Girona... is a holy place. It's WEIRD. It just feels like... It's a real "On this rock you will build my church" kind of place. It apparently was a very typical Spanish village before the Reconquista, in that it had Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities to cater to, but the thing is that here, they did it BIG. This isn't like "Oh, hey, there's the Alhambra, this must be an important holy place," because, among other things, there's a major Mosque, a gothic cathedral, and a Synagogue, and all three of them seem to have been competing with each other. Not competing like in America, not for "who can get the most members together." Competing like "Hey, boys, them Christians just put in another stained-glass window."

"... Shmuel, tell me again what your plans were for above the Ark?"

"I was thinking maybe polish the stone a little, lead down to a half-wall mural on the eastern wall."

"Make it the whole wall. And maybe slap some blue and some gold in there, will yas? We don't want everyone to come here on Shabbos and think we're slacking off."

The city is very tightly compacted, very close in- It's weird, I don't think I've ever been in a walled city like this. ... Well, except the Vatican... But the Vatican didn't have so damn many PEOPLE. And those it did have were either tourists or put on routine patrols, whereas here, it's bustlingly chaotic. Not exactly in a BAD way. It'd sort of be like blood flowing through your circulatory sistem if your circulatory system alternately used and blocked different paths at random. It's confusing, but in an alive sort of way.

The Jewish quarter (The Call) is made of a bunch of maddeningly twisty little alleyways intertwining with each other into something a little like a square spider web or a pachinko game. It's probably one of the best noir settings I've ever seen in my life. These kind of alleyways in the dead of a dark night are evocative of just the right feeling of a city that welcomes you, but that ain't looking out for you... Which pretty much HAD to be what the Jews felt when they were here.

Still, as far as Jewish life here, I'm guessing things were actually pretty okay. The Diaspora served us well, here, considering that literally every artifact in the museum is gilded and the headstones that remain in the cemetary are some of the most ornately carved pieces of stone I've seen from this era. Seriously, this place was... GOOD to us, man. The typical clothing housed here was brightly-colored and festive, the food was served on plates only marginally less stunning than what we used for Passover and the like- hell, they had a crushed velvet cover for the the Megillah, and it was a different cut from that of the Torah. From what I could tell, they even had a Megillah and Torah that were MADE here IN THE SAME YEAR, which if you know anything about Jewish scribes suggests that there had to be two active groups of scribes working at once.

And then the Reconquista happened, which is I think when the Jewish Quarter started to... turn.

They had on exhibit a letter written by the chief "Jurat" of Girona (Catalan term basically analogous to "judge"), expelling the Jews. Some got out, I guess. Quite a few, if you believe the walls. And others... didn't. These were the ones who got too comfortable to remember how to flee properly, it seems.... And those were the ones that were killed in the main square, in front of the Cathedral, over year after year of inquisition conduct. They were offered the freedom to convert, oh, yes, but the thing is that from the records, more than half of the people who DID convert were still brought in a few laters, accused of practicing Judaism in secret. Which some of them might well have been, but... Seriously, dudes, they tried to play it your way. Who elected YOU Inquisitor- oh right.

Granted, the town apparently learned the hard way that killing and expelling Jews causes a deep and terrible plague to fall upon your city in the Renaissance... the plague of inescapable poverty. One. In the 1490s, Jews = trade. Did Venice and Florence teach these people nothing? Two. You never, EVER try to evict a quarter of your population, ESPECIALLY if all the men are tradesmen, blacksmiths, merchants, butchers, bakers, candlers, and many other professions upon which the continued wealth of your city depends. This is what we like to call "Shooting yourself in the foot."

So yeah. Jews leave, suddenly that area of the city is preeeeetty bad. People who DO live there are bitter, and the people who've left have taken their trade, their food, their cultural contributions and, in a few key notable places, the actual stones that make up their buildings and alleyways. I'm not making this up, there's a place in the Rambla that's still missing half of a stair.

Aaand that was the permanent exhibit. There was a temporary calligraphic exhibit about the Song of Songs, but without much English writing, I sort of had to puzzle out what the Catalan was saying about it - The Castillian signs here are useless, basically, as they're all Blind Idiot translations- and I got the feeling that this exhibit would be really, really nifty if Dave was here to explain what I was looking at.

Also, as a brief aside, the stuff that Nahmanides actually touched and used has this unusual way of GLOWING. I think he probably was quite happy when thinking about God, and it shows. Even his handscript is more playful than most, in a way I can't think how to describe.

Checking out the cathedral after lunch.

Update, a few hours later. On a visual level, the gothic cathedral of Girona (built over about two hundred years, so you really do get a nice slice of different architectural styles, from romanesque to the flying-buttressed variety) is really stunning. On a metaphysical level, ow. Ow and wtf. 500 years of masses kind of don't bleach out the continued red stain of "Our kind used to kill your kind here." It is VERY much an Inquisition cathedral, and thus I couldn't stand to stay in it for very long.

Couldn't find the Mosque, because apparently the Cathedral is built where it used to be. Some people directed me to a smaller mosque, but it was recently firebombed. So it goes. The muslim community here is endeavoring to rebuild it.

Finally ended up finding my way to the Nahmanides Institute of Jewish Learning... Which was closed, because it's Shabbos. Oh well.