Word: madrid
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...recently, after the sun had set over Madrid, a "group of Spanish Jews met in a small, neat, new synagogue. On the walls hung the white and blue banner of Israel; the traditional nine candles stood against a background of gold-embroidered drapery. When the candles were lighted, old men in black skull caps joyfully started to chant the ancient Hanukkah hymn. The younger ones barely remembered the words. Once more, the Jews of Spain, who used to be the world's richest and proudest, had an open, permanent place of worship. A bent old man sighed...
...Spanish Jews went, they formed proud groups among their fellow Jews. They lived in many countries, mixed with many stocks, but they never lost their pride in their Spanish heritage. Slowly a trickle of their descendants returned to the home of their ancestors. In 1917, one Ignacio Bauer opened Madrid's first synagogue since the expulsion. During the Spanish civil war, it was closed down once more and looted by the Communists. But Bauer managed to save the Torah (sacred book), and the Franciscan nuns of Murcia hid it in the crypt of their convent. Under the Franco regime...
Every seat in the columned auditorium at Madrid's Club Mercantil had been taken, but still the people came. Mink-coated ladies and threadbare scholars jostled for places behind the doors, crowded onto the balcony overlooking the hall. They waited patiently for the wiry little man with unruly white hair to step to the gold desk on the dais. When he did, they burst into cheers. They clapped and shouted so long that they seemed almost hysterical. The little man smiled, slowly raised his arms for silence. Then he began to speak...
...speech José Ortega y Gasset made that night was on an academic subject-Arnold J. Toynbee's Study of History (TIME, March 17, 1947). But all over Madrid last week, it was the talk of the coffeehouses. It had been twelve years since Spain's most celebrated living philosopher had gone into voluntary exile when Franco came to power. Now, with Franco's permission, he was back lecturing again. He had been told to stick to cultural subjects, but Ortega seemed to have other plans. He had chosen to lecture on Toynbee merely "to loosen...
...Philosophical Pope. Whatever themes he might pick, Spaniards would remember what it was like to have Ortega around. He had been a proud and fastidious figure, quoted and copied everywhere. When he lectured at the University of Madrid, students jammed his classes. He was called "the philosophical Pope of Spain"; and when he went to his favorite coffeehouse, it was with a crowd of disciples tagging behind. There, perched on the edge of his chair, he would hold forth each night, spinning phrases like sparks from a pinwheel, sometimes until the sun came...