Eps 1. Doña Gracia, Part 1: Her Rise to Glory

Join us [music] as we listen closely to voices that still echo from our nation's past. Distant, [music] even obscure, but all the more exciting for that mystery. It's where [music] fascinating women discuss fascinating women's histories. I'm Saporo Weineberg, and this is Veiled Reference. Let's take a deep dive into pockets [music] of history preserved in our Torah sources. With each episode, we'll travel back in time to discover [music] and recover stories of women who might have otherwise been lost to us. Piecing together [music] the tales of these women of old can help us to understand periods of time that we've only hazily [music] conceived of before. It's time to let these women's voices rise to the surface [music] through the sources left to us and to learn about the lives they led and maybe draw inspiration [music] and strength to empower each one of us on our own journeys. And so it's absolutely appropriate to begin our quest with a remarkable woman. Dona Gracia Mendesi is nothing short of exceptional. Despite being born into a tumultuous time in Jewish history, she ascended to tremendous power. I think it's fair to say she was the most effective woman, the woman who intervened, supported, and accomplished the most for the Jewish people since biblical times. We learn about her through our rabbitic sources. She appears in the writings of the Maharashtam, the Maharib bin, and others. And historians draw upon these sources to document her unusual life as she ascended to the position of the most wealthy and influential woman in the free world at the time. Joining me today, I have the distinct pleasure and honor of welcoming an exceptional woman in her own right, Miriam Wegus. Without irony, I say Miriam's the woman most likely to be a superhero of all the women that I know. alongside her life as a master educator of history. She's such an inspirational mother, daughter, grandmother, and friend. I'm so proud and excited to introduce you, Miriam. Thank you so much, Sipora. It's a pleasure to be here. I think it's only fair for our listeners to know something about you, Sepora, since you are host of this podcast and you're too modest to talk about yourself. So I well I'd like to just tell listeners that several years ago I got a phone call from my son who lives in North Woodmir and his sh a lovely congregation called Leavos was looking for a rough and after many testings of many different rabbitic candidates my son calls me saysma we have an amazing new rv but I got to tell you the rabbitson you're going to love I think she's an academic Jewish history so sure enough next time we went to North I went to Shaw and I met the incredible Sapora Weinberg who is a descendant of a very illustrious acidic dynasty who is the wife of an incredibly brilliant acidic rebby in Woodmir Long Island and she is herself a scholar in her own right. She is a graduate student in Jewish history. She is currently the recipient of a fellowship at Yeo. She is also a current fellow at the center for Jewish history. She is also for readers of the Mishbaka the author of that incredibly moving and powerful article that appeared last summer on the last nil of tells which was so beautiful I think I cried through the whole thing and I got so many phone calls do you know the Sapora Wineber she's incredible she's also an expert on the famous composer Yonom and she's published and written about him and it is certainly such a pleasure to be here with you Tapora and I am so lucky to count you as a friend and I have to say that I love going to Shul I don't always go to Shoul and Yansf but now I do when I'm in Woodmir with my kids, I go to Shul and we talk shop. So, it's so lovely to be talking shop in a more formal setting. And thank you so much to Kora. I have to recover from that a little bit. But that was so kind and way way generous of you. Thank you so much, Mariam, for those beautiful words. It's true that we are opening this forum, opening this podcast to highlight amazing women. And it's so fitting that we begin with you. So, now tell us a little bit about yourself and your life as an educator and your particular area of expertise and specialty. Okay. So, I am currently the chair of Jewish history at the Joel Braverman Yeshiva High School, yeshiva of Blackbush High School in Brooklyn, New York. Prior to that, I took European history at Turo College as well as Jewish history at several high schools around the tri-state area. Despite the fact that I'm Ashkanaz, or maybe because I'm Ashkanaz and the grass is always greener on the other side of the ethnic divide, I've always had a fascination for sphartic history. It's one of the subjects I teach at Flatapush, and Flatbush, some listeners might know, is primarily sphartic these days. At a certain point, I was so engrossed with the teaching of Spartic history and my students just assumed that I was sphartic and I started to believe that I must have some sphartic ancestry because there's something about the culture, the history, the music, the food that I absolutely adore. On a topical note, my own kids got me the um ancestry.com test kit and I was so convinced that I would find that I was at least 5% or 10% sphartic. Um, to my horror and dismay, it turns out that I was 100% Ashkanaz, but nevertheless, the fascination with Spartic history continues. I at this point consider myself after 25 years at Bapush a sort of honorary member of the Sphartic community. But in any case, I love that we're starting off with the story of Donna Gracia. And Donna Gracia's story is so incredible for many reasons, but it's also part of a larger story that's been happening in the study of Jewish history. And that is, you know, we always say that history is written by the winners. And the truth is that in the modern period, we Ashkanazim were the dominant group. We had the numbers. We had the influence. And so it's no surprise that when you look at books that were written about Jewish history, Safarad tended to be downplayed. And if you highlighted them at all, it was only about the medieval period when you had the