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Exodus 2: Spain to Portugal to Ceuta to Morocco to Rock of Gibraltar

That said, please join me and enter the lives of the  Israel family in the tumultuous year of 1492. You are about  to live as part of the family for 4 centuries and so will be around at many critical times having to  make many major decisions as a member of the family. Initially make those decisions as if you were a person of that time blissfully unaware of 21st century viewpoints. Then make the decision again this time as a 21st century person  considering how any changed decision might then affect you personally way back then.

However first- just as an exercise – imagine in  you are a Spanish native in 1492, desiring a career sailing the seas in what we would now call the merchant navy. Given the choice do you  choose to be an officer or a deckhand? I assume you choose “officer”. The goods being shipped usually involve some element of slave labor in their production. In the 15th century slavery of  peoples of all colors and creeds is pretty normal and not considered evil by the enslavers. In Africa the Portuguese buy the slaves off locals. Some now slaves had been until capture were even previously allies of competing slave capturers.

Thankfully we now all consider slavery as incontrovertibly evil. For you to be overtly anti-slavery in 1492 would be exceptionally abnormal. At most you might be enlightened to some modest extent and consider slaves should be treated better. What logical reason would the 15th century you have for not joining the Merchant Navy. If you did join, why should you be viewed by a 21st century person  as having been  evil? Do you deserve the evil tag whether you were an officer or just a deckhand and no matter what good deeds you may do in other aspects of your life?

You are the same potential officer in 1492 but now hold  the 21st century view of slavery. Do you decide not to join the navy? What alternative career should you go into that is free of any connection with slavery? Whatever you decide, do  you not wear clothes and eat food? Slavery is involved in both. Your government and your nations’ armed forces are financed partially courtesy of slavery. You are not living in a democracy and the result of any active protest by you could well be your death and achieve nothing. Should you not  compromise and take the post but try to do some good and seek to achieve some positive changes in viewpoints? If you did and a statue were to be erected in your memory it might well now still be torn down with you considered to have been evil because of your connections with slavery.

That was just a test. You are not a potential  sailor but a member of the Orthodox Jewish Israel family living in an undemocratic Spain. The Spanish Empire in the course of creation will be responsible for promoting on a massive scale the acquisition of slaves captured by one African tribe from another for sale and subsequent transportation  across the Atlantic. For the captors via the Atlantic trade in slaves to the Americas post 1492 they now are able to supplement their long established trade with the Moslems of North Africa.

In the years leading up to that fateful year of 1492 when Columbus (whose statues are now falling apace) left to “discover” America, the rulers of Spain, Isabel and Ferdinand are relying heavily, and indeed mainly,  for financial and commercial advice on two Sephardic Jews – Abraham Senior (an ancestor of mine via my paternal grandmother) and Isaac Abrabanel. If Jews are readily accepted at court surely this must be good news for you.

Not only that,  Abraham had  helped promote the marriage between Isabel and Ferdinand, helped fund the cost of the final expulsion of the Moors from Iberia and incidentally was a funder of Columbus. He is the Chief Rabbi appointed by the Crown to head the Jewish community which in many areas of life  is allowed to rule itself in accordance with Jewish law.

The Jewish community in which you live is divided between the few better off and powerful and the vast majority of poor and ruled. All the Rabbis are members of the better off and powerful families. Charity is provided by the community to the poor as required by Jewish law. Are you not thankful to be amongst the few better off since although you  might still later  move downwards from rich to poor, if you had been poor  only very rarely might you prove able to move upwards?

You are fortunate to have been born into the Israel family and automatically in that small elite upper strata of the Jewish community. Your family has an international trading network of fellow Jews spread throughout the known world and which the Spanish Crown are exploiting to improve the country’s economy. It is not a formal organization and no way structured. You wish to trade with some faraway place and you may find out that say your second cousin’s nephew lives there. You connect with him.

Just checking yet again, would you rather have been born poor and powerless? Can you do anything to avoid the actions of the 1492 you being considered evil in the view of the 21st Century you. The informal  networks were created not as a clever strategy but in the main as an incidental consequence of Jewish people over the centuries fleeing oppression in the towns where they were living and looking for a new  place where they would be welcome – at least for a time.

