Bela spoke in my mind: Little fritter, that long-ago Loma had such a happy life in Naples. She had many healthy children, who were her reward for always doing her best.
Author’s Note
The Jews who came from the Iberian Peninsula, which is shared by Spain and Portugal, are called Sephardic. My father’s ancestors (and half of mine) were among them. My father was born David Carasso in 1912 in Salonika, Turkey, and was still a baby when the city was annexed by Greece. His family had lived in Salonika for about four hundred years, but his first language was Spanish, or possibly a Jewish variant called Ladino. If my grandfather hadn’t emigrated to the United States when my father was very young, he probably would have learned Turkish and other languages, too. The Carassos were all polyglots—speakers of many tongues.
He had a sad childhood. His mother died when he was just a few months old; his father died a few years later; and he was sent to live and grow up at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City, which is the background for my first historical novel, Dave at Night. The orphanage was Jewish, obviously, but not Sephardic, and he lost both his Spanish and a direct connection to his roots, though he knew about them. And he changed his name from Carasso to Carson, to be more American.
Here’s a strange anecdote, though: When he was in his sixties, he vacationed with my mother in Spain, where, at a restaurant, my father, who thought he spoke no Spanish, told a waiter, flawlessly in that language, “This gentleman dropped his fork. Please give him another one.” My mother’s jaw dropped. My father snapped back into the present as if from a dream and had no idea what he’d just said.
I’m an example of the lingering connection that many Sephardic Jews feel to Spain. An uncle knew that our ancestors had gone from Spain to a city in Italy that starts with a T. The city was probably either Taranto or Otranto, both of which were at the time in the kingdom of Naples, where Jews were allowed for a while, until they were again forced to leave, in a series of departures that spanned almost fifty years. Loma would have been uprooted again. I predict she weathered this, too, and continued to have her happy ending.
My ancestors went next to Turkey in the Ottoman Empire, where they were welcomed. The immigrants stayed together and built synagogues named after the communities they’d left, which is why my uncle had an inkling. I have no information about their ancestral home in Spain. If any Carassos are reading this and have an idea, I’d love to know!
From childhood on, I’ve been fascinated by this family history, especially, maybe, because my father never talked about it, out of ignorance or pain. Salonika had been very much a Jewish city until the Holocaust, when its Jews were wiped out.
One of the notions that stayed with me as I wrote this book is that Loma is my own ancestor, a girl with the grit and perseverance to get through terrible times. I believe that all of us, Jewish or not, in ancient or more recent history, have forebears whose survival was uncertain and who struggled and made it against all odds.
On to more general history!
In the Middle Ages, Jewish girls and boys married when they were very young by modern standards. After the expulsion decree was proclaimed, many young women were hastily married off, in hopes of giving them a little protection.
Jewish girls in Spain were more educated than they generally were in the rest of Europe at the time. In well-to-do families that had only daughters, a teacher would be employed to instruct them, but if there were sons—fair or not—they would have the teacher, and the girls would learn from their brothers.
There were slaves in the Middle Ages, and rich Christians, Jews, and Muslims had them. The slave trade in sub-Saharan Africa was just starting in the fifteenth century, so few slaves were black. In Europe, most were Muslims from North Africa, and in North Africa, most were white Christians. Often, slavery was the result of battle, because the defeated were enslaved. Sometimes people were captured in raids along the coast of Spain and North Africa. Occasionally, people actually sold themselves into temporary slavery to pay off a debt. Jews were enslaved, too, but if there was a local Jewish community, the community would buy their freedom if it could afford to. The ransoming of the Jews of Málaga really happened.
Some believe that fewer Jews than Christians caught the plague during the Middle Ages. If that is true, it may have been because the Jews had to live apart, and because washing and bathing were part of Jewish ritual. But no one at the time understood what caused most diseases, including plague, so Christians came up with the explanation that Jews were poisoning their wells and causing the plague on purpose.
Loma’s abuelo Joseph Cantala is very loosely based on the historical figure Isaac Abravanel, courtier, financier, and philosopher, who is still renowned for his accomplishments. When he refused to convert, a plot was hatched to steal and forcibly convert his one-year-old grandson. Luckily, the family was warned and the grandson made it out of the country to Portugal.
Belo’s great friend, Don Solomon Bohor, is loosely based on Abraham Seneor, who was even closer to the Spanish monarchs than Isaac Abravanel was. Abraham Seneor, who was eighty years old at the time of the expulsion, did convert to Christianity and took the name Fernando Nuñez Coronel.
Historically, Christopher Columbus was in Málaga at the same time as Isaac Abravanel, so I thought it would be cool to have him make an appearance. He did have Jewish financial backers, and he did use Abraham Zacuto’s Almanach Perpetuum on his voyages.