golden age. And what's been happening the last 20, 30 years is that you've had a renaissance of Sphartic studies. The Sphartic community is growing, coming into its own. And the Dona Gracia story is really part of this larger rediscovery of the Spartic history and heritage. And it's just very exciting to be part of that story. Just to give you an example what we mean for years I taught a college level survey of modern Jewish history and Sphartic history was ignored. Well about 10 years ago we added a unit on sphartic history and today I would say that sphartic history is one of the most exciting fields of Jewish historioggraphy. So this is really part of this project to reclaim sphartic history and it's so wonderful what you're talking about donia in particular. I love that we are doing a reclamation of sphartic Jewish history alongside a reclamation of women's history because that too similarly just as the sphartic Jews have been marginalized women's studies have been marginalized and to take women front and center which is what we'll be doing in this podcast and to be bringing their voices back to life fuses so beautifully with what you were talking about in terms of recentralizing sphartic jewelry and I think one of the reasons Graciia is amazing to begin with in terms of sphartic jewelry is because When we think about the Inquisition, the skeleton, the barebones sketch is what most easily comes to mind. Jews were kicked out of Spain in 1492 if they hadn't converted to Christianity. But the lead to that, as you're suggesting about Sphartic Jewish history, in fact, was far more complex. The center of Jewish life in the medieval period, the hub of the Jews, was Muslim Spain. And the history of alandaloo, Jews under Muslim rule, was a time of flowering and growth, a flourishing forth that yielded advancements and innovations in Torah, in Jewish philosophy, Pute, dict grammar, in lushian cesh poetry. And that's why it was called the golden age of Jewish Spain. But then with the dissolution of the caliphate and the reconista, Christianity comes to Spain. And that's where our story begins. I love how you're pointing out that 1492 is just really the end of the story that begins earlier. And it's fascinating when I ask my students, what's the number one date you need to know in spartic history? It was 1492. But then we learned that 1492 really began in 1391. Ever since the Christians had lost Spain to the Muslims in 7-Eleven, they were undertaking this 700 plus year long crusade to win back Spain. And by 1391, much of Spain was under the control of Christians. And with that comes a growing anti-semitism. And in 1391, a terrible event takes place. You have programs, riots against the Jews that break out in civil and then spread to nearby towns and villages. So 1391 marks the beginning of severe persecution of Jews in Spain. And we need to understand that church law says that any Jew who's converted by force, even by force, is now Christian forever. And it doesn't matter if they want to revert back to their Judaism, they can. The problem is that in 1391, thousands of Jews were forcibly converted. Many of them have no intention of living as Christians. So for the next 100 years, they and their descendants will be living as secret Jews. The terms we use are interesting. Many listeners might know the termos, which is a problematic term. It might mean, it's not clear in the sources. It might mean swine or pig. We also have the term anusim, those who were forced. We have the neutral term new Christians. is we have the term conversos which is the term that we'll use for the rest of this podcast the conversals those who are converted and the question is what will the church do with these conversos who they suspect of keeping Judaism secretly and in doing so you are now according to church law a heretic but this scenario is crazy you are going to have for a century Jews living side by side those Jews who were never converted living side by side with friends relatives neighbors who had been converted many of whom would like to hang on to their Judaism. And who was helping them retain their Jewish ties? The Jews who had never been converted. And this is the single most important reason why the Jews, you mentioned 1492 as the pivotal year in Spartic history. Why were Jews given this terrible choice of expulsion or conversion? Well, the expulsion decree, the Alhhamra decree spells it out. Burden and Isabella were not just garden variety anti-semites who wanted to get rid of the Jews in order to create one fully Catholic kingdom. But as Ferdinand and Isabella wrote in their expulsion decree, we're getting rid of the Jews because those Jews who are both Jews, never converted are helping the converso stay connected to Judaism. And that was the entire really the reason given for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. And that means that the Jews now who are fully Jewish and were never converted now have a choice. Do they stay and convert or do they leave and remain Jewish? That's a tremendously helpful insight because we tend to think when we think about that period of time that every Jew converted. And I think that's a point we have to underscore. We think of people living in the closet. Everyone's living as secret Jews. But in fact, that wasn't the case. If you didn't attest to Christian faith at the time, if you were not baptized, you were able to practice as a Jew until that time came that it became forbidden, which is what Ferdinand and Isabella facilitated. I wouldn't even say facilitated, I would say enforced, right? They demanded. Now, this definitely complicates the picture and expresses the tragedy of choice that Jews faced at the time. Choice in air quotes. We've all heard the stories of those who ran away and those women who stayed and lit candles in a pot on Friday nights, right? How many camp canadas in the nine days recalled that secrecy? All the songs we used to sing about keeping your Jewishness secret and quiet and the sadness of not being able to show evidence of Yiddish kite within your own home. But there have been very exciting historioggraphical