Gracia Nasi was born into an ancient and venerable sephardic family that immigrated to Portugal when Spain expelled its Jews in 1492. Along with the thousands of other sephardic refugees of the Spanish Inquisition, the family was forcibly converted to Christianity by the Portuguese king in 1497. These converted Jews were known by the gentiles as “Conversos” or “New Christians”. The sephardic people called them “Anusim” (the forced ones).
Being suspected by the inquisition Gracia escapes to Italy and from Italy to Istanbul, where she pays to rebuild the cities of Tiberia, Gaza, Jaffo, Safed and Jerusalem. She builds a trade fleet and organizes embargos on the catholic countries saving the lives of sephardic people.
She died in 1569 and was buried in Jerusalem
Where did you all get your “facts”? Have any of you actually read the original 16th century documents? I found that almost nobody had done so because they are hard to find and even more difficult to read. We could not even get any confirmation from the Tiberias museum that they knew anything for sure, except what was written 60 years ago by Cecil Roth, who never had much access. But the museum, while entertaining, does not worry too much about actual facts.
That is what I found when I started to research a biography of Dona Gracia Nasi that would be based ONLY on primary documents written at that time. It took years but it is now done. It is called “The Woman who Defied kings,” and it has since won numerous awards. We also have a Facebook page (Facebook.com/donagraciaworldwide) which I encourage you to visit, as well as a truly fact-filled website: donagraciaproject.org.
So much error and tall tales have crept into her life that the only way to clear the decks, I discovered, was to start again from scratch. We do NOT know what happened to her during her childhood. Her relationship with her sister was far more complex and her sister never actually gave her away to the authorities. The sister was simply trying to get control of her own own daughter’s future and her own share of the family wealth. I urge you all to get involved in the real story, as we have done. It is even more fascinating than the so-called story, once you hear it all.
I’d love to hear from any of you.
Andree Aelion Brooks andreeaelionbrooks.com.
Thanks Yamit for your comments.
Jewish Women in Islamic Commerce
Jewish women entrepreneurs were a dynamic factor in the economic development of Islamic society, albeit they are given little recognition for their significant contribution. Jewish women had a unique advantage over men in doing business with the Islamic hierarchy – access to the harems.
Jewish women attained notable diplomatic and political power as a result of their activities in the courts of the Ottoman Sultans. The special relationship between the Turkomen and the Jews afforded Jewish women an opportunity to exercise considerable influence on the course of events.
A most intriguing figure in this history is that of Doña Gracia Mendes (1510-79). This remarkable woman played a significant role in international, Venetian, Turkish, Palestinian, and most importantly in Jewish affairs. The Mendes were marrano conversos from Portugal,where, (originally under the family name Benbanaste), they became prominent as bankers. Upon the death of her husband, Francisco Mendes in1537, Doña Gracia grasped the reins of the business and became a major banker on her own initiative. She negotiated loans to powerful monarchs. The Hapsburg Emperor Charles V, and the french King Francis I were among the recipients of her largesse.
Doña Gracia Mendes became widely renowned as La Senora, and then as Giverit (Hebrew for “woman”). She was suspected by the Inquisition for secretly maintaining their Jewish heritage (which, in fact, she was!). Due to her powerful connections Doña Gracia was able to consummate a special arrangement with the Spanish. She renounced her Christian conversion and name and proceeded to comport herself in the Jewish faith. She and her family were exiled from Portugal. She carried on her affairs in Belgium, and then in Italy. More
Dona Gracia Nasi Mendes
B”H
A great video about the life of Dona Gracia (1510 – 1569). Dona Gracia who tried to help European Jewry escaping the Inquisition by bringing them to Tiberias. Unfortunately, the plan failed because Dona Gracia died.
However, the video includes a few mistakes:
1. Dona Gracia wasn’t reported to the Italian authorities by her servant but by her sister. Before, her brother – in – law had died and left all his money including the business to Dona Gracia and not to his wife. He obviously felt that Dona Gracia would be the better businesswoman of the two sisters. Her sister was so upset that she reported Dona Gracia as a secret Jew. A stupid act because both sister got arrested.
