After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry

by Jonathan S. Ray

Overview

Honorable Mention for the 2014 Jordan Schnitzer book award in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History presented by the Association for Jewish Studies


On August 3, 1492, the same day that Columbus set sail from Spain, the long and glorious history of that nation’s
Jewish community officially came to a close. The expulsion of Europe’s last major Jewish community ended more than a thousand years of unparalleled prosperity, cultural vitality and intellectual productivity. Yet, the crisis of 1492 also gave rise to a dynamic and resilient diaspora society spanning
East and West.



After Expulsion traces the various paths of migration and resettlement of Sephardic Jews and Conversos over the course of the tumultuous sixteenth century. Pivotally, the volume argues that the exiles did not become “Sephardic Jews”
overnight. Only in the second and third generation did these disparate groups coalesce and adopt a “Sephardic Jewish”
identity.



After Expulsion presents a new and fascinating portrait of
Jewish society in transition from the medieval to the early modern period, a portrait that challenges many longstanding assumptions about the differences between Europe and the
Middle East.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814729113
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	01/07/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	777,601
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Ray is the Samuel Eig Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Georgetown University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Medieval Inheritance 11

2 The Long Road into Exile 33

3 An Age of Perpetual Migration 57

4 Community and Control in the Sephardic Diaspora 76

5 Families, Networks, and the Challenge of Social Organization 93

6 Rabbinic and Popular Judaism in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean 113

7 Imagining Sepharad135

Conclusion 157

Notes 163

Selected Bibliography 195

Index 205

About the Author 214

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

After Expulsion charters the (literally and metaphorically) troubled waters of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean with deftness and elegance. It takes us on a journey from Seville to Fez, Salonica and Venice. It fills a notable gap in the literature by offering a synthetic and yet thought-provoking narrative of the most complex period in the early modern history of the Sephardic diaspora."-Francesca Trivellato,Frederic W. Hilles Professor of History, Yale University

“Ray’s exciting volume contains a wealth of original insights on the subtle and complex process that transformed the Jewish outcasts of Spain of 1492 into a new society that would become known as the Sephardic diaspora. Based upon a careful reading of a wide variety of Spanish and Hebrew primary and secondary sources, Ray provides a new and rich understanding of the crucial sixteenth century in Jewish history. His refreshing historical analysis provides fruitful and novel interpretations of Sephardic and early modern Jewish history.”-Jane S. Gerber,Professor of History and Director, Institute for Sephardic Studies, City University of New York

Editorial Reviews

"This valuable and readable scholarly work will attract academics"

CHOICE

"After Expulsionwill prove to be an indispensable volume in the library of any reader interested in the history of Judaism in early modern Europe. Ray has written a brilliant, groundbreaking study fundamental in our understanding of the intricacies of the long and difficult configuration of the Sephardic Diaspora."

Sixteenth Century Journal

"After Expulsion charters the (literally and metaphorically) troubled waters of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean with deftness and elegance. It takes us on a journey from Seville to Fez, Salonica and Venice. It fills a notable gap in the literature by offering a synthetic and yet thought-provoking narrative of the most complex period in the early modern history of the Sephardic diaspora."

Francesca Trivellato

"[T]his book isgroundbreaking in what it does accomplish, and in terms of the many ideas Ray presents that others will undoubtedly pursue, research, and publish. For anyone who had assumed that there was a cohesive Sephardic identity of the Jews who left Spain at the end of the fifteenth centurythis book is a revelation."

American Historical Review

"After Expulsionis a rich and compelling history...With its intense focus on one century, Ray's book makes a distant time and trauma painfully vivid and immediate to the reader."

Jewish Currents Magazine - Jane Mushabac

"Rays exciting volume contains a wealth of original insights on the subtle and complex process that transformed the Jewish outcasts of Spain of 1492 into a new society that would become known as the Sephardic diaspora. Based upon a careful reading of a wide variety of Spanish and Hebrew primary and secondary sources, Ray provides a new and rich understanding of the crucial sixteenth century in Jewish history. His refreshing historical analysis provides fruitful and novel interpretations of Sephardic and early modern Jewish history."

Jane S. Gerber

"In tracing the social and political development of the Sephardic community during the sixteenth century, Ray reminds historians to exercise restraint in projecting community identities and affiliations backward in time. It is an important point, one that also fruitfully calls into question assumptions about the primacy of religious identity. Such cautions are timely, especially as more and more scholars take the & religious turn and, together with Rays inventive and careful revision of the poorly understood formative period of Sephardic identity, should win for this interesting book a broad readership."

The Journal of Modern History

"After Expulsionimplicitly invites the reader to succumb to the outmoded, rigid spell of historical structuralism, In this sense, Ray has offered a challenging achievement by proposing an explicit culturalist narrative that implicitly endorses structuralist interpretations of the Sephardim and the Mediterranean."

Jewish History

In tracing the social and political development of the Sephardic community during the sixteenth century, Ray reminds historians to exercise restraint in projecting community identities and affiliations backward in time. It is an important point, one that also fruitfully calls into question assumptions about the primacy of religious identity. Such cautions are timely, especially as more and more scholars take the ‘religious turn’ and, together with Ray’s inventive and careful revision of the poorly understood formative period of Sephardic identity, should win for this interesting book a broad readership.”-The Journal of Modern History

From the Publisher