Queens of the Jews

In the late fifteenth century, Jews were banished from their age-old center on the Iberian Peninsula, by order of Queen Isabella of Castile and her husband. While some converted to Christianity and stayed in Spain, most were scattered around Europe, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. They did not have a state of their own, but during the following century some of the Jewish community’s main leaders were women. Most prominent among them was Beatrice de Luna, from a family of converts who secretly kept their Jewish faith. Beatrice, widowed from a relative who made a huge fortune in the new Indian spice trade, soon became the richest woman in Europe, moved her business from Lisbon to Antwerp and thence to Venice and Ferrara, and ended up in Istanbul as Sultan Suleiman’s financier. Other prominent women of the age were Benvenida Abrabanel, head of the Jewish community on the Italian peninsula, and Esther Handali and Esperanza Malchi, the two personal assistants to the Ottoman sultanas, who wielded great power and influence during that era.