Gambling was considered a serious crime in the Middle Ages, although many committed it. Sadly, the Spanish Inquisition trial that Pero got caught up in because of his gambling really took place. Several New Christians and Jews were accused of crucifying a Christian boy, known as the Holy Child of La Guardia, and cutting out his heart to use, along with a Communion wafer, in sorcery to kill all Christians by giving them rabies! The accused were tortured into confessions, but the confessions, naturally, didn’t match up. For example, there were as many confessed locations of the boy’s body as there were confessors, and a search for a body was never made. And no child was ever declared missing!
I chose the route to Naples for Loma and her family because that’s the way my ancestors went. When the fleeing Jews arrived there, many were sick with plague, as I hint with Beatriz’s fever at the end. The refugees infected the local population—which didn’t enhance their popularity!
Each of the limited options open to the expelled Jews was perilous. France and England had already expelled their Jews, expulsions that were less significant than the Spanish one only because the Jewish population of those kingdoms was smaller. The Jews who entered landlocked Navarre from Spain were safe for only six years before they were all forced to convert. Those Jews who didn’t leave Portugal quickly weren’t allowed to leave at all and were forcibly converted. In the next century, however, restrictions were loosened and some left, and many of those returned to Judaism. The people who sailed to North Africa were at risk of piracy and were at the mercy of their ships’ masters, some of whom were murderously anti-Semitic. If they reached their destination, they were vulnerable to attack by local tribes. Those who got to the city of Fez were denied entrance for a while because of a famine, but eventually they were allowed in and were permitted to stay.
I read many learned books and articles for A Ceiling Made of Eggshells, and you can find a bibliography on my website, www.gailcarsonlevine.com. I’ll mention just two here that may interest readers:
Authentic Everyday Dress of the Renaissance: All 154 Plates from the “Trachtenbuch,” illustrated by Christoph Weiditz (in the sixteenth century). This may be the first-ever costume book and is certainly one of the earliest. Most of the fashions come from Spain. The drawings are in black and white, but notes tell the colors.
A Drizzle of Honey: The Lives and Recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews by David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson. The clerks of the Spanish Inquisition recorded everything! The recipes in this cookbook, which I was told about by my cousin Joe Carasso are drawn from ingredien
ts mentioned in Inquisition annals. So far, I’ve made the vermilioned eggs, though, following family tradition, I cooked the eggs many hours longer than the recipe in the book calls for. The flavor is subtle and interesting.
Here’s my cousin’s recipe:
COUSIN JOE’S SEPHARDIC EGGS
INGREDIENTS
12 eggs
1 tablespoon of olive oil
3 tablespoons of white vinegar
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of white pepper or 1 teaspoon of black pepper
small bag’s worth of onion skins and onion tops (as many as possible that will fit in the pot) from brown onions
1 tea bag
1 tablespoon of coffee grinds
Put all the ingredients in a pan that will allow the eggs to be covered (or nearly covered) with water. Cook on a very low fire so that the water is simmering for 12 to 24 hours.
Note: Traditionally, this dish was made with just onion skins. My family added one of either pepper, tea, or coffee. I use all of them for a richer flavor, but they can be made with any of them to good effect.
Glossary
abuela: grandmother
abuelo: grandfather
aljama: the Jewish community in a town or village in Spain
bisabuelo: great-grandfather
converso: a convert from Judaism to Christianity after 1391, when many forced baptisms took place
Don: Sir, a title of respect
Doña: Lady, a title of respect
ducat: a gold coin
get: a writ of divorce, the document that finalizes a divorce
hazan: cantor, or singer in Jewish services
hermandad: the local police force
infanta: the daughter of Spanish monarchs
Judaize: to practice Judaism in secret, while pretending to be Christian
judería: the neighborhood where Jews were required to live; the Jewish ghetto
maravedi: silver coins of little value, used mostly in paper transfers of money
New Christian: a converso
Old Christian: someone from a family that was Christian before 1391
reale: a silver coin
sanbenito: a tunic worn by people who had been condemned by the Inquisition
tallit: a prayer shawl worn by men
tevah: the lectern members speak from in the synagogue
tía: aunt
Torah: the first five books of the Hebrew Bible
Acknowledgments
A Ceiling Made of Eggshells owes a great debt to the kindness and generosity of historians, and, first among them, to Jane S. Gerber, professor emerita at the City University of New York, who guided my reading, answered my many questions, read the manuscript when I finished, and gently let me know where I’d gone astray.
Many thanks also to Teofilo Ruiz, distinguished professor and Robert and Dorothy Wellman Chair in Medieval History, University of California, Los Angeles; to David Gitlitz, professor emeritus, University of Rhode Island; to John Vidmar, OP, associate professor, Providence College; and to Karen E. Carr, retired member of the history department of Portland State University.
