1515. An Astronomer and A Kabbalist in Rags: Iberian Exiles in Jerusalem

JEWISH MOMENTS IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL

1515.
An Astronomer and A Kabbalist in Rags:
Iberian Exiles in Jerusalem

Around 1515, a letter left Jerusalem describing two exiled Iberian scholars as the city’s poorest men. Written to a powerful patron abroad, it sought help for these refugees and anchored their suffering in the wider Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel. The story of that letter, its author, and its subjects shows how, even in extreme poverty, Jerusalem remained a chosen destination for Jews after the expulsions from Spain and Portugal.

——–

The testimony comes from a Hebrew letter in the Cairo Geniza, composed in Jerusalem by the Spanish exile R. Moshe Castro, around 1515. R. Castro wrote as a local communal figure addressing a wealthy diaspora leader, probably in one of the established centers of the Ottoman or Italian Jewish world. His purpose was straightforward and practical: to secure sustained financial support for the struggling Jews of Jerusalem.

The letter reflects a mature, organized system of assistance from the diaspora to the Jews of the Land of Israel. Already in the late Middle Ages, emissaries were regularly dispatched from Jerusalem and Safed to collect funds in communities in Europe and the Mediterranean. These donations were understood as a unified lifeline connecting dispersed Jewish communities to a permanent Jewish presence in the Holy Land. R. Castro’s letter belongs to this genre of appeal.

At the time of the letter, Jerusalem was still emerging from the Mamluk period and on the eve of the Ottoman conquest of 1516–1517. Its Jewish community was small and economically fragile. Many residents depended on small trade, crafts, and charity. Diaspora donors tended to prioritize the Holy Cities, Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias, not because they were wealthy or secure, but precisely because they symbolized continuous Jewish attachment to the land. Within this setting, R. Castro implicitly sketches a social hierarchy among the poor. Long‑established families and local functionaries often had first call on communal resources. At the same time, newly arrived Sephardic scholars, however distinguished, might find themselves at the very bottom, lacking property, stable positions, or deep local networks.

In this context, the letter from R. Castro names two particular sages whose distress he presents as a shocking extreme case of poverty. These were R. Abraham Zacuto, the famed Sephardic rabbi, astronomer, and historian, and his brother-in-law and colleague R. Abraham HaLevi, a prestigious Sephardic rabbi and kabbalist. R. Castro stresses that “no poverty in Jerusalem is as dire as theirs.”

R. Abraham Zacuto, born in Salamanca around 1452, had been royal astronomer in Portugal and the author of astronomical tables and instruments that aided Atlantic navigation. He left Spain in 1492 and Portugal after 1497, spending time in North Africa in the eastern Mediterranean and in the Levant, where he died around 1515.  R. Abraham HaLevi, a fellow Iberian exile, was born, probably in Toledo, around 1460. He left Spain after the expulsion, lived in the Greek lands under Ottoman rule, and in Constantinople, before settling in Jerusalem, where he died after 1528.

As to R. Moses Castro himself, he was the stepson of R. Abraham HaLevi, who raised him like a father when he was still living in Spain, the nephew of R. Abraham Zacuto, and a student of R. Levi ibn Habib in Jerusalem and later of R. Yaakov Berab in Safed.

R. Castro writes as a Jerusalem insider who has taken responsibility for the welfare of his fellow Sephardic exiles. He presents R. Abraham Zacuto and R. Abraham HaLevi as scholars of the first rank whose Iberian eminence has not translated into economic security in the Land of Israel. As bearers of the Iberian Torah tradition now transplanted to the Land of Israel, their poverty is a communal embarrassment. Jerusalem, which aspires to be the heart of the Jewish world, is shown as unable on its own to support even the most learned of its residents. As such, their situation is used to dramatize the city’s needs and to persuade his addressee that charity to the Holy City is both urgent and meritorious.

Seen in this light, this glimpse into life in Jerusalem c. 1515 links Iberian catastrophe and Jewish continuity in the Land of Israel in a single document. Two men whose careers began in the courts and academies of Spain and Portugal chose to end their lives in Jerusalem, despite the city’s poverty and political instability. The letter captures the cost of that choice, that is, extreme material deprivation that could only be mitigated by the steady concern of Jews abroad. But the letter also shows that, even at its weakest, the Land of Israel continued to attract exiles who were willing to exchange comfort for the chance to live and learn there. Their dependency on diaspora charity did not weaken the symbolic pull of the land. Rather, supporting them became one of the main ways in which Jews across the Mediterranean renewed their connection to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.

Sources and Further Readings

Abramson, Henry. “The Sephardic Diaspora and the Holy Land.” In The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume 6: The Middle Ages: The Christian World, edited by Robert Chazan, 604–626. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

David, Abraham. “A Unified Lifeline in the Middle Ages: The Ways of Assistance from Jewish Diaspora to the Jews of the Land of Israel in the Middle Ages.” EtMol 24, no. 2 (1999): 18–20 (Hebrew).

David, Abraham. To Come to the Land: Immigration and Settlement in Sixteenth‑Century Eretz‑Israel. Translated by Dena Ordan. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999.

David, Abraham. “Those Who Come from the Ends of the Earth to Jerusalem, With Their Wealth, and Build Houses: A Chapter in the History of the Jewish Community in Jerusalem at the Turn of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in Studies in Hebrew Poetry and Jewish Heritage: In Memory of Aharon Mirsky, ed. Ephraim Hazan and Joseph Yahalom (Ramat Gan: Bar‑Ilan University Press), pp. 455–462. (Hebrew). 2007.

“HaLevi, Abraham ben Eliezer.” In Encyclopedia Judaica. 2nd ed. Edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007.

“Zacuto, Abraham ben Samuel.” In the Encyclopedia of Religion. Detroit: Gale, 2005.