Author's Note: My title is adapted from Samuel Usque’s A Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (with translation, notes and introduction by Gershon I. Gelbert, Ph.D. Bloch Publishing Co. New York, 1964. Originally written in 1553.)
CONTENTS:
1. Uziel Abreu. Cordoba and سلانیك (Selânik) [Thessaloniki], 1492-1526. *
2. Malka Mitrani. Antep, 1881-82. **
3. Nissim Abulafia, Istanbul and Palestine, 1908-1915.
4. Yeshua, Istanbul, 1937
* My omission of fictional portraits between the eras of Abreu and Mitrani is explained by the existence of a detailed, real one. Marilyn Birnbaum’s The Long Journey of Gracia Mendes, (1510-69) describes the life of a Portuguese exile who prospered under the Ottomans. Birnbaum’s book is, in fact, a double-portrait, since it also tells the story of Mendes’ eminent husband, Joseph Nasi (1524-79). The author regards Mendes and Nasi as examplars of Usque’s theme of consolation.
** In 1921, the name “Antep” was changed to “Gaziantep,” to reflect the heroic role of the town during the Turkish War of Independence (1919-22), also known as the Greco-Turkish war. “Gazi” means “war veteran.”
* * *
1. Uziel Abreu. Cordoba and سلانیك (Selânik, or Thessaloniki], 1492-1526.
Chapter One.
My story follows the pattern of the biblical Daniel’s. Like him, God saved me from the lion’s den (Spain and Portugal), and placed my deliverance in unlikely hands (the Ottomans’). Like Daniel, too, I came to serve my masters very well, repaying their kindness ten-fold.
In the year 5252 [1492], under the aegis of the Spanish Inquisition, all Jews who were unwilling to convert to Christianity were either killed, forced to become Christians, or cast out of the kingdom of Castile. Six-hundred of the fleeing families then agreed to pay two cruzados per person to King Don Johao II, of Portugal, in return for which His Gracious (i.e. Usurious) Majesty offered them the choice of either sanctuary within his domains, or ships to take them elsewhere.
A single man, eighteen years of age, I was among those who chose the second option. I was forced to pay the ransom fee, myself, since my father, mother, and all of my other relations had either been consumed in the fires of the Inquisition, or had chosen to remain in Spain, as conversos [converts]. The reason I was unsure about their fate was the haste of my own departure.
I do not mean to cast aspersions upon those who took the easiest path, conversion, of the three offered by Queen Isabella, of Castile. Neither do I claim that my own choice was dictated by piety. On the contrary, as a young man, I had not been a particularly observant Jew, even by the loose standards of the Abreu family. I was just a stubborn young fellow who hated to be told what to do. To my mind, to have accepted enforced conversion would have been tantamount to voluntary gelding.
After my escape from Spain, a very good reason also kept me from accepting the option of remaining in Portugal. For no sooner had the non-conversos arrived in that land than a virulent pestilence struck. Since it carried off Christians and Jews, alike, and since the Jewish emigrants had presumably demonstrated their fidelity to G-d by choosing to flee Castile, the theological implications of this pestilence are difficult to fathom, at least by a simple man such as myself.
At any rate, those of us who were motivated to travel on did so as much from fear of further persecution, at the hands of cruel and inconstant Portuguese Christians, as from fear of infection by the pestilence. The destination we were offered was Turkey, ruled by Muslims, whom rumor said were somewhat more tolerant of Jews than were those whose own deity had commanded them to “love thy neighbor.”
Not that the King of Portugal’s grant of ships provided a guarantee of reaching safe harbor. For no sooner had the αρχάγγελο [Argonaut] sailed from Lisbon than the crew proceeded to strip, then rape, every female passenger, from very young girls to withered, toothless crones. When I ventured to protest, one audacious devil went so far as to order me, at cutlass-point, to lower my own britches. Had it not been for another crew member, who cried “Shame!” who can say what my fate might have been at the hands of that unnatural rascal? Would I have died defending my “honor”?
“Many thanks, friend,” I said to my defender. “May whichever deity you follow reward you for your virtuous deed!”
