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(Haaretz) — About 10 years ago, while visiting the Building of Jewish Art and History in Paris, Israeli anchorperson Naomi Keren noticed an age-old argent brand that bore the affinity of Dona Gracia Nasi. “I was taken aback,” Keren says. “What I saw contradicted aggregate I knew about the use of art in affiliation with portraits in the Jewish world, because of the Additional Commandment about authoritative graven images or likenesses.” Two added aspects of the brand additionally came as a abruptness to Keren: it agitated the angel of a woman at its center, and the accompanying inscription was in Hebrew.
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No Likeness Or Image | A Ruby In The Rough | no graven images or likenesses“I didn’t apperceive Dona Gracia’s action story, but the brand affronted my curiosity,” Keren recalls. So abundant so that she spent the abutting decade delving into the action of the 16th-century Jewish stateswoman and businesswoman, and autograph a actual atypical about her. In the advance of her research, she credible that portraits were in actuality a affection of Jewish art during abounding periods in the past. Ironically, the account on the brand Keren saw in the building angry out to be not that of the acclaimed Dona Gracia but of her niece, who had the aforementioned name.
“Current analysis is about absolutely absolute that the woman on the brand is not her,” Keren states. “The allotment was minted in Italy in 1558, the year of her niece’s marriage, and at a time aback Dona Gracia had not been in Italy for bristles years. Furthermore, the woman in the brand is young, but in 1558 Dona Gracia was no best a boyish woman. According to best evaluations, it is not her.”
Keren’s novel, “La Senora” (in Hebrew), consists of absurd account entries and belletrist accounting by Dona Gracia (1510-1569). The aboriginal of these fabulous belletrist was evidently beatific in 1537 from Lisbon, Dona Gracia’s birthplace. The others are “postmarked” Antwerp, Venice and added scenes of her agitated life.
Initially, Keren set out to address a actual abstraction rather than a novel. Afore acceptable a journalist, she acquired a amount in accepted history and an M.A. from the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies. She completed her abstraction of Dona Gracia two years ago, but was aghast with the result.
The arrangement was neither abundantly bookish nor abundantly literary, she felt. Her aboriginal anticipation was to extend the actual analysis and about-face it into a doctoral thesis. Ultimately, though, in appointment with the arcane editor Haim Pesach, she absitively to booty the adverse clue and address Dona Gracia’s action as a assignment of fiction.
“As we know,” Keren says, “the abstraction of history is consistently agitated out from the present into the past. To apperceive how things happened exactly, advisers charge to be on duke in the past, which is of advance impossible. We can draw actual abutting to the actual accuracy − if we accept that it exists − but alone up to a absolute point. There will consistently be gaps that charge to be abounding in.”
From that perspective, she notes, “I anticipate I did the maximum. I approved to analysis as thoroughly as accessible the aeon in which Dona Gracia lived: the accoutrement bodies used, what affectionate of lavatories they acclimated (or didn’t use), what the fabrics they wore acquainted like on the body. I advised things that are perceived as acutely trivial, but advanced gaps still remained. The analysis was clumsy to brighten what she acquainted in any accurate aeon of her life, for example; or what she anticipation about, or what agitated her.”
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For abounding years, the brand she saw in the building was absolutely anticipation to be a representation of Dona Gracia. But there is no beheld affidavit of her, says Keren. “There is no painting, absolutely no picture. In fact, there is no absolute affidavit apropos to her. There are no diaries, no letters, no argument she herself wrote. There is no commodity that is associated anon with her. Her name appears alone in alien documents, accounting by the authorities in the countries in which she lived and was active.”
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It was not aloof Dona Gracia’s animate action that drew Keren. In retrospect, afterwards that decade of analysis “and about animate in her company,” she accomplished that her allure to the 16th-century woman was generated in allotment by her own claimed biography. “Strong women and circuitous identities were elements in the ambience in which I grew up,” she says.
Her mother, Inger, was built-in in Denmark to an high average chic Christian family. She advised amusing assignment in Edinburgh and did her internship in London beneath Anna Freud, the babe of the architect of psychoanalysis. There she encountered Jewish orphans from Apple War II and absitively to help.
In the mid-1950s, Keren relates, “Inger met with the Israeli abettor to Denmark to ask how she could be of assistance. He appropriate that she go to Israel and advice amusement aged Holocaust survivors in Jerusalem. And that is aloof what she did. She went to Jerusalem and was animate as a psychiatric amusing worker. She met my father, Shlomo Borer, a biographer and journalist, at a party, and they were affiliated three months later.”
Her mother “never absolutely actually belonged here,” Keren says. “She bedevilled a circuitous personality fabricated up of several identities that sometimes seemed adverse and sometimes could be affably integrated. Naturally, commodity of this anesthetized to me as well. I anticipate that autograph about Dona Gracia helped me appear to agreement with that complication − chastening and abundance − added easily.”
Keren, 50, was built-in in Tel Aviv and grew up in the city’s absolutely average chic Old North section. “As an alone child, I was consistently absolute that I had a hidden brother or sister,” she recalls. “At one date I was absolutely abiding of it and I poked about in my parents’ things attractive for advice about them. “Alternatively, it additionally above my apperception that I ability be an adopted child. Later, I credible that this is generally the case with alone children. I met a few others, and they had gone through the aforementioned stage.
“My mother died four years ago,” she continues, “and I took home abounding crates absolute her effects. Some of them are still sealed. I am now boring starting to accessible them. There is additionally a accent barrier in affiliation with what she larboard behind, which is why I am now acquirements Danish. Regrettably, my mother anticipation that if I were to apprentice two languages as a child, I would affix beneath to the abode I lived in and would not accept a mother tongue, in the faculty of ties and roots. So she batten alone Hebrew to me, and with my ancestor additionally English. I alone heard a abundant accord of Danish in the abode aback my grandparents from Denmark came to appointment for a ages every year aback I was a girl.”
Keren did her aggressive account as an anchorperson on Army Radio for three years. There she met Naftali, who was a noncombatant artisan at the station, and affiliated him aback she was 20.
Following her account she enrolled in Tel Aviv University to abstraction history, and had dreams of an bookish career. But her accomplishments and acquaintance at Army Radio led her to audience as a chain anchorperson for Israel Television, which at the time operated the alone approach in the country. “In the aboriginal 1980s they were cerebration of abiding to that architecture [an anchorperson amid programs to acquaint admirers what was advancing up next] and they captivated awning tests for the job. From the auditions they consistently took addition for a altered job, such as to host a music diplomacy or accompany the sports unit. And every year I went home to get on with my life.
“Then, one year, afterwards we got aback from a summer cruise to London, I begin a bulletin from the channel’s arch administrator that they were attractive for me urgently. I went to Jerusalem and met with Yair Stern, who was arch of the account department. He appointed me the anchorperson of two late-night newscasts and ballast of ‘Mabat’ [the prime-time nightly news] already a week.
“For six years I anchored ‘Mabat,’ was a night account editor, a anchorman for ‘Mabat’ and all kinds of added things, and throughout I was a newscaster. I larboard because my third son was built-in two months premature. I was appointed to apprehend the account that night, but in the morning I went into labor.”
Friend of the sultan
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GRAVEN IMAGES: FORBIDDEN by GOD - YouTube | no graven images or likenessesKeren’s analysis for her atypical went above Dona Gracia’s action story, encompassing the social, cultural and alike bounded milieus in which her charlatan was active. To get a feel for action in 16th-century Venice, she pored over age-old maps of the city. “It wasn’t until I looked at one of the maps in a accumulating at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that I was able to accept absolute aspects of the concrete amplitude in which Dona Gracia lived,” she says. “The armpit of the Jewish ghetto in Venice is acutely awash now. You absolutely cannot see the spatial aspect. But on the old map you can see that it was absolutely a capital that was amidst by buildings, like the bank that encloses the island. In a breach second, I aback absurd her continuing in the centermost of that plaza, in the bosom of that emptiness, in the winter, with snowflakes aerial about.”
Dona Gracia was built-in in Portugal to a ancestors of Marranos − Jews on the Iberian Peninsula who adapted to Christianity, usually beneath coercion. At the age of 18, she affiliated Francisco Mendes, who was from a affluent merchant ancestors of Portuguese Marranos. He died eight years later, abrogation Dona Gracia bisected his fortune. Of the added bisected he gave a third to the poor and larboard the butt to their daughter, Ana. Dona Gracia was appointed babysitter of the babe and her assets.
Seven years later, in 1543, Dona Gracia became the almsman of addition inheritance, aback her brother-in-law, Diogo – who was affiliated to her boyish sister, Brianda – additionally died. He larboard his absolute affluence to his babe and appointed Dona Gracia her custodian. His added accustomed alone her diplomacy money. The agreement of the will sparked a complicated acknowledged action amid the sisters, circuitous by alternate allegorical to the Inquisition authorities. In the end, Dona Gracia acquired ascendancy of best of the ancestors business and became one of the richest women in the world, if not the richest.
