The Denver Jewish news., 1924-01-31
Jeus Who Graced
The South
BY ABRAHAM CApLAN a
Copyright 1924. Jewish Telegraphic
Agency

Republic Inc SOutn cOnlalneu some ol
the most promising Jews in the west
ern world. They We're largely Of The
Sephardic commUnity-Jews whose an
cestors lived in Spain and Portugal be
fore the days of the Inquisition and
numbered among them some of the not
able figures in post-Biblical Jewish his
tory. No more brilliant chapter may
be found in Jewish history Than thar
which records the religious, spiritual
and intellectual heights won by the
Spanish Jews before the days of Fer
dinand and Isabella. The 1ndlIsition
shattered the political and intellectual
grandeur of the Spanish Jews, but it
only shnrpened their religious ardor.
Thousands of them suffered the tor
lures which the religious fanaticism of
fifteenth century Spain devised. Others
fled to less turbulent countries. In
l492 the Jews were expelled from Spain
and went in every direction-tc Hol-
land and later to England 10 France
and Italy; To the Central European
IL -AlII'i iit
Lcvant: to South America. In due
course of time the descendants of the
:, phar,iic Jews found themselves pros
porous and public-spiritual citizens of
southern colonies.
History does not know of more
poignant sufferers than the Jews who
in the year when Columbus under
have shown. Jewish patronage opened
mp The now world. were expelled from
tho Iherian Peninsula. Cut off from
The main body of the Jewish people in
Central and Eastern Europe. the Span
ish Jews developed n sclf-consciousness
and an aloofncss from non-Sephardic
.!cws that have been marked since they
ramo in contact with them in England
die communities in America maintained
their religious life most Loyalty. But
that was only for II while. The South
crn communities. mere so than those
from their ancient moorings. They
whose reading Of Hebrew was the pur-
est. whose religious ccrcmonials were
ornate and rcdolcnt of past glories un-
der the Moorish dispcnsaticn in Spain.
whose dignity and delicacy of social
hcar.uo arose from Il sense of ancestral
Inartyrdom. fell prey to n dissolving
process that in less than two hundred
years has left hut n memory of their
glorious past. Disdaining marital nj
Iiances with Jews deriving from other
Than Spanish and Portuguese ancestry.
these Jews found solacc in n narrow
social life hereft of Jewish suggestion
or. as has been happening in ever-in-
crcasing numbers in late years, in in
with non-Jews. Bearers of
names that sound like music to Jews
who recall with pride the poets, phil
osophers. statesmen and men OF science
IN whom Spanish Jewry abounded when
il enjoyed the freedom and opportunity
accorded by the liberal Moorish kings,
their disappearance gives rise to great
sadness. Were il not that they recalled
former glories and later oppression.
they would not have been able to with
stand the consequences of dangerous
And yet in the course of
a century and half these Jews of
Sephardic extraction are diluting their
blood with that of their ncn-Jewish
l ai,,hbors.
In 1900 Charleston, South Carolina,
the largest Jewish center in
America. But Charleston was not
destined to be the center of American
Jewish life, nor was it to he one of
the great communities that now dot the
Atlantic Coast. Charleston could not
remain at the head of American Jew
ish Communities for any Lengths of
time. For Il while. however. the South
held the flower of Jewish Intelligence.
Charleston, Savannah. in
Jewish potentiality. We'd with New
York. Philadelphia and Providence. In
all these cities the original Jewish set
tiers were the Sephardic Jews whose
ancestors lived in Portugal and Spain.
The culture and social dignity in which
they were bred, the native refinement of
character with which their splendid an
cestry endowed them, enabled them TO
adjust themselves easily to their next
The courtlv social tradi-
tions of colonial life in the South were
well understood by these Jews. Despite
memories of the rack and the stake
which Tomas de Torquemada utilized
in roofing out the Jewish religion in
Spain, these SephardicrJew found that
life among knightly Christians was to
be preferred to associations with Jews
of an inferior type-as they regarded