Lecture 63. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated · Sabato Morais Digital Repository · Legacy Projects from Judaica DH at Penn Libraries

Title

Lecture 63. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated

Author

Morais, Sabato

Location(s)

United States -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia

United States -- Pennsylvania

Format

11 pages on 4 sheets

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?

Language(s)

English

Source

Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Sabato Morais Collection, Box 12, Folder 5

Has Format

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/ark:/81431/p38g8g27d/manifest.json

Link to Colenda

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p38g8g27d

Provenance

Transfer of Custody from the Hebrew Education Society, 10 March 1913.

Is Format Of

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/judaicadh/morais/main/TEI/SMBx12FF5_20.xml

content

S. MORAIS,
546 N. FIFTH STREET,
PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Post Biblical
63

History has recorded that even after the pitiless procla--mation of expulsion had gone forth, Abarbanel had not relinquished all hopes to work upon the feelings of the king and queen and induce them to revoke the iniquitous edict. He knew that Isabella was not hard-hearted by nature, if she was made a bigot by education, while experience had made it almost assured to his mind him that Ferdinand could be softened at the sight of gold. Accordingly, he secretly arranged that an audience might be given him together with a few influential friends. In language which Abarbanel knew well how to choose, the great diplomatist and financier, pointed out the irreparable loss that Spain would sustain by the banishment of a class of people that had enriched it the country as merchants and benefitted it by a practical application of sciences; a people that reflected honor on the peninsula by their cultured intellects and who loved it passionately as the home of their ancestors as the cherished spot where lay the bones of generations of Jews, ever ready to make sacrifices for their native hearth country. Then with keen judgment and tact he added at the last that as a demonstration of the affection which Jews bore Spain, they would pour into its treasury three hundred thousand gold ducats for the privilege of living and dying there.

Isabella, not inherently cruel; Ferdinand insatiably greedy, wavered. They looked at each other indecisively. They were about to yeild, when Torquemada, the inquisitor general, who must have heard that Abarbanel and his friends had been given an granted a private audience, rushed into the hall, hiding under his Dominican cloak a crucifix. He seized it, raised it aloft and with a fierce countenance cried out, "Judas Iscariot sold his master for thirty pieces of silver, your highnesses are about to sell him for three hundred thousand ducats pieces of gold. Here he is, take him, barter him away." With that, the savage priest, whose insolence ought to have met with a withering rebuke, threw the crucifix upon a table and went out, thus putting an end to the pending negotiations. For, Isabella was terror struck at the denunciations of the man who held in his hand the strings of her heart. in his hand Her confessor would not grant her absolution. She would be doomed to a hereafter of everlasting torments. No: Catholic Spain must not harbor infidels. Prescott in his elegantly written history of Ferdinand and Isabella, referring to the expul-sion, says that by "a deed so unwise and impolitic, Spain lost the most industrious and skilful portion of her subjects." And in a narrative which tears the soul of the reader, the American historian pictures the sufferings of the exiles while in search of an asylum, which refined barbarity denied them. Abarbanel in his preface to a his comment on Daniel utters this Jeremiah-like lamentation.

"I am the man who saw affliction, after having seen my people in its greatness. My own eyes did see its increasing prosperity; the height it had attained, its glory; all which it had achieved. My eyes followed it in all its phases. It was became splendid. Who would have believed what has happened? I call heaven and the Lord Divinity as witnesses of this truth. In the year that our splendour vanished, there were in the kingdom of Spain three hundred thousand of my people, every one of whom owned estates worth amounting altogether in the aggregate to more than thirty millions gold ducats--a wealth ammassed alas! to the ruin of its possessors. For, after four years from the awful event, the exiles were reduced to ten thousand were poverty stricken, stripped of their all; a target to robbers, rolling in their own blood. Bitterly do I weep; my spirit is broken by reason of the devastation and desolation. My heart trembles; I drag myself on the ground which I tread upon." A number of the unfortunate refugees reached Italy and sought a home in Naples, where Ferdinand II. reigned. That Prince showed them kindness. Abarbanel and his family had also gone there in quest of a shelter. The illustrious exile found a measure of comfort in resuming his favorite writings. But again he was drawn out of the privacy that he yearned for. The Neopolitan king being told of his presence, requested that he would serve him, as he had served Alfonso V of Portugal

and the ungrateful Ferdinand and Isabella. Abarbanel dared not refuse and he accepted the an office in the financial treasury department. But adversity accompanied him there also. For, Charles VIII. of France made war against Naples and conquered it. Abarbanel, loyal to the son of Ferdinand who had succeeded his father, at--tended the dethroned Prince in Sicily, as partner of a life of sorrow. in Sicily The French had confiscated all he possessed, and unhappy Abarbanel a wanderer all alone forlorn and disconsolate, left exchanged after a time Sicily for Corfu. because Meanwhile his children unable to provide for their parent and for themselves, had scattered about. He, Left alone, he however did not, continue long in Corfu, but longing anxious for quietness after so stormy an existence, he passed on to Monopoliz, a small town not far from Venice, where he remained eight years absorbed in the studies which alone afforded him pleasure respite and earned for him eternal renown. At the instance of his son Joseph he was subsequently induced to come out of his retirement and settle in Venice. Inscrutable are the ways of Providence. The Republic on the Adriatic, knowing what an expert Abarbanel was in diplomacy, requested that he would undertake to settle a dispute litigation it had with Portugal, concerning certain distant colo--nies and the trade derived from them. His diplomatic will statesmanship was put again to the test and, regardless of the treatment which he had received when in his native home at Lisbon, he settled the dispute contest agreeably to both the contestants disputants.

