Modern Jewish History:
The Spanish Expulsion
(1492)
Modern Jewish History: Table of Contents | Blood Libel | The Inquisition
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In the same month in which their Majesties
[Ferdinand and Isabella] issued the edict that all Jews should be
driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month they
gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of
discovery to the Indies." So begins Christopher
Columbus's diary. The expulsion that Columbus refers to was so cataclysmic an
event that ever since, the date 1492 has been almost as important in
Jewish history as in American history. On July 30 of that year, the
entire Jewish community, some 200,000 people, were expelled from Spain.
Tens of thousands of refugees died while trying to
reach safety. In some instances, Spanish ship captains charged Jewish
passengers exorbitant sums, then dumped them overboard in the middle
of the ocean. In the last days before the expulsion, rumors spread
throughout Spain that the fleeing refugees had swallowed gold and
diamonds, and many Jews were knifed to death by brigands hoping to
find treasures in their stomachs.
The Jews' expulsion had been the pet project of
the Spanish
Inquisition, headed by Father Tomas de Torquemada.
Torquemada believed that as long as the Jews remained in Spain, they
would influence the tens of thousands of recent Jewish converts to
Christianity to continue practicing Judaism. Ferdinand and Isabella
rejected Torquemada's demand that the Jews be expelled until January
1492, when the Spanish Army defeated Muslim forces in Granada,
thereby restoring the whole of Spain to Christian rule. With their
most important project, the country's unification, accomplished, the
king and queen concluded that the Jews were expendable. On March 30,
they issued the expulsion decree, the order to take effect in
precisely four months. The short time span was a great boon to the
rest of Spain, as the Jews were forced to liquidate their homes and
businesses at absurdly low prices. Throughout those frantic months,
Dominican priests actively encouraged Jews to convert to Christianity
and thereby gain salvation both in this world and the next.
The most fortunate of the expelled Jews succeeded
in escaping to Turkey. Sultan Bajazet welcomed them warmly. "How
can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king," he was fond of
asking, "the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and
enriched ours?" Among the most unfortunate refugees were those
who fled to neighboring Portugal. In 1496, King Manuel of Portugal
concluded an agreement to marry Isabella, the daughter of Spain's
monarchs. As a condition of the marriage, the Spanish royal family
insisted that Portugal expel her Jews. King Manuel agreed, although
he was reluctant to lose his affluent and accomplished Jewish
community.
In the end, only eight Portuguese Jews were
actually expelled; tens of thousands of others were forcibly
converted to Christianity on pain of death. The chief rabbi, Simon
Maimi, was one of those who refused to convert. He was kept buried in
earth up to his neck for seven days until he died. In the final
analysis, all of these events took place because of the relentless
will of one man, Tomas de Torquemada.
The Spanish Jews who ended
up in Turkey, North Africa, Italy,
and elsewhere throughout Europe and the Arab
world, were known as Sephardim — Sefarad
being the Hebrew name for Spain. After the
expulsion, the Sephardim imposed an informal
ban forbidding Jews from ever again living
in Spain. Specifically because their earlier
sojourn in that country had been so happy,
the Jews regarded the expulsion as a terrible
betrayal, and have remembered it ever since
with particular bitterness. Of the dozens of
expulsions directed against Jews throughout
their history, the one from Spain remains the
most infamous.
Sources: Joseph Telushkin. Jewish Literacy. NY: William Morrow and Co., 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.
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