interventions of late about this. Spencio Netanyahu BB Netanyahu's father who spoke about how deeply the racial implications of this kind of anti-semitism anti-Judaism and specifically the idea of purity of blood which was the initial law that was enacted called limpeda dangre about the suspicion of impure blood being a reason to marginalize Jewish people being a precursor to the Nermberg laws. So that's something that we can really trace back to the 1492 Alhhamra decrees and understand where these are actually coming from. What was the motivation behind these racialized laws against the Jewish people that supposedly were about Christian faith but perhaps as Nataniel suggests were about something much deeper. Right. The big question in as you mentioned the myth that all moranos since 1391 and then again up to 1492 there's this sort of mythology that they're all secret Jews. What Natano did very controversially in his book the origins of the Inquisition is that he completely rejected this theory and he said in fact most of the conversos would have been totally happy to assimilate and move up the ranks in Christian society and that we tend to exaggerate just how closely connected these conversos were certainly after one or two generations when it's hard to stay connected to Judaism you were exaggerating the extent to which they were connected to Jewish life and law and ritual and that many of them had the church left them alone would have easily assimilated into Christian society. And what he says is controversially is that because you will have this intense hatred of the Jewish people and also economic jealousy because let's not forget and this is so important our discussion of Don Gracia. If you're a converso, you now have business opportunities, social opportunities, you can become very wealthy and very powerful as a converso. You're now a new Christian. And so coupled with this animosity towards Jews that has, as you say, a racial component plus economic jealousy, the church does something that is astonishing. They have won the battle for the first time in Jewish history. What has Christianity always wanted? To convert Jews. We have never converted in large numbers until 1391 and then again in 1492. Now the church comes along and says, "We don't trust you. In fact, they're going to create an organization called the Inquisition, which is a religious court trial. We're going to see if we suspect you of secret Judaizing tendencies, we're going to arrest you, tort you, and ultimately perhaps burn you at the stake. And what the church is saying is, we don't care if you're a Christian and you're professing the Christian faith. We don't trust you. And Nathaniel is suggesting that a lot of these accusations were false. And what the church is doing now is revealing its racial animous and hostility of Jews. And Netanyahu, the historian, discolors his whole view of the era. And he says exactly that this is racial anti-semitism. You mentioned the Nermberg laws the desra the laws that the inquisition is going to bring or the laws that the government is going to bring which say just to clarify for our listeners these are blood purity laws that say if a hundred years after a Jew converted his descendants who are Christians apply for a job in the bureaucracy. Guess what? They're not going to get it cuz we're going to open up these books of records that were kept. Blood purity laws. Your great great great great-grandfather was a Jew, a convert. and therefore you can't get this job. What does this tell you? Natano clarifies. He says this means that you had this bitter deep racial hatred that cannot simply be explained by Christian anti-semitism. And this is astonishing because if Natano is right, he is suggesting that the presence of racial anti-semitism goes way back and he sees this by the way extending past the inquisition to earlier eras. It's the racial anti-sem that exists throughout history. And by the way, you mentioned he's BB Netanyahu's father. This is astonishing. There have been historians and scholars who say that BB Netanyahu's right-wing hawkish views and everything from Iran to Israel security stems from his father's perception of history as an us against them. And there's this animist and hatred built in that we need to acknowledge and we can't be optimistic, so to speak, about relationship between non-Jews and Jews. We need to determine there's this hatred out there and deal with it in a strong and firm manner. Well, what it particularly does is upends the notion that Christian notion that once we do convert, Jews would be fully accepted no matter what. If generations later the limpa laws come back to want you and you can never eradicate that drop of Jewish blood, what's to be said of Christian doctrine? So this is a very unusual and interesting take on what it actually means to be a converso in Christian Spain, to be a new Christian if you can never really eradicate your former identity. >> There's also the echoes of that in that city in Spain that we discussed. The evidence of this type of Jew hatred was recently brought to light in a news feature when we learned that in 2015 a town that was originally named for killing Jews was in fact called Castrio Mata Hudios Jewiller camp and that was as late as 1627. There were records of this town in Spain being called by this name. In fact, by that point there should have been no open Jews in Spain, right? It was 1627. And yet this city, this this little town had this name called Jew Killer Camp. And it retained that name until as late as 2015. So the Jew hatred was alive and well for many, many years. And it didn't go away just because Jews had Christianized. And I think it's also fascinating to mention here that the places that had forcibly eradicated the Jews, very interesting that they no longer bear a Jewish presence at all. Miriam's about to embark on her yearly destination, her yearly trip to Spain, her heritage trip. And we had discussed that there are absolutely no vestigages of Jewish life that are still vibrant today in Spain. So I think that that's something that has a parallel in Poland. Perhaps