Spain: Day 8

Hola familias!

 

Curl up on a couch and read our adventures from today, which deserved a more detailed update. I appreciate you following our stories!

 

This morning, we woke up to snow. I have never seen such cold weather in March in Spain, but if the weather is the worst part of this trip, then no pasa nada. After another delicious breakfast (and additional pastries from some of the boys at a local panadería—Nathi’s words: “Most incredible pastries I’ve ever had and I spoke so much Spanish talking to the lady”), we went to a private school in the outskirts of Valladolid to interact with kids ranging from kindergarten to tenth grade. We attended an assembly in which we presented about our school, we visited classes, played a get-to-know-you game, and talked to tenth graders more in depth about their school and their lives. I love school visits because it’s daily life; it’s a real glimpse of a country. My favorite moment from this visit was watching Jillian, Mira, and Tahel put on a Taylor Swift song for a class of young kids. Watch this moment and especially the kid in the back row. Daily life: It’s magic.

 

We ate lunch today at 5 Gustos, an award-winning restaurant in Valladolid. Our chef Palmira made us several dishes including some Sephardic recipes—all incredibly beautiful and packed with flavor. My favorite was a Sephardic rice dish that made the rice back home at Rumi’s kitchen seem mediocre.

 

Inching toward sundown and Shabbat, we made one more stop: a visit to a private Jewish residence. Some background: At their most prosperous time, the Jewish community numbered 350,000 in Spain. Today, there are about 12,000. It’s quite miraculous then to find a Jewish family outside a major city. Far from the exhausted path of tourism and on a sleepy street in the outskirts of Tordesillas lived a dear friend of mine named Javito, the town’s only Jew (and only one of six in the whole province of Valladolid).

 

About Javito: No taller than me with long, silvery white hair, a scruffy beard, rosy cheeks, arresting blue-green eyes, and lots of Jewish rings on his fingers, Javito had all the vibes of a hippie abuelo. I met Javito and his wife Pepa almost six years ago, and I found him to be so loving and inspiring that I knew that I needed to bring Weber students to meet him. Javito was full of love and also had an admirable streak of rebellion, and this combination put so many tears in our students' eyes, as he would tell them things they didn’t know they needed to hear. Some of Javito’s beliefs (translated):

 

“I don’t pray to G-d. I talk to Him”

 

“I’m not afraid of G-d. I am His friend.”

 

“He who decides he is Jewish is Jewish.”

 

“I don’t believe men and women should be separated during prayers.”

 

Though not everyone may have agreed with everything, Javito’s words challenged us to live elbow-to-elbow and imagine a world where the reconstructionist might have a joyful “sobremesa” (a long and intimate meal) with an orthodox. This idea of course translates to more than just the Jewish family and religion in general, but also rich and poor, black and white, Republican and Democrat, and the list goes on. Javito believed the impossible was possible. These are the kinds of people I want in my life and in our students’ lives.

 

About Javito’s house in Spain: it was once one of four synagogues in Tordesillas. Four synagogues in this small town is a shocking historical tidbit to think about considering Queen Isabella (whose reign with Fernando started the Inquisition) was from Tordesillas. It’s the cradle of Catholicism, and yet here stands this synagogue/casa today. The evolution of Javito’s house began as a fifteenth century synagogue followed by a Catholic church during the Inquisition and then finally to Javito’s family’s home in the twentieth century.

 

Speaking about Javito in the past tense tonight doesn’t feel real. My last vivid memory with him was walking arm in arm with him along old cobblestone to Shabbat dinner in March of 2022, his wisdom and warmth stabilizing me during an incredibly difficult season of my life. When I received the news of his passing four months ago today from an unexpected heart complication, I started sobbing in my kitchen back home in Atlanta. My toddler, who I always imagined would play in Javito’s yard one day, asked me why I was crying, and I told him mommy’s friend is gone. Imitating a song he learned off of the kid’s show Daniel Tiger, he said, “Don’t worry. Grown ups come back.” I looked at his face and saw how rosy his cheeks were just like Javito’s. “I hope so,” I told him.

 

Exactly four months after his passing, I walked onto Javito’s property with students this afternoon, maybe for the last time. The synagogue/house is along the Río Duero, a river that runs from middle Spain to Portugal. Over the years working in Spain, I have lived so much life along the banks of the Duero—walking, dipping my toes in the current, throwing sticks into the water for dogs to fetch, eating tapas nearby, repelling, kayaking—all with locals who started out as acquaintances and quickly became family who I visit every time I’m in Spain. The Duero has changed me; I have learned to let go and send some debilitating stress down the river and not look back. And Javito felt the same. “El Río Duero es mi Rio Jordan,” Javito once told me. It’s his River Jordan. I’m eternally grateful for this river even though it now carries with it a shadow of darkness I never saw coming.

 

Today, we gathered with Javito’s wife Pepa and children Hannah and Israel and organized prayers, stories, and music around three memorials: the global initiative of the Daffodil Project which remembers the children who perished in the Holocaust through the planting of daffodils, a new Weber community initiative to remember the civilians murdered in the October 7 attack on Israel, and the planting of an olive tree as a remembrance of Javito’s life. 

 

More on the Weber initiative: the Israel memorial was a collaborative effort from over 40 Weber students, their families, and faculty as we sought to remember the names of all 1300+ perished civilians of the October 7 attack. The community wrote their names on biodegradable scrolls with the words “Que su nombre sea inscrito en el Libro de la Vida.” May their name be inscribed in the Book of Life. We buried the names. This initiative was deeply emotional to organize, as I knew inevitably some names would be left out and/or some duplicated. Because life cut short is chaotic. It can’t be fully measured. We must accept the messiness of it all and hope in a greater power or justice that accounts for every precious name.

 

I struggle to articulate the importance of this afternoon for so many of us and for so many different reasons. “My father would have loved this,” Hannah told me with tears falling down her face. I have to believe Javito was with us.

 

Shabbat shalom a todos.