Today we went to Toledo. We saw two of the ten remaining Sephardic synagogues in Spain (Sephardic Jews are Jews from Spain or North Africa). One of the synagogues that we saw had been turned into a museum. The other was left as a tourist site, where we bought tickets to walk through the building. Cristina, our tour guide for the day, told us that after the Inquisition all synagogues had been turned into churches.

I don't understand why the person who restored the tourist-site temple left a cross hanging over the bimah (altar). When someone restores a temple, I think she should make it look exactly the way it did when it was used for worship, especially when this temple is being used to show tourists what a Sephardic synagogue was like before the Inquisition. I'm not sure why this cross made such an impression on me, but seeing it hang there really disturbed me. I wonder if the desecration of this temple evoked the same feeling in me that the Chanukah story evoked in the people of that time. If a person is going to restore a temple, she should do it completely. I think that this "church/temple" disturbed me more than seeing a temple completely turned into a church.

Although the "church/temple" episode bothered me, seeing the "museum/temple" was definitely weirder. This temple was covered with glass cases which preserve objects that I use every year, if not every week or every day of my Jewish life. Behind the glass were talitot and Torah scrolls with little labels next to them explaining what they were and how they were used. The English translations of these signs would have gone something like "Talit: A prayer shawl worn by the Jews during religious services," or "Torah: The first five books of the Bible that the Jews read during worship." It was as if I was in a museum looking at a people from a completely different time. It was like looking at an exhibit of the ancient Egyptians or the Roman temples. "Chanukia: A candelabra lit by the Jews during their festival of lights." "Seder Plate: A plate used by the Jews in the religious ceremony of Pesach (Passover), which takes place in the spring." Objects that I always assumed people knew the names of and uses for were being explained in simplistic terms on placards in a museum. This trip to Spain really showed me how protected and sheltered my life has been. "Jewish Star Necklace: An ornament worn by the Jews to symbolize their Judaism." Weird.

Now we are in Seville. Today, in addition to seeing the Cathedral and going shopping, we visited the Alcazar. The fortress was absolutely amazing. We saw the wing where King Pedro's wife stayed with her ladies-in-waiting, and we saw the ladies' garden. The garden was beautiful, but I hope no one ever tries to stick me in a garden and tell me that it's the only place I'm allowed to go for fresh air! Wandering through the fortress, it struck me that Europe has this amazing sense of tradition and historical magic that the United States lacks. As I walked through the same hallways that I knew royalty had paraded through centuries before, I felt a chill begin at the tips of my toes and work its way to the top of my head.

The Alcazar was breathtaking. In one room decorated with ceramic tile, I saw designs of the Star of David. I stopped and counted the points of these stars three times to be sure that they were not a trick of my eye, but every time I counted six. I asked our tour guide what the stars on the wall meant. She pointed out crosses and other religious symbols that were in the tiles and told us that they had all been put there hundreds of years ago to remind the king that Spain was comprised of many different peoples, and that he was champion of them all. Her answer really impressed me. But then again, I guess the stars on the walls didn't do their job in the end, or maybe King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella just forgot to look at them. I figured that this was probably one of the few times I would see Jewish stars in Spain, but while we were in a shopping district in Toledo this afternoon, I noticed plates, clocks, jewelry and other trinkets decorated with the six-sided Star of David. I asked my teacher whether all the stars represented the Jewish people. She said that she really wasn't sure, and reiterated the words of our tour guide from the Alcazar.

Unsatisfied with my teacher's response, I asked Nuria, a Spanish woman who was showing us around Seville, what the stars meant. "It's just a design," she told me, "Solamente un diseno." "But doesn't it symbolize something?" I asked her. "There's no meaning behind the design?" "No," she told me again, getting slightly impatient, "Solamente un diseno."

That strikes me as so odd. Here we are in the land of the Inquisition and Spaniards are buying jewelry to wear, and plates to hang on their walls, that contain the symbol of Judaism, the faith they expunged from their country. And they don't even know what the stars stand for. Solamente un diseno. What would happen if Jewish people started wearing crosses around their necks and hanging them on the walls of their houses? Solamente un diseno? I don't think so.

I told Nuria that it was the Star of David, the symbol of the Jewish people. "I guess it's that, too," she conceded, "but for us it's a pretty design. Solamente un diseno."

Growing up 45 minutes from New York City, a city with more Jews than Jerusalem, I never thought I would find myself in a place where the Star of David is not, first and foremost, the symbol of Judaism. To me it is certainly not solamente un diseno.

My name is Jill Santopolo and I am almost 18 years old. I go to George W. Hewlett High School in Hewlett, New York and will be attending Columbia University next fall. My program in Spain was an exchange program run through the Council for Foreign Exchanges. Sixteen students and two teachers from my school traveled to Spain for sixteen days, staying mostly, with students from the Liceo Europeo, a school in La Moraleja, a suburb of Madrid. We spent a lot of time touring and visiting all of the famous museums and sites in Madrid, and took two side trips, one to Seville and the other to Toledo. We learned a lot about the language, the culture and the history of Spain.