ABOUT THE JEWS OF GIRONA

It is already known that there are a large number of fragments of texts written in Hebrew that make up part of the covers of some of the notarial books in the Historic Archives of Girona. We know that it was a customary practice in medieval times to use fragments of papers, which were considered to be worthless, to pad the covers of books, thereby giving more filling and flexibility to the covers and greater protection to the books themselves. This "recycling" system has bequeathed to us a large number of Hebrew documents hidden in the covers of notarial protocols and, from the first research done, we can speak of what, in the future, will be one of the most important collections of Hebrew documents in Europe. In the face of this information, and so as to see the possibilities for recovering these documents, The Historical Archives of the city of Girona (Generalitat de Catalunya or Autonomous Government of Catalonia), in collaboration with the Patronat Call de Girona, decided to do more in-depth research, which resulted in a sampling of documents from which it was possible to get a glimpse of what kind of documents might be found and what information they could provide for historical research on the Jewish community of Girona. We are presenting publicly, in this exhibition, the results of this first research. It explains the work carried out to recover and materially restore the Hebrew fragments previously found, as well as for identifying them through a first reading and summary. It should be made clear that the fragments that have been recovered and which have undergone a first cleaning and restoration represent only a small part of what will be an important Hebrew collection. The television channel "TV Girona" has actively collaborated in the task of making the importance of these documents known and in the work carried out on them. The channel has prepared a very interesting report that is essential for understanding the difficulties and painstaking effort put into the recovery and conservation processes of the fragments.