How Sephardi Refugees Brought Chocolate to France

In the middle of the 16th century, Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants—known as New Christians—began slipping from Spain and Portugal into southern France. Although this area was also officially Judenrein, here Jews had to make less effort to conceal their identities, and as time went on the communities they founded slowly became openly Jewish. One such group settled in Saint-Esprit, adjacent to the city of Bayonne and near the border with Spain. Mariana Montiel writes:

Bayonne . . . became a prosperous city with the help of its new inhabitants. Feeling safer, these crypto-Jews began to practice their Judaism. Even though they were discreet in their practice, the Christian population knew they were Jewish. They therefore could not live in Bayonne [proper] and were able only to participate in wholesale trade.

Because these Jews had ties with the thriving Sephardi community in Amsterdam, they participated in trade in spices and cocoa. They brought the secret of chocolate manufacturing to the city, making a substantial contribution to its growth and wealth.

Documents show that in 1761, the Jewish population of Saint-Esprit was reprimanded because of the symbolic transgression that its inhabitants committed by living in beautiful homes where they would leave their curtains open on Friday night, allowing the Christians to see their Shabbat candles. . . .

The 600 Sephardic Jews of Saint-Esprit at the beginning of the 18th century maintained close relations with family members who had stayed in Spain and Portugal as well as with those [who had settled] across Europe, in the Caribbean islands, and on the North and South American coasts.

Read more at Atlanta Jewish Ideas

More about: Amsterdam, Food, French Jewry, History & Ideas, Sephardim, Spanish Inquisition

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF