Convert or Leave (Replay)
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
7/31/1492. In cities, towns and villages across late medieval Spain, whole districts have emptied out. Houses abandoned, stores closed, and synagogues—which until recently had been alive with singing and prayer—now sit quiet. Exactly four months earlier, the King and Queen of Spain issued an edict: by royal decree, all Jewish people in Spain must convert to Catholicism or leave the country, for good. Why were the Jews expelled from Spain? How did Spaniards, and then the world, start to think of religion as something inherited, not just by tradition, but by blood? And how does this moment help us understand the challenge of assimilation today?
Thank you to our guest, Professor Jonathan Ray from Georgetown University and author of "After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry" (2013).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:03.3 | Hey history this week listeners, Sally here. |
| 0:05.7 | Today we are bringing you an episode from the archives going all the way back to season one |
| 0:10.6 | and all the way back to 1492. Hope you enjoy. |
| 0:17.7 | History this week July 31st 1492. |
| 0:23.4 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:31.7 | In cities and towns and villages across late medieval Spain, whole districts have emptied out. |
| 0:41.8 | Houses abandoned, stores all closed up, and synagogues, which until recently had been |
| 0:49.6 | alive with singing and praying. |
| 0:55.2 | Now sitting quiet. |
| 0:59.9 | Exactly four months earlier in March, the king and queen of Spain issued an edict. |
| 1:07.2 | By royal decree, all Jews in Spain must convert to Catholicism or leave by the end of July. |
| 1:17.1 | And so for the past couple of months, these districts, the Jewish districts in medieval Spain, |
| 1:24.5 | have been full of furious activity. Some Jews are baptized in hurried ceremonies so they can |
| 1:31.2 | keep their homes and their lives. Others say, no way am I converting. |
| 1:38.0 | They're forced to sell all their belongings and then flee to the border. |
| 1:42.7 | Some try to get passage on a boat to North Africa. There are stories of captains charging people |
| 1:50.0 | huge amounts of money and then throwing them overboard before they arrive. Others are attacked |
| 1:56.9 | or killed before they leave the country. |
| 2:01.9 | But in the centuries before this, the Iberian peninsula had been home to some of the most |
| 2:07.5 | lively and bustling Jewish communities in all of Europe. There had always been tension. |
| 2:15.2 | But for the most part, the dominant Catholic Spaniards had lived relatively peacefully alongside |
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