Bookstore Glossary Library Links News Publications Timeline Virtual Israel Experience
Anti-Semitism Biography History Holocaust Israel Israel Education Myths & Facts Politics Religion Travel US & Israel Vital Stats Women
donate subscribe Contact About Home

Corunna, Spain

CORUNNA (Sp. La Coruña, Coruniya), Atlantic seaport in N.W. Spain. Fragments of tombstones found in Corunna show that Jews lived there in the 11th and 12th centuries. A street called Sinagoga is still to be found in Corunna. The Jewish community evidently began to expand in the 15th century along with other centers in northern Castile as Jews moved there from the south. The Jews of Corunna engaged in maritime trade with Castilian and Aragonese ports. In 1451 the community contributed 300 gold pieces toward ransoming a Jew of Murcia who had been taken captive. A tax of 1,800 maravedis was collected from the community in Corunna and others in the vicinity in 1474 by Jacob Aben Nuñez. One of the most beautiful illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in existence, the so-called Kennicott Bible in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, was completed in Corunna, for Isaac, son of Don Solomon de Braga, in 1486. The Corunna community apparently flourished until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

H. Beinart, in: Sefunot, 5 (1962), 80, 90; C. Roth, Gleanings (1967), 316–9; I. Loeb, in: REJ, 6 (1883), 118–9; Cantera-Millás, Inscripciones, 31ff.; Suárez Fernández, Documentos, index.

[Haim Beinart]


Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.