Zamora סמורה
A Castilian town by the Portuguese border, home of the compiler of the Ein Yaakov, through which in 1492 the exiles passed into Portugal.
The Jewish quarter of Zamora stood outside the city wall, in the place called Vega, and by 1283 it had no fewer than three synagogues. A church council of 1313, held in Zamora itself, imposed on the Jews a distinguishing badge and barred them from public office, one of the first such rulings in Castile. The persecutions of 1391 seem to have produced converts here too.
In the 1470s and 1480s Rabbi Isaac Arama, author of the Akedat Yitzchak, preached here. In those same years the yeshiva of Zamora was kept by Rabbi Isaac Canpanton, who was called the Gaon of Castile. In 1485 the kabbalist and preacher Saul Saba was condemned to death; no details survive.
After the edict of expulsion the Jews of Zamora went into Portugal, a few days' journey away, and by the end of 1492 the town had become a crossing point for those returning from Portugal to be baptised. Among the natives of Zamora were Rabbi Jacob ibn Habib, compiler of the Ein Yaakov, and his son Rabbi Levi ibn Habib, both of whom found their place in the Ottoman Empire.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The rulings of the church council of Zamora, 1313 — the badge and the bar from office
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, the numbers and the circumstances
Basis: documents and evidence.