New Home - Spain
Several days later a jailor came through with a list of one of the groups. The members of the group were again taken out, this time for the ride to the harbor to go by sea to Spain. This time it was on Spanish ships. A few were to set sail to Barcelona, a major port city in the region of Hispanic Catalonia near the border with Gaul. Others to seaports further south on the Iberian Peninsula’s Mediterranean coast.
Moshe and Zeira managed to stay together with Moshe’s uncles, the two elders Nahman and Shlomo. They were placed with about twenty others on one of the ships to Barcelona.
As they approached their assigned ship Moshe looked at the men standing at the pier by the ship. “General Ruiz what a surprise.”
“Surprise for you young Moshe but not for me. I am the senior officer of the Catalonian brigade and admiral of its navy. I arranged for you your cousin and two uncles join me on my ship. Welcome aboard. You four come directly to my quarters so with my translator we can discuss how to feed you amazing people on the trip to your new home. Moshe go with Garcia to the cooks galley and see what will have to be done there or purchased so you people can eat what is cooked. Elder Nahman, I believe you will find this leg of the voyage more comfortable and so we will talk more in the week or so before us. Ha, those Romans imagine they know how to build ships, ha.”
“Sergeant Moner, remove the shackles from these four men and when our other prisoners are on board remove the shackles from all of them. I trust that they will behave well.”
There, to their great surprise and joy, they discovered that were all set free. They would not be slaves. In Catalonia they would have to find work of some sort, be it as paid servants, or whatever profession they could get work as.
Nahman, Moshe and Zeira went with General Ruiz and some of his men to the market. Fruits vegetables and fish were bought, as were some cooking utensils.
“Nahman here is a meat shop, shall by beef or sheep meat for your people so they can cook a stew?”
“It is generous of you General Ruiz but please recall that we may only eat if one of our trained slaughterers slaughtered the animal and checked its insides for its health signs.”
“Oh yes I forgot. One day you must tell me why all these restrictions. I really am curious about it.”
“As you like sir.”
“Oh stop calling me sir already. You are twice my age, and hundred times more learned in more spiritual fields than I ever knew existed.”
The voyage on the Spanish ship was much more comfortable than the one to Rome. Ten days later they made port in Barcelona. There they rested received clean clothing, and met the governor of Catalonia. They also began to realize how highly respected and important a person the general was in his country.
After a few weeks in Barcelona, Moshe along his elderly uncles and his friend Zeira were given permission to move northeast to a smaller town in Catalonia, the Ausetani town of Gerunda (later to be renamed as Girona) along with some other of the Jerusalem expatriates. Gerunda was the home town of General Hidalgos Ruiz de Catalan, where it turns out he was also the head of the regional council, and they were his guests of honor.
There with the general’s help, they set up what was to become one of the main centers of study and worship of the Jewish communities in Spain. This center’s influence would become a positive one for the entire nation for many centuries to come. Here the world received Rabbi Yonah Girondi of blessed and holy memory, author of ‘Shaarei Tshuvah’, and Rabbi Moshe Bar-Nahman Girondi (Also known as The Ramba”n or Nahmanides) of blessed and holy memory, a physician, personal friend and advisor to the King of Spain, a master kabbalist and author of several books including ‘The Holy Letter’ and a famous highly respected commentary on the five books of the Torah.
He was so highly respected and valued by the non-Jews of Gerona that they gave him the name Bonastruc Saporta. In the Catalan, the local dialect, that means “Lucky star of the City’s Gates”. Some of his descendants use the family name Saporta, Sasporta, Sasportas, Shisportas etc all derivations of the illustrious ancestor’s honorific.
The Ramba”n of blessed memory was in Gerona in the 1200’s. During that time the church was sending priests to synagogues to give missionary speeches during Shabat services. There was no way to stop them in the state controlled by the Roman Catholic Church.
However Rabi Moshe o.b.m. was highly respected and loved by the king. He managed to arrange a royally declared debate between him and a representative of the church. The church chose an apostate Jew. The debate took place in Barcelona and lasted three days. Rabi Moshe trounced the apostate totally disproving every claim, proving false every perverted interpretation of Torah, made by the apostate. Understandably though the official referees, all church priests, could not admit it publically. However the effect was that the missionary speeches in the synagogues were made into a laughing stock.
Despite the church appointed referees having declared their representative as the winner of the debate, the King gave the Ramba”n o.b.m. a prize of a purse full with gold coins, secretly acknowledging him as the winner.
The covert admission of Rabi Moshe’s polemic conquest was seen in the fact that the bishop of Barcelona demanded that the king of Spain execute the Ramba”n o.b.m. The king said he could not do so without legal grounds.