2. Dona Gracia died near Istanbul but is NOT buried in Jerusalem. In fact, no one knows the exact location of her grave.
3. Dona Gracia wanted to settle the Jews in Tiberias but not in Safed (Zfat). Some people say Tiberias and Zfat but it actually was only Tiberias.
Dona Gracia Nasi Mendes
B”H
A great video about the life of Dona Gracia (1510 – 1569). Dona Gracia who tried to help European Jewry escaping the Inquisition by bringing them to Tiberias. Unfortunately, the plan failed because Dona Gracia died.
However, the video includes a few mistakes:
Jewish Women in Islamic Commerce
Jewish women entrepreneurs were a dynamic factor in the economic development of Islamic society, albeit they are given little recognition for their significant contribution. Jewish women had a unique advantage over men in doing business with the Islamic hierarchy – access to the harems.
Jewish women attained notable diplomatic and political power as a result of their activities in the courts of the Ottoman Sultans. The special relationship between the Turkomen and the Jews afforded Jewish women an opportunity to exercise considerable influence on the course of events.
A most intriguing figure in this history is that of Doña Gracia Mendes (1510-79). This remarkable woman played a significant role in international, Venetian, Turkish, Palestinian, and most importantly in Jewish affairs. The Mendes were marrano conversos from Portugal,where, (originally under the family name Benbanaste), they became prominent as bankers. Upon the death of her husband, Francisco Mendes in1537, Doña Gracia grasped the reins of the business and became a major banker on her own initiative. She negotiated loans to powerful monarchs. The Hapsburg Emperor Charles V, and the french King Francis I were among the recipients of her largesse.
Doña Gracia Mendes became widely renowned as La Senora, and then as Giverit (Hebrew for “woman”). She was suspected by the Inquisition for secretly maintaining their Jewish heritage (which, in fact, she was!). Due to her powerful connections Doña Gracia was able to consummate a special arrangement with the Spanish. She renounced her Christian conversion and name and proceeded to comport herself in the Jewish faith. She and her family were exiled from Portugal. She carried on her affairs in Belgium, and then in Italy.
By a series of intricate maneuvers, Doña Gracia succeeded in transferring much of her family’s fortune to Venice, and from Venice to Istanbul, where she arrived in 1553. She launched into assembling a trading consortium of Jews and Muslims. It dealt mainly in wheat, pepper, and raw wool for the production of European textiles.
image
A wealthy Jewish treadewoman from the Anatolian town of Bohcaci, painted by Jean Baptiste in 1719. Jewish women could do business with the women of an Ottoman harem. They obtained furnishings for the palace and clothes and adornments for the women. Many Jewish women became wealthy entrepreneurs and could afford having their portraits painted by outstanding artists. Illustration courtesy of Stanford Jay Shaw
Doña Gracia soon attained powerful political and economic influence in the Ottoman court. This enabled her to get Sultan Süleyman to intervene with Pope Paul IV on behalf of her fellow Marranos in Ancona, Italy, where they had been arrested and imprisoned by the Inquisition. She convinced the Ottoman Sultan to intercede for the Jews by threatening a boycott of Ancona’s Mediterranean trade. The Jews were freed; many made their way to Ottoman territory.
By 1556 Doña Gracia was joined by her nephew, Don Joseph Nasi (1524-79). Don Joseph was born in Lisbon, son of a Marrano professor of medicine at the university. His father had died when he was but a year old, and Doña Gracia became his foster parent. He left Portugal
with Doña Gracia in 1537 for Antwerp, where he married her daughter Reyna. After graduating from the University of Louvain, Don Joseph integrated into the family’s banking affairs. He became friends with King Charles V, and with Emperor Maximilian of Holland. When the Inquisition’s malevolent influence insinuated
itself into that region, he joined an exodus of fellow Marranos to Venice, and then, along with 800 other Marranos, arrived in Istanbul. There he and the others cast off their Catholic masks and openly resumed their Jewish heritage.
A vast network of international enterprises was constructed by her nephew under the tutelage of Doña Gracia. Their most noteworthy accomplishments were the assistance given to Marranos fleeing persecution. In addition to massive support of communities in Ottoman territory, they developed major new settlements and financed yeshivas (learning centers) in Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel, in Tiberius and Safed.
