Crisis and Creativity: Spanish Jews Confront Inquisition and Expulsion
with Dr. Ronnie Perelis
Jews thrived within the multicultural society of medieval Spain, creating a rich and dynamic culture of Torah scholarship, poetic and artistic creativity and cutting-edge science and philosophy. But the vital, if uneasy, relationship with their Christian and Muslim neighbors suffered a devastating blow in the summer of 1391, when anti-Jewish riots raged across the peninsula and left thousands of forced converts in their aftermath. The tensions between the newly converted Jews, the conversos, and their Christian neighbors led to the rise of the Inquisition and the eventual expulsion of all Jews in 1492. This lecture will explore how the vibrant Jewish community faced the challenges of religious violence, inquisitorial persecution and expulsion.
Ronnie Perelis’s research explores connections between the Jewish and wider Iberian communities with an emphasis on the dynamics of religious transformation within the context of crypto-Jewish life. Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies and director of the International Affairs Program at Yeshiva University, he is author of Blood and Faith. His full biography can be found here.
ABOUT THE SPANISH JEWISH EXPERIENCE SERIES
For two millennia, Spanish Jewry swung on a pendulum from the heights of tolerance during the “Golden Age” — when Jews flourished as philosophers and poets, physicians, mathematicians and traders — to the depths and degradations of forced conversion, the Inquisition and expulsion.
The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center is proud to present a five-part lecture series illuminating the complexities of Sepharad, as Iberia is called in Hebrew, and to discover the rich legacy of Jewish Spain through the lenses of art, architecture, music and the modern diasporic experience.
We will meet ordinary Spanish Jews who struggled with the ever-changing realties, as well as some of Judaism’s most revered thinkers and writers: the physician/rabbi Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides or Rambam; the virtuosic poet Yehuda Halevi; and the biblical scholar and philosopher Abraham Ibn Ezra.
Delivered by leading professors of Sephardic studies from across the US and the Atlantic, each lecture stands on its own. You are welcome and encouraged to attend any or all.