The bishop sent a courier to Rome to tell of the debacle that hit their missionary efforts at the hands of Rabi Moshe. The Pope was quick to send a Papal execution order. This meant that if the king would not have Rabi Moshe executed, the church would have the king executed. The king said he would give the order yet asked for three days to arrange it all.
That very night the king sent a personal messenger (there is also a tradition saying that he went himself in disguise) to the Ramba”n’s house telling of the execution order, giving him a large sack of gold coins, and an escort of the king’s personal guards to escort him to escape by sea to wherever he desired.
Before leaving Spain he told his sons that when they see his mother’s grave stone split and a candelabra similar to the candelabra of Holy Temple sprout from the split, they will know that he has passed from the physical world.
Thus The Ramba”n o.b.m. at the age of 70 years made aliyah to the Holy Land in the year 1270 C.E. a few weeks before the Jewish New Year.
He arrived in a land ravaged and rendered desolate by the crusades and the Mongol hordes. In the Holy City of Jerusalem few buildings were left standing. The local rule was “find a ruined house, rebuild it and it’s yours”. The famed synagogue built by Rav Yehuda Hachasid o.b.m. was a ruin; there were barely a hundred permanent residents. There was no minyan (quorum of ten men) for full prayer services. The Torah scrolls left intact had been sent to Chevron and Shechem for safekeeping.
Then he hired laborers, local and from nearby Arab villages, also nearly uninhabited, to rebuild a home for himself and to rebuild the synagogue built by Rav Yehuda Hachasid o.b.m.. He sent to Chevron for several Torah scrolls. With that he also managed to convince several itinerant merchants and pilgrims to remain for the High Holydays. That Rosh Hashanah (New Year), Yom Kippur and Sukkoth he stood, at his very advanced age, prayer leader for the congregation he had organized. After that he spent the next two years travelling from town to town to teach and spiritually enliven the Jewish communities in the Holy Land.
On 11th day Of Nisan 1272 while visiting the town of Acco The Ramba”n o.b.m. returned his pure and holy soul to its creator. Indeed the sons knew immediately for the sign he had told of was seen in the cemetery of the Jewish congregation of Gerona. Before passing he requested that he be buried in Chevron under the seventh stair next to the building on the Machpelah cave where Adam, Eve, the Patriarchs and three of the Matriarchs are buried.
Other areas in Spain also produced numerous Torah scholars of great minds and souls that would positively influence the world’s Jewish communities for more than two thousand years after their arrival in Spain, as well as influence to the world’s nations in general.
However, after several centuries of flowering, the Spanish Jews would again be subjected to cruelty, slaughter and exile during infamous inquisition and expulsion. Among them, where descendants of the Ramba”n of Blessed and Holy Memory.
Moshe and Zeira managed to stay together with Moshe’s uncles, the two elders Nahman and Shlomo. They were placed with about twenty others on one of the ships to Barcelona.
As they approached their assigned ship Moshe looked at the men standing at the pier by the ship. “General Ruiz what a surprise.”
“Surprise for you young Moshe but not for me. I am the senior officer of the Catalonian brigade and admiral of its navy. I arranged for you your cousin and two uncles join me on my ship. Welcome aboard. You four come directly to my quarters so with my translator we can discuss how to feed you amazing people on the trip to your new home. Moshe go with Garcia to the cooks galley and see what will have to be done there or purchased so you people can eat what is cooked. Elder Nahman, I believe you will find this leg of the voyage more comfortable and so we will talk more in the week or so before us. Ha, those Romans imagine they know how to build ships, ha.”
“Sergeant Moner, remove the shackles from these four men and when our other prisoners are on board remove the shackles from all of them. I trust that they will behave well.”
There, to their great surprise and joy, they discovered that were all set free. They would not be slaves. In Catalonia they would have to find work of some sort, be it as paid servants, or whatever profession they could get work as.
Nahman, Moshe and Zeira went with General Ruiz and some of his men to the market. Fruits vegetables and fish were bought, as were some cooking utensils.
“Nahman here is a meat shop, shall by beef or sheep meat for your people so they can cook a stew?”
“It is generous of you General Ruiz but please recall that we may only eat if one of our trained slaughterers slaughtered the animal and checked its insides for its health signs.”
“Oh yes I forgot. One day you must tell me why all these restrictions. I really am curious about it.”
“As you like sir.”
“Oh stop calling me sir already. You are twice my age, and hundred times more learned in more spiritual fields than I ever knew existed.”
The voyage on the Spanish ship was much more comfortable than the one to Rome. Ten days later they made port in Barcelona. There they rested received clean clothing, and met the governor of Catalonia. They also began to realize how highly respected and important a person the general was in his country.
After a few weeks in Barcelona, Moshe along his elderly uncles and his friend Zeira were given permission to move northeast to a smaller town in Catalonia, the Ausetani town of Gerunda (later to be renamed as Girona) along with some other of the Jerusalem expatriates. Gerunda was the home town of General Hidalgos Ruiz de Catalan, where it turns out he was also the head of the regional council, and they were his guests of honor.
