I Heard The Call of Girona

by Elyn Aviva

I heard the Call whisper to me as I pressed my hands against its crumbling grey stones. I was standing in the medieval Jewish quarter in Girona, aka “The Call,” a Catalan word based on the Hebrew qahál, which means “a meeting or a gathering.” And gather they did, long ago, the Jewish residents of Girona, Spain, in the winding streets and narrow alleys, in the covered corridors and on the steep-stepped sidewalks. Hurrying to work, to play, to study, hurrying to synagogue to pray. They arrived in 898 and for 500 years they were integrated into the city—except for those dreadful times like 1391 when suddenly they weren’t and they became the targets of violence and repression.

I had seen their traces in the Museum of Jewish History, housed in what had been the Girona synagogue until 1492 when all the Jews were expelled, ending 500 years of coexistence. Suddenly they were gone, all gone, forced from their temple, their homes, their land, and sometimes from their faith.

I had seen what little they had left behind, displayed in the museum’s evocative exhibits. One gallery held fourteenth-century limestone gravestones, engraved in Hebrew (“Josef, a young child who was a lover of joy, the son of Rabbi Jacob. May he be present in Glory, protected by his Rock and his Redeemer" and “the honored Estelina, wife of the distinguished and upright Bonastruc Josef. May she have her mansion in the Garden of Eden”). Other galleries were filled with rare artifacts, facsimiles, and borrowed objects, with modern reconstructions and pictorial displays. Nothing else remained of the once-thriving community—except its reputation. Not even time’s amnesia could silence that, for Girona had been the center of a famous medieval school of Kabbalists, those mystical philosophers who believed the universe was made manifest in ten emanations.  

The most famous Kabbalist of that time was Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (also known as Ramban or Nahmanides), born in Girona in 1194 and died in the Holy Land in 1270. In 1263 King James I of Aragón (a personal friend) summoned him to Barcelona to defend Jewish beliefs against the Dominican Pablo Christiani, a Jewish convert to Christianity. King James awarded Nahmanides a prize and declared that never before had he heard "an unjust cause so nobly defended."

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Blood On His Hands

words and photos by Elyn Aviva

He was a good-looking guy, even though he had blood on his hands and his jacket was spattered with red stains. His eyes were intense, his smile tight, his long fingers graceful as he sharpened his knife, the thin blade scraping rhythmically against the long steel rod.

The carnicería was packed with customers, patiently impatient, enjoying Julio’s ongoing spiel, willing to wait (for wait we would) while he cut each piece of meat to order. There were five butcher shops (not counting two supermarkets) in Sahagún, the small town in northern Spain where we were living, but this was the best. I had it on good authority.

“He’s an artist,” my late friend Paca had explained. “He can slice a piece of meat so thin you can see Barcelona through it.” No small task, given that Barcelona is 500 miles to the east.

Inside the entrance to the small shop was a red ticket machine. Take a number and you will know where you stand. Or so I thought at first. But I was quickly disabused. The flashing number on the bright-lit sign above Julio’s head never changed.

“Who’s last in line?” I asked, my limited Spanish having expanded to cover such necessities. A man leaning on a cane pointed to the elderly, burgundy-haired woman beside him; she nodded. I knew my place and sat down to wait. And wait. An hour would be fast, I realized, for it was just before the holidays, and everyone was stocking up to feed the hoards of friends and relatives returning home.

Homemade chorizo sausage, marinated pork loin, pork tongues, skinned rabbits, quarters of young and slightly older lamb, whole chickens, duck pâte, smoked pork chops, soup bones, bacon, tiny quails packed close together, pig ears, beef steaks, stew meat, chunks of beef to slice into fillets—and more—were tightly packed inside the glass-fronted case that separated Julio from his customers. Another case was crammed with rounds of cheeses and heaps of packaged pork products, its flat top covered with jars of leeks and asparagus and tuna, and bottles of local fruit conserves. On the wall behind, assorted Iberian hams hung from ropes tied around their shanks.

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Power Places

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

Souls in the form of lizards and snakes slither their way to the seashore sanctuary of San Andrés de Teixido in northwestern Spain. At least that’s what local Galician folklore claims about this hard-to-reach pilgrimage shrine, perched on a cliff on the Costa da Morte. “If you don’t go there before you die, you’ll have to go there afterwards”—or so the legends assert. So why not go now, I thought to myself? It would certainly be simpler and more convenient. Besides, I was intrigued by these Celtic-tinged stories of transmigration of souls in what appears to be a deeply Catholic country.

Rather than slither, I went by car, wending my way up and around curvaceous roads shaded by huge eucalyptus trees that swayed in the strong Atlantic breeze. Their medicinal scent filled the air. I pulled over near a TV repeater tower to walk a short stretch of the original pilgrims’ path, careful not to kill any insects I encountered en route—after all, they might be souls on pilgrimage. Or so the legend goes.

At last I reached the tiny village of San Andrés and left the car in the large parking lot at the outskirts. I strolled down the narrow lane lined with souvenir stands selling wax ex-votos in the shape of body parts, brightly painted hard-baked bread-dough offerings, and tiny bundles of hierba de enamorar, a local pink flower that is supposed to be a love potion. Something for everyone, I thought. But was there anything here for me?

Around a bend I came to the white-washed sanctuary that guards the relics of the apostle San Andrés (Saint Andrew). The church was surprisingly small, given the size of the folklore that surrounds it. Legend says that San Andrés was distressed because so few pilgrims visited his isolated shrine, so he complained to Christ; Christ felt sorry for him and promised that nobody would enter heaven if they hadn’t gone first to San Andrés de Teixido. It was a great marketing ploy, judging by the popularity of the shrine over the last 400 years.

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