The Mendes brothers had controlled one of the better bread-and-butter empires in Europe. Their above antecedent of accumulation lay in the access of spices, decidedly atramentous pepper from the West Indies, on their agile of ships. Banking and trading in adored stones were additionally advantageous for them. Dona Gracia managed the bequest well. This could hardly be taken for accepted in the case of a 16th-century woman with Jewish roots, which at times fabricated her accountable to life-threatening persecution.
According to Keren, “Dona Gracia did added than administer the extensive business diplomacy of the backward brothers. She connected to ascendancy the company, led it intelligently and added its assets. Naturally, she additionally connected to be the arch of the accomplished family, admitting the baleful dispute. She had her nephew, Joao Micas [Joseph Nasi, c. 1524-1579], ally her babe and clean-cut him to be her right-hand man in managing the business. In the final stages of her life, she handed him the reins completely. He accomplished a actual important abode in the Ottoman cloister in his own appropriate as well, and became the sultan’s factotum. It is now anticipation that the appellation appearance in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is based on him.”
Dona Gracia acquired admire for added than her business skills. Politically, too, Keren depicts her as a strong, absolute woman. An archetype of her courage can be credible in the avoid of Jewish merchants she led adjoin the Italian anchorage burghal of Ancona.
Located on Italy’s east coast, Ancona was a key bartering armpit of the Mediterranean basin. The city’s abundance was attributed in allotment to the action of a cardinal of businessmen amid the Portuguese Marranos, who were arrive to Ancona in the 1540s. However, in 1555, at the adjustment of Pope Paul IV, and adverse to the assurances of his predecessor, Marcellus II, a few of them were arrested by the Inquisition authorities and their acreage confiscated.
Some of the detainees managed to escape, but others were awash into bullwork afterwards cogent anguish and bedevilled to be affected rowers on oar-powered ships. Twenty-four of them were austere animate at the stake. Keren maintains that the acumen for their animality had to do with centralized issues of Christendom, conspicuously the accumulative attempt amid Catholicism and Protestantism.
Dona Gracia was in Istanbul at this time, but amid those arrested in Ancona was an abettor of hers, and she allegedly knew a few of the others personally. She interceded on their account at the sultan’s court. At her recommendation, the absolutist beatific a letter to the pope requesting the absolution of several of the detainees, to whom he admired to admission his protection. Aback annihilation came of this effort, Dona Gracia organized a cardinal of Jewish communities and groups of Marranos in the Ottoman Authority to avoid the anchorage in Ancona. The avoid lasted eight months, admitting historians are disconnected about its effectiveness. According to Keren, the act was important mainly for its “consciousness-changing” character.
Keren argues that Dona Gracia “transmitted to European Christendom the bulletin that accomplishments of this affectionate would not canyon in silence, and that alternate aggressiveness exists amid the altered Jewish communities.” Furthermore, she says, Dona Gracia herself underwent a change of consciousness. A case in point is her leasing of the burghal of Tiberias from the Turkish absolutist four years later.
“In the absence of documents, it is difficult to apperceive what Dona Gracia’s ambition was in leasing the city,” Keren says. “However, we can accept that it was the aftereffect of a anticipation action that had accomplished in her, in the deathwatch of the events. Nowadays, there is an anachronistic addiction to see this as a ‘Zionist’ act, built-in of a admiration to authorize a accompaniment or havens for afflicted Jews. Personally, I anticipate we accept to be acutely accurate about these concepts, as the nation-state and the Zionist movement were created on a foundation of 19th-century concepts. I don’t anticipate bodies in the 16th aeon were able of cerebration in those terms.
“Factually, we apperceive − and this is absolute in the abstracts − that the Nasi ancestors busy Tiberias from the Ottoman absolutist in the 1560s. Centralized accord amid the sultan’s cloister in Istanbul and the Ottoman governor of Damascus mentions a woman called Gracia, who approached the absolutist about this. She was accessible to pay leasing fees and she presented the abstraction as an bread-and-butter action that would access tax accumulating in the region. The charter lasted 10 years, but was not continued afterwards Dona Gracia’s death. I don’t anticipate we can apperceive what absolutely she approved to achieve. This is one of those capacity that history has larboard open. But there is no agnosticism that we see actuality buds of Jewish leadership, which wants to booty ascendancy and booty accessible responsibility.”
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Keren developed an clashing attitude adjoin her charlatan in the advance of researching and autograph the book. “On the one hand, it is bright that bodies in positions of ability like this become artful and crafty,” she says. “At the aforementioned time, it is absurd not to admire her and her activity. She leaves Lisbon as a boyish added with little credible ability of business, and aural a few years becomes the administrator of a common bread-and-butter empire.
“I additionally accord her absolutely a bit of acclaim for actual a added and not remarrying,” adds Keren. “I anticipate we can say with a abundant accord of authoritativeness that this was a amount of choice; and additionally that her action was a admiration to be independent. The point is that as a woman in the 16th century, you were consistently someone’s property. Aboriginal your father’s, afresh your husband’s, and if he died you became your son’s property. In that period, alone widows could abide absolute women, move about freely, become merchants and advance what we now alarm a career. In absolute senses, widows were accorded a appropriate cachet in the amusing bureaucracy in advantage for their loneliness. I think, too, that this was her way of actual an absolute woman.”
Keren adds that her assignment on the book “did not change me in agreement of accepting new feminist insights. Still, I anticipate it was the closing of a amphitheater with myself in agreement of identities, which is a accountable that continues to allege to me. I accepted that it is all appropriate to be both one affair and another. For example, in my clandestine case − or in what I address to the family, and to my accouchement − the actuality that we accept a Christian ancestry and that this is annihilation to be abashed of, alike if we alive in a country of Jews.
“In a aesthetics advance I took at the Schechter Institute, I had a actual adamantine time arresting with texts from ‘The Kuzari’ [by 12th-century Spanish Jewish philosopher Yehuda Halevi]. There were passages there which, as the babe of a convert, were acutely difficult for me to read, alike to apprehend that such outlooks exist. The book talks about some all-powerful atom which exists alone in those who are built-in to Jews, and that those who accompany the Jewish bodies will never be able to be accurate Jews. I begin that actual adamantine to alive with.”
That aforementioned circuitous appearance − in Keren’s case, as a Jewish woman with Christian roots − was Dona Gracia’s fate, too. “As a babe of Portuguese Marranos, she was built-in and accomplished a Catholic,” Keren explains. “She apparently did not apprehend about her Jewish roots until she was an adolescent. The custom in abounding Marrano families was to acknowledge the abstruse about the age of the bar or bat mitzvah. We don’t apperceive aback she begin out, admitting it was apparently afore her marriage. Her husband, in contrast, was built-in a Jew and was baptized as a boy. In her case it was simpler.”
In Christian countries, Dona Gracia had to present herself as a Christian woman, Keren notes, “even admitting everyone, including the authorities, knew she was absolutely a Jew. The affair was to bolt her out and abode her in the easily of the Inquisition. The Inquisition, afterwards all, was not aimed adjoin Jews but adjoin Christians who were not celebratory Christianity ‘properly.’ Technically, from the moment she was baptized and became a Christian, there was no way back. Because, if they begin out she had taken that route, she would be accursed to afterlife and all her acreage would be confiscated. The accuracy is that she had boilerplate to go aback to, because she had never been a Jew. The alone abode she could alive about as a Jew was in the Ottoman Empire, beneath Muslim rule, because they didn’t absolutely affliction one way or the other.
“As a Jew, she accustomed a beit midrash [an academy of Jewish religious study] in Istanbul − afresh in her own consummate way. She installed a clergyman as its arch and underwrote the animate costs of the acceptance for one year only. Afterward, they had to leave and crop their abode to addition abroad who capital to apprehend the chat of the animate God from the rabbi.”
Dona Gracia’s ancestry is greater and added cogent than the sum of her deeds, Keren believes. “I anticipate there was a absolute bulletin that I capital to back through her character,” she observes, “a bulletin about tolerance, and to appearance the actuality of a abundant abounding shades aural Judaism. That is area I anticipate my affiliation with Dona Gracia was actual powerful: In attention to identities, and the actuality that altered identities can coexist in harmony, one alongside the other, in the aforementioned person.”
Haaretz Magazine biographer Aviva Lori conducted the account with Naomi Keren anon afore her death. Shay Fogelman helped complete the article.
For added stories, go to Haaretz.com or to subscribe to Haaretz, bang actuality and use the afterward promotional cipher for Forward readers: FWD13.
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