NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A Jewish community that thrived in Spain in the Middle Ages and served as a center for the Cabala movement will be explored during a lecture this month at Vanderbilt University.
The "Jewish Girona (Catalonia, Spain): A Flourishing Community in the Middle Ages" lecture will be presented by Silvia Planas MarcÈ, director of the Museum for the History of the Jewish People and the Nahm‡nides Center for Jewish Studies in Girona, Spain. Both are housed in the Bonastruc ca Porta Center.
The lecture will be at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 25, at the Ben Schulman Center for Jewish Life at Vanderbilt. A reception will follow. Both are free and open to the public.
Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 after years of hardships and persecution. Girona had the second largest Jewish population after Barcelona and was at the center of the Cabala movement, a school of Jewish mysticism and philosophy.
The lecture is sponsored by the University Lectures Committee at Vanderbilt in conjunction with the departments of Spanish and Portuguese, History, French and Italian, the Program in Jewish Studies, the Center for Latin America and Iberian Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Ben Schulman Center for Jewish Life, and Sister Cities of Nashville.
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
Jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu