Description
OBJECTIVE of the essay: What were the post-expulsion experiences of the Jews following their forced departure from Spain in 1492, and how did their living conditions and quality of life in exile unfold? Additionally, what can historical testimonies reveal about the challenges and resilience of the Jewish community during this period? We want to learn about what the Jews went through during their exile – the tough times, how they lived, and the challenges they faced. This is important because it’s a side of history that isn’t talked about enough.
Write a 6-8 pages long essay with times new roman size 12 with 1.5 spacing (MLA format) about the expulsion of the jews in 1492 from Medieval Spain, where did they end up in after the expulsion and how was life after.
TESTIMONIES
write about the testimonies of different people and include:
Look for certain themes: how did they writing it, do you see a patterns?
recurring themes, situations, problems that were happening
Are there shared ideas or are they different?
Do they talk about family they left behind, problems crossing borders or making money, do they deal with problems in a similar or different way, more religious or are expressing doubt and that God isn’t protecting them. What is the tone?
What can you learn from the text, are these narratives telling a reflection… Do you see that in other sources of how people remember the experience or is it a unique one?
What does that personal expression tell you and give an insight into it.. as so many people went through it
How is it different? There are parallels in every testimony as each person has their own unique experience
How do they describe the goyim (non-jews)? Are they kind or not to him?
These questions are suggestions, but not just mainly what the essay is about. It should go broader than that
SOURCES
Use different primary and secondary sources and put them in the citations at the end and be sure to cite properly in the paper. primary sources should be the book im attaching below named “After Expulsion : 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry” by author Jonathan Ray. The secondary sources should be academic sources, NOT random from the internet.
Unformatted Attachment Preview
3
f PerpetuaI Migration
.An.Age o
·u
t you to rout before your enemies;
L rd W1 pu
.
,ne O
eh ut against them by a single road, but flee from
u will mar o
yo by manY roads;
thern
hall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
and you s
-Deuteronoroy 28:2.5
One of the defining characterist ics of Jewish history in the sixteenth century
was that the great expulsions of the 1490s did not lead to a neat transfer of
Jewish settlement from West to East. Rather, the Jewish exodus from Spain
gave way to a long and decidedly unsettled period of nearly continuous
migration around the Mediterran ean. Of course, large-scale immigration
had always been part of Mediterran ean Jewish life, as had the close social,
economie, and intellectual ties that carne with it. Procedures had long been
es~lished for ransoming captives, as well as accepting new settlers with
:aryìng customs, languages, and ideals and finding ways to integrate them
~to new communities. The formidable bonds of Judaism made all this posSible. But the magnitude of the Expulsion of 1492 tested these time-honore d
customs in ne
.
.
.
.
d
th
.
w ways. In a sense, the issues of Iber1an
em1grat1on murore
ose
• of
. ra1sed bYconversion a century earlier. That is to say, t h e convers1on
an
mdividual
· o f t h ousands
or a small group could be ignored, but the convers1on
So hrought a host of practical and philosophic al issues into sharp relief.
‘ too, the movement of masses
· h wh om
of Jews forced them and t h ose w1t
>>
57
58
> 59
on of
ilar reconnection with the religi
. . ney a desire to fsee1·k a• sim
d ul
lty, which were
JOUf’Ibese themes o re 1g1ous return an e turai fea
h1S
•
5ee i1l
th C
chroniclers
ebears.d eloquently attn’buted to e onversos by Jewish
for
•
htS
part of the historiography on the
nt
rta
po
im
an
ed
ain
rem
e
bav
{orcefullY -~
• n out of Iberia.2 However, a
• m1•gratio
• d the1r
oas ‘a driving force beh1n
pen
the
f
o
• d• • h h decision to return
al
conversosk at Luis’s testimony reve s no 1n 1cat1on t at is
100
with Judaism, family,’ or comct
ne
on
rec
to
g
gin
lon
a
by
d
ate
motiv
doser
.
Ferrara, but he
t0 ItalY was
took h1m to Rome, Bologna, and
. His initial itinerary
y’s Sepinvolve himself in the affairs of Ital
to
s
ort
eff
no
de
ma
e
bav
to
JII~
JIJU
ria! record of his travels notes:
;~ ;congregations. The inquisito
ney,
where he could go to make mo
of
nk
thi
to
an
beg
he
a
rar
Fer
Wbile in
a citth a Jew from Murcia who was
wi
ken
spo
ing
hav
ed
ber
em
and he rem
in
wn. And he asked him if anyone
kno
t
no
is
e
nam
ose
wh
a
rar
izen of Fer
ng
s Jew tolda servant of his to bri
thi
d
An
.
ing
eav
-w
silk
ed
ctic
Ferrara pra
çabahon, originally from Guada
ed
nam
Jew
r
the
ano
of
se
hou
him to the
, and
d the accused went to bis ho use
An
.
ses
res
dd
hea
of
ker
ma
a
Iajara, and
him
ke headdresses. Tue Jew asked
~a
to
silk
ve
wo
y
the
ere
wh
asked him
ally
d that he was a Castilian origin
sai
d
use
acc
the
and
m,
fro
s
wa
where he
risa Jew but that he was now a Ch
rly
me
for
s
wa
he
t
tha
and
s,
sca
from llie
one day at
the accused to come and eat
ited
inv
n
the
Jew
d
sai
Tue
.
tian
ey dined
to eat with him one Saturday. Th
ht
we
d
use
acc
the
and
e,
hom
his
empanafor Saturday, coo~ed with fish
day
Fri
on
ed
par
pre
w
ste
at
me
on
s pray, the
ore eating, at the time when Jew
das. And that day, Saturday, bef
arriving in
with the aforementioned Jew,
accused went to the synagogue
ce among
And the Jew sat in his usual pia
the middle of the prayer service.
er Jewish
sat on a Iow bench among oth
the other Jews, and the accused
d and the
er place to sit. And the accuse
youths because there was no oth
completed
until all of the other Jews had
Jew remained in the synagogue
gue.
their prayers and left the synago
d
aforementioned Jew, the accuse
the
h
wit
en
eat
ing
hav
r
afte
And
til the
urn to the house of the Jew un
ret
t
no
did
and
city
the
into
went out
him if
he went to his house and asked
e
tim
t
tha
At
.
day
Sun
,
day
ing
follow
nner, in
ioned Murcian Jew, the silk spi
ent
rem
afo
the
h
wit
ken
spo
had
he
used that
0rder that the accused might find work. And the Jew told the acc
be could
Jew, but that he told him that
he had spoken with. the Murcian
3
•
not spin 8m,
re to spin than to weave.
“At smce 1t cost mo
ed a
ed on to Venice, where he board
nu
nti
co
is
Lu
rk,
wo
d
fin
to
ble
shiUr
rtuguese merchants. The three
met two Po
p ouorl for Naples and there
60
65
ommunities could become household servants, and Jewish children
.
Jewish ;en baptized and raised as Christians. In one heartrending case, a
wer~ child who was captured and baptized in Sicily kept alive the memory
0
Jewi~hfamily and former religion unti! adulthood. Once grown, he set out
of hisd his family and return to his ancestral faith, only to be rejected by his
19
to fin ho. was unwilling to revisit the pain of his family,s ordeal. Records
fatbe~wincidents that were preserved by chance in the rabbinic documenta~f su f the day offer brief glimpses of what must have been a relatively wide-
uon o
spread phenomenon.
North Africa and the Iberian Colonia! Frontier
The coastal cities of North Africa proved to be particularly fertile ground
for slave taking. Writing on the fate of the Jews of Tlemçen after the city,s
capture by the Spaniards, one Jewish exile observed: “about 1,500 Jews were
killed or taken prisoner. Some Jews went to Fez to ask the locai community
to ransom the captives, but they could not redeem ali of them because of
their great number and because the prices being demanded were higher than
they were worth:,20 Tue story of the intense battles for political, economie,
and ideological dominance in the Italian Peninsula during the sixteenth century is well known in the West. By contrast, the contemporary struggle for
control of the Maghreb-a decades-long drama that involved a cast every bit
as colorful and diverse as that in the ltalian context-has received much less
attentiòn by modern scholarship.
Tue Jews who settled in North Africa often found themselves caught in
the internecine warfare among Muslims, as well as the shifting alliances
fonned to repel the Spanish and Portuguese, who were bent on establishing
a foothold in the region.21 The Jewish chronicler Samuel ibn Danan describes
how the Jews of Fez became embroiled in the heady mix of battles, intrigues,
and double-crosses among Arab, Turkish, and Christian forces during the
war of 1553-54. When the battle for Fez spilled over into the Jewish quarter
there, a Jewish notable from Algiers intervened on behalf of the beleaguered
~mmunity and obtained a safe-conduct for them from the city’s new Turkish sultan, Muolay Muhammed Saleh. As contro! of the city shifted back
and forth between Turkish and Arab forces, the Jews were forced to make
continuai payments of tribute to a succession of rulers in order to remain
protected. Tue fact that the various Muslim rulers chose to accept this tribute rather than despoil the Jews and drive them out is some indication of
tbhe preferred method of dealing with a minority that promised long-term
enefits.22
66 > 67
29 Portuguese reaction to this problem was more ambiva•
lebrauon.
and ce Manuel accepted the presence of Jews in the North African towns
Ient. Doill trol establishing Jewish quarters there in 1512 and 1514.30 On
, Vasco Coutinho de Borba, the Portuguese governor of
his cond Count
h
underther
.
,
an
theO
an city of Arzila, forbade Jew1sh and Converso refugees to settle
. 31
th Morocc
by Muslim stronghold of Qsar al-Kabir.
e
e d ecades,
• 1or
• d precanous
• rema1ne
• North Afnca
in the near
Europeans’ position 1n
‘!11: reatly contributed to their attitudes toward their acquisition of new
whi:h ~ubjects. A combination of economie need and generai politica! disJe:r allowed for Jews to reside in these Iberian strongholds. Even Dom Joao
~:I (r. 1521_ 57), whose prohibition of crypto-Jewish activity was decidedly
more aggressive than that of his predecessor, had great diffic~lty in policing the former Conversos i~ his North African territories. The ~ortuguese
representative in Fez c?mplatned of merchants who acted as Jews 1n Fez and
32
Christians in Portugal, but to little avail.
In many ways, North Africa represented something of an expansion of
the Christian reconquista and a continuation of its distinctive mix of aggression and accommodation between different religious cultures. Recently
exiled Jews, irnmediately recognizing the situation for what it was, promptly
reprised their traditional role as economie and politica! intermediaries
between feuding parties. Conversos living in Portuguese garrisons such as
Safi and Azemmour were able to access the trade routes of Muslim North
Africa through their connections with Jewish merchants. Tue latter provided
Conversos with liquid capitai and helped to bring Portuguese and Asian
commodities from Lisbon into North Africa markets, even as Muslim forces
fought to repel the Portuguese from the region.33
Tue linguistic, cultural, and social bonds that the former Spanish and Portuguese Jews shared with Iberian Christians (“Old” and “New”) made them
indispensable to royal plans of politica! expansion in Africa and Asia. Jew~sh status was dependent on these dreams of conquest, and patterns of JewtSh migration followed the course of imperial needs. Tue long reign of Joao
III,. known as “the Pious:’ represented a decided shift away from the more
patient and lenient policies of Manuel I with regard to the Conversos and
~ir relationship to professing Jews in Portugal’s overseas territories. Yet,
oughout the sixteenth century, there was always a frontier always an edge
‘
• h’
of empir 10
b J e w ich the·need for the economie and diplomatic skills provided
r!y~wsd~o~ed them to operate, regardless of the hardening policies of the
a m101stration.
•
Jews of Ibe • h ·
unti} the . na_n entage remained a fixture in Portuguese North Africa
mid-sixteenth century, when royal interest in preserving its
68
> 69
. With the decline in opportunities in the Spanish and Portuguese
orien~att~n. North Africa and Asia, a new wave of Converso merchants and
coloni~s in 5 established themselves in the Americas. Tue colonia! terri1.,, ·n1strator
ast and inquisitoria! presence was slight, with only two tribuaUJ 1
. were v
in Mexico (after 1571) and Cartagena (after 1610). Even these
t’ng
tories
1
• heraft
• • eharges of w1tc
•
• 1nvest1gat1ng
d 1n
•
nals opera bave’ been more 1ntereste
•
• • was not to Iast.
• s1tuat1on
• • But th1s
• out Juda1z1ng.
to than in rooting
appearrcery
•
• ‘ enem1es
• • w1t• h Spa1ns
and.so the fears that the Conversos were consp1nng
In tune,
hed the New World, and in the 1630s and 1640s, the Holy Office there
• • 1hey confi scated Iarge
• Converso actlv1ty.
reaccame increasingly interested 1n
b
~ounts of goods and property and held a massive auto da fé against sus39
pected Judaizers in Lima in 1639. Tue vicissitudes that characterized Jewish
life in the Mediterranean throughout much of the 1500s would be repeated
in many of the Jewish and Converso settlements in the Americas during the
following century. As in the Mediterranean context, the degree to which
colonia! settlers could openly profess their adherence to Judaism, should
they be so inclined, depended on the ever-shifting political landscape of the
Americas.40
1
•
From West and East, and Back
Tue unsettled situation in North Africa and Italy coincided with, and helped
to engender, the establishment of Sephardic settlements in the eastern Mediterranean. By the second quarter of the sixteenth century, the Iberian refugees had begun to reach the cities of the Ottoman Empire in large numbers,
and the situation they encountered there must have appeared remarkably
stable in comparison to the prevailing conditions in most other Mediterranean regions. Iberian Jews joined others from Sicily and Naples who were
increasingly driven eastward over the course of the century.41
By 1517, the Pax Ottomanica had spread, although at times only lightly,
across the whole of the eastern Mediterranean from the Adriatic coast to
:gypt During the reign of Suleiman the Great (1520-66), the Ottomans
ro~dened and consolidated their territorial holdings in Europe, North
:~ca, and the Middle East. It was here, in the rapidly expanding empire
_e T~ks, that Jews found greater prosperity and stability than anywhere
• • or Muslim world.
e1se me1ther the Chnstian
.
