In 2015, over 500 years after their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, the Spanish Government passed a bill into law offering a path to citizenship for anyone who could prove they were a descendant of the exiled Sephardic Jewish community.[1] In doing so, the exile of the Jews in the wake of the signing of the Edict of Expulsion by Isabella I of Castile and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon was brought to the forefront of public attention.[2] Where previously, the topic was one little known outside of academic and Sephardic communities, suddenly it had become mainstream. While the Spanish Government’s motivations for issuing the invite have been questioned, that shall not be the topic of this essay. Rather, this paper seeks to disrupt many of the prevailing narratives which paint those exiled Jews as hapless victims, waiting meekly in perpetual banishment, hoping for the day when they would be permitted to return to Iberia. While the 1492 expulsion was undeniably a terrible blow for the Sephardic community, the Jews were no strangers to persecution. Contrasting such totalizing victim narrative and depictions, moving forward this paper will explore how, in the wake of their forced exile, the Sephardic Jews showed incredible resiliency and perseverance, re-establishing themselves across the Mediterranean basin. In many of the lands in which they ultimately settled, the territories held by the Ottoman Empire included, far from living as dispossessed refugees, Sephardic exiles ushered in a new golden age of Jewish culture, scholarship, and religious resurgence. With that in mind, the task of exploring this Sephardic resurgence will be guided by one overarching question: focusing on the Ottoman Empire, and more specifically on the city of Safed, in what ways and why can it be said that Sephardic Jewish culture in the aftermath of the tumultuous expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 saw an unprecedented resurgence and the dawn of a new Sephardic Golden Age? As we shall see, the answer lies largely in a complex intersection of Ottoman policies, Sephardic determination, and fortuitous economic and social conditions which allowed the relocated Jews to flourish.
Moving forward, this paper will transition through four main sections before concluding. Firstly, there is some contextual information that needs to be outlined. The definition of terms such as Sephardic Jewry as well as the lead up to, and signing of, the 1492 Edict of Expulsion must be clearly presented. Having done so, the focus will then shift to consider the Ottoman response to the Iberian expulsion, considering primarily the policies and initiatives enacted by the Ottoman Emperor/Sultan Bajazet II (sometimes spelt Bayezid) to encourage the exiled Jews to relocate within his territories.[3] Next, the effectiveness of these policies on attracting Jewish refugees will be demonstrated by considering the demographic changes we see in several major Ottoman cities, specifically looking at the increase in the Jewish population, both in terms of raw numbers, but also as a proportion of the overall ethnic makeup. Lastly, before concluding, the focus will shift once more to consider the experience of Jews in the city of Safed, with the goal of demonstrating why many regard this period as the dawn of a new golden age for Sephardic Jews.
Background: Sephardic Jewry and Spain in the Leadup to the Edict of Expulsion
The first term that really necessitates defining is that of Sephardic when used to refer to Sephardic Jewry. Fortunately, the term is a relatively simple one, albeit likely little known by those who do not work with, or consider themselves part of, the group it describes. Essentially, the term just refers to those Jewish individuals and communities descended from the Jews who settled in the Iberian Peninsula; modern-day Spain and Portugal.[4] Much like how Ashkenazi Jews are those descended from groups which settled in Germany and Eastern Europe, or Mizrahim Jews are those from Iraq, Persia, and Yemen primarily, Sephardic or Sephardim acts as a geographic and cultural identifier which distinguishes the unique Jewish culture the Sephardic Jews developed from that of other Jewish Groups.[5] While, the umbrella term of Sephardic includes a vast number of individuals and groups, each of which have unique and distinctive histories and traditions, in general, it is accepted that the commonality between the groups is to such a degree that classifying them all broadly as Sephardic Jews is best. While estimates vary, it is thought that on the eve of the Jewish expulsion in 1492, there lived upwards of 200,000 Sephardic Jews in Iberia; between 120,000-150,000 in the lands belonging to Castile, and around another 50,000 throughout the kingdom of Aragon.[6]
Now that what is meant by the term Sephardic Jew has been defined, we can move on to consider the buildup to, and signing of, the Edict of Expulsion on the 31st of March 1492 and announcement on April 31st, giving all Spanish Jews only three months to either convert to Christianity or leave Spain and never return.[7] While the path to the order of expulsion is long, complex, and multifaceted, some general trends leading up until Isabella I and Ferdinand II’s reign can be identified. Most broadly, it can be said that with the collapse of Muslim Al-Andalus in 1031 A.D., and the subsequent fall of the many resulting Taifa kingdoms at the hands of Christian rulers culminating in the fall of Granada in 1491, the attitude of the ruling classes in the peninsula began to shift from one of general religious tolerance under Islamic rule, to increasing religious persecution.[8] The Edict then, rather than representing an isolated shift in official and popular policy, can be more accurately understood as the culmination of increasing anti-Jewish sympathies throughout the Christian Kingdoms.[9] Concerns about Jews influencing conversos, recent converts to Christianity from Judaism either voluntarily or coerced to do so, to continue practicing Judaism in secret had been growing for some time, and large scale anti-Jewish and anti-converso riots had broken out in 1391, 1449, and sporadically throughout the 1460s, 70s, and 80s.[10] The writing had been on the wall for some time, and as Jonathan Ray put it, while “the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 was perhaps the most famous exile of that era…it was actually only one of a series of cataclysmic events that drove large numbers of Jewish refugees eastward across the Mediterranean;” to fail to recognize the complex nature of the expulsion would be to erase the nuanced history leading up to the event.[11] So, while Ferdinand and Isabella’s political agenda could be summarized by their Grandson Carlos V, otherwise known as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor,  as “Unum ovile et unus pastor,” “una grey y un pastor solo en suelo,” or “Un monarca, un Imperio y una espada” (One flock and one shepherd, one monarch, one empire, one sword), their actions were simply the last in a long line of increasingly anti-Jewish movements across Iberia.[12] That being said, the result was that, ultimately, on July 31st, 1492, or the seventh of Av 5242 by the Jewish Calendar, the last Jew left Spanish soil.[13] Now, we can consider what greeted them once they left.
Jews in the East: The Dawn of a New Jewish Ottoman Golden Age
He chased my friends from me, exiled
my age-mates, sent my family far
so that I never see a face I know—
father, mother, brothers, or a friend.
He scattered everyone I care for northward,
eastward, or to the west, so that
I have no rest from constant thinking, planning—
and never a moments peace, for all my plans.
Now that I see my future in the East
Excerpt from Poem to His Son, Judah Abravanel, Jewish Exile, 1503.[14]
This book was completed…. In Istanbul, the fine city, the city of a great King, a faithful shepherd, our master the Sultan Suleyman, may his splendour be exalted, and his honour grow, and in his times and ours may Judea and Israel be redeemed and may the redeemer come to Zion.
Title page of a collection of responsa published in Constantinople, 1556.[15]
“You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler, he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!”
Sultan Bajazet II, Address to his courtiers, 1492.[16]
As the above quotes demonstrate, for many exiled Sephardic Jews, the land controlled by the Ottoman Empire to the east offered an inviting prospect for resettlement.[17] While proximity did play a role in this, the most significant reason why so many exiles chose to relocate throughout the East lies in the policies and attitudes of the Ottoman rulers. As the quote from Sultan Bajazet II in particular highlights, the Ottoman ruling class welcomed the arrival of the Jews. As highly skilled artisans, merchants, civil servants, and physicians, for the tax money they paid, and for the economic simuls they generated in the towns and cities they settled in, Ottoman rulers saw the Sephardic influx as a fortuitous event to be celebrated.[18] Ottoman Sultans in particular were highly eager to employ the services of exiled Sephardic physicians and doctors who held a reputation for being unparalleled in their skill.[19] As Annette Benaim explains, for those Jews wandering the Mediterranean in the wake of the 1492 expulsion from Spain, the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire offered “unconditional hospitality.”[20] Furthermore, while the acceptance of the Sephardic exiles by the Ottomans was noteworthy in the hope it offered for those who had been displaced, it was hardly a surprise that they would do so. The Ottoman attitude towards the Jews had a basis in the longstanding tradition of Muslim toleration and protection for minorities grounded in the practice of dhimmi, or a religious tax.[21] In fact, other than having to pay the dhimmi and abide by a few other minor restrictions, “all Jews in the Empire were generally granted great religious and socio-political freedom.”[22] This tradition of Islamic tolerance towards religious minorities, in contrast to that of the Christian kingdoms, comes through in the writing of many of the Jews who relocated throughout the East. In one such example Isaac Zarfati, an Ashkenazi Jew who relocated to Turkey from Europe, contrasted the Muslim attitudes he encountered, writing
here you are allowed to wear the most precious garments. In Christendom, on the contrary, ye dare not even venture to clothe your children in red or blue, according to your taste, without exposing them to insult of being beaten black and blue, or kicked red and green, and therefore are ye condemned to go about meanly clad in sad-colored raiment.[23]
These attitudes and approaches of toleration towards Jews throughout the Empire worked in attracting a staggering number of exiles to settle in Ottoman lands. The exact figures that relocated we can now discuss.
On the whole, exact statistics for Sephardic migration into the Ottoman Empire post-1492 are scarce. However, what does exist are the demographic records for individual towns and cities, and those figures paint a clear picture of massive Jewish resettlement. Specifically, we can look to the cities of Safed, Constantinople/Istanbul, and Salonica to create a general image of what undoubtedly was occurring to varying degrees across the empire. In Constantinople, for instance, by 1574 we see the Jewish population increasing to upwards of 30,000 and the presence of 44 different synagogues dispersed throughout the city.[24] In Salonica, the numbers are even more staggering. The migration of Jews to the city and the successes of their descendants, triggered by the expulsion from Spain in 1492, saw that by the 19th century there would be over 90,000 Jews living there; meaning that over half of the city’s population was Jewish. In the city of Safed too, we see that in 1525 there were recorded only 233 Jewish households as compared to 693 Muslim ones, yet only four decades later the influx of Sephardic Jews saw that figure increase 945 and 986 respectively by 1567.[25] So pronounced were these migration flows into Ottoman lands that Rabbis writing at the time liked it to a second Exodus, declaring
For when the Lord saw the affliction of his people for nearly fifteen hundred years, after having been driven from their land, wandering from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another in a series of expulsions and persecutions, He remembered the alliance with their forefathers and returned their exiles whom He gathered from all corners of the earth, from different cities and families, into the land of Israel where they settled in the city of Safed.[26]
It is hardly surprising, then, that with such massive migration flows we see a subsequent renaissance of Sephardic culture take place throughout the Ottoman territories.
