DONA GRACIA

JORGE NEVES

ISRAELI COMMUNITY OF OPORTO

APRESENTAÇÃO DO LIVRO "GRACIA NASI" de Ester Mucznik pelo Presidente da Comunidade Israelita do Porto, Ferrão Filipe, na SINAGOGA MEKOR HAIM, 10 de Novembro pelas 18h30
A história judaica tem mulheres extraordinárias. Da matriarca Sara à sionista Golda Meir, muitas mulheres judias fizeram história. Grácia Nasi foi uma delas. Com um carácter intocável e uma personalidade de ferro moldada pelas agruras da vida, esta mulher não teve medo de desafiar homens, papas, reis e o seu próprio destino. Nasceu em 1510 em Portugal depois de a sua família ter sido perseguida e expulsa de Espanha. Contudo não seria em Lisboa que encontraria a tranquilidade desejada. Viúva aos 25 anos, herdeira de um império comercial e de uma incalculável riqueza cobiçada por todos, Grácia Nasi torna-se numa verdadeira mulher de negócios, assumindo o seu espírito pioneiro e empreendedor, traço marcante dos sefarditas judeus/cristãos novos. Grácia Nasi percorre o mapa da Europa, passando por cidades como Antuérpia e Veneza, até chegar ao Império Otomano, onde finalmente pode praticar a sua fé às claras, sem recear qualquer perseguição. É aí que se dedica a ajudar os seus correligionários a escapar à Inquisição, apoia o estudo e o ensino religiosos, bem como a edição de Bíblias e estende a mão aos mais necessitados.

From: José Ferrão Filipe
Subject: GRACIA NASI, "A SENHORA"
To: "José Ferrão Filipe"
Date: Friday, November 5, 2010, 4:53 AM

QUARTA-FEIRA PELAS 18H30 VENHA CONHECER UMA DAS MULHERES MAIS FABULOSAS DA NOSSA HISTÓRIA...

GRACIA NASI MENDES... "A SENHORA"

"A JUDIA PORTUGUESA DO SÉCULO XVI QUE DESAFIOU

O SEU PRÓPRIO DESTINO"

APRESENTAÇÃO DA OBRA DE ESTHER MUCZNIK

SINAGOGA MEKOR HAIM

RUA GUERRA JUNQUEIRO, 340

PORTO

The Dona Gracia Festival for the Culture and Folklore of the Spanish Jewish Diaspora

http://festival-donagracia.info/pages/english.php?lang=EN

Tiberias, Israel
15-18th of November, 2010

The Dona Gracia Festival invites you to a moving 3 night and 4 day experience, where you will be swept away by the culture of the countries touched by Dona Gracia's thread of life: Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Turkey – and Tiberias, as well.

Festival Highlights:

Two great original productions in the new "Berku" Amphitheater, with esteemed artists and performers in a unique setting
A joyous festivity in the promenade
A sampling of activities - Fascinating meetings with Creators and Artists
Special lectures
Stories and narratives from Father's house
Dishes from Mom's kitchen
Secrets and mysteries of Tiberias - guided walking tour
Bus tours of the area
Tour of "The Dona Gracia Museum"
Sail on Sea of Galilee
And much more to come .....

Who was Dona Gracia?

Dona Gracia (nee Beatrice De Luna, or Hana Nasi in Hebrew) was the daughter of a Jewish family of "Conversos". By her thirties she grew to be a significant merchant, in fact, the richest woman in the 16th century world. As wealthy as she was, so were her deeds filled with generosity, as she dedicated herself to saving her expelled and persecuted brethren. With the blessing of the Turkish Sultan, Dona Gracia promoted and worked for the establishment of a Jewish state in Tiberias and environs. She built the walls of Tiberias, but her sudden death at the age of 59 brought an end to her remarkable Zionist initiative. For the occasion of her 500 anniversary, we are creating a new tradition: An Annual festival in her memory .