[Hebrew] Of his three sons, the illustrious distinguished father might well have been proud. Judah, the oldest, called in Italian "Leon," gained distinction as an eminence as a physician, but more so by means of his scientific researches. His celebrity however, is principally based upon a work which he entitled "Dialogues on love"; Dia -loghi d'amore. I confess that it being in my mother tongue, I felt very curious to read it. But owing to my unacquaintance with ignorance of philosophy in general and with of that of Plato in particular, I failed to appreciate a book discussing the attractiveness of metaphysical ideas. But the production which I did not prize non-Jewish Italian scholars however have greatly valued, that book that so that so that through their favorable opinion it has undergone translations in several languages, even in Hebrew. Profess Graetz holds that "Leon Abarbanel was much more highly accomplished; richer in thoughts; in every way more gifted than his father." Possibly so, but I am not fa-miliar with the writings of the son, and I have acquired some acquaintance with those of the parent, that I highly appreciate.--an author greatly exceedingly esteemed by me. My affection for Judah Abarbanel has its origin not in his Dialogues on love, but in the anguish that he heroically endured for the sake of his religion. When the agonizing hour of the expulsion from Spain arrived, Ferdinand of Castile determined that, if his minister and financial adviser preferred poverty, exile and suffering to baptism, the son, who had developped extraordinary talents, should be forced to remain in Spain.

to accomplish his design, he ordered that Judah Abarbanel's little child, one year old, named Isaac, after his grandparent, be abducted, thinking that it would be the sure means of preventing the departure of the father, who would try make any sacrifice to secure the recovery of his boy. An intimation of the wicked plan was obtained in time and Judah Abarbanel entrusted the babe to a nurse, charged to take it him to Portugal. He himself would not venture there, because of the treatment which his own father had received under John II. He preferred to accom--pany his broken-hearted parent to Naples, hoping that the child would escape the attention of the authorities in Lisbon. Whether treachery on the part of the nurse, or government spies did the foul wrong, John II was told that one of the seed of Abarbanel was in his kingdom. He kept the child as a hostage, ex-pecting that his father would soon follow. Frustrated in that object, the boy was finally baptised and baptism of the boy Abarbanel boy was made to afforded ba the beholders pleasure. Like Edgar Mortara of Italy Papal Rome in our days, the lad was reared in the bosom of the Catholic Church. A Hebrew elegy which the afflicted father composed is dis--tressful in the extreme. I will translate two or three lines: Apostrophising his child, the unfortunate father exclaims: "I hope, oh hope deferred! Why dost thou my sweet darling delay to come? Why wilt thou crush the heart of him that has begotten thee, thrusting arrows into my reins, darkening the sun, clouding the stars of my existence, stealing sleep from my eyes, so that I know not

whether I should to rise up, or lie down. Ah! I dream of the my return. I see thy image--O how delightful my hope lot!"
Joseph Abarbanel, the second son of Don Isaac, combined with the knowledge of the medical art that of general literature. He settled in Ferrara and reached a very old age, in the enjoyment of universal esteem. Samuel the third son of Don Isaac was only nineteen years, when his father fled to Naples. And as his parent could not bestow upon the youth's education the necessary attention, he was sent to Salonica, where he gained surpassing capacities, the exercise of which procured for him fame and riches. One of his contemporaries, Samuel Usque who had escaped from the inquisition at Portugal, alluding to that third son of Don Isaac, writes in his history entitled "Consolation for the sorrows of Israel" "That scion of Abarbanel possesses a threefold glory--greatness in learning, greatness in lineage, greatness in affluence." And the same author lavishes praises upon that an same Israelite, whom he portrays as a generous and public benefactor. However, in my mind the father of the three distinguished sons excelled them all. Not simply because of his facile pen so very prolific; not even for the honor which he shed upon his people and his faith by his a broad understanding of the art of govern--ment, but because when confronted by the alternative either to enjoy life, opulence and power as a pretended convert to Christianity, or to face tribulations and death in exile,

he chose the latter, that he might remain true to Judaism. Born to be a majestic figure in the country of his birth among the celebrities of that wonder-ful age of learning, perfidy, ingratitude and religious hatred made Isaac Abarbanel a wanderer, among strangers, needy and broken in spirit. Scarcely had the allotted scriptural three score years and ten arrived; when the strain of exceedingly extremely sore trials, told upon his system. He died in at Venice, just after having completed his seventy first year, at Venice but the Israelites of Padua, who could boast of a flourishing community and of men in its midst of great calibre, begged of their Venitian coreligion--ists the privilege of having the Sephardic Sage and illustrious diplomatist statesman, who had created an epoch, interred in their choice burial place ground. His sons had the remains of their immortal father carried there, amidst the universal la--mentations of Italian Jews. But even after its decease, the body of that glorious son of Israel was denied rest, for a conflict between some Italian cities within the gates of Padua overthrew houses and fields and with them the cemetery in which the bones of Don Isaac Abarbanel lay buried. Still, I remember to have read that recently while excavations were being made, the working men found a tombstone, which they imagined to have been placed over what was mortal of our greater brother in faith.

Nay, his body may have been lost, but his spirit lives and breathes love within all for the religion that cost him such sufferings. Could his undying soul address us now, it would urge us to hold fast on the belief we inherited, even, on the Sephardic liturgy memorials, historically grand.

Identifier

p38g8g27d

identifier

SMBx12FF5_20