the lands that expelled their Jews with such brutality no longer merit a Jewish presence. And we shouldn't take for granted that the places in the gulos in the exile that do have Jews have a certain and a special or a certain special charm to them that Hashem allows Jewish life to thrive and to survive and and to flourish in places like the United States because that's not the case for every place in Europe. By I think by logic we should imagine that by now Spain should be repopulated with Jewish people or Poland should be repopulated with a real Jewish presence. And yet that hasn't happened. That's a fascinating observation. On that note, in a very sad and tragic way, you say that there is no living presence really of Jewish life. There is, you know, small communities here and there, but you're right, nothing that ever matched the flourishing of Jewish life before the expulsion. But there is, and this is so sad and tragic, there is a DNA study that tells you about a Jewish presence much muted in Spain. And this brings us back to our discussion of the conversion of Jews. And this subject is also rather controversial. When the Jews were given a choice to convert or leave, we now know the number suggests that at least half and possibly more than half of the Jews of Spain converted, which is really a shocking statistic. And the question is why? We're not talking about community that wasn't religious. We're not talking about a community. We're talking about Jews who were observant Jews. Why is it? That could be a subject of a whole other podcast. There are many reasons given. But what we do know today is that DNA studies were done that show that one out of every five Spanish men today in Spain carry genetic markers of Jewish ancestors which means that the number of Jews who convert and stay behind ultimately assimilated to Spanish society is very high. And I think that's one of the tragic what was that statistic again? >> One out of five 20% of all Spanish men have Jewish DNA. What does that tell you? There's an ancestor way back when who was one of the converses, one of the converts to Christianity. And of course, by now they're not Jewish, but their DNA bears traces of Jewish history. And if you think about the numbers and that 20% and you think about if they had remained Jewish, what the numbers of Jews in the world would look like, it's quite astonishing. >> It's mind-blowing. >> It's mind-blowing. It's so sad. It's so upsetting. And I wonder about, again, I'm drawing the parallel to modern day Poland, but about all the Jews who come out of the woodwork who their DNA is not sublimated by non-Jewish blood. They're actually Jewish, but they never get to learn about it because their parents want to hide their Jewish ancestry from them growing up in the wake of the Holocaust, right? >> And so many of them don't ever learn about it. And so, but this is so many years later and there's still traces of Jewish presence that is not at all Jewish because they don't even, you know, kind of they don't live as Jews and they don't know about it. It's so tragic to to think that way. But our story takes us to a time when Jewish Spain [music] and Jewish Portugal was a vibrant living thing. The story of the Jews of Portugal is actually fascinating because in 1492 those Jews who did not want to convert and left and we would include Dona Gracia's family among those families. Most of them went to the country that offered them refuge if they could afford to pay a certain amount in taxes. Now we Portugal. Portugal is the closest country. Similar culture, similar language. And Donagassi's family ends up in Portugal. And things seem for a few years to be okay until we get to the year 1497 when the king, we have a shid issue here because King Manuel of Portugal comes to the throne in 1495. He after a brief period of persecution, the Jews of Portugal restores their freedom. He appreciates, this is so important for our entire discussion, the economic advantages that Jews bring to the country. But then he wants to get married and he wants to get married to the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. And the problem is they're so excited about this shid because we can unite Portugal and Spain. But there's a problem and they send him a message. You have Jews in your kingdom. We got rid of ours. How can you be a good Catholic monarch and be married to our daughter with Jews in your kingdom? And now Emanuel's faced with a problem. He likes the Jews. He likes their money, their expertise, their advice. How can he keep them and yet make his prospective in-laws happy? This tells us so much about political intrigue and how marriages are often tied to the fates of nations. Yeah. >> The fate of nations are tied up in the marriages of the aristocracy and how a family's fortune and a family's marriage and wedding arrangement can actually affect the future of the Jews. And it also tells us how the Inquisition was different from country to country. And not every country was affected in the same way or at the same time. And the Portuguese experience differed from the Spanish experience in this way. Right? So Manuel gives the Jews the same choice that they were offered in Spain. And in 1497, the Jews are given a date at which they can either appear at the port of Lisbon with their bags packed and leave or remain. And we have to remember something. This is important. The Jews in Portugal, those Jews who had left Spain because they wanted to remain Jewish. None of them want to accept the offer to convert and stay. So all of them essentially pack their bags and get ready to leave. But instead of allowing the ships to take them out of the harbor, there are no ships. Instead, all the Jews are forcibly baptized right then and there. And that means that you now have an entire community of convers here. We're not questioning the Jewishness or the loyalty to Judaism because these are the Jews who were loyal to Judaism and who had left Spain originally to stay Jewish. So you now have thousands of Portuguese Jews living as convers. We can point to the fact that this was such a tragic turn of