“The Woman who Defied Kings” book review

by Jaime Cader

San Francisco, California: On October 5, 2013, while sitting in the Northern California International Solidarity Movement’s booth at the Arab Cultural Festival, I finished reading the book “The Woman who Defied Kings -The life and times of Doña Gracia Nasi -A Jewish leader during the Renaissance” by Andreé Aelion Brooks.  I had been taking my time reading this publication since last summer and I had it with me during my trip to Jordan and Palestine.  This book is about a “conversa” (a new Christian of Jewish origins, her family was forced to convert to Catholicism) from Portugal whose parents came from Spain fleeing the Inquisition.  I became interested in Sephardic culture and language years ago as I found that the Judeo-Spanish language has many archaic Spanish words, many of these still in use among the rural populations of Latin America.  One of these words is the subjunctive of the word “to be” (haiga, but in modern standard Spanish it would be “haya”), which I must add I have found also in the Aragonese (aranés, fabla) language.

Back in the year 2004 I attended a presentation of the author of this book.  There has not been much written on Doña Gracia Nasi previously and Brooks stated that she was told that she would not find any documents relating to Nasi.  In doing her research she did find documentation however.  Previous to the dedication page there is a page that states, “Before there was a House of Rothschild there was a House of Mendes and at its head was… a woman [Nasi].”  In reading about the life of Nasi one finds that it is in a sense a great adventure story, how she and her family escaped Portugal to live in Antwerp. Then after a time she escaped to regions of what is now Italy and finally to the Ottoman Empire (Constantinople).  From there she was a leader in the boycott of the city of Ancona (presently in Italy) where Jews were being burned at the stake.  And also from Ottoman territory, where she was able to openly practice Judaism, she continued to help her converso people in their escape from Spain, Portugal, etc. so that they could settle in Ottoman controlled lands.  It was in this region that Nasi and her nephew Joseph Nasi were in good standing with the Sultans and received favors from them.

Although I enjoyed reading this book because I was learning something about those times, the individuals involved -such as the popes, the sultans, the kings, the Holy Roman Emperor, the leading rabbis, etc., I have some reservations about this text.  Is the author promoting Zionist beliefs with some of the statements she makes in her book?  Let me present some examples.  In relation to the eventual failure of the boycott against Ancona, Brooks states on page 358, “Soon, the looming chaos had more to do with heritage and personal economic concerns than it did with presenting a united Jewish front against aggression.  This was so even though such a front may well have demonstrated the kind of muscle that the early settlers in modern Israel, some five hundred years later, were determined to show the world; a level of determination that could make Christian leaders, and even Muslim rulers, think twice before persecuting the Jews with such abandon.”

Does the author show prejudice in her writing?  On page 433 she states in reference to the settling the Tiberias area of Palestine which was promoted by Nasi, “The crusaders were followed by the Mamelukes, nomadic Arabs so lawless and unpredictable that Jews were not inclined to return to the city.  Only when the Ottoman Turks conquered the Holy Land in 1516 did the potential for re-settlement reemerge.”  On page 434 she quotes, “No man can go there for fear of the Arabs,” wrote Moses Basola, a Jewish traveler in 1522, “except at the time of the caravans.”

On page 436 Brooks comments, “As the massive influx of sages into Safed seemed to augur the revival of this fundamental pillar of statehood, it is important to bring the idea to fruition.”  Were there people back in those days that were thinking in terms of states (aside from the Papal States)?  Another reference to statehood is found on page 442: “The idea that Jews would consider regrouping as a nation -even an embryonic one -seemed to horrify the Christian world.  Though the observation may have been designed to discredit a man the French disliked and distrusted anyway, it certainly bolsters the opinion of historians who have since maintained that the Tiberias project was part of a larger attempt to revive statehood.”

Page 441, still on the Tiberias theme: “The residents of nearby villages were assigned the job of making the mortar, using sand from the shores of the lake.  The hordes of discarded stones were gathered and reused for the walls… But the indigenous Arab population was horrified when it discovered the underlying reason for the call up.  Its reaction began to resemble the disputes that have continued to this day.  One of their aging sheiks -a sort of 16th century Yasir Arafat -insisted that he had found a passage in an ancient text that prophesied the end of the local Arabs, and even Islam, once Tiberias was rebuilt.  “Our faith will be lost and we will be found wanting,” was the way historian, ha-Kohen, recorded the sheik’s warning.  Little wonder that they refused to sign up.”

Finally I also have questions on the historical accuracy of Brooks’ book.  On some pages, for example, she refers to a region as Italy when it did not exist during the 16th century.  I want to mention also that when I had this book with me in the Middle East, an English-speaking woman spotted me with it at a hostel.  She seemed impressed that I had a copy of it and she said that she had previously read the book.  However her tone changed when I told her I had intentions of doing a critique of it. She abruptly commented, “Well the things in it happened centuries ago and you were not there to see if the things in the book took place or not…”  Anyhow, here I have presented the reader with some information on Brooks’ publication.  Hopefully this will get some thinking and discussions going.