Marc D. Angel, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel, has my gratitude for commenting on my manuscript from his wealth of knowledge about Judaism, especially in Iberia. Thanks also to Rabbi Laurie Gold for welcoming me to Temple Beth Elohim in Brewster, New York, my hometown, and answering my questions about Jewish practice.
Thanks to the librarians at the Center for Jewish History and to Amanda (Miryem-Khaye) Seigel and Anne-Marie Belinfante, librarians at the Dorot Jewish Division, the New York Public Library.
Between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, Spanish Jews enjoyed a flowering of poetry in Hebrew. The poems in this book were inspired by The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi, in which the poems were translated into prose in English. I made them poems again and relied on the chapter “Notes on the Systems of Hebrew Versification,” in hopes of attaining a little authenticity. You may notice that one poem is an acrostic on the word hospitality, because acrostic poems were common, often on the poet’s name.
Writing, at least for me, isn’t efficient. The pages I wrote about the crossing to Naples are in the belly of my computer, where they will stay, but I still needed help getting them right before I realized I should cut them. Thanks to Richard Dorfman of New York City’s South Street Seaport Museum and to Charles Bendig, doctoral student in naval archaeology at Texas A&M University. For help with pages I did keep in the book, about medieval wharf activity, I don’t have a name to thank, only a Reddit Ask-A-Historian handle: Terminus-trantor.
My cousins Joe Carasso and Lucienne Carasso Bulow astonished me with their reach into the past. Many thanks to Joe for help with astrology and for the hints that led me to Naples as Loma’s destination. And to Lucienne for the introduction to Rabbi Angel and for Sephardic music.
From Spain, via phone and Google Translate, thanks to Lola Zueco, Fundación Tarazona Monumental, and to staff at the Judería de Sevilla. Many thanks to my friends Melinda Caro Montanaro and Gabriel Montanaro, for their on-the-ground research and the photos and brochures they brought back from Seville.
Much gratitude to discerning reader Amy Ehrlich for looking at the manuscript in its earliest stages. “Be a novelist!” she said, and I gradually became less timid.
Thanks to Charlotte Lang-Bush for her help, also in the early stages.
Eternal thanks, always, to my editor, Rosemary Brosnan, and to the team at HarperCollins, and to my agent, Ginger Knowlton. You are the most constant, stalwart support a writer could have.
However, despite all the wonderful assistance I had, I’m sure I made mistakes. If time travel to fifteenth-century Spain were possible, readers—and I—would be amazed at all I got wrong. Many apologies! How I wish we could go back (safely, possibly invisibly) and witness events!
About the Author
Photo by David Levine
GAIL CARSON LEVINE’s first book for children, Ella Enchanted, was a Newbery Honor Book. Levine’s other books include Ever, a New York Times bestseller; Fairest, a Best Book of the Year for Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal and a New York Times bestseller; Dave at Night, an ALA Notable Book and Best Book for Young Adults; The Wish; The Two Princesses of Bamarre; A Tale of Two Castles; Stolen Magic; The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre; Ogre Enchanted; and the six Princess Tales books. She is also the author of the nonfiction books Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly and Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink, as well as the picture books Betsy Who Cried Wolf and Betsy Red Hoodie. Gail and her husband, David, live in a two-centuries-old farmhouse in the Hudson Valley of New York State. You can visit her online at www.gailcarsonlevinebooks.com and at www.gailcarsonlevine.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Books by Gail Carson Levine
NOVELS
Dave at Night
Ella Enchanted
Ever
Fairest
The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre
Ogre Enchanted
Stolen Magic
A Tale of Two Castles
The Two Princesses of Bamarre
The Wish
THE PRINCESS TALES
The Fairy’s Return and Other Princess Tales
The Fairy’s Mistake
The Princess Test
Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep
Cinderellis and the Glass Hill
For Biddle’s Sake
The Fairy’s Return
PICTURE BOOKS
Betsy Red Hoodie
Betsy Who Cried Wolf!
NONFICTION
Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly
Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink
POETRY
Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems
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Copyright
A CEILING MADE OF EGGSHELLS. Copyright © 2020 by Gail Carson Levine. All rights reserved u
nder International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2020 by Emily Lui
Cover design by Catherine San Juan
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Levine, Gail Carson, author.
Title: A ceiling made of eggshells / Gail Carson Levine.
Description: First edition. | New York : HarperCollins, [2020] | Audience: Ages 8–11. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: From age seven, Loma relishes traveling with her beloved grandfather across fifteenth-century Spain, working to keep the Jews safe, but soon realizes she must also make sacrifices to help her people. Includes historical notes, recipe, glossary, and a link to a bibliography.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019040581 | ISBN 978-0-06-287819-9 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-06-287820-5 (library binding)
Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Persecutions—Spain—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Jews—Persecutions—Spain—Fiction. | Grandfathers—Fiction. | Family life—Spain—Fiction. | Spain—History—Ferdinand and Isabella, 1479–1516—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.L578345 Cei 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040581
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