.
I
the
Both
popu ar collective memory of the Diaspora of the Jews from
n.. d’
&”e 1eva} Sp • d .
am an its treatment in modern scholarship emphasize the differe t
n recepti0 ~ 0 f the Jews in the Christian West and the Muslim East. Tue
standard
practice has been to chronicle the travails of the Jewish refugees
70 73
at the same time that the exiles of 1492 and their descendants
to make their way to the Ottoman Empire in large numbers,
ili 1538.
were begtn~t ~hristian Italy remained a viable option. Papal participation
.s striking. It was one thing for secular rulers like Ercole II
5ert1ernent ìil 1
process
.
I of Portugal to openly allow such heretical acts in the name of
iJl th15
1
or Man~e d politica! objectives, but it was quite another coming from the
econot111C an
pope,ul UI’s benevolent approach to the Jews was later reversed under the
Pa. of Pius IV (r. 1559-65) and Pius V (r. 1566-72). Tue first, in the reac~apaciess irit of the Counter-Reformation, sought to revive and implement
of the Talmud in
uonarr fpanti-Jewish measures, beginning with the burning
.
.
ahost o
e Bologna, Florence, Ven1ce, Crete, and Corfu 1n 1553. Two years later
!::~ed the bull Cum nimis absurdum, in w~ich he called for ~e ghettoization of the Jews living in the Papal States, and 1n an even more duect reversal
of the policies of his predecessor, ordered the execution and burning of 60a
group of Converso merchants in Ancona for having reverted to Judaism.
This aggressive attack on Jewish status and mobility was continued by Pius
v, who expelled the Jews from the Papal States in 1569. Tue enforcement of
these new anti-Jewish measures, while at first erratic, eventually solidified
into a new status quo that greatly restricted Jewish settlement and social
mobility throughout the Italian Peninsula. For severa! decades, however,
the degree to which these policies would become permanent was not clear,
least of all to the Jews themselves. Tue litany of anti-Jewish laws and expulsion decrees did not completely dissuade the Jews from settlement in Italy.
Even after 1569, small Jewish settlements were allowed to stay on in Rome
and Ancona. Jewish merchants, bankers, and artisans waited and watched.
Would the policies of the next pope echo the more liberal ones of Paul III or
be like those of his successors? Where might a duke appear who was willing
to grant extensive settlement privileges to the Jews and ignore the religious
past of former Conversos in order to stimulate trade?
Crusaders, Pragmatists, and Resourceful Jews
seeking to understand the motivation behind Jewish settlement patterns
the second and th’1rd generah•ons after 1492, it is perhaps most helpful to
m
•1..:_1.
UUllJC of the sixt
eenth-century Med1terranean as a piace defined by the contrastin
One :rces. of pragmatic mercantilism and visceral religious passions.
O
ish . e pomts of continuity between medieval and early modern Jew. to withstand outbreaks of violence and
soc1ety was a hard-won ab’ihty
the delet .
• h Iegislation. Jews were resigned to the
enous effects 0 f ant·1-Jew1s
f
74 > 75
ters,, between Christianity and Judaism, as they moved
.
d .
h
.
. __,,1 commu
ed
pracbc
be
could
aism
Ju
ere
w
lands
s
vanou
the
and
al
as •cultuicu
tureen portug
bel”
65
penlY•
0
conclusion
urse of the seventeenth century, the Sephardic Diaspora would
aver tbe coo separate branches: one centered in Muslim lands, and one in
producen~urope… Each would develop its own distinct cultura! character~orthe:dapting many of the traits of its respective host societies. However,
is~cs~ ·onal and cultura! divide cannot be projected back onto the period of
•d
•
• the sixteen
r gtSephardic settlements 1n
tbis
th century. In th’1s ear1·1er peno ,
the first
Jews and Conversos alike pursued opportunities for safety and economie stability wherever they might be found. For many of those in the second and
third generation of Jewish exiles from Spain, this quest meant remaining
to
within the bounds of Christian Europe. Religious freedom was important
many of the exiles, but it was rarely a determining factor in their decision of
where to settle.
Tue long and often serpentine process of the Expulsion of 1492 was followed by decades of Jewish migration throughout the Mediterranean and
beyond This age of constant movement of Jewish groups resists the concept
of Sephardic resettlement from the Christian West to the Ottoman East. As
the story of Luis de la Isla illustrates, the generations of Jews of Spanish heritage passed back and forth between Christian and Muslim lands, and often
between Christianity and Judaism as well. One of the greatest challenges to
the survival and integrity of Jewish society during this long period of movement and communal upheaval was how to reconstruct viable communal
struc_tures at a time when so many factors seem to conspire against them. It is
.
to this question that we will now turn.
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