RASGO - Red de Juderías de España. Caminos de Sefarad

The Arco de Cristo, from the 1st century, is the only one of the Roman gates of the wall which has been preserved. Via the arch the Old Jewish Quarters could be accessed directly

The beauty and typicality of the Old Jewish Quarter of Cáceres, with its narrow streets, its whitewashed, luminous houses and flowers in their windows or on the balconies is only comparable with the monumental nobility of this ancient city: all serving as a symbol of the protection always sought by the protective aljamas of kings or lords. The trip from the New Jewish Quarter to the other side of Plaza Mayor also gives you a chance to visit a large part of this city which is Heritage of Humanity, following the medieval traces of its Hebrew residents.

It is not known exactly when the Jews settled in Cáceres as we have no written or archaeological sources confirming a Jewish presence in Roman times. What is for sure, as this is the interpretation given to a reading of the Charter of Cáceres of 1229, is that during the long Moslem domination of the city then called Hizn Qazris, the Jews maintained a reasonably large presence in the society of Cáceres.

El Baluarte de los Pozos (Bulwark of the wells)

The first documentation about this community dates back to the Charter of Cáceres of 1229, granted by Alfonso IX de León, but there is little doubt as to the existence of a Jewish population in the centuries of Moslem domination. The Charter of Cáceres was ratified in 1231 by Fernando III the Saint and it urged Jews, Moors and Christians to inhabit the recently reconquered city. By confirming the rights and prerogatives of the charter, the Saintly King granted Cáceres the right to organise and celebrate a fair in late April and the first fortnight of May, a market at which Jews, Moors and Christians were invited to take part as resettlers. In actual fact the Charter devoted eight chapters to the Jews who at that time barely numbered a hundred largo residents, a population which was to multiply in the two subsequent centuries. What's more, the Charter of Cáceres granted Jews' right, thanks to the royal concession, to prove their innocence by swearing on the Torah at the synagogue:

Nevertheless, although a Jew could prove his innocence by swearing on the Torah, litigation between Christians did not accept a Jew's testimony. From the Charter we can seem to deduce that in the late 13th century Jews and Christians in Cáceres not only lived physically apart, the could not enter into a mixed marriage nor was any relationship permitted between people holding different beliefs.

As far as the Jewish history of Cáceres during the 14th century is concerned, not a single document has been conserved. More than likely, according to some historians, is that there was no Jewish quarter in the city until the reign of Pedro I the Cruel during the course of a very conflictual period stretching from the start of his reign in 1350 until his death in 1369 as a consequence of the wounds inflicted on him by his brother Enrique II, something which also had major repercussions for the Jews. With Enrique II feudal and agrarian nobility gained the upper hand to the detriment of the development of the urban bourgeoisie and the consolidation of industry already noticeable in the rest of Europe, largely driven on by the Jews. With Enrique II a period of instability set in for the Jewish communities of the peninsula which Cáceres benefitted from in demographic terms as the events of the late 14th century deriving from the persecutions commenced by Ferrand Martínez, the Archdeacon of Écija, entailed a population shift which resulted in a notable increase in Jews in the north of Extremadura in view of the area's stability and the fact that the Christians in Cáceres were not as ridden by anti-Semitic prejudices, combined with the proximity to the border with Portugal which offered a way out in the event of any outbreak of violence and intransigence after the Disputation of Tortosa of 1412 and the sermons of St. Vincent Ferrer and the hate unleashed in the slaughters of 1391. In addition, Enrique II, who had started his reign in favour of the Jews, later demanded compliance with the Synod of Zamora. The Synod of Zamora of 1313 imposed the opinion of the most radical sectors of the Church, reawakening the stipulations of the Lateran Council, forbidding Jews from being doctors to Christians, excluding Jews from public office and obliging them to wear a distinctive mark of their status on their clothes.

Although in 1388 the council of Palencia stipulated the segregation of Jews and Moors in their own quarters, requiring them to sleep there despite letting them carry on business in other parts of the city, what is for sure is that the Jewish Quarter of Cáceres was also inhabited by Christian families as is borne out not only be deeds of purchase and sale, but also by some medieval Christian inscriptions right in the heart of the Jewish district. Organised as an aljama with their own governors and courts, the Jews of Cáceres worked in a wide range of trades (silversmiths, cobblers, tailors, tanners...) and some of them attained a high social standing. Also worthy of mention is the presence of some doctors like Rabbi Yuçé who practised in the second half of the 15th century.

La calleja del Moral (Moral alley)

The 15th century was a time of prosperity for the Jews of Cáceres. Except for the outbreak of violence in 1391, the Jewish quarters of Extremadura became a haven of peace for hundreds of Jews who settled in this area in the late fourteenth century, a contingent added to almost a century later by other families from Andalusia after the expulsions in 1483 of Córdoba, Seville and Cádiz. This immigrant population is what increased the number of inhabitants in the Jewish quarters of Cáceres and Extremadura from the Valle del Ambroz, Jerte, Vera de Plasencia and Sierra de Gata, in other words, the North of Cáceres. The choice of Jewish quarters in Extremadura by the new Jewish families was undoubtedly influenced by the closeness of the border with Portugal.

