Dalia Kandiyoti and Rina Benmayor, editors
REPARATIVE CITIZENSHIP FOR SEPHARDI DESCENDANTS: RETURNING THE JEWISH PAST IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
New York: Berghahn Books, 2023. ISBN 978-1-80073-824-9
Reviewed by Jane S. Gerber1
The Sephardic diaspora was electrified by the Spanish and Portuguese Nationality Laws of 2015 which temporarily offered non-residential citizenship as a form of atonement for the past injustices committed against their Jewish communities in medieval times. Spain’s law was described as a “reconciliation with the Sephardim after five hundred years” and Portugal’s was called a “law of return to the homeland.” The 2015 laws were hailed by many Sephardim or people of Iberian Jewish ancestry as a unique opportunity to reconsider their relationship to their past connection to Spain or Portugal. Over 300,000 applications were submitted to the two countries (p.2) despite the expense and complexity of the laws. Both laws raised a host of questions, many of which are touched upon in the sixteen essays in this volume.
Reparative Citizenship is based upon seventy carefully selected interviews with articulate informants in various disciplines and offers a diverse set of academic, historical, sociological, and personal perspectives. The resulting volume thoughtfully confronts a varied set of questions such as what motivated the governments of Spain and Portugal to belatedly promulgate their edicts. And why weren’t the Muslims who were also expelled in medieval times (the Moriscos) also included in the legislation? How did the current Spanish and Portuguese Jews lobby for these reparative laws? More interesting still are the data of who applied and why? How did the opportunity to reacquire Spanish or Portuguese naturalization affect the Sephardic identity of the applicants? The sixteen resulting chapters edited by Dalia Kandiyoti and Rina Benmayor provide significant preliminary data from the legal, historical, cultural, and testimonial point of view and contribute some new perspectives to the growing literature on the interconnections between history and memory.
Just as the past historical experiences of the two Jewish communities were interconnected but also substantially different, so too were the two laws quite different in their intention and applicability. In contrast to Portugal, Spain has never rescinded its expulsion decree of 1492. The Portuguese, on the other hand, explained their law as the restoration of a right which had been denied to the Jews, not a reparation. In the case of both countries, citizenship was not to be restored automatically but might eventuate as the result of a complex, multi-stage, and expensive application procedure that would involve travel, multiple bureaucracies, testimonies of genealogical experts, and more. It is scarcely surprising that only a few thousand applicants ever received positive confirmation of citizenship at the end of the intricate and laborious process. Spain’s procedure was much more complex than Portugal’s. As a result, fewer applicants completed the arduous process or achieved success after great expense, much disappointment, and bureaucratic hassle. Both naturalization laws have since expired.
The issue of rescinding Spain’s expulsion decree has been raised several times in the past, most recently culminating in 1924 with the royal decree of the dictatorial regime of Primo de Rivera that offered naturalization to Sephardic Jews. This offer was temporary, expiring in 1930 and did not offer residential rights. Its implementation became a bone of contention during the Holocaust and was invoked by Franco’s regime to whitewash its behavior towards Jews at that time. Few Sephardic Jews availed themselves of the 1924 offer, yet Spain attempted to take credit for the individual generosity and assistance of a few Spanish consuls who rescued some Sephardic Jews during World War II in order to embellish its fascist past with a more favorable narrative (p. 10).
After Franco’s death in 1975, a new, positive discourse of “convivencia” (of pluralistic tolerance and peaceful co-existence in medieval times) emerged with new emphasis on a shared medieval Spanish culture (Hispanidad). This cultural emphasis served to legitimize the exclusion of Spain’s Morisco population (predominantly North African Muslims) from considerations of eligibility for naturalization (chapters 6 and 8). Spain’s emphasis on cultural continuity as a criterion for naturalization also set up a set of significantly expensive and extremely time-consuming barriers for applicants involving knowledge of the Spanish language and Spanish history as proven by passing several written examinations and personal interviews.
Portugal’s path to citizenship was more lenient than Spain’s, although the country was loath to physically incorporate new Jewish citizens as residents. The Portuguese did not demand proof of knowledge of their language or culture; their “law of return” was also part and parcel of a broader program to depict present-day Portugal as a tolerant democracy (chapter 2), both pluralistic and welcoming. In both cases, many potentially eligible applicants felt that applying for citizenship would be tantamount to absolving Spain or Portugal of responsibility for past persecutions (chapter 12, chapter 16) of their ancestors.
One of the most interesting features of the volume is the richness of personal testimony of applicants. The application process sparked renewed interest in a frequently long-lost or carefully concealed Sephardic identity among descendants of medieval Iberia. The process of discovery of familial roots in Spain or Portugal occasionally produced new Jewish communal connections, even shaping the emergence of new Jewish communities of converts. This was especially the case for conversos and crypto-Jews in the Americas (chapter 14). Their identification was primarily with their Sephardic ancestors, not predominantly with Spain. For some applicants, the genealogical route produced quasi-mystical bonds with unknown ancestors and a general fascination with their roots. For others, however, a sense of disconnect and rupture with the past prevailed.
The personal testimonies include a fascinating and rare testimony of a Donme (a follower of Sabbetai Zvi whose Sephardic ancestors had converted from Judaism to Islam in seventeenth century Salonica). Equally interesting is the response of contemporaneous Catholic Brazilians descended from Portuguese Jewish forced converts from the sixteenth century wave of migrations from Portugal or the Netherlands to the Americas. By re-appropriating and crafting a Sephardi narrative, according to cultural anthropologist Marina Pignatelli (chapter 15) these Brazilian descendants of conversos not only announce their “otherness,” but also link themselves to Europe through Portugal and thereby attain a new individual and collective sense of belonging. The application process for Portuguese naturalization has, in their case, opened new paths of self-discovery and “belonging” (chapter 15).
Social media such as Facebook, videos, and YouTube have all played a significant role in the creation of virtual groups currently engaged in constructing their “Sephardi-ness.” Many of these particular applicants perceive themselves as descendants of New Christians rather than as normative Sephardi Jews. They differ from those applicants, generally Turkish, Israeli, or Venezuelan, for whom a second passport is perceived as a backup security plan or a way of doing business in the European Union. In 2020, 65% of the applicants were Israeli. The total number of applicants who have successfully availed themselves of the Portuguese Nationality Act to acquire passports exceeds 50,685 with 80,102 applications still pending as of 2022 (p. 219, n.2).
Ruth Behar poignantly expresses the sadness and anger of those whose application was deferred or denied by Spain as she questions whether Spain ever genuinely wanted to offer a home to the Sephardim, the Spaniards without a country, or whether it wasn’t all a publicity stunt to begin with (p. 220). Diverse personal responses such as Behar’s, buttressed by the more technical chapters on the application process for Spanish and Portuguese citizenship, leave the reader with much to think about on the continuing identification of Sephardic Jews and their descendants with their Spanish or Portuguese past.
1 Jane Gerber is Professor Emerita of History at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.