[1] HAIM BEJARANO TRAVELS TO BÉJAR
Many stories begin, end or take place on a journey. From The Odyssey and The Divine Comedy to Don Quixote and the Lazarillo, the metaphor of the road serves to tell the life of human beings, even those of those who have never moved from the place where they were born.
Antonio Muñoz Molina, one of the most recognized
writers in the Spanish language, is a good example of that close relationship
between the word and the journey as the driving force and reason for the lives
of characters and people. The Polish Horseman is the story of his own family
over several generations. Winter in Lisbon is that of the jazz musician who
pursues love on the back of a piano. The Wind of the Moon is the chronicle of
the end of Franco's regime with the arrival of man to the satellite as a plot
thread. But Sefarad, published in 2001, is the work that best expresses transit
as a way of life. It is a novel composed of several formally unconnected
stories that the author describes as “an encyclopedia of possible exiles.”
Sepharad is the distant homeland of the Jews
expelled in the 15th century. There is a disparity in figures among those who
have studied the departure of the Hebrews from Castile in 1492, ranging from
the 300,000 indicated by Isaac Abravanel, a contemporary of the events, to the
half million that was established as the usual figure in more recent times. At
that time there were no censuses nor were any records taken of those who left.
We will never know how many left.
What we do know is that many of those who left
adopted as their family name the toponym of the cities that saw them leave:
Toledano, Sevillano, Zamora, Ávila. And also Béjar, Bejarano and all the
derivations that the surnames suffered over time and the adaptation to other
grammars (Behar, Becerano, Bicerano, Bidjarano and others).
The story of Rabbi Haim Bejarano is also that of a
journey. That of his own, which began in present-day Bulgaria and ended in
Istanbul, and that of each of the Sephardic Jews who continue to speak today in
Ladino or Spanish Judeo.
He was born in Stara Zagora in 1850, son of Moshe
Bejarano and Kalo Baruch. He grew up with his maternal grandfather in Palevna,
where he began studying the Holy Scriptures. At the age of 17 he was already a
rabbi in Rusjuk Varna, while he studied English, French, Italian and German,
which he would complete with Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Romanian,
Bulgarian and Judeo-Spanish. He worked as a Hebrew teacher at the Israelite
Alliance school in Ruse. And after the death of his mother he settled in Bucharest,
where he served as a dayyan (judge for matters related to religion) and as an
interpreter for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At that time he had a
relationship with Isabel de Wied, queen consort of Romania, who appreciated his
knowledge in literature and philosophy and who was the author of several
literary works under the pseudonym Carmen Sylva.
His intellectual activity rivaled his religious
career. He was one of the founders of Hovevey Zion, an international
organization created in Eastern Europe to combat Russian repression of the
Jews, which led him to have a correspondence relationship with some of the most
important promoters of Zionism at the end of the 19th century, such as Theodor
Herzel, Max Nordow and Ben-Yehuda.
Haim (or Henri, as Western intellectuals liked to
call him) Bejarano (or Bedjarano, Bedjerano, Bidjarano and Bijarano, which is
how we can find his last name spelled) was a lover and active defender of
Sephardic culture. A regular columnist in newspapers printed in Judeo-Spanish
such as Tiligrafo and El Tiempo, but also in the Spanish press, between 1903
and 1913 he compiled in writing some 3,600 common Sephardim sayings and
proverbs.
He married a woman named Reyna Asa and they had
eight children, five girls and three boys: Marin, Severe, Jacques, Bucka, Rosa,
Rahel, Diamanti, and Bellina.
The war between Bulgaria and Turkey surprised him in
1912 as a rabbi in Andrianopolis (now Edirne, in Turkey) and during the
confrontation and conquest of the city by the Bulgarian army he contributed to
keeping his community safe.
Bejarano reached the highest religious
dignity in 1920, when he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Turkey, a position that
allowed him to meet and treat the last sultan of that nation, Mehmet VI, and
the young general who modernized the country, Mustafa Kemal, Atatürk. Precisely
under the rule of this Turkey experienced a process of secularization that also
affected the Jews, who were frequently exposed to harassment from the media
related to power, such as when they were accused of placing themselves at the orders
of the Government of Spain for writing a letter of adhesion to a tribute to
Christopher Columbus.
