She was the paramour of King Alfonso VIII of Castile, a Catholic Christian and husband of Eleanor of England, for almost seven years.
Rahel received the death penalty, together with her fellow Jews in the court, in the presence of the king himself.
This love-story, which had been relegated to the realm of fable by the Marquis de Mondejar[1] and other Spanish literary historians, is related as a fact by Sancho IV around 1292.
[2] The love affair between Rahel and Alfonso has been dramatized by Luis de Ulloa y Pereira, Vicente Antonio García de la Huerta, and other Spanish writers, as well as by Franz Grillparzer in his play, Die Jüdin von Toledo.
Die Jüdin von Toledo was also the name of a novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, based on the story of Rahel and Alfonso as is La Historia de Fermosa by Abraham S.