Tag Archives: Christianity

Jew of the Week: Grace Aguilar

Defender of Judaism

Grace Aguilar (1816-1847) was born in London to descendants of Sephardic Jewish refugees who fled the Portuguese Inquisition. Her parents were active leaders of London’s Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue. Grace was a sickly child, and seldom left her home for the first eight years of her life. During this time, she learned dance, piano and harp, and was tutored in Jewish studies and classical literature. She started writing at this time, too. As a teenager, her father taught her Hebrew and more advanced Jewish studies while she took care of him during a long bout with tuberculosis. She then took care of her ill mother, before being plagued with a serious case of measles starting at age 19. With her brothers away at boarding school, she bore the burden of caring for her parents and taking care of the family home. To raise more money, Aguilar strove to become a professional writer. Her first book, a collection of riddle-poems called The Magic Wreath of Hidden Flowers, was a huge success and launched her writing career. She then published a translation and explanation of an earlier Spanish work called Israel Defended, written to prevent Jews from converting to Christianity. Aguilar became good friends with future British prime minister (and former Jew of the WeekBenjamin Disraeli who helped her spread her writings. She soon convinced Isaac Leeser, editor of the popular Jewish magazine, The Occident, to publish her new book, The Spirit of Judaism, in 1842. The book was very popular both in America and England. Aguilar continued to write poetry, fiction, and treatises on Judaism. While she had become a bestseller, she still did not earn enough to care for her family, and had to work as a director of a Hebrew school. In 1845, Aguilar published Women of Israel, describing the lives of great Jewish women in history, and serving as an inspiration for countless Jewish women at the time. Some consider this to be her masterpiece. She followed that up with The Jewish Faith: Its Spiritual Consolation, Moral Guidance, and Immortal Hope, explaining the value and beauty of Judaism. Two years later, Aguilar was struck with spinal paralysis. She had already planned to set out on a trip to Europe, and refused to cancel it. She died in Frankfurt, and was buried in its Jewish cemetery. Her tombstone fittingly has verses from Eshet Chayil (“Woman of Valour”, from King Solomon’ Proverbs, chapter 31). Many more of Aguilar’s incredible works were published after her death, including collections of Jewish stories, novels for women, proto-Zionist writings, and works on Sephardic Jewish and English Jewish history. Her novel Home Influence, which had its first print just as Aguilar was dying, went on to sell out thirty editions. Her works were used as textbooks in some of the first American Hebrew schools. Although she was only 31 years old when she died, Aguilar is credited with being one of the most important Jewish educators and writers of her time, and playing a tremendous role in preventing Jews from assimilating and converting. Today, there is a public library named after her in New York City. Aguilar Point in British Columbia is named after her brother, who was an officer in the British Royal Navy. At her death, she was called “the moral governess of the Hebrew family”.

Words of the Week

There are rabbis who are so great that they can revive the dead. But reviving the dead is God’s business. A rabbi needs to be able to revive the living.
– Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzkthe Kotzker Rebbe

Jew of the Week: Don Fernando de Aguilar

Shana Tova v’Metuka!

Don Fernando de Aguilar on the cover of a children’s book

Don Fernando de Aguilar (c. 1500) When Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, some chose to stay behind and convert superficially to Christianity, practicing their Judaism in secret. One of these Conversos (or Marranos) was Don Fernando de Aguilar, who also happened to be the conductor of the Royal Orchestra in Barcelona. Despite the fact that Judaism was outlawed in Spain (until 1967, in fact) de Aguilar organized secret prayer services in the basement of Don Manuel’s leather shop. But there was one mitzvah they could never keep: hearing the shofar. After many years of longing for the sounds of the shofar, Don Fernando came up with a clever idea. He wrote a concert featuring the “melodies of the world”, set to play in Barcelona over the High Holiday season. Fernando expertly weaved the shofar into his opus, with packed crowds of hidden Jews listening in, along with the fooled Inquisitors. Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov writes: “It was said that no one had ever been more successful in confusing Satan on Rosh HaShanah than was Don Aguilar.”

Words of the Week

Three books are opened on Rosh Hashanah: The righteous are inscribed in the book of life; the wicked are inscribed in the book of death, and the judgment of the intermediates hangs in balance until Yom Kippur…
– Talmud, Rosh HaShana 16b

Jew of the Week: Francisco Maldonado

Doctor with a Mission

A Scene from the Inquistion

Francisco Maldonado de Silva (1592-1639) Raised as a devout Catholic, de Silva is one of the most famous Marranos in history [Marranos were the Spanish Jews forcibly converted to Christianity by the Inquisition]. His family migrated to Chile where de Silva became a doctor. He learned of his Judaism from his father, took an interest in it and started to learn more. He returned to Judaism wholeheartedly, circumsizing himself with a pair of scissors (relax, he was a doctor). Unfortunately, being Jewish was a crime and de Silva was arrested and thrown in jail for 12 years. He refused to eat their un-kosher food and would fast for 40 days at a time. De Silva was endlessly interrogated by no less than 13 inquisitors. Amazingly, he escaped from his cell after weaving a rope of corn stalks. Instead of running away, he climbed into the adjacent cell and converted two Catholics to Judaism. Tragically, he was burned at the stake with 11 other Jews in Lima, Peru on January 23, 1639.

Words of the Week

“The [Torah] has been a Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed; down to the modern times no State has a constitution which the interests of the people are so largely taken into account, in which the duties so much more than the privileges of the rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for Israel in Deuteronomy and Leviticus.”

– T.H. Huxley, famous biologist and paleontologist, father of the Huxley dynasty which includes Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, Francis Huxley and Andrew Huxley.