First in 467 Years

Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) services were an hour late getting started in Madrid, but nobody seemed to mind. One of the 200 Jews who crowded the third-floor hall off Madrid's Gran Via explained: "We've waited 467 years for this day. A few more minutes won't hurt." At last the congregation, led by younger members bearing the Torah, began the solemn march, chanting the ancient Hebrew prayer: "Praised be the Lord, for He is good and His mercy endureth forever." Then the congregation president lit the "eternal light" (an electric bulb). Occasion: dedication of Madrid's first regular synagogue since 1492, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, urged on by the Spanish Inquisition, ordered all Jews expelled from the land in which Judaism had once flourished.

During the 19th century, some Jews began to drift back to Spain, followed in the 1930s and '40s by refugees from Naziism, and more recently by Jewish migrants from Morocco. Today there are about 3,000 Jews in Spain (pop. 29,662,000), about 200 of them in Madrid. During the past decade, with tentative approval from the Franco regime, Madrid's Jews have held makeshift services in a room that became known, after its owner, as "Lawenda's basement"; occasionally, they managed to rent space in the Castellano Hilton for the High Holy Days. Then, five years ago, Madrid's Jewish community started drawing plans for a permanent synagogue.

They collected $40,000, spent most of it on furnishings--gleaming, oak-paneled walls, handcrafted ark and candelabra. The government agreed informally that the synagogue would be permitted to operate openly as long as police were kept informed of its activities. At last week's dedication, a police inspector duly watched as reverent Jews queued up to kiss the Torah, listened blandly as the congregation chanted its ancient Hebrew prayers. The service over, the inspector congratulated Congregation President Louis Abraham Blitz on the synagogue's impressive decor, shook hands all around and left. President Blitz led the assembled Jews in a tactful prayer: "May God look with kindness upon the chief of the Spanish state."

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