New and Old Worlds at the Hispanic Society of America, Fall 2016

Visit to the Hispanic Society of America, November 18, 2016. 

Over the years I have had the great pleasure of taking my students at YU to the Hispanic Society of America on 155^th and Broadway (http://hispanicsociety.org/).  My graduate students from Revel, as well as my undergrads from YC and Stern have visited this unique space in Harlem. Most years we come in the context of our study of Jewish life in Medieval Spain or the Inquisition. I bring them to this dusty gem of a museum and library for several reasons. I want them to get a feel for the wider Iberian culture where the history we are studying unfolded. I want them to see the mudejar cabinets and pottery next to the Virgin and Child, el Grecco’s electric yet somber saints, and of course the commanding Duchess of Alba that greets all visitors to the museum with her sly insistence that “solo Goya”! (She is currently on loan and so did not greet us this time.) The texts we study together all semester were written and read on the Iberian and American soil that was the stage for these paintings and furnishings and I hope to give my students a taste of a taste of that world. The museum was designed to evoke “Iberianess”, and it is transporting. Ultimately, however, it is a manicured simulacrum. We are not in a patio in Córdoba, or a church in Burgos or Oaxaca, we are in Harlem and that is the wonder of it all. Just 3 miles from my classroom at Yeshiva we can enter a well crafted time machine and make connections between the geometric patterns of a Nasrid-era door from Granada and the delicate shapes adorning the margins of a medieval Bible.

http://hispanicsociety.org/

The highlight of most visits is our time with John O’Neill, the chief librarian of what is probably the best collection of Spanish rare books outside of Spain. He is funny, down-to-earth and in love with the books he brings up from the vault to share with us. He generally chooses a variety of medieval and early modern texts that link Jews and Judaism to the wider Iberian context: a manuscript copy of the Alfonso X’s legal code, the Siete Pártidas, with a special oath for Jews to recite during legal proceedings; a 14^th century copy of the legal code, Arba’a Turim, written by the German Rabbi R’ Jacob ben Asher who along with his father, the “R’Osh” found refuge in Toledo in the late 13^th century; a book of genealogy proving the “blood purity” of a nobleman eager to shed his converso past; an inquisitorial trial transcript against a bunch of Portuguese Judaizers living in México.

This time I took my students from my “New World Encounters” class. We have been studying the ways Europeans conceived of the New World with a focus on the first century of European exploration- Columbus, Cortés, Bernal Díaz, Cabeza de Vaca, Shakespeare’s the Tempest with some indigenous counterpoints where available. O’Neill began with an incunabula copy of Ptolmey’s geography from the 1480’s –no Americas in sight! We saw the municipal log book of Santiago de Guatemala with the signature of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the loquacious chronicler of the conquest of Mexico and a prominent resident of Guatemala; a pictographic census of a small Mexican town a generation after the Spanish conquest with a pull-out map of the town indicating its resources and population along with small portions of Nauhatl text written in Latin characters. 

These are fascinating old books and manuscripts and the students seemed to appreciate the magic of seeing and touching something that is centuries old and that connects to the history they have been studying. (They had good questions and “ooed” and “ahhhed” at the right moments!) However, what really got their attention was when O’neil brought out a big box and revealed an exquisite illuminated 15^th century Hebrew Bible. Until this visit I have only seen this Bible in the wonderful facsimile that O’Neill generously gave as a gift on previous visits. Up close the colors were more vibrant, nuanced. They were rich and textured. All of my students “popped-up” to see the colorful decorations on the borders of the words which were written so elegantly many generations ago. We tried to make out the comments written around the margins in a tiny but clear script, often curving into geometric micro-graphic patterns. Did the rabbits or monkeys in the marginalia “mean anything”? Was there a connection between the Biblical passage and the coat of arms festooned on the opposite page?

I am consistently struck by the care that went into one of these manuscripts- the preparing of the parchment, the writing of the text, the layers of craft and creativity that go into the ornamentation. Seeing my students’ excitement deepened my gratitude for all those who have preserved these books, reading them, smuggling them out of lost homelands, caring for them under a host of good and bad times.

The Hispanic Society will be closing for renovations for about two years beginning December 19^th. I cannot urge you enough to go for a visit to this wonderful space and I encourage you to take in the sights and sounds of the surrounding neighborhood. And don't forget to spend some time with this devil who has been hanging out in storage for a while!