Dona Gracia Nasi: The Angel of the Inquisition

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It’s been close to two months since the lives we always knew were pulled from beneath us. Since our cushy reality as a supported, accepted nation was roughly torn away. We keep reaching out, looking around and yet not finding the comfort we are looking for. We are stumbling, grasping for something to hold on to – and yet finding nothing.

What if we could find the strength and fortitude we so desperately need right now by looking back at heroic women of the past? Women who dealt with different enemies in the blackest periods of our histories and yet emerged with their faith and dignity intact. Women who faced unfathomable choices and yet chose to become a beacon of light for their people so many years later.

Dona Gracia Nasi is one such woman.

Little is known about Dona Gracia, a woman thousands of conversos and persecuted Jews called by no other name than ‘Our Angel’.¹

Dona Gracia stood steadfast with unshakable values and unmovable faith despite her life being threatened at every turn, surrounded by those intent to eradicate Judaism and those wishing her death from sheer jealousy.

Her records of accomplishments are astonishing, from spearheading one of the earliest attempts to form an independent state for Jews in Israel to encouraging and supporting Torah study after years of persecution, violence and bloodshed. Although Dona Gracia lived over 500 years ago, the story of her fearless faith, courage and wisdom is pertinent today, perhaps more than ever.

Gracia Nasi, known at first as Beatrice de Luna, was born in Portugal in 1510 into a family of conversos, the result of the mass conversion of Portuguese Jews in 1497. As so many others had done, her family secretly retained their ties to Judaism, risking their lives at every turn to preserve their Jewish faith. They gave her the Hebrew name Hannah².

Instead of nursing her gaping wounds – a woman in her prime forced to flee her hometown and care for her child single handedly – Dona Gracia summoned her inner spirit and fortitude and set forth to become a beacon of light for her suffering Jewish brethren.

Beatrice married another converso, Francisco Mendes, a wealthy trader in gems and spices. Beatrice and her husband, Francisco, had one child, a daughter named Reyna. In 1536, when Reyna was five years old, Francisco died, and Beatrice, now a 26-year-old widow, was heir to one-half of his enormous fortune. That same year, the Inquisition was re-established in Portugal and all conversos were threatened, prompting Dona Gracia to leave Lisbon. Together with her daughter, she fled to Antwerp, the capital of Flanders.

In Antwerp, instead of nursing her gaping wounds – a woman in her prime forced to flee her hometown and care for her child single handedly – Dona Gracia summoned her inner spirit and fortitude and set forth to become a beacon of light for her suffering Jewish brethren³.

She immediately set up a fund to help the conversos who escaped from Portugal, allowing them to re-establish their lives on foreign grounds with financial assistance provided solely by her generosity⁴.

Living as a so-called Christian in Antwerp, Dona Gracia mingled with the highest society and gained many vital connections that she would use to help her people.⁵ Predictably, a short time later, Dona Gracia was asked for her consent for her daughter Reyna to marry a local noble. Knowing what was at stake – her wealth, her standing, her very life, Dona Gracia still proclaimed that she would rather have her daughter dead. Inevitably, that statement aroused immediate suspicion and Donna Gracia was forced to flee to Venice.⁶

Even though Jews lived openly in Venice – confined to a dreary island called the Ghetto – Gracia was not able to reveal her Jewishness publicly. To do so would have meant an end to her business dealings, which would mean the end of her philanthropic activities for thousands of Jews who needed it desperately.⁷

Dona Gracia once again took the more difficult route, a choice that would become the running theme of her life, and opted to continue living as a pseudo-Christian in central Venice in order to continue her underground Jewish efforts.

Shortly after her arrival, immersed in efforts of helping conversos, she was denounced to authorities as a Jewess and was arrested. All her property was confiscated by the Inquisition.⁸

After many months of internment, she was released following the tireless efforts of her nephew. She relocated to Ferrara where she supported local Jewish scholars and paid for the first translation of the Torah into Spanish – an astonishing achievement at the time.

This peace and happiness was short-lived. In 1551, plague broke out in Ferrara.⁹ City officials blamed Jews and forced all the Jews to leave the town.

Like her forefather Abraham, Dona Gracia didn’t question, didn’t throw up her arms in despair and didn’t doubt her unique mission to help her nation in one of our history’s most turbulent periods.

Gracia relocated to Turkey, settling in Constantinople, in the heart of the Ottoman Empire. There, she lived openly and proudly as a Jew. She continued to run her trading empire with their secret routes ferrying Jews to freedom, and for the first time, Gracia was able to publicly support Jewish organizations as well.¹⁰

Each day, 80 poor people entered her home to receive free meals. Gracia paid to redeem Jewish slaves who were seized by pirates. When Turkey experienced a bitterly cold winter in 1567, she paid to help the empire’s poor Jews afford heat and clothes. She supported hospitals, charities, schools and synagogues throughout the Ottoman lands.¹¹

One of Gracia’s most prominent projects was a synagogue and yeshiva she established in the heart of Constantinople, which was known as “the Synagogue of the Senora”.¹² Previously, local tradition dictated that Constantinople’s Jews always prayed in the one synagogue to which their families belonged. Gracia’s synagogue was different: it was open to all Jews, welcoming everyone whether members or not.

Gracia’s most ambitious project was supporting the Jewish community in Israel. She fought for and was granted permission to resettle Spanish Jews in Tiberias, an ancient city in the north of Israel. Gracia immersed herself in every detail of the venture and built a thriving Jewish settlement there. She also had a house built for herself in Tiberias and petitioned the Sultan for permission to go to the Holy Land.¹³

With great difficulty, she had her husband Fransisco’s body removed from the church graveyard in Lisbon where it was interred and brought to Israel, where he was reburied in Tiberias.¹⁴

Destiny did not allow Gracia to follow him there. She grew sick and withdrew from public life, living in Constantinople in old age in precarious health. She died in about the year 1569, one of the most beloved figures in the entire Jewish world.¹⁵

One of the most famous tributes was a poem written by the great Jewish poet Sa’adiah Longo, who had fled the Spanish Inquisition as a child and moved to Salonika, where he witnessed Gracia’s tireless efforts for Jews. In his ode “Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi”, he describes Gracia as having “straightened the path in the wilderness…the passage to an awesome God.”¹⁶

Dona Garcia, it’s roughly 500 years later and we’re still in the wilderness, we are grasping for our awesome God and we know however black it is, that just like you, we can make choices every day that will bring us closer to Him.

¹ _{https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111939/jewish/Dona-Gracia-Mendes-Nasi.htm}

² _{The Woman Who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Dona Gracia Nasi by Andree Aelion Brooks (2002).}

³ _{Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi by Cecil Roth (1946).}

⁴ _{Kaufman, Michael. Women in Jewish History. p.89}

⁵ _Ibid

⁶ _{Ibid p.90}

⁷ https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/sy8jmbp113

⁸ _{Kaufman, Michael. Women in Jewish History. p.89}

⁹ https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/nasi-gracia-mendes-1510-1569

¹⁰ _{Kaufman, Michael. Women in Jewish History. P.90}

¹¹ https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/dona-gracia-nasi

¹² _{https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/nasi-dona-gracia}