Judaism For Dummies by Rabbi Ted Falcon

Author:Rabbi Ted Falcon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-03-03T21:00:00+00:00

Figure 14-1: Jews traveled west to North Africa and throughout Europe.

The Reign in Spain

As Christian kings conquered Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they turned to its Jewish communities to help run the country. James I of Aragon granted the Jews many of the same rights and privileges they had enjoyed under Islamic rule, and while the Jews weren’t allowed to hold government office, they frequently acted as advisors to the royal court. The Jews also translated hundreds of scientific, mathematical, and philosophical works from Arabic and Greek into Western European languages.

In those early years — while many Jews were being slaughtered elsewhere in Europe — Spanish Jewry remained prosperous and secure, though never reaching the glory they had achieved under Islamic rule. All that changed in 1391, when mobs of Spanish Christians, perhaps fueled by resentment over the affluence of some Jews, rioted, seizing property and attacking Jewish communities.

The Jews weren’t a small minority in Spain; by some estimates, one out of every ten Spaniards was either Jewish or had some Jewish blood. What would you do if your neighbors suddenly started attacking you because you didn’t believe in the same religion? Some Jews took refuge in safer communities in North Africa. However, for many, it seemed a reasonable choice to convert to Christianity and attempt to assimilate into the dominant culture. These new Christians were known politely as conversos (“converts”) or, less flatteringly, as marranos (“pigs”).

Some Jews clearly became faithful Christians, but for others, the conversion was only skin deep. They continued practicing Judaism in secret (modern-day historians call these “crypto-Jews”). By 1480, suspicion of conversos was so great that Queen Isabella — a devout Catholic — decided that the allegations of hidden Jewish practices needed to be examined. Fortunately for her, the Catholic Church had long-before instituted a special corps trained to root out heretics, called the Inquisition.

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