After 500 Years, a Wrong Redressed : Religion: Spain’s Juan Carlos prays with Israeli president in Madrid synagogue on anniversary of expulsion of Jews.

In a remarkable gesture of reconciliation, King Juan Carlos I donned a white yarmulke in Madrid’s only synagogue Tuesday and prayed with Israeli President Chaim Herzog for peace and brotherhood on the 500th anniversary of Spain’s expulsion of the Jews.

The king had come to redress a wrong, and there was a palpable sense of history in the starkly modern synagogue as he walked with Queen Sofia toward a velvet throne for an 85-minute meeting of prayer and reflection with Israeli officials and leaders of Spain’s small Jewish community.

It was on March 31, 1492, that another king, Ferdinand, and another queen, Isabella, issued an edict expelling Jews from a land where they had dwelt for a millennium.

“May hatred and intolerance never again provoke expulsion or exile. On the contrary, let us be capable of building a prosperous Spain in peace among ourselves on the basis of concord and mutual respect. . . . That is my most fervent wish. Peace for all. Shalom,” said Juan Carlos.

The ceremony was the emotional highlight of observances called Sefarad ’92 which, the king reminded about 250 worshipers, he had announced on a visit to the Sephardic Synagogue in Los Angeles five years ago.

Spain is engaged in a yearlong fiesta recalling the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage west and a year--1492--that was perhaps the most important in its history.

“It may seem paradoxical that we have chosen commemoration of a separation to encourage such a profoundly significant encounter. But the history of all peoples, and of course the history of Spain, is full of lights and shadows,” the king told the solemn congregation.

“We have known moments of splendor and of decadence. We have lived epochs of profound respect for freedom and others of intolerance and persecution for political, ideological or religious reasons. What is important is not an account of mistakes or successes but the willingness to project and to analyze the past in the context of our future.”

Officially at least, there were no Jews in Spain until 1869, when the Expulsion Edict was revoked. Sephardic Jews did not begin returning in appreciable numbers until the 1950s. The synagogue that the king visited Tuesday in this Roman Catholic metropolis was established in 1968 on a quiet cul-de-sac off Holy Trinity Street.

Today, the king said, “. . . Spanish Jews are in their own home, in the home of all Spaniards with full freedom, whatever their creed or religion.”

Parliament is expected to approve soon legislation that would grant equal tax exemptions and civil rights to all religions in Spain.

Herzog, making the first official visit by an Israeli president to Spain, told the king: “I have the sensation that during my visit, one more of the many and painful cycles in the history of our people is ending.”

In stumbling Spanish, Herzog hailed the “reconciliation of our peoples, Jewish and Spanish, owners of a rich and common history.”

The cruel expulsion of 1492, he noted, led to the dispersal of Jews across Europe, to the welcoming lands of the Ottoman Empire and, eventually, to the New World.

“We cannot change the past. What we can do is to learn from its lessons, thereby assuring a better future for us and for all humanity,” Herzog said.

The first appearance by a modern Spanish king in a Spanish synagogue--there are only half a dozen in all of Spain--”represents the closing of a chapter,” said Samuel Toledano, secretary general of the Federation of Jewish Communities, which represents Spain’s estimated 15,000 Jews, most of them first- or second-generation immigrants from North Africa and South America.

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, the first Jews moved to Spain in Roman times, although legend says they came in Solomon’s day. American historian John A. Crow says that Spain’s appealing Mediterranean climate, “so reminiscent of Israel,” drew large numbers of Jewish settlers from the Near East during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, AD 117-138.

Despite sporadic pogroms, Jews lived peacefully and prosperously for centuries in both Muslim- and Catholic-controlled parts of the country, contributing greatly to commerce, medicine, philosophy and the arts.

In January, 1492, armies of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille captured Granada after a long siege, ending seven centuries of Muslim rule in Spain. That was bad news for Spain’s Jews.

From the newly won Alhambra Palace in Granada on March 31, 1492, the monarchs, urged on by Catholic clerics, issued their Order of Expulsion:

“We have decided to order all Jews, men and women, to leave our realm and never return,” the decree said.

Those who agreed to be baptized could remain, the monarchs ruled.

“All others must leave our territories by July 1, 1492, and never return under penalty of death and confiscation of all property. Jews must not take out of Spain any gold, silver or valuables, nor anything else forbidden by law.”

Many Jews had converted to Catholicism after a particularly virulent pogrom in 1391. Beginning in 1480, under pressure of the Inquisition--which routinely tortured victims and burned them at the stake--thousands more at least ostensibly became converts. They passed into Spanish history as the conversos, and their descendants were among the intellectual elite and the Roman Catholic saints of Spain’s Siglo de Oro, the golden 1500s.

There were more conversions following the edict, but between 100,000 and 150,000 devout Jews left Spain in the summer of 1492 for Portugal, Morocco or Turkey, the latter the only major country whose government welcomed them. The sultan at Constantinople marveled at the folly of the Spanish king and his own good fortune.

Spain has long had good ties with the Arab world but was officially chary of Israel under dictator Francisco Franco. In 1986, when Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez established full diplomatic links with Israel, it also granted official status to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The even-handed ties made Madrid an acceptable venue for the opening round of the Mideast peace negotiations last fall.