<big>In the Spanish town of León, locals toast Easter with a ‘Kill Jews’ cocktail</big>
The Holy Week before Easter is Spain’s paramount religious period. Celebrations in the ancient northwestern city of León — population about 124,000 now — offer a particularly spectacular ten days of music, sermons and multiple daily processions of thousands upon thousands of penitents, many of them here for the purpose. In fact, in 2002, León’s Semana Santa was declared a “Festival of International Interest for Tourists.”
Alongside visitors, locals also throng the streets to knock back glasses of wine-lemonade … with the merry cry of “Matar judíos,” or “Kill Jews.”
They don’t see it as antisemitic.
Nearly every bar in the “wet district” — the Barrio Húmedo, the city’s nightlife-packed medieval quarter … two streets of which were once the ghetto — treats it as an element of proud heritage. In social media, it’s their hashtag for promoting the drinks of the season. Business is lively because, by ancient tradition, one drinks 33 limonadas across this period, for each year of the life of Jesus.
And pub-crawlers seeking to fulfill that custom say, also per centuries-old tradition, that they are going out to “Kill Jews”.
“It’s an expression here,” Margarita Torres Sevilla, a professor of medieval history at the University of León, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “For example, you tell me, ‘Have a drink with me? Okay, let’s go kill Jews.’ Another typical sentence of Holy Week is, ‘How many Jews have you killed? Three, four, five [limonadas]? Oh, you have killed a lot.’”
...“It’s strange to foreigners, but they take it with a laugh,” said ... a server rushing plates and glasses [to customers in] a local tapas bar. “Here it’s normal.”...
A jewish community existed in León at least as early as the 10th century, and grew to become a center of Jewish theology. It was probably erased when the Joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Queen Isabella I of Castile (r. 1474–1504) and King Ferdinand II of Aragon (r. 1479–1516), expelled all Jews from newly created Spain on pain of death in 1492. (That “Alhambra decree” was officially revoked in 1968, after the Second Vatican Council rejected the charge of deicide traditionally attributed to the Jews.) There’s been no visible Jewish community here apparently ever since.
At first, Jews lived in relative equality to León’s Christians, if subjected to sporadic violence. Then in 1293, King Sancho IV made it illegal for jews to own farmland, later they were forced to wear a yellow badge, and in 1365, under Peter of Castile —variously known as Peter the Cruel and the Peter the Just — they began having to pay a special tax, as Muslims also did.
Holy Week’s drinking cry of “killing Jews” may come from an event in the mid-15th century, before the Expulsion, after war and the Black Death had devastated the region economically,
leaving many Christian noblemen in debt. One such knight, Suero de Quiñones, owed payments to a Jewish merchant. To avoid paying his debt, Quiñones whipped up a religious fervor against León’s Jews on Holy Week in 1449 [organizing attacks by knights upon] the Jewish quarter, murdering the lender and several others...
“Quiñones said ... our Lord was accused by the Jews and the Jews killed him,” said Torres Sevilla. “So what do we do with the Jews? Kill them. But the real reason was not a Christian motive — the real reason was that he [owed a large debt he didn’t want to pay].
To celebrate their supposed vengeance for the death of Jesus, Quiñones and his allies went drinking … Thus commenced the ritual of downing limonadas to the refrain of “killing Jews,”
A kinder version holds that
the phrase emerged from the taming powers of limonada, authorized by medieval leaders in the midst of Holy Week’s abstinence and fasting to stop Christians from committing pogroms against Jews — by keeping them occupied in the taverns.
How plausible this explanation is, given medieval working people’s limited ability to purchase enough alcohol to immobilize them, and given the ‘liberating’ effects of alcohol upon sensible behavior, readers may decide for themselves.
A possibility more associated with actual history suggested by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, is that the expression refers to medieval public executions of Jews traditional at Eastertime.
“Tradition” seems to be what all the explanations have in common.
It is supposed that the expression bears no connection to the town about 150 miles to the east, Castrillo Matajudíos, so named in 1627
during a period of religious persecution of non-Christians in Spain… In June 2015 the name was changed back to Castrillo Mota de Judíos following a campaign led by mayor Lorenzo Rodríguez leading to a vote among the villagers in May 2014.[4][5]
There have been several anti-Jewish incidents since the name change.
All Jews had been expelled from Spain in 1492.[4] hence no Jews were there in 1627; the idea and hateful impulse still were.
So much has been erased from León history that at this point neither the wikipedia article on the city, nor on the Province, nor on the Barrio Húmedo even mentions a Jewish community ever existing there. Scholars know there was, deducing that there had been three medieval synagogues across time, but only one approximately located where it is is commemorated
by a small plaque recently installed on Misericordia Street: “The third Jewish synagogue of León was built here (1370-1481).” On a side street branching off León’s central square, one stone doorway bears two vertical markings, which Torres Sevilla believes were left by a mezuzah.
The roots of erasure and hatred at street level lie in popular Christian antisemitism in western history — not Catholicism alone — and at higher political level in officially sanctioned/enacted persecutions and lethal expulsions, the former including Soviet presecution of their jewish citizens, the later including an extensive range of countries in Europe and beyond, at various times in history, when the choices were to stay upon pain of death, or leave with all survival resources confiscated by the authorities or their surrogates. Across the medieval period and down through time, such persecutions and explusions commonly prefigured or echoed the motivations and incentives of Suero de Quiñones: scapegoat a helpless minority on false religious grounds … for economic and political gain or relief. Including misdirecting rage of the populace over their own economic struggles that their “leaders” impose for the financial benefit of crown or power-class, or that their ‘leaders” decline to address … popular rage is, after all, a manipulable social resource.
Anti-Semitism in popular European Christian culture escalated beginning in the 13th century. Blood libels and host desecration drew popular attention and led to many cases of persecution against Jews. Many believed Jews poisoned wells to cause plagues. In the case of blood libel it was widely believed that the Jews would kill a [Christian] child before Easter … to bake matzo. Throughout history if a Christian child [disappeared, the] accusations of blood libel would arise [regardless of the circumstances]. The Church often added to the fire by portraying the dead child as a martyr who had been tortured and [that the] child had powers like Jesus was believed to. Sometimes the children were even made into Saints.[47] Anti-Semitic imagery such as Judensau [sometimes complete with depiction of blood libel murder] and Ecclesia et Synagoga recurred in Christian art and architecture [and some are protected in situ to this day]. Anti-Jewish Easter holiday customs such as the Burning of Judas continue to present time.[48]
At Easter in León, all that remains of the Jewish community, and all that remains of popular attitude toward jews, is a cheerful, “normal” expression of lethal hatred traditional for heavy drinking on the holiday when, traditionally, any Jews within reach are most likely to be attacked and killed.
What do you think — is Matar Judios good clean fun? — does that belief about the tradition represent a bias its revelers consider they’re entitled to without owning it? — might it normalize religion-hatred of any kind (or all kinds) to tourists visiting there in this season? — does it represent something about how deep-rooted is the Xian world’s hatred of Jews (not religious Xians alone, but as the dominant culture of The”Advanced”West) that’s not as easily uprooted by ‘modern’ rational thought as we may wish to believe? — does this tradition embody the tip of an iceberg that sociopolitical climate change can never melt?
Other questions?
Thoughtful comments welcome.