By and large Barcelona is an enlightened artistic city....and in four days I fell in love with its wide family friendly boulevards and parks...and its ability to mix the modern and the ancient architecturally....I absolutely fell in ove with the architecture of Antonin Gaudi...no picture can do justice to his work... but as a historian there are things I am compelled to explore.... I find it amusing that the statue of Columbus in the port is pointing East... his intended direction... he was greeted in this harbor by Ferdinand and Isabella upon his return in 1493... wherein he would wind up tagging an entire race of people inappropriately.. ( could have been pres. of the nfl ) .. When you say 1492 to an American ... it conjures elementary school images of Columbus discovering the New World.... When you say 1492 to a Jew it conjures images of a pogrom second only to Hitler.... The Inquisition ( God bless Mel Brooks for turning Troquemada into a musical production number for the finale of History of The World) ....convert or die.... I found out about this tiny Synagogue in the old city of Barcelona..in the Gotic section ... Not on any of the tourist maps... it was in the basement of what became a warehouse for over a hundred years and has been reopened only 10 years. Pam and I went in circles thru these narrow streets for over an hour and could not find the address..... at one point I approached a fellow sitting on a step who resembled a young Andre Aggasi and showed him my map and asked if he understood english..he said yes.... we knew we were inside the square mile where this location had to be so i said the word sinogoga to him.... at which point he threw the map in my face and said go home. ..and turned to walk away.......well needless to say ...that brought out the Bronx in me and I said F*** YOU..!...at which point he turned back to me and we were treacherously close to blows... my wife interceded..bless her sephardic little soul.... but it shook me up...... these are not easy times... No one wants to see the children of Gaza in hospitals... but make no mustake... the citizens of Israel are not occupying someone elses land .... and you either understand never again ...or you dont.... this incident in Barcelona.. brought me back over 500 years where I stood as a jew ..in a city that was once 15% Jewish with over 15,000 Jews out of 100,000..... Now the city of 1,000,000 has 10,000 Jews...
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 15:21:07 +0000