My rescuer, a handsome young bearded Greek, replied to my thanks with a wide grin. Then, to my great surprise, he said, “I follow only the sea, friend. There are those among my countrymen who might say they worship Poseidon, Aphrodite, and the rest, but I’m not among their number.”
“Then, which faith do you follow, sir?” I rejoined. But to my persistence he made no reply other than to laugh and clap me on the back. His kindness emboldened me to ask a further question. “Will we be carried to Turkey now, friend?” He shook his head, in the negative.
Four days and nights later, made desperate by hunger, thirst, and the continuing depredations of the crew, we landed on what idlers on the dock told us was a small port in the Wattasid Kingdom of Fez, on the northern coast of Africa. In the general scramble to leave the αρχάγγελο, our ship of horrors, I happened to look back, and caught sight of my rescuer, who leaned against a bulkhead, wearing a look of regret. When he saw me looking at him, he beckoned to me, with a finger, to return. When I was back on the deck, he commanded, “Go below, friend. Our next stop, in fourteen more days, will be Turkey. Be quick!”
“But why have we stopped here,” I asked, “when the Portuguese king promised us passage to Turkey?”
“Yes, you were promised, and the captain was paid for, your passage to Turkey.”
“Then, why…”
“Greed, my friend, greed. Africa is ten fewer days than Turkey from Lisbon, our port of embarkation. Now, without having to feed his passengers any longer, the captain will proceed to Thessaloniki, where the ship will take on a cargo of spices and other valuable trade items, which will fetch him and the owners of this vessel a rich profit, upon our return to Europe.”
With profuse thanks, I proceeded below decks, where my benefactor hid me in a storage space, as the boat re-embarked. There, for the next fourteen days, I was brought food and drink by this good man, whose name I learned was Demopoulos, and who haled from the town of Pylos, in the Peloponnese. To this day, I consider myself a grecophile, in large part because of my enduring debt to Demopoulos, but equally because of the warm welcome I received in the Turkish town of سلانیك (Selânik) [Thessaloniki], where many Greeks lived.
Before I proceed with the account of my arrival in Selânik, and my subsequent good fortune, let me linger briefly over the continuing misfortunes, and subsequent rescue, of my erstwhile fellow passengers. Cast upon the savage north African shore, they continued to undergo all manner of abuse, now at the hands of cruel Bedouin captors. The refugees were reduced to beggary and starvation, from which, as I later heard, some even sought escape by digging their own graves and leaping into them. Driven into Fez, the rest were sold in the slave markets. But, after that, the fortunes of at least some of them turned. For their co-religionists in the Kingdom of Fez not only bought the freedom of many of the captives, but also relieved them from their penury.
Of course, when the fate of those who had left Portugal was learned by their co-religionists, most of the latter chose to remain in the harsh bosom of Christianity, rather than to suffer like those who had departed. However, the decision of some Jews to remain in the supposed sanctuary of Portugal quickly proved ill-advised. For, in the very next year, 5253, King Don Johao II betrayed these innocents. Claiming he had set the total number of Jewish refugees at 600 families, he now sold “the superfluity” into slavery. He ignored, of course, the pleas of these unfortunates that they be allowed to remain free if they paid him the same amount he had initially exacted from the 600 departed families, two cruzados per person. But, no, the monarch insisted on selling them.
As for the victims’ children, when their parents were sold, they (the children) were banished to the pestilential Portuguese island of Sao Tome’, which had been, until then, a prison to which common criminals were consigned. Those among the banished children who did not starve to death, or succumb to one of the numerous endemic diseases of that horrid place, were consumed by the alligators, or by the serpents, that ruled the island domain.
What was the king’s motivation for selling the parents, as slaves, and for consigning the children to death? To quote my friend and rescuer, Demopoulos, the motive was the same as that of Demopoulos’ own captain: greed. If there is a single sin from which all others proceed, I would say it is that one. For, even the root sin in the Christian catalogue, pride, can be regarded as a species of greed. But what does Uziel Abreu, a simple man, know of such deep matters?
10/01/2024
09:53:25 AM