TOLEDO Origin of surname

Toledo

City in Castila La Mancha, central Spain; capital of Spain until 1561.

According to a Jewish tradition dating from the period of Muslim rule, the Jewish settlement in Toledo was the most ancient in the Iberian Peninsula. This tradition was accepted by Isaac Abrabanel who states (in his commentary to the book of Kings, at the end, and to Obadiah, 20) that the first settlers in Toledo were exiles from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Jews probably established themselves there when the town became the capital of the Visigoths, or during the fourth to fifth centuries c.e.

Toledo is one of the few towns of Spain where remnants of Jewish edifices have been preserved. Toward the close of the 15th century the sources mention ten synagogues and a further five battei midrash. Toledo also has many remnants of Jewish tombstones, some of which are preserved in the archaeological museum of the town.

During the 11th century, when Toledo was ruled by the Muslims, it had a large Jewish population of about 4,000, divided into separate communities generally according to place of origin and a group who were of Khazar descent.
Toledo was also the center of the Karaites in Spain. Jewish occupations included textile manufacture, tanning, and dyeing, military professions and commerce. Toledo became a center of Jewish scholarship, translation, and science; the astronomer Zarkal (Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Ben Yachya) lived there for a time in the mid-11th century, and the biblical commentator Judah Ben Samuel Ibn Bal'am was born and educated in Toledo in this period. The situation of the Jews in Toledo remained unchanged after the town was conquered by Alfonso VI in 1085. During the 12th century it continued a center of learning and Jews and apostates were among those who translated works of mathematics, astronomy, and other subjects from Arabic into the spoken vernacular and from that language into Latin. From then on, the community developed until it became the most prominent in the kingdom of Castile and one of the most important in Spain. During this period some of the most distinguished who apparently left the town in 1119; Moses Ibn Ezra who stayed there; and Joseph Ibn Kamaniel, the physician, one of the wealthiest members of the community who was entrusted with an important diplomatic mission to the king of Portugal. The language spoken by the Jews of Toledo and employed in their documents during the 11th to 13th centuries was partly Arabic; they customarily wrote their documents in Arabic with Hebrew characters. These sources reveal a well-developed economic life. Jews of Toledo are recorded as having sold or purchased land, as lenders and borrowers, and are also found in partnerships with Christians in real estate transactions and in commerce.

The administrative organization of the community does not appear to have changed throughout its existence. There is no information on the administrative organization during Muslim rule, but a responsum, attributed to rabbi Joseph Ibn Mega, mentions the existence, in the early 12th century, of an organization headed by seven notables and elders and a bet din. The procedure for solving problems was to be taken by decision of four elders, Muqaddimun of the community, and two Jews chosen by the archbishop.

A period of crisis occurred at the time of the revolt of crown prince Sancho against his father (1280-81). A contemporary author relates that the community of Toledo was shaken "as Sodom and Gomorrah". Alfonso X ordered the imprisonment of the Jews in their synagogues, from which they were not to be released until the community paid him a special tax. Notables of the community remained in prison for many months. Attempts were even made there to convert them and several were executed.

During his own lifetime, Maimonides was challenged in Toledo by a notable adversary, Meir rabbi Todros Ha-Levi Abulafia, whose opinions were shared by the physician Judah B. Joseph Al-Fakhar, and Joseph Ben Todros Ha-Levi. They regarded the writings of Maimonides to be dangerous in that they could undermine faith. The controversy over the study of the writings of Maimonides received particular impetus in Toledo in 1304-05, at the time of the publication of the correspondence between Solomon Ben Adret and Abba Mari Astruc on the subject of the cherem issued against the study of the guide of the perplexed.

At the beginning of the 14th century, an attempt was made by the clergy in Toledo to compel the Jews to cease from engaging in moneylending; they also compelled the Jews to return the interest which they had taken and to cancel the obligations of payment which Christians had undersigned.
Ferdinand IV notified the clergy that he would bring them to account if they continued to impose a boycott on the Jews or sought to persecute them before the church tribunals. Nevertheless in a number of cases the king accepted the arguments of the clergy, and Jewish moneylenders of Toledo were arrested, tried before Christian judges, and condemned to lengthy terms of imprisonment.

The Black Death (1348) took a heavy toll among the community of Toledo. During the reign of Pedro the Cruel (1350-60), Don Samuel Ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia acted as chief agent and treasurer of the king. In 1358 he left for Portugal to negotiate a political agreement, and he was signatory to several royal edicts. He was suddenly arrested in 1360 upon the order of king Pedro, and removed to Seville, where he died at the hands of his torturers. Other Jews after him were lessees and courtiers, more particularly members of the Ha-Levi and Beneveniste families of Burgos.

In 1355, when the king entered Toledo, Christians and Muslims attacked the Jewish quarters. The town changed hands several times; when Pedro once more besieged the city, in 1368-69, 8,000 Jews perished. While the Toledo community was still endeavoring to recover from the effects of the civil war, it was overtaken by the persecutions which swept Spain in 1391 and brought down upon it ruin and destruction. The riots against the Jews in Toledo broke out on 17 Tammuz. Almost all the synagogues were destroyed or set on fire, and the battei midrash became mounds of ruins. Many abandoned Judaism at that time, and Toledo became filled with Conversos. The community of Toledo did not recover throughout the 15th century. Vicente Ferrer visited Toledo in 1411. He entered the Jewish quarter with an armed escort and converted the Ibn Shoshan synagogue into a church. There is reason to believe that a number of Jews converted to Christianity as a result of the sermon he delivered. When Isabella ascended the throne and the country became united with the kingdom of Aragon, Jews of Toledo again held important positions in the kingdom as lessees and courtiers. However, while in Toledo in 1480, the catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella decided on their anti-Semitic policy.

Jews were living in Toledo as forced converts during two periods. The first was under the Visigoths, and the second period of religious persecution and forced apostasy was from the end of the 14th century. The Conversos of Toledo continued to live in the quarters they had formerly occupied as Jews, until the 1480s. Many pamphlets of satire which ridiculed the Conversos were composed, while forged letters were circulated of a supposed correspondence between Chamorro, the "head" of the community of Toledo, with Yusuf, the "head" of the Jews of Constantinople, concerning a project to destroy Christianity. Attempts to conduct inquiries in Toledo against suspected heresy, in inquisition style, were inspired by the monk Alfonso de Espina during the 1460s. In 1485 the rabbis of Toledo were ordered to proclaim a cherem against the Jews who refused to testify before the inquisition if they knew of Conversos who observed the Jewish precepts. In 1486, and the beginning of 1487, 4,000 of the inhabitants of the town and the vicinity were involved in five autos-da-fe; some of them returned to the fold of the church and others were burned at the stake.

The Jews of Toledo were expelled with the other Jews of Spain in 1492, and the last exiles left Toledo on the seventh of Av. They left behind them the debts owed to them by Christians, and the government determined the procedure for their collection.