Touching the Inquisition, part 2

In the synagogue in Barcelona: Even broken glass can be brought back together

Now I will take you on my journey through Spain. Something important before I start: Physically I went on this journey alone, but I had a group of 16 intercessors covering me in prayer, without whom I would not have been able to make this journey!!! I can write a book about all that I experienced in those two and a half weeks, so I will have to really choose what to share. Let me first tell you about the itinerary. I started in Barcelona, just because it is the first city in Spain when traveling from France and it has been on my wish list for ages (because of the art of Gaudí). Furthermore I knew I would be going to Tortosa and the city of Léon, because of the connection of these places with the Dutch pope. But another three cities were added to my plan: Valladolid, Segovia and Mérida. I will try to share something significant from each city that happened or that I discovered. But first, what did I actually do?

One of the most important things I felt to do was to physically walk the land, literally touching the ground my feet and praying for the healing of the land (and yes, between the cities I used faster means of transport than my feet 😊). Then I prayed and repented in places significant in Jewish history and in the history of the persecution of the Jews. If I was not able to find specific information on where things happened, I went to the main church and main square of the Middle Ages and to places connected to the Dominican order. I proclaimed bible verses, sang worship songs, songs and psalms in Hebrew, and parts of the Jewish liturgy, specifically in places where I felt the Jewish expression should be restored. Another important thing I did was asking questions. Yes, I wanted to get information, but even more so it was a way to bring up the subject, to have people start thinking about it, to provoke them to address the subject. It was also a way to discern the openness in people or closedness. And on the two Fridays that I was in Spain I purposefully celebrated shabbat, trying to do it in a significant place, also as an act of restoration.

Barcelona

In Barcelona the Jewish community was almost entirely murdered during the 1391 massacre. The main place where the massacre took place was in the Castello Nuevo, a castle that has entirely vanished from the map of Barcelona and even people in the office of Tourism had no idea it even existed and they referred me to another castle in Barcelona, which plays no role in the massacre of 1391. In the end I was able to find the location in a small museum on Jewish history and I went around the block of houses now built on top of it several times in prayer. I also had a beautiful encounter in the former synagogue, rediscovered in 1996. Here I met with a Christian woman from Mexico, to whom I could speak about how many people in Latin America have Jewish ancestry and how God is restoring that in our days. She was not aware of Jewish ancestry in her family line, but I challenged her to seek the Lord about it. Then some Americans entered and I understood these were Jewish people. I went up to them, sharing with them that I am a Christian who loves Israel, I shared the purpose of my journey and asked if we could sing Oseh Shalom (He who makes peace, a famous Jewish prayer for peace) together. The first response was surprise: Did I know the song? How was that possible? And then regarding my desire for repentance: This was not my fault, so not my responsibility. When I said, that I see this history still needs healing, the response was affirmative. And when I said, that I believe repentance brings healing, the response was affirmative too. In the end we sang Oseh Shalom together and it was a God-filled moment.

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Tortosa

Tortosa has a beautiful tourism website and the way they presented the old Jewish Quarter (the Judaría) gave me a very idyllic impression of the place. So, I had hoped to be able to celebrate shabbat on Jerusalem street in the Judaría. I was deeply disappointed to discover that the whole area of the Judaría is old, rundown and the atmosphere is somewhat hostile. The beautiful thing is, that Abba gave me words of awakening and restoration to pray, both in words and in movement (dance). I had a sweet time with the Lord there. And in the end I took my shabbat meal on the square in front of city hall. This was a different kind of special setting, because city hall had a big Palestinian flag on its balcony 😉.

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Valladolid

I went to Valladolid in order to meet a friend of a friend. But looking into the history of this place I realized how God had used that meeting to bring me here. Because it was in Valladolid that the Catholic kings, Fernando and Isabella who established the Spanish Inquisition, got married and thus gained power over Spain as it was known then. I was able to pray in the place where they got married and also visited all other sites connected to the Inquisition and the Jewish history. At one of the offices of Tourism I had an interesting conversation with two ladies working there. It turned out that in the family of one of them seven out of eight family names are Jewish and in the family of the other one three or four. They both agreed that there is a huge lack of knowledge in Spanish society regarding the history of the Inquisition and that the little information that has been preserved (since much has been lost), is not being ‘brought into the light.’ At the end of our conversation I invited them both to ask God about their Jewish heritage, since I see how this is important for Him. And on the last night in Valladolid I ‘accidentally’ learned that the first Great Inquisitor, Tomás de Tourquemada was born in or around Valladolid, grew up there and entered in the Dominican monastery there. He also was one of the personal confessors of Queen Isabella and was one of those who gave her the idea of the expulsion of the Jews. He later became prior of the monastery in Segovia, where he wrote the handbook for the Inquisition. I already had planned to go to Segovia, but the importance of this visit was now confirmed!

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Segovia

In Segovia the Jewish history is well preserved and documented and I went to all the important places and prayed there. Very little information was available on the history of the Inquisition. But I went to the former Dominican monastery. Its church has a beautiful entrance that was added in the time of de Tourquemada and it is thought this was paid for by money from the Jewish victims of the Inquisition. The monastery functions now as a university and is only open to visitors on Sunday. So I went around the compound in prayer. On one of the buildings close to the former monastery a combination of a Swastika and a Dominican cross was spray-painted! On my way back into town my path crossed with a young woman and I saw she had a pendant of the land of Israel around her neck. I reacted to this, which made her stop. I started the conversation by pointing to her pendant and asking her if she was Israeli. No, she was Palestinian. I told her from the bottom of my heart, that I am so sorry, for what is happening to her people (because no matter what narrative you believe, the Palestinian people are suffering a lot and are not free!). We ended up having a beautiful conversation. She was an Orthodox Christian, visiting a friend in Segovia. At the end we hugged.

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Léon

My visit to the city of Léon was one of spiritual extremes. On one hand I had a beautiful time celebrating shabbat there. On the other hand I didn’t only feel silence around the history of the Inquisition, but I even felt secrecy and felt like hitting a wall. It was also in Léon that for the first time in two weeks someone admitted that there wasn’t more information on the Inquisition, because: “We don’t want to know about this history, as about the history of Franco”. I thought of traveling from Léon to Portugal and spend some days praying in the country, before travelling to Lisbon for the national Memorial day of the victims of the Inquisition on March 31. But there were no good travel options available. So I decided to not abandon Spain yet and travel further south and then travel from there straight to Lisbon. I ended up going to Mérida.

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Mérida

And yet again, it seemed totally random for me to travel to Mérida, as had been the case with Valladolid. But once I decided on Mérida I also explored the history of this city. It turned out, that in Mérida the first archaeological evidence of Jewish presence on the Iberian peninsula was found: a second century gravestone of a Jewish girl. It felt like touching the roots! In Mérida I went to see that gravestone. It is in a big museum on Roman art and I needed a guide of the museum to find it. I talked with the guide about the purpose of my visit and he was interested. He started to talk with another guide about the Jewish history of the city and they agreed with one another, that there should be more information available about it. They were able to point me to the square around Diana’s temple, where around the time of the expulsion and the beginning of the Inquisition a synagogue was superseded by a church. So, I went there too (it ‘happened’ to be just down the road from my hotel…) and was able to pray there onsite. If it had not been for these two guides, I would never have found it, because except for a information sign on site, no other information was available.

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With those two nights in Mérida my time in Spain came to an end, for now. I do feel that this land needs a lot more healing and a lot more prayer, repentance and touching of the history of the Inquisition. I will keep you posted on how this will continue for me. I did continue my journey to Portugal and was able to assist at the very meaningful memorial walk that my friends organized for the national day of commemoration of the victims of the Inquisition. And with some last minute changes in my schedule I also participated in the Seder, the traditional celebratory meal on the first night of Pesach, with the Messianic congregation in Lisbon. What a beautiful and hopeful conclusion of my time on the Iberian peninsula!

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