Our Early History and Legend
By Raphael Ventura
The early “history” of our family, as is frequently the case, has a nucleus of historical truth, couched in a layer of myth and legend. The legend that was woven around the personalities of our ancestral figures, Rabbi Isaac Ashkenazi and his son Menahem, is almost as precious to us, as a family heirloom, as is the historical truth. Only prominent people inspire legends that can survive for centuries in the collective memory of their descendants.
My first encounter with our ancestors was in the Hebrew Encyclopedia (in Hebrew), under the entry “Adrianople”; Then the Encyclopaedia Judaica, under the entries “Edirne” and “Bekemoharar”. My attempt to put together the information from these three articles left me with more questions than I had answers for. Therefore, I checked their sources – books and articles written by historians of the period such as Salomon A. Rosanes, Dr. Simeon Marcus (who had some of his data from Yomtov Behmoiram), Avraam Danon and Avraam Elmaliah. Rafael Benaroya checked the accounts given by Avram Galante and M. Franco. Later we discovered in the Internet the Jewish Encyclopedia on-line. We pooled our results and found out that there are quite a few discrepancies among the various versions, but the main facts are clear.
The Behmoiras family “made it” to the encyclopedias because it produced a series of as many as nine Rabbanim Kolelim at Edirne (we call them here grand rabbis, though, of course, they were subject to the head rabbinate of the Ottoman Empire which resided in Constantinople). This series of grand rabbis is rightly qualified as a “dynasty” because the office passed literally from father to son for a period of about 200 years.
Edirne at 1700 was a very important city of the Ottoman state. Its days of glory as the capital of the state had passed, but many sumptuous buildings had been erected there and the sultan himself used to stay in his Edirne palace for long periods. Many crucial incidents of the Ottoman history took place at Edirne. It was situated strategically at the gateway of the European part of the empire.
The Jews of Edirne were numerous but divided into 13 congregations, each with its own synagogue. Most of them were of Sephardic origin. The grand rabbi of Edirne was the religious, judicial and cultural head of the entire community. He was also responsible for all Jewish communities in the Ottoman occupied Balkans, including principal cities in Bulgaria, Salonica etc.
Our story starts in 1666, when a boy was born to Rabbi Isaac Ashkenazi at Temishvar1[1. As I remarked elsewhere, R. Isaac's place of origin has been claimed by some sources to be Poland and possibly Germany.], Hungary (now Romania). He was named Menahem. Two years later, Rabbi Isaac, heard about Sabbetai Zevi (the false messiah), whose fame had reached the Jewish communities of the West, and decided to leave Hungary with his family in order to meet him in the lands of the East. His destination, most probably, was the Holy Land.
When he reached Edirne (Andrinople) on his way, two things happened. a) The boy, who was two years old, became sick with “the plague”, b) Sabbetai Zevi happened to be in that very city. Sultan Mehmet IV had obliged him to change his faith and become a Moslem. This act disillusioned most of his adherents, but some still clang to their faith in him and in his power to perform miracles. Old women, thus the legend goes, advised that Sabbetai Zevi should see the sick boy and miraculously save him from certain death.
When Sabbetai Zevi came to the room where the boy lay, he put his hands on him and murmured a spell. Then he took out of his plate two sweets made of sugarcoated almond and gave them to the child. He promised the women who stood there that the child would recover and that his progeny would become learned rabbis, and so it came to pass. Therefore it is an old custom in our family to say about Sabbetai Zevi: “Neither shall you curse him, nor shall you bless him”.
Menahem's father died soon and the elders of the Jewish community of Edirne looked after the orphan boy. They enabled him to study the bible, and he excelled in his studies. At the age of 40 he was such a learned man and rabbi, that he was appointed assistant to the grand rabbi, Rabbi Avraam Zarfati.
Not having a male successor, R. Avraam sought to bequeath his office to his son-in-law Rabbi Avraam Gueron, but not all the members of the community accepted this nomination. Six out of 13 congregations preferred Rabbi Menahem. So, in 1722 the community of Edirne had, for the first time in history, two officiating grand rabbis. Each one developed a dynasty of his own, so that we can now speak of the Dynasty of Gueron and the Dynasty of Menahem, both of which ruled in parallel from Edirne until 1900, i.e., for about 200 years.
Rabbi Isaac Ashkenazi (Menahem's father) was of Ashkenazi origin. Having become grand rabbi of a city that was populated by a vast majority of Sephardic Jews, Rabbi Menahem felt that his Ashkenazi origin, and particularly his father's nickname[2. Ashkenazi Jews did not possess surnames at that period. Most probably he was known as “Rabbi Isaac son of X”. In Edirne, however, the mostly Sephardic Jews, who did possess surnames, must have nicknamed him with the descriptive surname “Ashkenazi” since this is what he was.], would mark him as a foreigner, and impede his assimilation among his followers. Therefore he made an exceptional decision. He did away with the nickname “Ashkenazi”, and established in its stead the term Bekhmoharar by which his family became subsequently known (see article “The Name “Behmoiras” its meaning and variants“). In the course of the centuries, repetitive intermarriages with the local sephardic population rendered the family sephardic, as it is today.
Menahem died in 1734, at the age of 68, and his son Mordechai Bekhmoharar Menahem took over. On Menahem's tombstone his son carved, among other things, the titles of the learned writings that his father had composed (most of them, in manuscript, were subsequently destroyed in a fire, of which more will be said in a future article). Rabbi Menahem served as grand rabbi of Edirne for 12 years.