Jews of Catalonia (Catalonian Jewry, Catalonian Judaism, in Hebrew: יהדות קטלוניה) is the Jewish community that lived in the Iberian Peninsula, in the Lands of Catalonia, Valencia and Mallorca until the expulsion of 1492. Its splendor was between the 12th to 14th centuries, in which two important Torah centers flourished in Barcelona and Girona. The Catalan Jewish community developed unique characteristics, which included customs, a prayer rite (Nusach Catalonia), and a tradition of its own in issuing legal decisions (Halakhah). Although the Jews of Catalonia had a ritual of prayer and different traditions from those of Sepharad, today they are usually included in the Sephardic Jewish community.
Following the riots of 1391 and the expulsion of 1492, Jews who did not convert to Christianity were forced to emigrate to Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Maghreb, North Africa and the Middle East.
Early history
Historians affirm that Jews arrived at the Iberian Peninsula before the destruction of the Second Temple, although as regards archaeological remains, the oldest burial gravestones that have been found which testify to the existence of Jewish communities date from the third century.
The term Aspamia derives from the name Hispania and refers to the Iberian Peninsula in Roman times. At the beginning of the 5th century, the Roman domination of the peninsula fell to the Visigoths. During the Visigoth period, numerous decrees were issued against the Jews and sometimes they were forced to convert to Christianity or be expelled.
In 711 CE, Muslims began conquering the Iberian Peninsula. The conquered areas that were under the rule of Islam were called al-Andalus (in Arabic: الأندلس). We do not know much about the history of the Jews at the beginning of Islamic rule, but we are aware that the Jews began to use the term Sepharad to refer to these lands.
In a process of territorial reoccupation called Reconquista, the Christian kingdoms progressively conquered all Islamic territories, from north to south. With the Christian Reconquista, the territories occupied by the kingdoms of Castile and Portugal were also called by the Jews Sepharad, while Catalonia and the other kingdoms of the north were called Edom or named after Esau.
The reconquest of Catalonia began under the auspices of the Frankish kings, who forced the Muslims who had managed to cross the Pyrenees at the Battle of Poitiers in 732 to retreat to the south. All the lands freed from the Islamic domain became counties and remained under the administrative organization of the Franks. The Catalan counties, led by the counts of Barcelona, slowly broke free from the Franks and began to govern themselves independently. Old Catalonia became a zone of containment (Marca Hispanica) against the spread of Islam. Jews often moved from Sepharad (the Muslim zone) to the northern lands (the Christian kingdoms), and vice versa. The fact that many of them spoke Arabic and also the vernacular Romance languages helped them to serve as translators and acquire important positions in both Muslim and Christian governments. Jews owned fields and vineyards and many of them devoted themselves to agriculture.
In this early period, the Jewish scholars of Catalonia who sought advanced Talmudic studies used to go to study in the Talmudic academies (yeshivot) in the South. Also, those who wanted to study science or linguistics went to Sepharad, as did Rabbi Menachem ben Saruq (920-970), who was born in the Catalan city of Tortosa and moved with all his family to Cordoba to study and to devote himself to the Hebrew language under the patronage of Governor Shemuel ibn Nagrella.
The first evidence of an important Jewish settlement in Barcelona and Girona are from the 9th century CE. We know that in the 11th and 12th centuries in Barcelona there was a rabbinical court (Bet Din) and an important teaching center of the Torah. In this period, Barcelona became a link in the chain of transmission of the teachings of the Geonim.
Important Catalonian Rabbis from this time are Rabbi Yitzchaq ben Reuven al-Bargeloni (1043 -?), Rabbi Yehudah ben Barzilay ha-Barceloni, called Yehudah ha-Nasi of Barcelona (late 11th century, beginning of the 12th century) and Rabbi Avraham bar Chiyya Nasi (late 11th century, first half of the 12th century). We know that two of the great chachamim of Provence, Rabbi Yitzchaq ben Abba Mari (1122-1193) and Rabbi Avraham ben Rabbi Yitzchaq (1110-1179), moved to Barcelona.
Catalonia joined Provence in 1112 and Aragon in 1137, and thus the County of Barcelona became the capital of the unified realm called the Crown of Aragon. The kings of the Crown of Aragon extended their domains to the Occitan countries.