Museums and Heritage Institutions
This page will introduce some (but not all) of the many museums, heritage, and archaeological institutions that are instrumental to presenting the narratives of Jewish Spain. These institutions each play a big role in the public perception of the Jewish people and are designed by various actors with specific motivations in presenting their historical narratives.
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first floor of MUHBA El Call exhibit
MUHBA CALL-Barcelona
The Museu de Historia de Barcelona El Call is a very small museum of Jewish History placed centrally in the historic Call of Barcelona. The museum is only seven years old and is placed in a historic home of the Call. The architectural remains of the original structure are still visible today through the glass panels on the floor. I was able to meet with one of the curators of the museum, Ramon Pujades, who was able to shed some insight on the museum's flow, history, and current initiatives. The museum firstly begins with a 10 min video, provided in many languages, outlining a brief of Medieval Jews in Barcelona. What I particularly liked about this video was the usage of traditional art from medieval Haggadahs to animate people, boats, and other figures. The first floor displaces some artifacts found in the home where the museum lies today and throughout the Call that were given to the museum. The first floor also displayed a Jewish tombstone similar to the ones seen in the walls of Placa St Iu. The second floor outlines the works of three notable Jewish Barcelonian figures including Rabbi Shlomo Ben Adret, Hasdai Crescas, and Bar Hiyya. The museum, along with artifacts, presented a few interactive touchscreen tables which Ramon mentioned will be replaced in the coming year for some different interactive element. The museum does a good job of creating an understanding of history and archaeology. Although the remains are very small and few, one can get a sense of the medieval Call and the second floor, contextualizes this history with the legacy of the Jews who made a mark on the communities of Barcelona.
MUHBA CALL-Barcelona
Ramon insisted that this history must be treated "respectfully and with acknowledgement of the horrible conditions they [the Jewish community] lived under" as properties of the King. He also mentioned the difficulty the museum faces with regards to the Orthodox community in Barcelona especially concerning the excavations at Montjuic Cemetery and mentions of polygamy in historic Ketubahs (Jewish marriage contracts). This was certainly a conflicting point of information as I had learned that Dominique Tomasov Blinder, who has no affiliation with the Orthodox community, was the one to lead the efforts against the excavations at Montjuic Cemetery. Like every good tale, it seems the memorialization of Jews in this context is certainly multidirectional. At the end of my visit I was presented with a pamphlet in several languages about the historic medieval Haggadahs that the museum created. Ramon was kind enough to gift me one in English, Catalan, Spanish, and Hebrew, as well as a book about Catalonian Jewish documents. Likewise, it is worth noting that the museum is only open during very select times of the week and therefore, the public's exposure to the museum is likewise very limited. To learn more about the museum and its hours please visit barcelona.cat.
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artifacts of Jewish life found in MUHBA El Call
mozaika-Barcelona
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Inauguration of "Discovering Jewish Memory at the Cathedral"
On May 17, 2022, I was invited to the Inauguration of a collaboration between Mozaika and the Cathedral de Barcelona for their new exhibit "Descubrim la memoria jueva a la Cathedral" (Discover the Jewish memory at the Cathedral). This opportunity came as a surprise following my meeting with the co-founder of Mozaika Victor Sorrenssen and marked the week before the exhibit would be open to the public. After three years of research, the inauguration celebrates an exhibit in the Cathedral of Barcelona that highlights a new classification of the church's archives about Jewish medieval life. This is a very unique exhibit and collaboration among two entities that have rarely been seen together. At the inauguration, the architect of the exhibit, the head of Mozaika, and the head researcher all spoke on what this exhibit means for Catalonia, for the Church, and for Jewish people.
mozaika-Barcelona
The architect of the exhibit highlighted the notion that for a long time we couldn't think of Barcelona's memory as being anything but Christian however today, because of this exhibit, it can be more than that. Fundamentally, this is an important point to make especially among a holy Catholic place. The collaborations between Jewish entities and the Church and the recognition of their existence in the collective Spanish memory is perhaps the biggest takeaway from this exhibit. The exhibit, itself, is held in the small, narrow, and dusty archives inside the Cathedral. These archives would have kept the names of community members, marriage dates, births, taxes to the church, and deaths. At the very end of the archives are laid two rows of glass cases with the documentations pertaining to the Jewish community. Such documents include the sale of home where the instructions stated by the owner explicitly mention the Jewish quarter, a notary's manual including mentions of Jewish homes, and a signed document by Rabbi Shlomo Ben Adret. Overall, the exhibit felt like a historic collaboration and recognition of a shared past that is certainly worth noting. The memory of Jews is now a visible part of the Cathedral itself and it was a unique experience to witness the inauguration of all the actors that came together to make it come to fruition.
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archival exhibit at the Cathedral in collaboration with Mozaika
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the courtyard of the Jewish Museum in Girona.
jewish museum-girona
I visited the Jewish Museum in Girona as a part of my tour with Girona Experiences. The museum has a very expansive collection of Jewish History with a vast array of physical remnants from the Medieval Call. This is very surprising compared to the few remains left in Barcelona. The Call of Girona's closure between 1415 and 1975 helped preserve much of its structure for the public to see today. I met with Lidia Donat at the Nachmanides Institute which is connected to the museum and she helped me outline some of the museum's history. Under the mayorship of Joaquim Nadal, the Call and the building which now includes the museum and the institute became a part of the public non governmental domain (organisme autonom local) as a touristic and cultural site in 1991. Lidia likewise explained that the museum, before its opening in 2001, was actually a very trendy restaurant and bar post the fall of Franco (pictures of this restaurant can be seen above the iconic Star of David tile). She emphasized that the museum is a history museum and not a Jewish museum which began with an emphasis on showing research.
jewish museum-girona
The museum is a multi-level exhibit that chronologically exposes the history of the Jewish people to its visitors. There is a significant amount of tombstones from Montjuic, artifacts of daily life, and scrolls that help to visualize the Jewish Call at its height. The museum also boasted a historic mikveh at its site (which seemed very shallow for a normal mikveh) and likewise held most of the original stone from the 13th century. However, I was shocked to walk into a section of the museum where a talit (a traditional prayer shawl), tefilin, and a torah were placed in a glass case. The torah, I found out, was actually donated by la CIB when the museum started. These were not medieval remains but actual items that a Jewish person could use today. It was astonishing seeing your living culture in a glass case, crystalized in history, as if we were dead. Certainly, the museum has taken on the narrative that the culture of living Jewish people should be historicized in the same manner as the artifacts of the 13th century. The feeling among that exhibit room was bizarre in many regards. I had never seen such items in glass cases and I certainly hope I never would again. I could not help but wonder if the museum's mission was truly about history or some narrative that has been commonly spread throughout Spain seeking to mythicize the Jewish people. It was an overall eye opening discovery about the mishandling of memory and how narratives of memory, in institutions like a museum, can make a whole people appear dead to the eyes of the public.
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A Torah in a glass case at the Museum of Jewish History
