Abraham Benveniste

Appointed Rab de la Corte in 1421, he convened in 1432 a conference of Castilian communities at Valladolid, which reorganized communal life.

In Castile, Abraham Benveniste was named Rab de la Corte in 1421, a sort of 'chief rabbi' for the kingdom's Jews, and in 1432 he convened a conference of Castilian communities at Valladolid. A range of ordinances was passed and communal life was reorganized. The drive toward centralization went on under the next leader, Abraham Seneor, a prominent banker at the royal court.1 According to Javier Castaño, the push for centralization produced a 'development of proto-national consciousness' among Castile's Jews. Ironically, as the Jewish story in medieval Spain drew to a close, Castilian and Aragonese Jews may have identified more than ever with their respective kingdoms. It is perhaps not altogether surprising, then, that the exiled Spanish Jews clung so stubbornly to their Iberian legacy even after being expelled in 1492.2