Contact:

The Dona Gracia Festival in Tiberias
Tel: 972-4-6728912, 1-800-88-88-58 , Fax: 972-4-6717059
festival@donagracia.com
"The Dona Gracia House" Museum, 3 Flowers Street, Tiberias Israel 14100

DONA GRACIA

(From the Jerusalem Post)

Dona Gracia recognized as Zionist hero in Beit Hanassi

By GREER FAY CASHMAN

Once the wealthiest woman in the world, Dona Gracia planned to establish an autonomous Jewish community in Tiberias. She was more than 300 years ahead of Theodor Herzl in conceiving a movement whereby Jews would once again take possession of their spiritual homeland, and way ahead of Baron Rothschild in purchasing property in the Land of Israel, but only now is Dona Gracia, once the wealthiest woman in the world, being accorded her rightful place in Jewish history and the history of Israel. Various novels have been written about her, with a blending of fact and fiction, but she has entered Israeli consciousness only in recent years. A true heroine of Jewish history, she was largely ignored according to Dr. Tzvi Schaick of Tiberias, because history was by and large written by men who were unwilling to credit women with power and achievement. The one place in Israel where her memory has long been revered is in Tiberias, where there is a Dona Gracia Museum of which Schaick is the director and curator. The museum, known as Casa Dona Gracia is part of the Dona Gracia hotel which is owned by the Amsalem family, veteran residents of Tiberias with known roots in Morocco and Turkey that in all probability stretch back to Spain and Portugal. The museum conducts weekend seminars about the life and times of Dona Gracia whose story fired Cohen's imagination to the extent that she pushed for the Education Ministry to include the study of Dona Gracia in school curricula. Tzvi Tzameret, the Chairman of the Education Ministry's Pedagogic Secretariat, agreed that it was high time for Dona Gracia to come out of the mothballs of the distant past. The upshot is that Israeli high school students as well as soldiers in the IDF will now learn of her plans to establish an autonomous Jewish community in Tiberias, which from the second to the tenth centuries was the largest Jewish city in the Galilee, and a great seat of Jewish learning. The 500th anniversary of Dona Gracia's birth was celebrated on Sunday at Beit Hanassi in the presence of President Shimon Peres, Israel's fifth President Yitzhak Navon, who heads the National Authority for Ladino, is a former Education Minister and is descended on both sides from long lines of Sephardi rabbis, Education Minister Gideon Saar, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch among a host of dignitaries. Former MK Geula Cohen, once a Lechi fighter who was arrested by the British, and an Israel Prize laureate, was credited several times over with initiating the Dona Gracia festivities - so much so that Peres said he was tempted to call her Dona Geula. The remark was greeted with cheers and sustained applause. Peres observed that it was easier to reach the peak of Mount Everest than the heights attained by Dona Gracia, whose influence was felt all over Europe and whose enormous wealth also influenced the Sultan of Turkey. Filled with awe and admiration at the extent of Dona Gracia's political and economic clout in what was then a man's world, Peres underscored that even though women have come a long way since then, there are still societies in which women are discriminated against, repressed and humiliated. "It is an outrage that even today millions of women are subjected to a life of slavery". Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that the story of Dona Gracia was buried for centuries and almost forgotten. "She was larger than life" said Peres, his voice ringing with astonishment as he recounted her travels, her rescue of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition, and the manner in which she provided safe havens for conversos like herself. The amazing thing he said was that she was able to achieve so much in so short a life span. She was only 49 at the time of her death. Education Minister Gideon Saar described Dona Gracia as "a woman before her time" preceding Herzl in her vision of a Jewish homeland and becoming a Zionist before the term was ever coined. Chief Education Officer of the Israel Defense Forces, Brigadier General Eli Shermeister commented that if Dona Gracia were alive today, she would be able to teach a valuable lesson in global economy and in leadership. "Her economic success was unprecedented, as was her political influence," he said. "She was a woman among men long before women were given the right to vote." Even if her name is not widely known, said Shermeister, "the values she espoused are part of our heritage. I salute her in the name of the IDF." http://www.jpost. com/Israel/ Article.aspx? id=192615

DONA GRACIA I

http://www.catedra-alberto-benveniste.org/

October 19, 2010, 18.30, University of Lisboa
Dia 19 de Outubro,

Conference of/conferência de:

Andrée Aelion Brooks: "Dona Gracia Nasi and her Significance to Jewish and Portuguese history. Why she is important to study and remember"
Sala de Conferências da Reitoria da Universidade de Lisboa, pelas 18.30h
Conferência integrada no Ciclo de Conferencias 2010, dedicado ao tema «Grácia Nasci e a sua circunstância».

The “Discovery” of Doña Gracia: Rising from the Footnotes of His-story to Recognition on Her 500th Birthday
(This article first appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Halapid, the publication of the Society for Crypto Judaic Studies (http://www.cryptojews.com)

by Dolores Sloan

In 1996, I decided that the book I was to write about the Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal would utilize biography. I reasoned that readers would get more out of a work of history about a distant place and age if they could identify with the persons who lived it. I would tell the story of the age through the lives of several notable Sephardic individuals of the day.