In 1558 or 1559, Doña Gracia and her nephew obtained a lease on Tiberius from Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent for the sum of 1000 Cruzados per annum. The formerly Jewish town was in ruins. The walls were quickly rebuilt, a yeshiva was founded, and correspondence went out into the Diaspora for settlers and students. Norman Stillman, in The Jews of Arab Lands, (p. 90), states that “The plan to restore Tiberius as a Jewish center had Messianic overtones, as there was an ancient tradition that the Messiah would appear there.”
The Mendes supplied funds to house and feed newly-arrived refugees, and they financed the establishment of Jewish silk culture, fishing, and agriculture. The Tiberius yeshiva accommodated students and scholars from all over the Diaspora.
The influence of the Jews at the Ottoman court was threatened by an attempt of a Greek political party to to eradicate Jewish influence at the court by replacing the Sultan with his half brother, Prince Beyizid. This attempt to usurp the throne was supported by the Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokolly.
To counter this threat, the Mendes’ financed the rise to power of Sultan Selim II in1576. Their influence and prestige attained unprecedented heights.
Stanford J. Shaw, in his work The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, outlines another plan of Don Joseph for the resettlement of persecuted Jews into a free Ottoman environment. “Don Joseph encouraged the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus, achieved in 1570, at least partly with the idea of making it into a place of refuge for Jews arriving from Europe.”
1. Dona Gracia wasn’t reported to the Italian authorities by her servant but by her sister. Before, her brother – in – law had died and left all his money including the business to Dona Gracia and not to his wife. He obviously felt that Dona Gracia would be the better businesswoman of the two sisters. Her sister was so upset that she reported Dona Gracia as a secret Jew. A stupid act because both sister got arrested.
2. Dona Gracia died near Istanbul but is NOT buried in Jerusalem. In fact, no one knows the exact location of her grave.
3. Dona Gracia wanted to settle the Jews in Tiberias but not in Safed (Zfat). Some people say Tiberias and Zfat but it actually was only Tiberias.
The true founder of the Zionist Movement?
Once the wealthiest woman in the world, Dona Gracia planned to establish an autonomous Jewish community in Tiberias.
She was more than 300 years ahead of Theodor Herzl in conceiving a movement whereby Jews would once again take possession of their spiritual homeland, and way ahead of Baron Rothschild in buying property in the Land of Israel, but only now is Dona Gracia (Gracia Mendes Nasi), once the wealthiest woman in the world, being accorded her rightful place in Jewish and Israeli history.
The 500th anniversary of her birth in Lisbon to a family of Marranos, originally from Aragon, that fled to Portugal when Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand expelled the Jews in 1492, was celebrated on Sunday at Beit Hanassi.
Various novels have been written about her, with a blending of fact and fiction, but she has entered Israeli consciousness only in recent years.
A true heroine of Jewish history, she was largely ignored, according to Dr. Tzvi Schaick of Tiberias, because history was by and large written by men who were unwilling to credit women with power and achievement.
The one place in Israel where her memory has long been revered is in Tiberias, where there is a Dona Gracia Museum, of which Schaick is the director and curator.
The museum, known as Casa Dona Gracia, is part of the Dona Gracia Hotel that is owned by the Amsalem family, veteran residents of Tiberias with roots in Morocco and Turkey that in all probability stretch back to Spain and Portugal.
The family also owns Amsalem Tours, which together with Schaick, the Tiberias Municipality, the Galilee Development Authority, the Tiberias Hotel Association and former MK Geula Cohen has been working for years to promote awareness of Dona Gracia.
The museum conducts weekend seminars about the life and times of Dona Gracia, whose story fired Cohen’s imagination to the extent that she pushed for the Education Ministry to include the study of Dona Gracia in school curricula.
Tzvi Tzameret, a former director- general of Yad Yitzhak Ben- Zvi and currently the chairman of the ministry’s Pedagogic Secretariat, agreed that it was high time for Dona Gracia to come out of the mothballs of the distant past. The upshot is that high school students and soldiers will now learn of her plans to establish an autonomous Jewish community in Tiberias, which from the second to the 10th centuries was the largest Jewish city in the Galilee, and a great seat of Jewish learning.
Doña Gracia (Finally) Takes Her Place In Jewish and Zionist History