Between Recognition and Exclusion: Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s Professorship in Madrid in Letters and Press Reports

Abstract

This article reexamines the intellectual and political trajectory of Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951) through the lens of his Spanish career, situating his professorship at the Universidad Central de Madrid (1915–1923) within the broader dynamics of philosephardism, Orientalist scholarship, and Zionist debates. As the first Jew in modern Spain to hold a full academic chair, Yahuda became a symbolic figure in a national project of cultural reconciliation, intended both to atone for the expulsion of 1492 and to serve Spain’s geopolitical ambitions in Morocco. Drawing on contemporary press reports, correspondence, and institutional records, this study reconstructs the reception of Yahuda’s lectures, the political and academic expectations invested in his appointment, and the contradictions that eventually led to his resignation. The analysis highlights how Yahuda’s Sephardic background, German scholarly training, and Zionist engagement positioned him as an intercultural mediator whose vision of Jewish modernization emphasized dialogue with Arab culture. His Madrid years, at once celebrated and contested, reveal the opportunities and limits of cultural brokerage in early twentieth-century Europe. By reassessing this episode, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of how Jewish scholarship functioned as a site of symbolic politics and how mediators like Yahuda navigated the tensions between recognition and exclusion, nationalism and universalism, colonial policy and cultural dialogue.