His interest in Spain and the culture of his
ancestors led him to contact prominent Spanish intellectuals at the beginning
of the 20th century. It all began after meeting Dr. Ángel Pulido, a Spanish
doctor and senator for life who visited the Sephardic communities around the
Danube in 1903. Fascinated by the preservation of the language and culture of
those Jews who spoke to him with echoes of the 15th century, Pulido dedicated
the rest of his life to act as a defender of those expatriated compatriots, whom
he admired and whom he presented to King Alfonso XIII as potential commercial
partners of Spain throughout the Mediterranean arc
Under the guidance of Pulido, Haim Bejarano, whom
the Spaniard addresses in his writings as Enrique, joined the Royal Academy of
Language and came into contact with the likes of Menéndez Pidal and Unamuno.
He had an epistolary relationship with the rector of Salamanca, of which a small memory is preserved in the Bilbao native's personal library. These are two autograph letters sent by the rabbi to Unamuno in 1904, when the young Greek professor had already been directing the University of Salamanca for four years.
The first letter is dated April 4, handwritten on
squared paper with neat calligraphy in excellent Spanish, in which he addresses
Unamuno as “Very illustrious, wise and dear sir.”
It is the response to a letter from the rector sent
a month earlier and for which Bejarano thanks him for “the great sympathy that
you express for my brothers from the East and for my humble and obscure
person.”
Bejarano speaks to the rector about his work
compiling proverbs, of which he says he has already published more than 2,000,
and how he is surprised to know that in Spain many of them have lost the
original meaning that is maintained among the Sephardim: “It is wonderful to
see how many of them that seem to have lost the origin of the first meaning in
Spain are found here in the East in the mouths of the common people.”
He also tells you that he is sending you some books
published in Judeo-Spanish, such as The Treaty of Aboth, which I send you with
a Spanish translation and square characters. It is read in the Temple on each
Sabbath of the six weeks that follow Easter in the Spanish language and
"It is explained." No trace of any of those books is preserved in the
Unamuno library.
The second communication, dated September 29 of the
same year, is a postcard in which the text appears crammed together and where
he informs her that he has had access to part of a speech by Unamuno given in
Gijón of which he asks for a full copy. He also tells him that he is sick and
asks him if he has received the books in Judeo-Spanish that he sent him so
that, if not, he can "complain to the post office."
This second text is accompanied by a business card
in French in which he introduces himself as a member of academic organizations
in France and Italy.
Bejarano spent much of his life fighting to preserve
and enhance the Sephardic culture and its language, trying to strengthen its
presence in the countries of Eastern Europe and the Middle East through his
contacts with Spain, trying to counteract in this way the The strength of
French and local languages will put an end to Ladino.
He died in 1931, aged 81, and is buried in the
Arnavutkoy Jewish Cemetery in Istanbul. One of his daughters said of him: “He
was a friend of sultans, the last caliph and Ataturk. The world admired him and
acclaimed him, and he made a place for himself among the cultured people. With
an enormous memory, he knew how to combine Western culture with the treasures
of Eastern culture. Inclined to perfectionism, but with deep humility and great
modesty.”
The reader who has come this far will be wondering
about the journey that the text titles. When did the famous rabbi and Hebraist
come to Béjar? Who did he interview with? What memories did he leave in
writing?
I said at the beginning that literature uses travel as a narrative resource to tell a story. Haim Bejarano's is one of those trips that are only made with imagination and desire. He was never in Spain, and of course he did not set foot in Béjar, but he had a deep affection and respect for what he often called his homeland. He told Unamuno in his letter: “I don't know how to combat this nostalgia for four centuries! I would be, I assure you, the unhappiest mortal if I were to die with this tear from my soul to see the motherland of Spain where the ashes of my parents lie!
So forgive this trick of a shell journalist that has
brought you here so that you can learn about the life of an illustrious
countryman who was not born in Béjar. That of our Bejarano's distant cousin,
who died praying in the Ladino language that his parents gave him as a
centuries-old gift that connects him with all of us.
In his letters to Unamuno, his memory remained just
70 kilometers from that cemetery where his ancestors lived (of which, by the
way, we do not know his location). If poetic justice exists, let me dream that
this article has brought him to us today and that, after knowing something
about his life, we can tell him:
Enrique, welcome to your house.
IGNACIO COLL TELLECHEA
Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the David
Melul de Béjar Museum Foundation.
Spanish Text originally published in the
'Festivities and Fairs Magazine' of the Béjar Chamber of Commerce. September
2016
https://www.museojudiobejar.com/en/2020/05/haim-bejarano-viaja-bejar/
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