This migratory stream led to a real heyday of the aljamas of Extremadura. The Jewish community of Cáceres is described as an aljama in 1474 in the Repartimiento hecho a los judíos (The Forced Segregation of Jews) by Rabbi Jacob Aben Núñez, the main Jewish judge in the times of Enrique IV of Trastámara. The considerable tax contributed to the royal coffers, 8,200 maravedis, made the aljama of Cáceres one of the five largest in Castile.

The Adarve del Cristo

In 1438 the document was signed in which Ravina, the wife of Rabbi Raime de Cáceres, sells Pedro de Carvajal, amongst other things, two pairs of hens she had in the Jewish quarter in Sant Mattheos collect and thirty years later the Jewish quarter as such is mentioned in documents which are today to be found in the Diocesan Archive of Cáceres and according to which Sayas Nahum had two pairs of houses located in the [...] Jewish quarter.

Commercial life must thus have gone on at Plaza Mayor as is borne out by many documents of the time. According to the manuscript ms. 430 of the National Library (1447), the merchant Haim Alvalía received from the Council of Cáceres a shop/house in Plaza Mayor, one of the six the Council owned in the site nearest the steps providing access to Arco de la Estrella. It was the commercial centre, the site of holidays and markets and hence the Jewish establishments abounded; a certain Samuel, the son of Dos Santo, had a shop there, and Abraham Levi or a Ruiz David alias the Jew; or the silversmith's owned by Bartholomew the Jew. The Square was not only the business and market centre, it was also a thriving crafts' centre where the trades had their workshops. During the 15th century Jewish influx to Plaza Mayor was at its height. Here the most important Jews had their properties: the Alvalía, the Nahum, the Haçan Adaroque, Isaac Navarro or Abraham Gago to name but a few of those who appear in the Diocesan Archive of Cáceres. In 1490 the interest in the commercial site Plaza Mayor was still important.

The Jews were also to be found on the outskirts of the Square: the Amarilla, notable Jews in Cáceres, had rented a house outside the Jewish quarter. Others such as Isaac Colchero lived at Pintores street, an important thoroughfare for accessing Plaza Mayor in a house rented from a Christian. Although in 1478 the Jewish quarter of the San Antonio district was dismantled and the Jews were also asked to abandon the suburbs and live at the newly assigned site, not even the abbot of the council, the main ecclesiastical authority, complied with the stipulations and he allowed the rental of properties; in 1479 a Christian rented a house to Jewish couple in Plaza Mayor for seventy maravedis and two chickens a year. In view of the lack of data in this year of 1479, it is estimated the existence of 130 homes or family units which could entail around 650 people compared with the eight or ten thousand inhabitants in the city at that time.

The new location of the aljama, driven on by Isabel the Catholic, extended via the then designated Calle de la Judería (Jewish quarter street) at San Juan collect, a narrow street stretching from Plaza Mayor to Corte street (the present Paneras street) and it had ramifications in bordering side streets and Cruz street, and where today the Palacio del Marqués de la Isla (Marquis of the Island Palace) was the new synagogue which, after the final expulsion in 1492, became a hermitage: the Cruz hermitage, alongside the street of this name. Rabbi Sergas Cohen inhabited the Galarza Palace or Casa de los Trucos. Jewish life in Cáceres did not run off closed in a ghetto but rather there was the possibility of expansion or at least easy access to the colourful area of Plaza Mayor, place where the Jews lived. In actual fact, activity was focused on this Square and on the aforementioned Calle de la Judería (Jewish Quarter street) or Judería Nueva (New Jewish Quarter).

La calleja del Moral (Moral alley) alongside the Arch of Christ

Until the mid-15th century the aljama of Cáceres does not feature in the tax books, perhaps because it was answerable to the aljama of Trujillo in matters of a legal and religious nature. Since the instauration of the aljama, Cáceres would was full equipped: synagogue with its Rabbi and shamashim or auxiliaries like sextons, ritual bath or Mikveh whose location we are unaware of, the Rabbinic school or Talmud-Torah, the butcher's with its shojet or ritual butcher, communal oven, hospital and a shelter home for orphans and pilgrims, a Rabbinic tribunal or bet din, cemetery, plus an infrastructure for officials and managers whose blood or monetary distinction was recognised by the use of «don», a title or forbidden form of address which, as in many other cases, was not complied with in the Jewish quarter of Cáceres nor in others as in Cáceres «don» is used for the lineage of David Cohen and his wife Camila, Don Sento Cohen and doñbet dinl, but also for the cobbler don Abraham Padre, the son of don Orro; don Yudá Pardo, the dayan or judge of the aljama and don Jaro Pollo, the accountant. From these examples we can deduce that the Jewish quarter was organised around Rabbi Cohen; he had the aforementioned posts as well as that of the butler, town crier and various official duties.

As occurred in the other Spanish Jewish quarters, with the exception of those of Navarre, the edict by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 brought to an end a long history of cohabitation, requiring all those who refused to be christened as New Christians to leave the city. Some of those who left Cáceres like Isaac Abranavel settled in towns like Segura de León very near the Portuguese border. Others went directly to the neighbouring country and in some cases continued to spread the diaspora worldwide. The surname Casseres, amongst others of local origin, bears testimony to this exile.