February 25 1336 – 12 Adar 5096
Apostate Abner of Burgos, who changed his name to Alfonso of Valladolid, persuaded Alfonso XI of Castile to ban the prayer Aleinu (We must praise the Lord). Alfonso alleged that the prayer was anti-Christian, taking insult at the line describing nations other than the Jews as bowing “to vanity and emptiness, and they pray to a god who helps not.” The offending line is a quotation from the book of Isaiah (30:7 and 45:20), which long pre-dates Christianity, and was aimed at idol worshipers. In any case, the Aleinu prayer recited at the conclusion of services was composed in the third century by Rav Abba Aruha, head of the Academy of Sura (then in Persia), where the majority of the population was Zoroastrian, not Christian. Ashkenazi prayer books dropped the line, while Sephardic prayer books current in the realm of Islam, retained it. Today, it sometimes appears in parentheses.
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