events because this was not a voluntary conversion. This was a bait and switch of the highest order where all these Portuguese Jews are suddenly tragically baptized against their will. And we can finally think about our heroine dona gracia Luna Menddees Nasi. She was a woman born into a family of proud Jews who were forced to flee during this upheaval from Spain to Portugal. And this woman of Luna of light is born in Anusa. She's born into this family of secret Jews. The wealth of her family, which has been debated in historical sources, is less apparent than the wealth of her rich uncle, who then becomes her husband, Francisco Menddees, also known as Sema Benovveniste. He's a religious man, much more than Gracia, who was probably apprised of her Jewish identity only at age 12 like other secret Jews. But Francisco was rabbi of the Anusim. And when she marries him, they in fact have two wedding ceremonies. One recognized as Catholic, Portuguese by the officials and the other one in a private most probably in her own home. TO you mentioned something fascinating which is that Dona Gracia married her uncle which again for the modern listener might sound very bizarre or strange but please note that in the medieval period well into the modern period wealthy families especially converso families wanted to retain their wealth are suspicious of outsiders and remaining endogamous and marrying within the family is a way to preserve your wealth. It's a way to make sure that outsiders are not coming in and challenging your secret Jewish status. And so this was very very common and not unusual at all. You married cousins, you married uncles, very common practices amongst converso families as well as marrying in terms of fusing wealth of families because I think an underlying theme throughout today's podcast episode is shidim. We spoke about shidim at large in the aristocracy but now in the converso aristocracy as well. We're talking about a shed made according to wealth and lineage. And in fact, in that sense, Gracia marries up because she marries this very religious man who's also a very wealthy man. So, interestingly mentioned, her family will once again marry into this family, which complicates things even more. But commercially, Portugal was the most important gateway to Europe because all of the exotic merchandise, black pepper, which was called black gold, right, and other spices, tobacco, wood, metals, precious stones, they all arrived in Lisbon. And all the trade that benefited the Portuguese crown was managed from start to finish by the Menddees brothers. This landed for approximately 30 years. This is now Gracia's legacy. This is now Gracia's money, right? because Zen her husband dies and this is just after such a short period of marriage and they have a baby they have Raina this one little girl and then he leaves half of his wealth to Donogia and in very interesting circumstances which we'll discuss shortly according to Catholic law a widow inherits half of his money and he has a will as well in which he names Gracia as executia then moves to Antworp to Flanders as it was called and together with her brother-in-law Diego Menddees and together they grow their commercial interests. Then the next happens, Diego marries Gracia's sister, Brianda. And then Diego passes away after only four years of marriage and their little daughter also that is interestingly called after her aunt. Um she's called Gracia. Just to confuse our listeners exactly just a little bit. So we gave her a nickname, right? We didn't give it to her. They give her a nickname perhaps for that reason. Lachica. Lacha. Exactly. The little girl. And he too leaves half of his wealth not to his wife but to his sister Alo Gracia naming her the execut. And he appoints her as manager of all of the Benovisti family's wealth and property. Now, this is something that's well documented in their rabbitical sources from the time and will really unfold not during their life in Antour, but much later during their time when they settle in Constantinople where it's brought down in the Jewish sources. It would be interesting to hear about the role of women during this period of time, what their economic reach could be and how they could be players inside and outside their home at this period of history. So, I think it's important to note that Donna Gracia was only 25 years old when her husband died. And it's incredible that her husband recognized her business expertise, if you will, or potential business expertise by placing her as an inheritor to his wealth. She also points out just how wealthy they were. You mentioned that they basically controlled much of the trade that came into Lisbon. Francisco and his brothers Yoga were so wealthy that they created the second wealthiest or largest bank in all of Europe during their lifetime. And this is the inheritance of Donna Gracia. She's 25 years old. At 25 years old, they barely know how to balance a checkbook. And here she is running this multinational. And I think it is important to note and I think for our listeners especially who are, you know, interested in this question of what women bid. And the answer is that throughout Jewish history and certainly throughout the medieval period, we see women engage in all kinds of business activities. Nobody reaches the level that Donna Gracia reaches this mogul, >> right? But certainly you have women who are money lenders. You have women who are traders. You have women buying and selling all kinds of things. You have women in the Muslim world who are acting as agents for Muslim women who are not allowed to publicly buy or sell things. You have women in the Italian Renaissance who are making buttons and selling silk and are money lenders and traders and crafts women and doing all sorts of things. So, it's interesting that women are not limited and haka doesn't limit or relegate women to a strictly domestic role. And throughout Jewish history, you know, the song as that we sing every week about women bringing in merchandise for the ships, that's not just a metaphor. It's actually a reality. Women throughout Jewish history and