The Synagoga Mayor de Barcelona was an ancient synagogue in the center of the city of Barcelona, Spain. Shlomo ben Adret was the officiating rabbi of this synagogue for about 50 years. After many years of being used for other activities, the building at 5 Marlet Street was inaugurated as a synagogue and museum in 2002, thanks to the efforts of the Catalan historian Jaume Riera i Sans in locating the building based on documents such as the route of a tax collector and the specifications in the Talmud on how synagogues should be built. However, the synagogue was actually located at number 9 Salomó ben Adret Street, the adjacent house, and not the one currently promoted as the former synagogue. Currently, the building is not used for daily prayers, but is used for community festivities.
The synagogue of the oldest existing Jewish community in Spain, founded in 1918. The community moved into the current building in 1954. The Synagogue of the Jewish Community of Barcelona, is a cultural and religious center that was built in 1954 to serve the Jewish community that lived then in the city of Barcelona. The three story building is located on Avenir street, and provides services to the members of the community as well as visitors. The center has two synagogues, one Sephardic and the other Ashkenazi. The building also has a library and a conference room.
The Synagoga Mayor de Barcelona was an ancient synagogue in the center of the city of Barcelona, Spain. Shlomo ben Adret was the officiating rabbi of this synagogue for about 50 years. After many years of being used for other activities, the building at 5 Marlet Street was inaugurated as a synagogue and museum in 2002, thanks to the efforts of the Catalan historian Jaume Riera i Sans in locating the building based on documents such as the route of a tax collector and the specifications in the Talmud on how synagogues should be built. However, the synagogue was actually located at number 9 Salomó ben Adret Street, the adjacent house, and not the one currently promoted as the former synagogue.
There is evidence of the Jewish cemetery of Barcelona since the eleventh century. In 1391, with the attack on the Call of Barcelona, several tombstones were looted to sell it, and it was not until the twentieth century that architectural remains were found again. Thus, in 1945 171 graves were found after the construction of some pavilions in the area, and in 2001 an excavation uncovered 557 tombs and a tombstone.
The Plaça Reial stands in front of the former palace of the King of Aragon, location of the famous Disputation of Barcelona, a contest of words between Nahmanides, the Kabbalist of Girona who had close ties with the King, and Pablo Cristiani from Montpellier, a Jew who had converted to Catholicism. The debate went on for 4 days, with topics ranging from debates around the Messiah to which reli-gion showed the truth. The aim of such debates was to show the flaws in Judaism in front of an angry public, humiliating Rabbis who were not allowed to ask questions, but merely defend those presented to them. Though King Jaume I said that “never before had he heard an unjust cause so nobly defended”, and had a good relationship to Nahmanides, he still banished him, albeit with a large sum of money in his hand.
This square hosts the vestiges of one of the most dramatic episodes of Barcelona’s Jewish history. On the walls of one of the building one can still see the hebrew inscriptions from the tombstones that were used to build the Palau del Lloctinent sometime after the Jewish community was expelled. At the time of the construction of the Palau del Lloctinent, the Jewish quarter had already been razed and after 1492, with the expulsion order that the Catholic Monarchs gave to the entire community, theoretically there were no Jews left in the city. Since the Jewish necropolis had already been dismantled, some of its tombstones were reused as building materials. At the facade of the same type building in the Plaza del Rey, near the Salón del Tinell and at ground level you can also see some stones with Jewish inscriptions.
