The history of the Jews of Spain is a remarkable story that begins in the remote past and continues today. For more than a thousand years, Sepharad (the Hebrew word for Spain) was home to a large Jewish community noted for its richness and virtuosity. Summarily expelled in 1492 and forced into exile, their tragedy of expulsion marked the end of one critical phase of their history and the beginning of another. Indeed, in defiance of all logic and expectation, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain became an occasion for renewed creativity. Nor have five hundred years of wandering extinguished the identity of the Sephardic Jews, or diminished the proud memory of the dazzling civilization, which they created on Spanish soil. This book is intended to serve as an introduction and scholarly guide to that history.

The book analyzes the place of religious difference in late modernity through a study of the role played by Jews and Muslims in the construction of contemporary Spanish national identity. The focus is on the transition from an exclusive, homogeneous sense of collective Self toward a more pluralistic, open and tolerant one in an European context. This process is approached from different dimensions. At the national level, it follows the changes in nationalist historiography, the education system and the public debates on national identity. At the international level, it tackles the problem from the perspective of Spanish foreign policy towards Israel and the Arab-Muslim states in a changing global context. From the social-communicational point of view, the emphasis is on the construction of the Self–Other dichotomy (with Jewish and Muslim others) as reflected in the three leading Spanish newspapers.

The history of the Jews of Spain is a remarkable story that begins in the remote past and continues today. For more than a thousand years, Sepharad (the Hebrew word for Spain) was home to a large Jewish community noted for its richness and virtuosity. Summarily expelled in 1492 and forced into exile, their tragedy of expulsion marked the end of one critical phase of their history and the beginning of another. Indeed, in defiance of all logic and expectation, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain became an occasion for renewed creativity. Nor have five hundred years of wandering extinguished the identity of the Sephardic Jews, or diminished the proud memory of the dazzling civilization, which they created on Spanish soil. This book is intended to serve as an introduction and scholarly guide to that history.

Jews settled in medieval Spain at least by the third century, and under the Christian Visigoths (sixth to eighth centuries) suffered increasing hostility and persecution, from which they were saved by the Muslim invasion (711). This book details the relations between Jews and the Visigoths, and then with the Muslims both in Muslim Spain proper (al-Andalus) and in later Christian Spain to the fifteenth century. It examines both the positive and negative aspects of those relations, drawing on a variety of sources many of which are here utilized for the first time. Political, socio-economic, scientific, cultural, literary and even sexual aspects of the history of the interaction between Jews and Visigoths, and Jews and Muslims, provide hopefully a new insight into a period of great importance in history.

2022 National Jewish Book Award Finalist for Sephardic Culture A fascinating study that will appeal to both culinarians and readers interested in the intersecting histories of food, Sephardic Jewish culture, and the Mediterranean world of Iberia and northern Africa. In the absence of any Jewish cookbook from the pre-1492 era, it requires arduous research and a creative but disciplined imagination to reconstruct Sephardic tastes from the past and their survival and transmission in communities around the Mediterranean in the early modern period, followed by the even more extensive diaspora in the New World. In this intricate and absorbing study, Hélène Jawhara Piñer presents readers with the dishes, ingredients, techniques, and aesthetic principles that make up a sophisticated and attractive cuisine, one that has had a mostly unremarked influence on modern Spanish and Portuguese recipes.

According to legend, in 1492, 200,000 Jews marched from Spain, singing religious songs, led by their rabbis. They were called Sephardim. They left at the orders of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, whose Edict of Expulsion gave Spanish Jews the choice of conversion to Christianity or exile. To commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of their expulsion, Yale Strom represents a memorable, beautifully crafted portrait of the subsequent Jewish existence in these secluded exilic lands--their sorrows, their courage, and the awe-inspiring attributes that have kept them religiously and culturally whole for half a millennium. From Spain, these courageous refugees settled in the Ottoman Empire--in Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, the Balkans and elsewhere. Traveling along perilous paths to uncertain futures, the pilgrims formed a new diaspora, a dispersion within a dispersion. As they found new homes in the strong and powerful Ottoman Empire, they of course longed for the land of Israel; yet, with steadfast tenacity, they determined to retain their Judeo-Spanish tongue (a composite of mainly Castellan, Turkish, Arabic, Greek and Hebrew words and idioms). With their strong-willed consciousness of Sephardic culture, they soon assimilated other Jews living along the Aegean Coast and in the Balkans. Even into the 1930s, two hundred thousand Jews of that region are Sephardim. But the Holocaust, and the aliyah to Israel and natural attrition due to ageing, has caused this number to dwindle to 50,000. Rich in historical detail, this tribute to Sephardic life reveals the Sephardim's contributions to Judaism throughout the world. Through vivid personal narrative and sensitive photography, it introducescurrent descendants of the exiled Jews--the Sephardim who still live in the countries where their ancestors sought refuge five hundred years ago. As well, it commemorates those Jews who chose to return to Spain and Portugal at the start of this century. An inspiring, highly readable account of a significant and dramatic chapter in Jewish history.

From his first book, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, to his well-known volume on Jewish memory, Zakhor, to his treatment of Sigmund Freud in Freud's Moses, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932-2009) earned recognition as perhaps the greatest Jewish historian of his day, whose scholarship blended vast erudition, unfettered creativity, and lyrical beauty. This volume charts his intellectual trajectory by bringing together a mix of classic and lesser-known essays from the whole of his career. The essays in this collection, representative of the range of his writing, acquaint the reader with his research on early modern Spanish Jewry and the experience of crypto-Jews, varied reflections on Jewish history and memory, and Yerushalmi-s enduring interest in the political history of the Jews. Also included are a number of little-known autobiographical recollections, as well as his only published work of fiction.

The Bible and Jews in Medieval Spain examines the grammatical, exegetical, philosophical and mystical interpretations of the Bible that took place in Spain during the medieval period. The Bible was the foundation of Jewish culture in medieval Spain. Following the scientific analysis of Hebrew grammar which emerged in al-Andalus in the ninth and tenth centuries, biblical exegesis broke free of homiletic interpretation and explored the text on grammatical and contextual terms. While some of the earliest commentary was in Arabic, scholars began using Hebrew more regularly during this period. The first complete biblical commentaries in Hebrew were written by Abraham Ibn ‘Ezra, and this set the standard for the generations that followed. This book analyses the approach and unique contributions of these commentaries, moving on to those of later Christian Spain, including the Qimhi family, Nahmanides and his followers and the esoteric-mystical tradition. Major topics in the commentaries are compared and contrasted. Thus, a unified picture of the whole fabric of Hebrew commentary in medieval Spain emerges. In addition, the book describes the many Spanish Jewish biblical manuscripts that have remained and details the history of printed editions and Spanish translations (for Jews and Christians) by medieval Spanish Jews. This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval Spain, as well as those interested in the history of religion and cultural history.