REVIEWS
Synagogue of El Tránsito
— Deyvi Papo
A vague memory of the future
Samuel ha-Levi, the treasurer to Peter of Castile, commissioned the synagogue with his name in the heart of the Jewish neighborhood of Toledo in 1356, which is known today mainly as the Synagogue of El Tránsito. After the expulsion of the Sepharads[1]—the Jews of Spain—in 1492, the Synagogue went through many transformations and finally became a Sephardic Museum in 1964. Today it is not only considered as one of the most important Jewish monuments in Spain, but it is also an institutional pilgrimage site for the Hispanic Jewry in a time where Sepharads intend to reappear on the Iberian Peninsula by being nationalized in Spain and Portugal.
On March 1, 2019, as the winter started fading away in southern Europe, I travelled from Madrid to Toledo to see the oldest synagogue of Spain, which allegedly had one of the most impressive stucco works after the Alhambra Palace. As I got off the bus and looked up towards the medieval town on the hill, the sun was shining on the old yellow stones, revealing the town’s glory. By the time I followed the entrance signs, I was struck by the image of two escalators, which led the “visitors'' into the city, reproducing the image of an amusement park with its kitschy historical castles and towers. However, the feeling evanesced as soon as I was on the top and got the escalators out of my sight. Then I started walking towards the steep and narrow streets of the city, and tried to find the museum intuitively, as I knew that it was somewhere over the top and there was a park with a view of the river in front of it. While I was climbing in the forest of medieval houses, I understood that I was on the right way, when I started seeing on the storefronts many books about the Sephardic Jews and then, of course, the signs of “Museo Sefardí”. When I arrived at the right address, I was captivated by the small park in front of the museum, which was facing a historical urban scenery on the other side of the river. I asked myself what stories were there to tell, behind those walls, windows and under those trees? I was yearning for the ones which are still untold, as the language of Sepharads[2] was disappearing from their minds and tongues.
It took me some time to turn back and find the entrance on the side of the building, which does not stand out neither with its dimensions nor with its ornamentality. The crowd in front of the entrance underlined the building as a site of attraction and the queue on the ramp indicated the current function of this brick-and-mortar memory. After buying the ticket and entering the museum, the main prayer room welcomed us with all its splendor: I needed a while to breathe in the glory of the lustrous wooden ceiling and the now-white floral stucco with its vanishing colors. This was the first time that I saw the architectural heritage of the culture I was born into. All the buildings of the Jewish community where I lived in Istanbul are either abandoned or invisible due to strong security barriers made of iron from outside, renovated with shiny plastic materials inside. The architectural and historical value of these buildings were left in the background, as the safety and community’s use was prioritzed. On the contrary, in Toledo, the architecture and history coexist in harmony, making the museum experience unique, as the space itself becomes the highlight of the museum’s collection.
After overcoming the fascination, first as a Sephardic Jew and then as an architect, I dived into the exhibition on the side chambers, looked through the maps and the chronological history of the Sepharads, their migration routes towards Eastern Europe and North Africa. Then I rested on the patio, took a look into the gravestones and archeological findings of the medieval Jewish neighbourhood. Later on, I went up to the “Gallery of Women” on the second floor, where I saw the Jewish cycle of life and festivities, which was told through various objects -from daily life and holidays- behind glass displays accompanied by videos on the small screens.
By the time I was back at the point where everything started, the lobby and the shop, I asked myself: What did I see and what did I learn? It certainly did not feel like I was reading and learning about the culture that I was born into. It was not familiar. There was almost no trace about the language that my grandparents are speaking, which is doomed to vanish. It was about a group of people who were expelled from the Peninsula about 500 years ago, and who were trying to reclaim their presence in an impressive building that they left abandoned through exoticized objects from different parts of the Mediterranean, and stories I had already knew that have been retold and reproduced by academics speaking a language from a place far far away.
At the end of my visit, I had only one question in my mind: How a museum like Museo Sefardí, a mirror of the past and memories, can contribute to the future of the endangered communities without burying them in cultural archeology and creating sites of memory enshrined in hysterical nostalgia?
References
[1] Sepharad means Spain in Hebrew and it is used to refer Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496.
[2] Judeo-Spanish is today an endangered language derived from Medieval Spanish, that has been spoken in the Jewish communities of Eastern Mediterranian, Maghreb and some parts of Western Europe.
Deyvi Papo is an architect/researcher and interested in the spatial practices of cultural production. He lives in Vienna, Austria and participated in the WriteON 2020 workshop series.