certainly in the early Renaissance period in Italy especially, you have women engaged in all sorts of activities. Donia, I think is distinguished by the scale of her activities, but not by the fact that she is a business woman. Since we mentioned Italy, it's fascinating that in Italy, Renaissance Italy, there were even examples of Jewish women who I don't know what the feminine version of this, they were moels, mohalot, would it be? Yes. So you have women doing all sorts of interesting things and their activities are not limited in any real sense and they do contribute. There are many women who contributed to the economic you know health of their families and whose contributions were crucial to keeping the family afloat and particular to the Italian Renaissance which I didn't even realize they would mention today. But there are also mentions in rabbitical sources of women learning Torah and illusions to the formal learning of women who sought to learn and to transmit Torah learning. We have that in the writings of Ragish Arvalti in Mayan Ganim, a poem really written about a woman who is asking to learn Torah. So all across the board we have women doing fascinating things. All across the board we have women engaged in what we might consider today to be surprising endeavors. In the sources that speak about Donog Gracia, we don't have awe or surprise at her reach. Yes. And that's I think also very fascinating that no one is saying we've never had a woman like this. And definitely she had to have been one of the most influential women of all time as we mentioned. But the fact that she's in business and running so much of this empire and being empowered to do so by the men in her life, first her husband and then her brother-in-law, points, in fact to the nonsurprising nature of women's power and reach at the time. And I would add to that that the rabbis at the time acknowledged that and gave her tremendous respect and honor and all their correspondence with her. And there was never a sense as you put like oh women. No. And she's mentioned by name and with honorifics. great adulation as will for by so many of the rabbanim whose yeshivos she supported whose Toras she printed as we'll speak about later in the Ferrara Bible. So she definitely used her wealth for the right reasons in terms of Torah learning and as we'll also see in terms of the bifthat endeavors, the support system that she created, the the pigeon that she did, the the smuggling of people from dangerous positions, whether it's inside Christian uh dominated areas who wanted to escape to other places. This was a woman who was at the forefront of all of this change while maintaining a full full schedule of as you called her international mogul status. T you mentioned that the first stop once it became too dangerous to live in Portugal. We should mention that the Inquisition did come to Portugal in the 16th century and so the Jews of Portugal now began to escape in increasingly large numbers. You could not stay any longer in Portugal and hope to maintain your status as a secret Jew now that the Inquisition on your tail. So they're going to move to Flanders and spend time in Antworp. But there's a question that we might have which is since Donna Gracia is going to Antworp which is ruled by the Catholics it's a Catholic kingdom why is she going from the frying pan into the fire and the answer is that as a major businesswoman Antworp Flanders was the commercial center for Europe at the time and even though it was still dangerous um it's important to note that they use bribes to stay out of trouble from the Inquisition she is amazing because she begins to use her resources while Living in a Catholic country, she designed an entire underground network that helped hundreds of secret Jews, cryptojsws flee, Spain, and Portugal. She had ships, donkeys, horses, taking them all across Europe by ship to safe harbors to places in the Ottoman Empire. She even has refugees end up in Israel. She's going to support that. Refugees end up in Salonica. And she not only ceased to it that the Jewish refugees were able to escape Portugal alive and reach the destination safely, she also prevent them from losing all their belongings. >> Yes, you know that the Inquisition once you were found guilty of Judaizing, there's a financial incentive to find you guilty because then the state and the church can confiscate your wealth. So what did Donna Gracia do? She had a company that was set up to buy and sell the properties of these convers before they could be confiscated by the Inquisition. And so the money from these proceedings were sent directly to the properties owner's hands through the Mendes Bank. She cashes them out. She thinks about cashing them out and making sure they maintain their financial viability. And at the same time, she's also dealing with King Henry II of England, with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of France, and even with the popes. She's actually dealing with the enemy themselves and on, you know, million-doll deals here, loans. And this also presupposes she must have known so many languages. She must have had amazing communication skills in order to be in this position as well. That's an interesting comment. Conversers were so valuable to the monarchs of Europe precisely because they're men of the world and in this case women of the world who are familiar with the languages of Europe. They speak Castellian. They speak Spanish. They speak Portuguese. They can easily converse. They also you have to remember if you're a converso you don't look or appear Jewish. You're dressed in the garb of the Christians, right? You can easily pass so to speak. And so it very often it's in the interest of even popes who you would think would come down hard against the conversos to ignore what might be secret Jewish leanings or beliefs because they're so valuable to your economies. In fact, you're crucial that the conversos were crucial to the economies of Europe. So not only because of their cosmopolitan qualities but also because of their networks and wealth and reach. International connections. Absolutely. A