The Jewish community has celebrated the third centenary of its arrival in Gibraltar with a large civic dinner at Grand Battery House.
James Levy, president of the local Jewish Community, celebrated the ecumenical coexistence of the Rock. According to him, “a paradise because of the way we coexist.”
After being systematically expelled from Sepharad during the previous two centuries, in 1724, just eleven years after the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, which prohibited the admission of Jews and Moors to the Rock, the community formally established itself in Gibraltar.
The admission of Jews was one of the violations of the Treaty of Utrecht that Spanish diplomacy used in an attempt to invalidate the treaty. Following the first claim, the Rock underwent several sieges by the Spanish during the 18th century, the first being in 1727. After its failure, in 1729, an agreement was signed between the British and the Sultan of Morocco, which allowed for the legal residence of Jewish people in Gibraltar, subject to the sultanate and aimed at aiding the supply of the British garrison. During the various sieges of the city by the Spanish, the Jewish community helped defend the colony when the Spanish tried to reclaim Gibraltar.
However, it was not the first Jewish community established on the Rock, as the first records of their presence date back to 1356, when the community appealed for the ransom of a group of Jews taken prisoner by pirates. Other documents indicate that Jews fleeing from Córdoba sought refuge in Gibraltar in 1473, a precursor to the saga of Corto Maltese, invented by Hugo Pratt.
The current Jewish community of Gibraltar numbers around 650 members.
After their return to this small territory of former Sepharad, Jews were granted the right of permanent settlement in 1749, when Isaac Niego, the first rabbi of the new community, arrived from London, establishing the Shaar Hashamayim congregation and founding the oldest and most beautiful synagogue in Gibraltar, also known as the Great Synagogue. The community from England was also of Sephardic origin. They are known, in fact, as Spanish and Portuguese: from Spain to Portugal, from Portugal to Holland, and from there to Britain—that was their route. At that time, 600 Jewish residents lived in Gibraltar, which made up a third of the civilian population.
Three other synagogues were built in Gibraltar: Nefutsot Yehuda (the exiles of Judah) and Ets Hayim in 1781, as well as the Abudarham Synagogue in 1820. In 1911, a fire damaged the Shaar Hashamayim synagogue, among whose pews is the plaque of the late Sir Joshua Hassan, the first Chief Minister of Gibraltar: “Hassan came here every Saturday, but sometimes a messenger would arrive to fetch him, and he had to go to the Convent,” confirmed Solomon Seruya, who later became Israel’s ambassador to the Philippines and was another pillar of the local Jewish community.
The Convent was an old Franciscan convent that now serves as the headquarters for the British governors on the Rock. Another example of ecumenical coexistence, whose historical precedents include Simi Cohen, the famous Gibraltar-born Jewish woman who converted to Catholicism and is venerated in Medina Sidonia: “In the United States, they have to set up commissions of friendship between Jews, Catholics, or Muslims, but here there’s no need,” suggested Solomon Seruya. In fact, the restoration works on the façade of the Shaar Hashamayim synagogue, the Gate of Heaven, were carried out by a group of Moroccan masons.
Some say there are not four synagogues in Gibraltar, but five: the fifth would be the Talmud-Torah school, the so-called synagogue of the children.
Traditional Hebrew, the one of the Scriptures, contrasts with Ladino, the 15th-century Spanish that Sephardim preserve and which is once again heard in some of the religious services on the Rock.
By the late 18th century, their presence on the Rock was already significant, reaching 31% of the population in the 1753 census. Today, it hovers around 650, almost the same number as those who founded the first synagogue.
Today, alongside La Chica and Abudarham Synagogues, both in Irish Town, there is Nefusot Yehuda, also called Flamengah, from Flanders. Shaar Hashamayim, also known as the Great Synagogue, is the cathedral-like one, used for official events, under the light of the menorah or seven-branched candlestick.
