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Gracious Widow Mendesia, Morano fugitive, was a potent
figure in Judaic-Moslemic Cooperation —four centuries ago
Gracia as a bride, at eighteen—from a medallion executed
by Pastorini, original in the Cluny Museum, Paris.
At right. Pope Paid IV.
By CHARLES RADDOCK
Would it surprise you to know that an
cestors of the Moslem extremists who now
seem to be combating the nascent Hebrew
republic so violently, even as late as four
hundred years ago backed Jewish settle
ment in Tiberias, Jerusalem and Safed,
and committed themselves so far as to help
a Jewish widow in Constantinople organize
a boycott on commercial products handled
by antisemites? In fact, incredible as it
may seem now, it was in Arab countries —
even Egypt, where slv, turbaned Haj Amin
El Husseini now goads paid guerrillas on
Jewish colonists—that this brave Jewish
matron found support for a novel and dar
ing experiment.
Particularly significant is the unique
story of Dona Gracia Mendesia today when
we note by the daily headlines how mod
ern kinsmen of those friendly Sixteenth
century Mohammedans resort to the
means of reprisal she devised and, more
over, how they use this means for a pur
pose diametrically opposed to hers and
contrary to the ideals once held by their
forefathers. For you may be sure that the
fanatical followers of Jerusalem's ex-mufti
who now ban Jewish-made goods from Tel-
Aviv are hardly aware that this singular
method of economic proscription first origi
nated in the mind of a Jew’ess—of whose
tiny family an Allah-worshipping sultan
About The Author
Born New York City 1910. Managing
Editor of “Trade Union Courier" (AFL)
labor newspapers and Feature Press.
Co-author "The Magic Touch.” comedy
which had brief run this season at
Int’l Theatre. Contributed to leading
American publications and journals of
Jewish opinion. Now at work on “The
Royal Promise,” drama based on life of
Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Is
land, slated to open this fall under the
aegis of John Chanin. — Editor’s Note.
was so fond that he presented her nephew
with a coveted city in Galilee.
Gracia came of ancient noble Jewish
stock, and had she arrived in our own time
to such wealth and social prominence as
her family enjoyed she would have prob
ably been described by society-columnists
as an “heiress” and most likely never had
a care in the world. Born as she was, how
ever. in the Sixteenth into a household of
marranos—i.e. “Jewish Christians” — she
was forcibly baptized by Portuguese In-
quisitionists at infancy, and thereafter
doomed to be a perennial refugee. A fu
gitive from religious persecution and from
repeated imprisonments on trumped-up
charges of “heresy,” she was forever in a
state of flight. From Lisbon to Antwerp,
Flemish harbor to North Italian seaport
and, finally, from the East of Italy to
Islamic climes. Married at eighteen, she
was widowed at twenty-five and left to
flee the Inquisition with a baby-daughter
on her hands.
She was past forty-two when, after
years of escaping the hotbeds of Catholi
cism, she managed to settle down in Con
stantinople— where erstwhile cathedrals
had been converted to mosques, progres
sive Moslems viewed Inquisitional torture-
chambers of southwestern Europe with
overt contempt and where, above all, Jew
ish initiative was appreciated for the boon
it brought to Mohammed’s enlightened do
minions. Once in the capital of the Otto
man empire, Gracia proceeded to follow
every philanthropic inclination she had
ever had and in a hundred ways compen
sate for the religious frustration and social
discrimination she and her child had pre
viously known under “protection” of the
depraved Spanish, Portugese and Italian
noblemen who were always avaricious for
her family fortune.
Under palatine protection of the power
ful Mohammedan sovereign Suleiman II,
who worshipped the Prophet of Mecca in
a manner reminiscent of Mosaic Judaism,
she was encouraged to rehabilitate Jewish
D.P.’s who successfuly fled the dungeons
of the Inquisition to the peaceable com
munities of Islam. Aided and abetted by
the sultan’s trustworthy muftis, she re
united hundreds of broken Jewish families
whose women and children had been held
by Christian pirate-slavers plying the wa
ters of the Mediterranean in quest of ran
som-money while they recited their Hail
Marys and Pater Nosters three times daily.
It was here, finally, that she effected an
excellent match for her daughter, and in
Constantinople that her son-in-law, him
self an exile, (Please turn to page 59)
The Southern Israelite
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