A Dangerous Idea

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IHS Panel: “Rodney King and the LA Riots: 30 Years Later”

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Sepharadim/conversos and premodern Global Hispanism

Sepharadim participated in the Hispanic vernacular culture of the Iberian Peninsula. Even in the time of al-Andalus many spoke Hispano-Romance, and even their Hebrew literature belies a deep familiarity with and love of their native Hispano-Romance languages. However, since the early sixteenth century the vast majority of Sepharadim have never lived in the Hispanic world. Sepharadim lived not in Spanish colonies defined by Spanish conquest, but in a network of Mediterranean Jewish communities defined by diasporic values and institutions. By contrast, the conversos, those Sepharadim who converted to Catholicism, whether in Spain or later in Portugal, Italy, or the New World, lived mostly in Spanish Imperial lands, were officially Catholic, and spoke normative Castilian. Their connections, both real and imagined, with Sephardic cultural practice put them at risk of social marginalization, incarceration, even death. Some were devout Catholics whose heritage and family history doomed them to these outcomes. Not surprisingly, many Spanish and Portugese conversos sought refuge in lands outside of Spanish control where they might live openly as Jews. This exodus (1600s) from the lands formerly known as Sefarad led to a parallel Sephardic community of what conversos who re-embraced Judaism in Amsterdam and Italy by a generation of conversos trained in Spanish universities. The Sephardic/Converso cultural complex exceeds the boundaries of Spanish imperial geography, confuses Spanish, Portuguese, Catholic, and Jewish subjectivities, and defies traditional categories practiced in Hispanic studies, and are a unique example of the Global Hispanophone

An Inventory of an Inquisitorial Prisoner\u27s Possessions

The presentation will describe how an inventory of an inquisitorial prisoner\u27s possessions, routinely drawn up at the time of a prisoner\u27s arrest, throws light on the material circumstances and consumption patterns of the prisoner and his/her family, as well as on the material milieu he/she inhabited. The inventory is that of Francisco Maldonado de Silva, a physician in the Viceroyalty of Peru, drawn up at the time of his arrest for judaizing in 1627. This presentation is for the following text(s): Inventory of the possessions of the licentiate Francisco Maldonado de Silva (1627) Click here to view video

The Power of Texts in the Conversion of an Old Christian Hebraist

Lope de Vera y Alarcón was an Old Christian Hebraist at the University of Salamanca in the late 1630s. In his professional training, he had access to texts that few people in Spain were permitted to see. His subversive reading of Erasmus and the Hebrew diary of David Reuveni, among other works, were not the only factors in his becoming a judaizer, but by his own account they were of great importance. The texts I will present are excerpts from his Inquisition trial (1639-1644). This presentation is for the following text(s): Inquisition file of Lope de Vera y Alarcón (1639-1644

“Liberty of Conscience” and the Jews in the Dutch Republic

In the popular imagination, seventeenth-century Amsterdam was an oasis of religious toleration in a conflict-ridden Europe and a city that welcomed Jews with open arms. This image is exaggerated and misleading, as scholars have long since shown. In this essay, I will examine how the interests of the Dutch ruling class, the regents, dovetailed with the interests of the governing elite of the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam to create structures of Jewish governance that were agreeable to both governing parties. While maintaining peace was one of the common interests between them, so was maintaining discipline. Neither the Dutch nor the Jewish authorities sought “liberty of conscience” in the modern sense of the term, that is, individual religious and philosophical freedom. For most, though not all, members of the Portuguese-Jewish community, this arrangement was natural and fully acceptable