There with the general’s help, they set up what was to become one of the main centers of study and worship of the Jewish communities in Spain. This center’s influence would become a positive one for the entire nation for many centuries to come. Here the world received Rabbi Yonah Girondi of blessed and holy memory, author of ‘Shaarei Tshuvah’, and Rabbi Moshe Bar-Nahman Girondi (Also known as The Ramba”n or Nahmanides) of blessed and holy memory, a physician, personal friend and advisor to the King of Spain, a master kabbalist and author of several books including ‘The Holy Letter’ and a famous highly respected commentary on the five books of the Torah.
He was so highly respected and valued by the non-Jews of Gerona that they gave him the name Bonastruc Saporta. In the Catalan, the local dialect, that means “Lucky star of the City’s Gates”. Some of his descendants use the family name Saporta, Sasporta, Sasportas, Shisportas etc all derivations of the illustrious ancestor’s honorific.
The Ramba”n of blessed memory was in Gerona in the 1200’s. During that time the church was sending priests to synagogues to give missionary speeches during Shabat services. There was no way to stop them in the state controlled by the Roman Catholic Church.
However Rabi Moshe o.b.m. was highly respected and loved by the king. He managed to arrange a royally declared debate between him and a representative of the church. The church chose an apostate Jew. The debate took place in Barcelona and lasted three days. Rabi Moshe trounced the apostate totally disproving every claim, proving false every perverted interpretation of Torah, made by the apostate. Understandably though the official referees, all church priests, could not admit it publically. However the effect was that the missionary speeches in the synagogues were made into a laughing stock.
Despite the church appointed referees having declared their representative as the winner of the debate, the King gave the Ramba”n o.b.m. a prize of a purse full with gold coins, secretly acknowledging him as the winner.
The covert admission of Rabi Moshe’s polemic conquest was seen in the fact that the bishop of Barcelona demanded that the king of Spain execute the Ramba”n o.b.m. The king said he could not do so without legal grounds.
The bishop sent a courier to Rome to tell of the debacle that hit their missionary efforts at the hands of Rabi Moshe. The Pope was quick to send a Papal execution order. This meant that if the king would not have Rabi Moshe executed, the church would have the king executed. The king said he would give the order yet asked for three days to arrange it all.
That very night the king sent a personal messenger (there is also a tradition saying that he went himself in disguise) to the Ramba”n’s house telling of the execution order, giving him a large sack of gold coins, and an escort of the king’s personal guards to escort him to escape by sea to wherever he desired.
Before leaving Spain he told his sons that when they see his mother’s grave stone split and a candelabra similar to the candelabra of Holy Temple sprout from the split, they will know that he has passed from the physical world.
Thus The Ramba”n o.b.m. at the age of 70 years made aliyah to the Holy Land in the year 1270 C.E. a few weeks before the Jewish New Year.
He arrived in a land ravaged and rendered desolate by the crusades and the Mongol hordes. In the Holy City of Jerusalem few buildings were left standing. The local rule was “find a ruined house, rebuild it and it’s yours”. The famed synagogue built by Rav Yehuda Hachasid o.b.m. was a ruin; there were barely a hundred permanent residents. There was no minyan (quorum of ten men) for full prayer services. The Torah scrolls left intact had been sent to Chevron and Shechem for safekeeping.
Then he hired laborers, local and from nearby Arab villages, also nearly uninhabited, to rebuild a home for himself and to rebuild the synagogue built by Rav Yehuda Hachasid o.b.m.. He sent to Chevron for several Torah scrolls. With that he also managed to convince several itinerant merchants and pilgrims to remain for the High Holydays. That Rosh Hashanah (New Year), Yom Kippur and Sukkoth he stood, at his very advanced age, prayer leader for the congregation he had organized. After that he spent the next two years travelling from town to town to teach and spiritually enliven the Jewish communities in the Holy Land.
On 11th day Of Nisan 1272 while visiting the town of Acco The Ramba”n o.b.m. returned his pure and holy soul to its creator. Indeed the sons knew immediately for the sign he had told of was seen in the cemetery of the Jewish congregation of Gerona. Before passing he requested that he be buried in Chevron under the seventh stair next to the building on the Machpelah cave where Adam, Eve, the Patriarchs and three of the Matriarchs are buried.
Other areas in Spain also produced numerous Torah scholars of great minds and souls that would positively influence the world’s Jewish communities for more than two thousand years after their arrival in Spain, as well as influence to the world’s nations in general.
However, after several centuries of flowering, the Spanish Jews would again be subjected to cruelty, slaughter and exile during infamous inquisition and expulsion. Among them, where descendants of the Ramba”n of Blessed and Holy Memory.