Buenos dias familias,
We are en camino (en route) to Madrid. Our time in Castilla y Leon has truly flown by, and though we are excited to experience the hustle and bustle of Madrid, we are sad to leave this region. From a programmatic standpoint, it has been meaningful moving from rural to urban, and yesterday was our first big taste of urban: a visit to nearby Valladolid.
After a light breakfast in our five hundred-year-old house, we left Simancas (population 5,000) and drove ten minutes to Valladolid (population 300,000)--quite a change! We walked through the Campo Grande, an extensive, green park filled with ponds, trees, and pavos reales: peacocks! After several photos with these gorgeous birds, we walked to a rambla (a pedestrian-only street) just outside of the casco historico (historic downtown) to meet some important Spaniards: Rabbi Jose Carlos Garcia Perez and Palmira Soler.
Rabbi Jose Carlos is a Sephardic Jew who lives in Valladolid. He is one of six remaining Jews left in Valladolid. 6 out of 300,000 people are Jewish. This was difficult to believe. The rambla where we met Rabbi Jose Carlos seemed like just a random spot, but at this point in the program, we have realized that nothing in a LITA program is random. It turned out that the street we were standing on used to be a Jewish cemetery. We were standing over what is estimated to be 78 graves of Sephardic Jews. Our mouths dropped when we discovered the sacred ground on which we were standing, and Rabbi Jose Carlos drew our attention to a few stones in the street that memorialize this Jewish community with a quote from Moshe Ibn Ezra. Written in both Hebrew and Spanish, the bricks translated to:
"These are old graves from ancient times/where men now sleep eternally/inside there is neither hate nor greed/neither love nor enmity toward one's neighbor/Upon looking at these graves, my mind is not capable/of distinguishing between slave and free man."
This quote written in Spanish and Hebrew is displayed by every remaining Jewish cemetery in Spain. We explored its meaning by having May read the quote in Hebrew and Daniel Stearns in Spanish and using both our Hebrew and Spanish to arrive at a translation in English. For me as a Content Dean in Spanish at a Jewish school, I was reminded of the responsibility we have as a Jewish Community to study Spanish and Hebrew and teach them together.
The second important person we met yesterday was Palmira Soler. Palmira Soler is a professional chef and owner of 5 Gustos, a Michelin Star restaurant. Palmira gave us a private cooking class of Sephardic recipes found in a special book she showed us (side note: when flipping through this cook book, we found a picture of Paco Diez, the musician we met and sang with on Tuesday. It was unreal to see a picture of someone we knew in a published book). We prepared and ate our own food in this amazing restaurant, and it was amazing!
After several hours to walk around Valladolid and shop, we met back up in two groups and ate dinner in familias. The "Familia" groups led by Laura and Olivia had a cool experience meeting a chef of a Michelin-recommended restaurant. This chef ("Paco") is the official chef of the Olympics for Spain, and he has traveled all over the world cooking for athletes. He was at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and was so excited to discover we are from Atlanta. It was a great experience talking to Paco about how much we love our city and his city.
"Oh my G-d, that is so delicious and amazing." -Jonah (in response to Chef Palmira's spin on a traditionally Jewish dessert, Charoset)
"This was the best day ever" -Paul
"I have never experienced a trip like this one." -Lindsey
These are just a few of the multiple, positive comments we heard about yesterday, and we are so sad this trip is ending soon.
Madrid, here we come!
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