Spanish rulers as a matter of norm for an upfront sum grant trading  monopolies to selected parties and who for the monarch’s own cynical reasons are often Jewish.They know  use of Jewish family networks improves the chances for successful exploitation of those monopolies. More importantly if successful the monopoly owners and those to whom they grant subsidiary rights can be heavily taxed. You do not like the way most business activities have to be conducted? Well that is the way business is conducted under absolute monarchies. You sail in their ship or not at all. The ship sails whether or not you are on board. Would you prefer a life or poverty and idleness? Would you be prepared to risk your family dying for lack of proper nourishment caused by poverty resulting from your seeking to avoid actions that would be considered undoubtedly evil in the 21st century ?

In any event those Jewish beneficiaries of monopolistic  trading rights are drinking from a poisoned chalice. If successful they may indeed have their moment in the sun. However in an instant they can become a sacrificial lamb. All it may take is for the general populace to remonstrate at the benefits a Jewish businessman has received and at any preference  given to him by the Monarch and for at that time  the Monarch to consider it in his interest to sooth the complainants by terminating those rights  and confiscating the wealth created by their exploitation for the undeserved  benefit of the Crown and perhaps selected other subjects of the ruler.

Monarchs consider rich Jews  no threat to royal power. If a monopoly were to be  granted to a Catholic  noble and he were to  become rich he would be theoretically able to arm his retinue with his eyes set on the throne for himself or his chosen candidate and to entice the general populace to  rally round him. A wealthy Jewish merchant could never attract this type of support with  anti-semitism as a matter of norm being promoted by the Church to the masses .

You and your family like most Jewry consider the temporary support of your Monarch as preferable  to no support at all and limited success to be better than no success at all. A life fulfilling menial tasks is not for you when compared to the one you are living. You operate  at a high level of responsibility and can, when you feel that way inclined, use your status and wealth for the benefit of the poor. For what possible reason would you choose to be poor? As a poor Jew  you would still  be subject to the same anti-Semitism experienced by rich and poor alike.

You know only too well that everything may well  fall apart for you, and preserve your sanity  by believing that this will happen at some indeterminate date in the future and certainly  not tomorrow.  In 1492 the Church wins  the Inquisition battle and you awake to find that time is now for Jewry. For Muslims there will be only a short delay before they are similarly targeted.

You learn that an edict has been issued by your beloved Monarchs requiring you and every Jewish native to convert to Catholicism or leave Spain. As part of the Israel family how do you feel about the choice you are now being forced to make?  The law has to be obeyed does it not? In this dictatorship you know you can only  either choose to stay and go through the conversion ceremony or to choose to leave.

The Catholic population in the main are happy with this new law. The unequivocal 21st century view of this is that the law was racist and most consider the supporters of the law must certainly have been racist. Could any good deed of any one in the Catholic population be deemed so worthy that a statue of them should be left standing in the 21st century? They accepted oppression of  notionally converted Jews and soon of notionally converted Moslems as positive acts just like they accepted slavery as part of life. They were in the main very religious people and it would not have crossed their minds that  their acceptance of slavery as part of life and of the Inquisition made them evil persons.

Burning of converted Jews and their descendents for heresy would often be the centerpiece of celebrations by the masses who would cheer as the victims died in agony. Should I as a Jew now feel that this horrific practice should be at the center of  all writing of Spanish history for the centuries of existence of the Inquisition and everything else of little importance ?  No as a 21st person I would similarly detest their attitude to slavery and their acceptance of imperialism and colonialism.

Should virtually  everyone living in those times be considered evil and any biography on them be based on emphasizing  abhorance to their acceptance of the Inquisition, slavery, imperialism and colonialism and downplaying any suggestion that they had any good motivations?  Can even a fictional story taking place in those years be written that does not focus on the  evil of the Inquisition, slavery, imperialism and colonialism? Should the works of all authors  and of all artists living in those years now  be destroyed because they accepted those attitudes as good?

Clive Russell
Clive Russell
CLIVE currently serves as Joint President of Russell Business LLC (“RB”), which is the collective name for a community of synergistic and complementary activities and businesses encompassing the International Property Market. RB is engaged in business activities that combine cutting-edge structured finance and technology geared to maximize returns from various sectors, including residential and commercial property, hotels and energy-related assets. Over the years, Clive’s forte’ has been the ability to develop and/or identify “below the radar” concepts, strategies and opportunities ripe for leveraging and ultimate success.

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