Jew in Portugal could have a relative in the Ottoman Empire could have traders in the New World and all of them are connected by this Jewish three degrees of separation or one degree of separation. Interesting how that remains a thread throughout the generations with the Rothschilds, right? Then later on with more modern Jewish families that we think about that that networking that even when Jews are not related but the lingua franco between Jews, we see that later in Aleppo and in the traders who passed through the Franco, right, who passed through Asteria that the international trade network between Jews is a solid bond that is never doubted and never contested. There's this namanus between Jewish people that is really has worked in our favor for so so many generations. Meanwhile, Gracia leaves Antworp to go to Venice because of a different kind of of crisis. Her daughter Raina catches the eye of the Christian aristocracy and she is sought after. And this is threatening to Gracia because for all the reasons we mentioned, she's closely into the Christian aristocracy and probably linked in business and in all kinds of connections and she doesn't feel she has the wherewithal to refuse this. So she picks up and leaves and she actually goes to Venice to Italy. Just want to add that if in fact her daughter were to marry a old Christian, her wealth would then be transferred to her husband. So there's yet another danger here that if God forbid her daughter were to marry an old Christian, the wealth that she is an inheritor to would disappear and would then be taken over by her Christian husband. It's reported, I don't know if this is documented, but it's been reported that when one of the emperors of Europe, maybe it was Charles V, had sought her daughter Anna, later known as Rea's hand for one of his children perhaps. Donna Gracia replied with, "I would rather see her drowned than married to a Christian." And that tells you something about Donagia's loyalty to Judaism. And certainly there was a real danger here of not only losing her fortune but losing her daughter to the Christian world. And so yes, she had to pick up and go to Venice in the interest of retaining her Jewish identity. Apparently even all of her power and her wealth couldn't protect her and she still felt vulnerable enough. This woman, this impermeable woman, right, impenetrable, she still felt that she had to pick up and leave. Which does tell you a lot about even within all this power, ultimately as a Jew, she's powerless. She can't stay there. She has to go. >> Right. >> In Venice as well, she does not revert to an open Jewish lifestyle. We know for example that Venice was an important commercial center and the city was an independent republic recognized the contributions of Jewish businessmen and many many Jews lived in Venice and Ashkanaz Jews and native Italian Jews, but they had to live in the ghetto. When she gets to Venice, she doesn't live in the ghetto. And that suggests that she's not living as she has not reverted back to Judaism. She is living in sort of this gray area as a new Christian. Well, everyone knows that she feels deeply connected to the Jewish people. I wonder if it's because being privileged today to visit that ghetto which is basically intact, the ghetto noo Venice. Was there a house big enough for Don Gracia there? We know that wherever she went, she lived in these beautiful mansions, but it said about her that there were always at least 80 people, 80 poor people sitting at her table at her house in Constantinople in her own table, right, benefiting from her saddaka. So I wonder if that was a constant. We know about it in Constantinople. But absolutely. Yeah. Was that a constant wherever she went? And in in the ghetto life, where would she put them? There was no gum gum in those days, right? Where would she put that? It's interesting that you mentioned that cuz today when you visit Venice, it's like the ghetto in Venice is like this the hottest neighborhood in in Venice and it's funky and it's beautiful and the buildings are well preserved. But back then it was dirty and crowded. And certainly if you were a multi-millionaire powerful woman, you would not want to live in the ghetto. nor would you want to be forced to wear the distinguishing signs of clothing that Jews had to wear in the ghettos of Europe. So, she was exempt from that and moved to a wealthy neighborhood of non-Jews because she is technically still a non-Jew. Meanwhile, Gracia leaves Venice uh yet again and this time it's because of a dispute that breaks out between herself, Brianda, and Gracia. And this has to do with the inheritance that we mentioned earlier that her own husband referenced Gracia as executive of half of his fortune. And this is something that's of grave offense to Brianda. In fact, she is known as more of a light-hearted, frivolous type of person. And that's how most of the historical literature paints her, even though today's history digs a little deeper and tries to claim that perhaps it wasn't exactly as black and white as all of that. But the fact that her own husband preferences a sister-in-law rather than his wife as execut of the will does suggest that there were some deficiencies in her character and is suggested here that Brianda in fact tries to out >> Gracia as a converso as a person who is still holding on to her Jewish identity which is something that's obviously true but because she was so miffed and upset about not inheriting she brings this before the court that you have two sisters here fighting each other and that you have Brianda outing her sister as an open Jew is astonishing because it means that she's endangering her sister's life and her sister's fortune. When I read details of the court case, uh, the many court cases brought by each sister against the other, it reminded me, I hope I don't sound frivolous, of some of the family first serals that always sound so over the top and the family feuds, but at the end of the day, especially when large sums of money are involved. I think that's something that modern day, you know, readers of the history can relate to, money