The Scrolls' Journeys
Accepting the opinions of the experts I consulted—Jordan Penkower, Shlomo Zucker, and Edna Engel— each scroll journeyed from Italy and North Africa, respectively, to Ottoman Palestine. Based on the date of creation (16th Century) as it relates to Jewish history, it can be assumed that the communities that wrote and used these scrolls were a generation of immigrants or one generation removed from immigration.
Sephardic Jewish History
The Sephardic Jewish community refers to those that trace their roots to the Iberian Peninsula, which in Hebrew is referred to as Sepharad. This community of Jews lived on the Iberian Peninsula from the Roman period through the rule of the Visigoths and Muslims (711-1492).¹ What was once a flourishing Jewish community ultimately came to an end with the Christian Reconquista, or reconquering of Spain, when Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issued the Alhambra Decree in 1492. This decree, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, forced either the conversion or expulsion of Jews from Spain. As such, many Jews fled Spain and settled elsewhere.
Some Jews who left Spain went to Portugal only to be forcibly converted or expelled five years later, in 1497.² Many from this subset, who first went to Portugal, decided to immigrate to North Africa when faced with conversion.³ Those who did not initally go to Portugal, went to North Africa, the Italian Peninsula, and later to the Ottoman Empire.⁴
North Africa
Upon arriving in North Africa, Jews of Spanish origin met Maghrebi Jews that had inhabited the region for centuries.⁵ It is likely that this group of Sephardic refugees that setting in the Maghreb produced the HWS Esther Scroll.
Italy
The third most popular destination for Sephardic refugees after Portugal and North Africa was Italy.⁶ It is likely that this community of Sephardic refugees in Italy produced the HWS Torah Scroll.
After Italy and North Africa?
Expulsion in the late 15th Century, settlement in Italy and North Africa soon after, and the estimated creation of the scrolls in the 16th century, provides a cohesive chronology. After migration from the Iberian Peninsula to North Africa and Italy, the story of the immigration of the groups that could have created and used the Scrolls in HWS' possession becomes far more uncertain. What is unknown and far harder to pinpoint is the scrolls journey from their creation in the 16th century to their acquisition in Ottoman Palestine in the late 19th century.
Due to the precarity of their situation in Italy and North Africa, many Sephardic Jews continued their immigration to the Ottoman Empire.⁷ As Jonathan Ray states, "The unsettled situation in North Africa and Italy coincided with, and helped to engender, the establishment of Sephardic settlements in the eastern Mediterranean. By the second quarter of the sixteenth century, the Iberian refugees had begun to reach the cities of the Ottoman Empire in large numbers..."⁸ The central reason for immigrating to the Ottoman Empire was because of its, "potential as a safe haven for settlement."⁹
Once arriving in Ottoman lands, the Jewish communities that used the scrolls in HWS' possession, could have immigrated to Palestine at any point. Ray states that, economic opportunity, "drew Jews to centers such as Istanbul, Salonica, and Izmir as well as smaller cities such as Ragusa, Candia, and Safed."¹⁰ In addition to economic motivations to relocate, the latter city, Safed in Ottoman Palestine, also became a "preeminent center for kabbalistic [Jewish mystical] learning."¹¹ Religious motivations also drew Jews to Jerusalem, a center of pilgrimage which, "rivaled Safed as a destination for Jewish scholars and students." ¹² Though despite these draws, the region of Ottoman Palestine was not, "a major destination for those refugees."¹³
Beyond the 17th Century, examined by Ray, Professor Jonathan Hacker, in his study of Jews in the Ottoman Empire between 1580 and 1815, states that throughout this period, "migration to the Land of Israel persisted from all regions of the Jewish world, from within the Empire and from without. The key destinations of such migration were the four “holy cities”–Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed, and Hebron– although the numbers of migrants was never great." ¹⁴ Therefore, between the expulsion of 1492 and the scrolls' acquisition in 1891, there had been some Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine, though not significant. It can be inferred that the communities that used the scrolls in HWS' possession migrated to Ottoman Palestine during this period between the 17th-19th centuries.
Endnotes
1. Elie Kedourie Spain and the Jews: The Sephardi Experience, 1492 and After (Thames and Hudson, 1992), 8.
2. Elie Kedourie, Spain and the Jews, 13.
3. Jonathan Ray, After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry, (New York University Press, 2013), 44.
4. Ray, After Expulsion, 33.
5. Ray, After Expulsion, 44.
6. Ray, After Expulsion, 45.
7. Ray, After Expulsion, 47.
8. Ray, After Expulsion, 69.
9. Ray, After Expulsion, 49.
10. Ray, After Expulsion, 71.
11. Ray, After Expulsion, 71.
12. Ray, After Expulsion, 71.
13. Ray, After Expulsion, 49.
14. Joseph R. Hacker, "Jews in the Ottoman Empire (1580-1839)," in The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed.Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 836.