Gibraltar trip report

[lethargic_man]

The first thing I saw, after I crossed the border into Gibraltar, was a British red 'phone box (now almost absent from Britain itself, or in urban areas at least). I reckon this was placed there as a sign to make it clear: you are now no longer in Spain. I suppose I should have found it strange that I was in a foreign place, on the Mediterranean, and where they drive on the right, but the language, culture and (give or take the design on the obverse) the coinage are British, but to my slight surprise I didn't; it felt almost like being at home.

The town itself largely lies on the short coastal plain on the west; there is a village at Catalan Bay on the east coast, but further south the Rock falls sheer to the sea. The Rock of course dominates all views; but for something that looms so large and so long, it's surprisingly narrow: I came across a (locked) tunnel going right the way through it, with daylight visible at the end a scant half mile away. (Gibraltar is really small, it only occupies two and a half square miles, so nowhere is really out of walking distance.) The Rock also lacks the shape one would expect from a hill: rather than the slope tailing off towards a summit, it continues to rise steeply until it plummets abruptly away—or so I understand: I never made it to the top.

The colony's military past dominates its history, not just within the Gibraltar Museum, but also physically in the gun batteries and street names. I suspect living there on a day-to-day basis it's possible to forget about these, though. The north face of the Rock is, further, riddled with gun embrasures dating from the eighteenth century to the Second World War; the western face is lined with strange obelisks which turned out to be ventilation shafts for the miles of tunnels within the Rock.

In the Gibraltar Museum I also saw pottery and other goods brought by the ancient Phoenicians. To my disappointment, none bore inscriptions that I could try and read, but to my delight, there were scarabs (amulets, not beetles!) that they brought from Egypt, complete with hieroglyphic inscriptions. (There was also an ancient Egyptian mummy, of entirely different provenance: the Spanish having captured it, two thousand years after its origin, en route to Britain.)

Having gone to Gibraltar to Get Away From It All™, I found the colony's Main Street a miniature capitalist hell; the shops and crowds could have been transplanted from Oxford Street. Fortunately, it's not all like that. Unfortunately, the alternative's not good either: much of the housing outside the old town, as I discovered when I tried to leave the beaten trail, seems to constitute ugly medium-rise blocks that would fit into lower class estates in Britain. But the old town is pretty enough.

The photograph below shows a shipwreck at Europa Point, the colony's southern tip. I've never seen a genuine (recent) shipwreck before. This happened in a huge storm a few months ago that caused much damage, and destroyed the colony's eruv immediately before Succos.

Which brings me nicely onto the Jewish community. Some of the people in my hotel group said "Where's the Ashkenazi shul?" and were surprised when they learned there wasn't one. Hello, here we are in the middle of Sefarad and you expect there to be an Ashkenazi shul? The rabbi attached to our group, Rabbi Roberts (originally from Gateshead—one of no fewer than ten Geordies either in our group or living in the Gibraltar community!) organised an Ashkenazi minyan for us, but it only met half the time on Shabbos and Yom Tov (and not at all during the week) due to not being able to scrape a minyan together.

Aside from that, there are four Sephardi shuls in Gibraltar, and I tried three of them out. The most impressive, architecturely speaking, is the Flemish Synagogue, Nefusot Yehuda, which was redecorated in the early twentieth century in the most sumptuous manner. I didn't get a chance to take a picture due to not being there when it wasn't Shabbos or Yom Tov, but there's a picture here in which you can just make out the sculptured plaster mouldings on the walls, and, in a complex octagonal design inspired by Moorish art, on the undersides of the ladies' gallery.

The shul which, however, stole the limelight for us visitors was the Abudarham shul, which was the smallest. This features some impressive silver rimonim (decorations for Torah scrolls, though these are too large to be used as anything other than ornaments), which they now only bring out on Yom Tov. Some time ago, these got stolen, broken apart and taken out of the country to be sold; but due to Rabbi Roberts having recognised what he thought to be the thieves,^* and our tour operator, Moses's (a former policeman), impressive ability to hold onto a suspect even after being kneed in the groin, the rimonim were succesfully recovered and returned to Gibraltar.^†

This is evidently a story the Gibraltar community is going to live on for many years to come: During my time there I heard it at least three different times, from different people; each time adding a different aspect to the story.

* He was wrong. These men, though known criminals, turned out to have be been double-crossed by the actual thief, who made off with the rimonim before they could.

† From Israel, which caused fun at airport security, when replying "rimonim" on being asked "What's in your bag?": Rimon, though literally meaning "pomegranate", in Modern Hebrew also means "hand grenade".

The Gibraltar community as a whole seems rather frum; many of the residents were chareidi; and when I turned up to the Flemish shul on the seventh night of Pesach, I found it packed in a way that made it feel oddly like Kol Nidrei. Nevertheless, they seem friendly, and, according to Rabbi Roberts, tolerant in a way that's a lesson to the rest of the Jewish world: anywhere else [certainly within Orthodoxy], as he pointed out, people who had married out would be censured by the rest of the community, and might well drop out of Jewish life altogether, but in Gibraltar, such people are the first people in shul!

As a result of this, Rabbi Roberts is really passionate about the community, in a way that's really rather touching; and has no regrets, despite hardly ever being able to daven in an Ashkenazi service, about having moved there from Gateshead.

Finally, a joke I'm not going to try and explain for those who don't know Hebrew (as the length of explanation would kill it dead):

Do you think it's called Tamid because if you want to eat out kosher in Gibraltar, you always have to go to the same place, or because the food they serve you is cooked until it's korbanised?

Comments

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Jews have been living in Gibraltar ever since 1705. In one of the Aubrey-Maturin books, Maturin returns from a long absence, claiming to have been in Ireland, but looking remarkably tanned. Aubrey remarks on his looking "dark as a Gibraltar Jew", and on the unlikelihood of his having got that way in Ireland.

As for the korban/carbon coincidence, I know someone who's convinced there must be something to it, despite all dictionaries disagreeing.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Jews have been living in Gibraltar ever since 1705.

Since the British conquered it, despite a clause in the treaty signed with Spain that said No Jews. Apparently the King of Spain visited once, discovered the existence of a synagogue, and threw a wobbly that threatened to become a major diplomatic incident unless the British expelled the Jews. Eventually the British rounded up all the Jews and put them on boats, then sent a message to London saying "Tell the king of Spain we've expelled all the Jews"... and then sent messages out to the Jews on the boats telling them they could come back now.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

Giggle! That really sounds like a joke.