Most works of history are chronological in format. Mine would be too, but chronological for each of the four or five individuals I was to highlight. I had three prominent ones selected. They were Isaac Abravanel, financial adviser to four monarchs and biblical exegete; Abraham Zacuto, noted astronomer of the day whose celestial almanac and improved astrolabe would make possible the safe return of the explorers Columbus and da Gama; and Luís de Santángel, influential converso courtier to the Catholic monarchs, whose generous loan to them made Columbus’ voyage possible. I needed one more notable person and I wanted it to be a woman.

I’m not sure where I came across Gad Nassi’s little work Doña Gracia Nasi—it was either in the Santa Fe Public Library or UCLA’s Research Library. Written in 1990 as a commemorative piece for the celebration of her life in Tiberias, it was a succinct portrayal of an awesome woman who, on widowhood at age twenty-eight, assumed leadership of a most powerful trading and banking firm in the Sixteenth Century. I learned that she then led her family on a seventeen-year odyssey to the Ottoman Empire. With her New Christian family able to practice the Judaism of their ancestors in Constantinople, she became the quintessential model for Jewish philanthropy, funding the printing of books, building of synagogues, establishment of yeshivas, and a genuine concern for the welfare of her people throughout the Jewish diaspora.

So Gracia Nasi became the fourth notable Sephardic individual to serve as the book’s nucleus, the focus of Chapter Five, following a chapter on each of her aforementioned male contemporaries. Now I was to look for resources. Fortunately, I found Cecil Roth’s The House of Nasi: Doña Gracia, because other sources for this dynamic woman were, at best, a few pages about her or brief mention when his-storians wrote about Sephardim in the Sixteenth Century Ottoman Empire. and thethe particular writers arrived at the point in their works of the Ottoman Empire. There was more attention to her nephew and guardian, Joseph Nasi, who had been named Duke of Naxos by Sultan Selim.

It is interesting that the true measure of her contributions almost escaped recognition by Cecil Roth himself, the prominent historian whose works on Sephardic Jews and Marranos would fill a long bookshelf. In the Preface to his venerable biography, he described how he had begun to write about “that extraordinarily romantic figure of Jewish history, Joseph Nasi, Duke of Naxos,” but as his research progressed, Doña Gracia began to emerge “from the background and her features became clearer to me. I realized in the end that she was of importance in Jewish history, not as the habringer of her nephew but on her own account….What her nephew did during her life was almost entirely due to her inspiration and tutelage….” (pp xi-xii)

Roth was writing in 1947. It took almost a half century before works began to appear in English on Donã Gracia. One of the first was a novel published in 2001 by St. Martin’s Griffin. Naomi Regan’s The Ghost of Hannah Mendes wove La Señora into the narrative as the inspiration for a Twentieth Century, sophisticated and secular family from Manhattan’s Upper Westside to transform themselves spiritually and view their Sephardic Jewish ancestry with pride.
Since then have appeared André Aelion Brooks’ almost 600-page biography, The Woman Who Defied Kings (Paragon Books, 2002) and Marianna D. Birnbaum’s The Long Journey of Gracia Nasi (CEU Press, 2003), which contributed insight into the business acumen of Doña Gracia as head of the House of Mendes.

I begin Chapter Five of The Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal with a snapshot summary. I aver that “It is easy to come under the spell of Gracia Nasi. Inspirational, and revered in her days by Jews and conversos alike, this figure from post-expulsion, sixteenth century Sephardic history appeals to the twenty-first century enchantment with women who have expanded the gender boundaries of their eras.”

Even today, it is not regarded as typical for a woman not yet thirty to assume leadership of on of the largest banking and trading enterprises of the day, with little preparation for the task, and manage it well for the rest of her life. Gracia Nasi not only accomplished this while the tenacious middle ages still influenced the dominant thinking and behavior in many parts of Europe and the Ottoman Empire, but she also applied her power to protect her people and initiate reprisal against their enemies. Widowed, she continued to use her great fortune and company ships to support a rescue operation initiated by her late husband and brother-in-law, to help Portuguese New Christians in danger of persecution flee for safer lands. She funded the building of synagogue, schools, hospitals. She served as patron to worthy literary efforts, some of which are still regarded as classics. She was the driving force behind an economic boycott of the Italian port of Ancona to avenge the burning at the stake of twenty-four conversos. And she initiated a resettlement effort, designed to bring Jews from throughout the diaspora to Tiberias in the Holy Land. (page 101)

I referred earlier to Gad Nassi’s work written for the celebration of her life in Tiberias. In the book’s Forward, Dahlia Gottan writes that in December 1990, “For the first time in over four hundred years the city of Tiberias paid homage to its one-time patron and saluted its beloved Señora.” (p. 3)

The celebrations continue. We have learned of plans to pay homage on the 500th year of her birth in Antwerp on February 9, 2010. It was to that city, then a hub of commerce where the House of Mendes managed its dominance of the lucrative spice trade, that the twenty-eight-year-old, recently widowed Doña Gracia fled Lisbon with her daughter, sister and nephews.

