Seville hotel that is worth visiting … just for itself

Las Casas de la Judería, a Seville hotel that is worth visiting … just for itself (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

There are some places I keep going back to because I am so comfortable there. There are some places I feel so comfortable in that you would have to peel me out of them if I spent too long there.

In some of those places I feel I am at home, even though I do not live there at present; in others there are happy memories of how I have been shaped in my values and my personality.

I find myself going back to these places time and again. And usually it is about the places themselves rather than where I am staying. Usually, the destination is the point, and the journey adds to the excitement.

Sometimes, there are hotels that are worth staying in just for themselves. Hotels can never be homes, and I would never fool myself into thinking that any hotel could be home.

But then I am reminded when I watch Fawlty Towers, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and similar series that there was a time when hotels were natural places for people to retire to.

There are hotels that I would return to time and again just because of their location. They include the Ferrycarrig at the mouth of the Slaney in Wexford, Pepi Boutique Hotel on Tsouderon street, Rethymnon, in Crete, the Hedgehog Vintage Inn in Lichfield, and the Varvaras Diamond Hotel in Platanes near Rethymnon.

But if they were not there, I would still keep returning to Lichfield, Wexford and Rethymnon.

However, last week I stayed in the most wonderful hotel in Seville.

Las Casas de la Judería is in the historical centre of Seville, beside the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca and across the street from a range of tapas bars, cafés and restaurant, and part of the city’s old Jewish Quarter, on the edge of the Barrio Santa Cruz.

Here it was a ten-minute walk from Alcazar, Seville Cathedral and the Giralda Tower and it is just another five minutes to the Torre del Oro, the University and the banks of the River Guadalquivir.

Inside, the hotel is paradise of its own making, another world away from the city. This is a collection of 27 different 15th century traditional houses. They appear to have been assembled randomly, but they have been restored to reflect the atmosphere of the surrounding neighbourhood.

There are baroque influences, and rustic charms in this self-contained barrio with a variety of buildings, courtyards, alleyways, overhanging balconies, gardens and terraces.

The 40 patios are typical Andalusian courtyards and ooze with vibrant colour, with hanging baskets, fountains, frescoes and classical features.

We moved through the hotel, from one courtyard to the next, one garden to the next, through a lair of labyrinthine tunnels, steps and arched passageways, often to the sound of water dripping from a tap or fountain that was heard but not seen.

There are surprises everywhere in these courtyard and tunnels. Fountains, statues and Roman amphoras decorate the winding passageways linking the rooms and shared open spaces.

A Roman tunnel connects the rooms with the breakfast room and spas. At times, we criss-crossed the narrow streets and alleyways of Seville itself, yet still found ourselves in the hotel.

The hotel has 178 rooms, individually designed and decorated, each with its own unique touch, filled with history and character, and facing into beautiful cool courtyards filled with plants.

Some of the rooms have names that are reminders of the people said to have lived in these houses down through the centuries: Duke of Bejar, Count of Villamanrique, Casa del Cura … one room is even named after Christopher Columbus, who is buried in Seville Cathedral.

Some of the names are a reminder that this was the heart of the Jewish Quarter before the Inquisition … Casa de Mose Bahari … or an intricate Star of David interlaced in the woodwork of a door.

The Palace of the Zúñigas once belonged to the Zuñiga family and is now the site of the hotel reception and the piano bar, which is named the Marquis of Villamanrique Saloon.

The Padilla family once owned the area that serves as the porter’s office, and they give their name to the Palace, Garden and Small Patio of the Padillas.

We were too late in the year to use the rooftop swimming pool, which is open from May to September, and has views cross the city.

There are so many cafés and tapas bars on the doorstep we never ate in the hotel. But on Friday evening, on our last night, we enjoyed a glass of wine and the live music in the piano-bar.

Of course, if this hotel was not there, I would still want to return to Seville. But if there was no Seville, and this hotel was in the middle of nowhere, I would still want to return to Las Casas de la Judería.

Photographs: Patrick Comerford, Seville, 2018; click on images for full-screen resolution