| Palma de Mallorca – Home of the Hidden Community
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Does your cruise ship stop in Palma de Mallorca? We are happy to offer
you an extraordinary shore excursion in this port!
Mallorca, the Sephardic island, was for hundreds of years home to a sizable
Jewish population that can be traced back to the 5th century.
Our 2,5 hour walking tour gives you an overview over the Jewish history
and presence in Palma. For clients, who can spend a whole day in Mallorca,
we offer a combination of this walking tour with an afternoon visit of
"Studio Weill", congenial designed by architect Daniel Libeskind.
The private museum, with a stunning view over the bay of Puerto Andratx,
shows the work of the American artist Barbara Weill.
Mallorca was an important center for cartography where Jews played a
pivotal role. The famed map-maker Jafuda Cresques, who according to legend
drew the maps used by Christopher Columbus, was recently honored with
a statue in the Jewish quarter of Palma.
Repression during the 14th and 15th centuries led to forced conversions.
These Crypto-Jews, publicly professing Catholicism while privately adhering
to Judaism, remained for a long time true to their faith. Private homes
secretly adapted rooms to be used as makeshift synagogues. Called Xuetas
by the Catholic locals, they lived for centuries in their own quarter
where signs of this secret community are still found today. Times have
changed and after many centuries some descendants of Jewish families have
begun again to consider and embrace their heritage. One of these, Rabbi
Nissan Ben-Avraham, born in Mallorca in 1957, was years after his re-conversion
ordained as an orthodox rabbi in Israel in 1991.
Our tour starts in the oldest Jewish quarter dating back to the Muslim
era of Mallorca, the Call Menor, and continues through the narrow, twisting
streets to the medieval Jewish quarter. The Call Major is home to remnants
of synagogues with Jewish life preserved in street names like Calle Argentera,
where the goldsmiths worked.
You can also visit the park where the old Jewish cemetery used to be and
walk the streets where the descendants of Mallorcan Jewry live to this
very day. The Museum of Jewish Memory (Museu de Memoria Jueva) has a permanent
exhibition about the history of the Sephardic Jews in general and the
Crypto-Jews of Mallorca in particular. Here you can also learn about today's
Jewish community, re-established in 1971. Let us make your stay in Palma
an unexpected experience. Come taste the flavor of the famous crespells,
a Mallorcan Jewish pastry, and encounter dimensions of Mallorcan life
you never before considered!
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