After a brief stop in England, they reached Antwerp, where Diogo, her brother-in-law, awaited them. It was the first temporary haven in the seventeen-year journey. They would eventually cross the borders of eight states on their way to the Ottoman Empire, where they would be welcomed by Sultan Suleiman, who followed the example of his predecessor, Sultan Bayazid, in harvesting the skills and resources of Sephardim expelled by the Catholic monarchs and harassed by the Inquisition.

Although it wasn’t a celebration, there was indeed an outpouring of gratitude and love for this remarkable woman at memorials on the occasion of her death, presumed to have been in 1559.
Many were the eulogies for La Señora. In his tribute, delivered at the synagogue Livyat Hen that she had founded in Salonika, Rabbi Moses Almosnino compared her to the great women of the Bible; Miriam, Deborah and Esther. A poet of Salonika’s Hebrew-Hispanic school, probably Saadiah Longo, laments that “She is no longer, the noble princess, Israel’s glory, the splendid flower of exile who built her house with purity and holiness. She protected the poor and saved the afflicted, bringing happiness to this world and rejoicing for posterity." (p. 123)

On the 500th anniversary of her birth, I have my own personal tribute. Thank you, Doña Gracia for your example of wise leadership, courage, generosity and service to your people, my people, and for adding giant cracks to that glass ceiling for women.




Dolores Sloan is the author of The Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal: Survival of an Imperiled Culture in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and the editor of the Journal of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Crypto Jews. Former editor of HaLapid, publication of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies (named after the publication edited by Artur Carlos Barros Basto), she is chair of the Society’s Arts Program Committee and a member of the Board of Directors.
Ms. Sloan is a frequent speaker at museums and conferences and at religious, community and educational organizations on the topic of her book, on crypto Judaism and on related subjects. She is on the English faculty of Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles, where she also offers the course “Women in Jewish History and Culture.” Her web site is www.doloressloan.com




Doña Gracia and the Boycott of Ancona

I have been asked to offer an excerpt from Chapter Five that illustrates some of the attributes of Doña Gracia described in the article above. I have selected the account of her leadership in the boycott of Ancona in 1555. It follows below:

Excerpt, Chapter Five of

The Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal:

Survival of an Imperiled Culture in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

By Dolores Sloan

The family had been in Turkey only two years, when the repressive situation in the Italian port of Ancona brought Doña Gracia once again to international attention. Paul IV had become Pope in 1555, determined to rid his Papal States of New Christians openly observing Judaism. The entire Ancona community of Portuguese conversos, about one hundred individuals, had been arrested and tortured, preparatory to execution by fire. Among them was the local representative of the House of Mendes. Upon learning of the arrests, Doña Gracia won Sultan Selim’s support. He interceded to ask for the release of the prisoners and all seized goods. The Pope rejected the effort, and twenty-eight individuals, including an old woman and a boy, were burned at the stake.

With others, Doña Gracia desired revenge against the papal city, a prosperous port, and used her considerable influence at The Grande Porte and throughout the Ottoman Empire to secure support for an economic boycott, diverting goods instead to nearby Pesaro, in the duchy of Urbino. There, the duke had sheltered those conversos who had managed to escape from Ancona. The original proposal was for an eight months boycott, after which the principals would decide whether to continue.

The boycott was opposed, however, by the prominent rabbi of Salonica, Joshua Soncino, who feared reprisals against the older, non-converso Jewish community that had not been harmed thus far because of its non-Christian background. He interpreted Talmud to call the boycott illegal. Doña Gracia and her followers, on the other hand, pointed out the danger that failure of the boycott would bring to those who had fled to Pesaro. There, she feared, the duke, disappointed at the undelivered promise of increased trade after making expensive harbor preparations, would no longer refuse to hand the Ancona exiles over to the pope.

Soncino won the support of enough merchants and rabbis, many of whom had previously backed the effort, to destroy the unity required for the boycott’s success. Subsequently, more and more trade began to return to Ancona.