can poison family relations. And you really see this here. We're talking about enormous sums and you're also talking about the interest of the Christian governments who see an opportunity to lay their hands on the mendes fortune and so all of them have a stake in this battle and that is why by bringing this court case to the Venetian authorities Briana knows she's going to find a sympathetic here and in fact the Venetian authorities rule against Dona Gracia but by then Donagrassia has already moved to Ferrara and now starts a whole new chapter in her because Ferrara is a very different place than Venice. And it's amazing that Donogio was able to have the foresight to turn to the Duke of Ferrara who in 1549 recognizes the validity of the Diego inheritance and gives shelter to the family in his city and that's what enabled her move. So different than the family first uh serals which are not resolved by turning to dukes and duchesses. uh Gracia is able to turn around and tap into her aristocratic connections and find Sukra and help in other countries. And while in Ferrara, she uses again, she uses her power and fortune to protect cryptoJWs and to redeem prisoners. And she was involved as mentioned in that initial iteration of organized smuggling of Jews from place to place, the persecution to places of freedom. And so what happens is that Donogia uses her wealth connections and her cunning to save people's lives. She contributed to the publication of the Bible translation into Ladino which was called the Ferrara Bible and written testimonies from her contemporaries like Schmo Oski and Yoseph Akohin and others. And Hakamos prefaces that Rabanim of the time wrote to her attest to this amazing power. In thinking about Don Gracia's focus on books and her support of publishing houses like the ones owned by Arak and Yavatias over other endeavors such as art, she chose to support the Jewish book. It makes us think about women who were always involved in the printing and dissemination of Jewish books. And I think it points to the love women always had for books and the idea that women wanted to be a part of the transmission of the printed word. And we might think about it rooted in the puk that we all know so well the mus the admonition of the fathers was transmitted orally just as to shabal is transmitted orally from father to son and women are kind of excluded from that transmission but altora the written Torah that gets transmitted through the mothers through the women and women would in fact hold the Torah they would hold and they would gift these books to their daughters as wedding presents. And also women understood that books as portable goods didn't have to be left behind when they got married when you your family had to move abruptly from place to place as was often the case for Jewish people. There's a beautiful story ascribed by Andre Alon Brooks in her famous book about Dona Gracia, the woman who defied kings. And she ascribes it to Judith Baskin, although I didn't find it in the stories she cites, but it tells of a woman in the 13th century whose husband gave her a piece of gold to purchase a new dress. And she informs him she'd rather buy a book or hire a scribe to write a new text to lend to her students. Right? It's beautiful. We can relate to that. >> Really beautiful. In any case, Ferrara establishes Dona Gracia's position as a supporter of safes and Torah learning. But I would add to that there's a practical reason why Dona Gracia in addition to this beautiful aliat and the love of Jewish women that we've had for books, there is this idea that Dona Gracia recognizes that for the thousands of conversos who have been living for so long as Christian, they no longer know Hebrew. And there's a desperate need to translate both the Bible and also the Cedor. She has a cedor printed by Rabbi Atias which is a translation into Ludino so that the Jews can have access to the holy sources that they have not had been access to because they're illiterate in Hebrew which is really if you think about it so tragic. I think that might have been the case for Dona Gracia herself as well who seems to have been literate in so many languages but not Hebrew. So perhaps she is also printing that for her own sake not only for the sake of everyone else so that she could be more learned. But that's just conjecture. It might not exactly be the case, but feeling the need as she did to produce these books and being able to produce them is such a wonderful endeavor for her to has chosen, right? And the translation of the Bible you mention is also important because there were earlier translations of the Bible into the languages you know Castellian Spanish etc. But remember that those translations were christoologgical and perverted the original Hebrew meaning. So it was so important for the conversos who had were all familiar they had been forced to go to church. They were all familiar with the Christian versions of the Bible but to have an authentic Bible to have an authentic Bible that represented Jewish tradition and Jewish paranut that was a sort of revolution in Jewish literature for the conversos and so amazing that a woman was the one who was behind all of that. A >> patronist of Jewish arts of the Jewish arts of Torah >> real large. >> Mhm. This leads us right into her final destination when she moves to Constantinople. And [music] the significance of this move for her and how the legacy is solidified through her move there is [music] an important chapter that we can't stress enough. This is where it all comes together. [music] Yes, I think the chapter of Donagrassi's life Constantinople is when she reaches the very pinnacle of her actions on behalf of the Jewish people. And really there's no other way to put it. This woman is a sadas. [music] >> What she does in Constantinople is extraordinary. Thank you for listening to Veiled Reference. Enjoy this episode and share it with [music] your friends. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future [music] episodes, we'd love to hear from you at podcasts@ mishbaka.com. Veiled [music] Reference, a mishbaka podcast.