THE JEWS OF SPAIN AND THE QUEST FOR CULTURAL IDENTITY

Abstract

The expulsion of the Jews in 1492 put and end to their long-standing presence in the Iberian Peninsula, a presence that goes back to the first century AD and hence lasted almost 15 centuries. This continuous pre sence is certainly the longest and most important in the history of the Jewish people after the destruction of the second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans and the consecutive dispersion. We may assu me that in the interval of time of about seven centuries that separates the advent of Jewish communties in the Iberian Peninsula and the be ginning of the Muslim conquest, the Jews should have cultivated a mu sical repertory of their own, at least in connection with the religious practices and in view of enhancing liturgical and paraliturgical events. In one of the few attempts at a comprehensive description of the sta tus of Jewish music in Spain before 1492, the eminent Spanish scholar H. Angl?s considered the long presence of Jews in Spain ?a blessing for the art of music of the Iberian Pen?nsula? stressing that in the process of the Andalusian cultural symbiosis they were not mere passive reci pients but rather active contributors (?La musique Juive dans l'Espagne medievale?, in Yuval, I, Jerusalem, 1968, p. 48-64). Although this state ment is not devoid of logic and corresponds to the hypothesis formula ted above, it cannot be convincingly proven because of the absence of concrete musical documents. Indeed, the Sephardi musical tradition, like all oral traditions, has been perpetuated by oral transmission and lived only in the vulnerable memory of its bearers. Even the thesis of faithfulness of the exiles and their exemplary devotion and loyalty to sep hardi chants, songs and ballads as ardently claimed by the father-foun der of Jewish Ethnomusicology, Abraham Zvi Idelsohn (Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies, vol. 4, Jerusalem, Berlin, Vienna, 1921-22, p.l) cannot guarantee a changless stability of the original tradition, con sidering its long exposure to a variety of other musical cultures after the