Doña Gracia had predicted correctly. The enraged Duke of Urbino soon banished all conversos from Pesaro, even those who had been long settled there. The refugees were preyed upon by ships from Ancona, one group captured and sold into slavery. The Pope was able to prevail upon even the relatively liberal Duke Ercole of Ferrara to destroy copies of the elegy on the Ancona executions, written by Poet Jacob da Fano, and close the press of its publisher, Abraham Usque. It was Usque who had printed the Spanish bible dedicated to his patron, Doña Gracia.

Roth singles out the boycott as perhaps the first time Jews had applied pro-active, unified political and economic action to defend Jewish interests, rather than take the more traditional route of financial payments and prayer. He holds the boycott’s failure responsible for the belief that was to persist in the centuries to follow: that Jews would never unite to fight their oppressors. The generations to come were to witness unending persecution and agony for Jews in the Papal States and in Christian Europe.

Study of these events illuminates the character and methods of La Señora, using her power to get cooperating rabbis to excommunicate merchants breaking the boycott, and summoning influentials before her in the manner of royalty, demanding and cajoling them for their support. Synagogues not yet committed were warned of losing the Nasi stipends they had been receiving. Even the redoubtable Rabbi Soncino was called to her palace in the same manner as lesser religious and commercial leaders, but to no avail.

“It was amazing that it was a woman who had taken the lead in this gallant demonstration that it was not always necessary for Jews to suffer passively,” the historian Cecil Roth asserts in his biography The House of Nasi: Doña Gracia.

Dona Gracia, A Senhora (1510-1568)

Dona Gracia, A Great Portuguese
mlopesazevedo

In the recent RTP TV contest to determine the greatest Portuguese, the ten finalists were all men. There are many women that could and should have been on the finalists list but are forgotten or ignored by dominant patriarchal rulers. One of them is Dona Graçia, born in Lisbon in 1510 of Spanish parents who were expelled from Spain in 1492 along with all other Jews. In Portugal, they were forcibly baptized in 1497 by King Manuel. Dona Gracia Nasi, born Beatrice de Luna, known to history as the Senhora, was the wealthiest banker of her day. She lent money to the Kings of Europe, including John III of Portugal,Henry VIII of England , Francis II of France, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and also to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. She was a patron of the arts, fed the hungry and gave refuge to the persecuted. And she is forgotten.

Dona Gracia married Francisco Mendes whose family had made a fortune on the pepper trade from India. The Mendes banking empire had spread far and wide with offices in Antwerp and representatives in several cities including London. Sadly, Dona Gracia became a widow at 25 years old. She was forced to leave Portugal when King John III insisted she hand over her two year old daughter to be raised in the court and of course, take part of the family fortune with her. She fled to Antwerp to join her brother-in-law Diogo, but he also died shortly thereafter. During this time she not only managed the family banking empire but also engaged lobbyists in Rome and paid huge bribes to keep the dreaded Inquisition from entering Portugal. She was forced to leave Antwerp after a personal meeting with the regent queen of the Netherlands, Marie, sister of the powerful Charles V of Spain, in which she refused the Queen's entreaties to marry her daughter to an Iberian nobleman. On the pretext of returning to a country spa for health reasons, she and her considerable entourage made there way, overland, to Venice where she was briefly arrested on charges of Judaizing and later to liberal Ferrara before settling in Constantinople where she died in 1568.

Dona Gracia was a woman ahead of her time. She refused to remarry because according to the laws of that time, she would have lost control of the family fortune. She was independent. She refused the efforts of kings and queens to force the marriage of her only daughter. She was defiant. When in 1555 pope Paul IV ordered the trial of Portuguese Jews in the papal city of Ancona where they had been promised freedom, she organized an unheard of economic boycott of the port, even though more conservative elements in the Jewish community opposed it. She was courageous and determined. She supported the printing house of Abraham Usque in Ferrara which published, Menina e Moça, a canonical Portuguese romance, amongst other important texts. She valued books. She supported the arts.She paid for the establishment of schools. She valued education. She convinced the Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, to grant her Tiberius in Palestine for the re-settlement of Marranos (mostly Portuguese Jews who were forcibly baptized in 1497). She was a leader. She supported the Portuguese intellectual community in exile, such as the pioneer physician, Amatus Lusitanus whose texts are still referred to today and which are dedicated to her. She was patriotic. She is said to have personally fed 80 people a day from her household. She was benevolent. She was and is a truly great Portuguese.

DONA GRACIA MUSEUM

http://www.donagracia.com/DonaGracia/index.htm