New Jersey Jewish News
Cenral New Jersey Feature Story

Could Cervantes have been a Jew?

by Curt Leviant
the author of six novels. His most recent fiction is the two-novella collection, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Original Music of the Hebrew Alphabet and Weekend in Mustara.

As I was about to reread Don Quixote — during the 400th anniversary year of its publication — I serendipitously ran across an item about its author, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), in the Encyclopedia Judaica. According to the short article, some scholars believe that Cervantes may have come from Converso stock.

In two of his plays, Cervantes presents in balanced fashion both Christian and Jewish attitudes to religion, and in another work he questions the validity of the notion of purity of descent —a cardinal precept in Inquisition Spain. Cervantes himself was wounded and captured during this period in Spanish history, and regularly denied the official appointments he sought, another reason scholars feel he may have descended from Conversos.

A 2004 article by Michael McGaha summarizes various scholarly suggestions about the author’s Jewish connections. McGaha feels that Cervantes purposely depicted Don Quixote as a New Christian, that is, one whose forebears were Jewish, declaring that in the book, his attitude toward Spanish Catholicism is constantly “ironic, negative, or disparaging.” He cites a critic from the 1960s who posited a kabalistic underpinning to the novel (which I feel is thoroughly absurd).

Another critic claims that in “Quichote” (sounded with a “sh” sound, with the “e” pronounced “eh” — “ki shoteh”) means in Hebrew “for he is a fool.” And a third suggests that one famous story in the novel is found in the Talmud — but also appears in a 13th-century Latin compendium of tales. Yet a fourth scholar attempts to prove Cervantes is a Jew based on the town where he was born and the fact that his middle name — Saavedra — is also associated with Jews.

I proceeded to read Don Quixote (the translation by Samuel Putnam) with Jewish eyes — and found that my eyes did not deceive me. Putnam cites 15 quotes from the New Testament and eight from the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible. I found 40 others the translator appears to be unaware of. An educated Christian of Cervantes’ time would have had knowledge of the Bible, but it is significant that the vast majority of the biblical quotes — and they range from the Five Books of Moses through Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes — are from the Tanach.

But even more impressive are more than a dozen unmistakably Jewish sources of certain passages in the novel (plus a few sly digs at Christianity). Combined with the biblical quotes, that is quite an impressive cache of Jewish knowledge.

Here are examples:

• The first hint of a Jewish connection is a remark Cervantes makes about an Arabic text: “…even if the tongue in question had been an older and better one.” Everyone agrees that the “older and better” refers to Hebrew, and it seems quite a courageous remark to include praise of the language in the novel.

• At one point Don Quixote’s sidekick, Sancho Panza, declares, “I am an old Christian and that itself is enough to make me a count.” To which Don Quixote replies, “…and even if you were not, it would make no difference, for once I am king, I can very well make a noble of you.” Meaning: Even if you were a New Christian — that is, a former Jew — I wouldn’t care.

• Sancho states that he “believes in the holy Roman Catholic church. I am a mortal enemy of the Jews.” This is the only time Jews are mentioned in the novel. Is it possible that this remark was made in order to make the novel acceptable to the censors, — indicating the inclusion of other elements might have made it unacceptable?

• In one of the book’s long narratives, a captive speaks of the “punishment for the sins of Christendom.”

• When Sancho is governor of his island, the butler says, “Don’t eat any of the food on this table, for it was a donation from some nuns and, as the saying goes, Behind the cross lurks the devil.” Perhaps the censors missed this anti-Christian remark.

• Don Quixote, in describing Amadis of Gaul, states that “he was slow to anger and quick to lay aside his wrath.” These two phrases are used to describe God in a popular prayer in the Rosh Hashana Musaf service. The next two lines echo this thought with different words — “hard to get angry” and “easily appeased” — phrases taken from Ethics of the Fathers 5:14.

• At the novel’s end, Sancho says: “Don Quixote returns vanquished by the arm of another but a victor over himself, and this, I have been told, is the greatest victory.” Very likely the person who told this to Sancho was the same one who told Cervantes about Ethics of the Fathers (unless he himself secretly read the forbidden text in translation); in Ethics of the Fathers 4:5, we read, “Who is strong? He who can vanquish his impulse.”

