Meandering to Moldova: La Juderia

I'm staying in an ancient neighborhood of tiny winding streets, known here as La Juderia. There was a time when Jews and Muslims and Christians all lived here — at the same time, but not necessarily in harmony.

The Jewish Synagogue is right around the corner. It's a museum now, stark, empty.

The upstairs space was for the women.

Very nearby is Casa de Sefarad. It's an old house, now a museum showing the history, culture and tradition of the Sephardic Jews.

Here I'm looking down from the second floor onto the central patio. I'll be back here in the patio tonight for a concert of music and dancing.

Single women and widows spun gold into thread for decorating special garments. It was a way for widows to have an income. (When there was a shortage of widows, married women did this work.)

I wandered through the various rooms in the old house. One room is the kitchen. In here, there are interesting quotations from Maimonides (1135-1204) about how to eat healthy. (These were shown in both Spanish and English. Nice.)

I chose one of the worst fruits in a jam for my morning toast today.

Aubergine is eggplant. I guess they're OK for women to eat!

One room was dedicated to outstanding women in the areas of mathematics, literature, poetry, philosophy. Paintings are by J. L. Muñoz — http://www.jlmunoz.com/html/al_andalus.html
Here are just two of the paintings:

The wife of Dunas Ben Labrat — they don't seem to know her name.

Lubna, the mathematician

Tonight I went back there for a Flamenco concert. Those of us in the audience sat around the edge of the patio. There were maybe 40 people there — a sold-out performance.

Why a Flamenco concert in a house dedicated to Jewish culture? Before the performance began, they explained: 1) They like Flamenco very much. 2) Many believe that the deepest and saddest melodies originated in the Jewish synagogue.

And then it began. First, a guitarist walked through the patio and took his seat in a chair on the stage, just a few yards from where I was sitting. He began to play and I was mesmerized. Such beautiful, soulful music! When he finished his first piece, a woman crossed the patio to join him. She was dressed all in black, and I'd describe her attire as funereal except for her glittery spiked heeled shoes. This time, when the guitarist played, the woman tapped one shoe. And then she began to clap her hands a little bit. And then the woman sang. It was more of a gutteral cry, a shout, a deep moan, not so much a song, and it came LOUD from deep inside her. How long could her vocal chords keep this up? How much longer could the guitarist's fingers do this incredible work?

And then the dancer crossed the patio, danced across it, whipping her shawl as she moved. Beneath the green flowered shawl she was wearing a white high-collar blouse and a black skirt, skin tight at the abdomen and then flaring out down to her feet. Up on stage, she discarded the shawl and continued to move to the music of the guitar, to the moaning song of the woman's voice. The singer's foot tapping and hand clapping blended with the sound of the dancer's feet. The dancer was as if in a trance. This dance did not seem sexual; she was expressing anger, grief, fierce intent, stamping her feet. I thought if she were a mother and her small child witnessed this, the child would be traumatized. There was power up on the stage, and beauty, and oh, so much energy! At the conclusion of the dance, the woman was clearly spent, sweating. She left the room, and for ten minutes or so, the guitarist and the singer continued without her.

When the dancer returned, she was wearing a green skirt, no shawl. This dance was not so angry. She was almost coquettish at times, the message maybe: Come hither if you dare, if you're strong enough.

(I could not understand the singer's words.) She lifted her skirts so that we could see her feet. Incredibly intricate footwork! This was the original tap dance!

Only at the very end were we permitted to take photographs. At this point, the dancer was barely moving.