• Strikingly Jewish is this line: “Pope Pius V, of blessed memory.” Uttering “zihrono l’vracha” (of blessed memory) after the name of a dead person is a distinctly Jewish practice.

• A woman character shouts, “It was an evil moment and unlucky hour,” a direct reverse of the Hebrew saying, “In a good and lucky hour.”

• Sancho speaks of “this vale of tears,” a phrase that appears in Psalms 84:5 in reference to the Valley of Baka. Only in post-biblical Hebrew literature does the phrase “Emek Habacha” mean “vale of tears,” and it is part of a verse — “Long have you dwelt in the vale of tears “ — in the Friday night hymn “L’cha Dodi.”

• In one scene, Cervantes offers a sympathetic depiction of a Moor who has been expelled from his homeland according to the 1609 and 1610-13 edicts. The Moor, Ricote, tells Sancho: “Wherever we may be, it is for Spain we weep.” Compare this to Psalms 137:1, where Jews in exile in Babylon weep for Zion. Ricote continues: “For when all is said, we were born here, and it is our native land,” and later states: “[The authorities] are ever on the alert lest some of us remain behind in concealment and, like a hidden root, in the course of time come to bear poisonous fruit in a Spain that is now cleansed and freed of that terror that our excessive numbers inspired in it.”

This impassioned speech on the injustice of the Arabs’ expulsion and love of Spain could easily be read as other-speaking for the tragedy of the Jews’ expulsion in 1492.

• When Don Quixote retires from chivalry, he and Sancho make plans to live a pastoral life, as shepherds and poets. Sancho says, “I’ll show how chaste my love is, as I don’t propose to go looking for fancy bread in other people’s houses.”

When Joseph is chief steward in Potiphar’s house in Egypt, we read that Potiphar “left all that he had in Joseph’s hand…save the bread that he did eat”. (Genesis 39:6) Rashi’s classic comment on this verse is: “Bread means his wife, but the Torah speaks modestly.” What is “bread” doing here in connection with chaste love and women? On the face of it, looking for bread in other people’s houses seems like an absurd intrusion, especially when Sancho continues by saying, “It is not proper for the curate to have a shepherdess….” However, if we attach the symbolic Jewish meaning to “bread,” the passage makes sense. Sancho means that he is satisfied with his own wife and, like Joseph, will not look for women in other people’s houses.

• Sancho quotes a proverb, “Said the frying pan to the kettle — get away, black eyes!” Putnam in his “Notes” states: “The original form of the saying was ‘Be off with you, black bottom!’ It is in this form that the proverb is preserved among Jews of Spanish origin” — the only time Jews are mentioned in Putnam’s notes.

• “Granted that self-praise is degrading,” says Don Quixote, “still there are times when I must praise myself — when no one is present to speak in my behalf.” Proverbs 27:2 advises, “Let another man praise you and not your own mouth.” A slight change of pronunciation turns this apothegm upside down. In Hebrew, “and not” (v’lo) can also mean “if not” when read as “va-lo.” The line then reads: “Let another man praise you if not” — if there is no stranger present, then —“your own mouth.” This is precisely the interpretation that Don Quixote gives the maxim, which is popular among Jews to this very day.

• A character, speaking of his happiness in marriage, says, “My cup runneth over…. I have the good fortune to come upon that virtuous woman of whom the Wise Man has asked, ‘Who can find her?’” Cervantes has combined lines from Psalms 23:5, “The Lord is My Shepherd,” and the opening line to Proverbs 31:10, “A Woman of Valor.” Both are recited on Shabbat eve.

We may never know definitively whether Cervantes’ ancestors were Jews. But given the thoroughly Jewish and specialized Hebrew material presented above, the notion that the author either descended from Jews or had enough sympathy for Judaism and its teachings to subtly weave such material into his great novel is surely strengthened.

Comment | Print | Subscribe