It bears noting that, while the scale of the relocation across the Ottoman empire certainly aided in the subsequent renaissance of Sephardic culture which we see, it by no means was a guaranteed phenomenon. Rather, the religious and cultural efflorescence was the direct result of a determined, sustained, and deeply held conviction by those exiled from Spain that the Sephardic legacy could and should be preserved for generations to come. It was an act of resistance. A way to defy the Iberian monarchs who had sought to put an end to the Sephardic tradition, and as such was an active and continual process.[27] We can see such determination manifest in acts such as the founding of the first Hebrew printing house in Istanbul in 1493, over two centuries before the first Turkish printing house would be established in the Ottoman Empire.[28] Sephardic Jews enjoyed a religious, economic, and cultural resurgence on a massive scale, to such a degree that even today many preserve the memory of this period as a living testament to one of the greatest chapters in Jewish history.[29] Of the golden age of Sephardic Judaism, it has been said that “the religious innovations that originated in Safed conquered almost the entire Jewish world. In the fields of liturgy, mysticism and Halakhah there was hardly any other period in Jewish history that could be compared to its productivity and lasting influence.”[30] Sephardic Jewish art and poetry, music and literature, scholarship and science, all flourished under the protection of the Ottoman Sultans. [31] One would be challenged to identify a more illustrious period in not just Sephardic Jewish history, but Jewish history in general. All arising as a direct result of the Iberian expulsion of 1492.
Conclusion
Hopefully, the story of the Sephardic exiles and their experience following their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula should have been made clear. With recent political events drawing the public’s eye to what was previously a little-known subject, it is important to counter narratives that essentialize these displaced Jews as merely passive victims. While yes, it is undeniable that upwards of 200,000 exiled Jews were the victims of considerable persecution and discrimination, they were so much more too. They were active agents in their own lives, determined to preserve their culture and way of life. Far from allowing the expulsion to break them as a people, the displaced Sephardic communities reestablished themselves throughout the Ottoman Empire and ushered forth a new Jewish golden age of culture, learning, economics, and art. With the support of the Ottoman Sultans, Sephardic Jewry turned one of the darkest chapters of their collective history into one of the brightest, and that resilience in the face of overwhelming adversity is what should be being highlighted moving forward.
Bibliography
Abravanel, Judah. “Poem to His Son (1503).” In Medieval Iberia: Readings From Christian Muslim, and Jewish Sources, Second Edition, edited by Olivia Remie Constable, 516-523. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
Adatto, Kitku. “Spain’s Attempt to Atone for a 500-Year-Old Sin.” The Atlantic, September 21, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/09/spain-offers-citizenship-sephardic-jews/598258/.
Assis, Yom Tov. “The Jewish World after the Expulsion: From Destruction to Revival.” Hispania Judaica 8, (2011):5-17.
Beinart, Haim. “Order of the Expulsion from Spain: Antecedents, Causes, and Textual Analysis.” In Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391-1648, edited by Benjamin R. Gampel, 79-94. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Benaim, Annette. “Chapter One: Introduction.” In Sixteenth-Century Judeo-Spanish Testimonies: An Edition of Eighty-Four Testimonies from the Sephardic Responsa in the Ottoman Empire, edited by Annette Benaim, 1-62. Boston: Brill, 2012.
Bennison, Amira K. The Peoples of the North in the Eyes of the Muslims of Umayyad Al-Andalus (711-1031).” Journal of Global History 2, (2007): 157-174.
Boon, Jessica A. “Violence and the “Virtual Jew” in Castilian Passion Narratives, 1490s–1510s.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 8, no. 1 (2016): 110-129.
“Charter of Expulsion, 1492.” In Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, edited by Olivia Remie Constable, 508-513. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
Gottheil, Richard, and Abraham Danon, “Bajazet II.” In The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 2, 1906; online edition, 2021. https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2377-bajazet-ii.
Hadden, Gerry. “Sephardic Jews Invited Back to Spain after 500 Years.” BBC, March 6, 2013. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21631427.
MJL. “Types of Jews: The Many Ethnic and Religious Subgroups Within the Jewish Community.” My Jewish Learning. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/types-of-jews/.
Petersen, Andrew. “Safad.” In Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine, 6. S-Z, 259-323. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Pulgar, Hernando del. “Crόnicas de los reyes de Castilla, 1492.” In Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, edited by Olivia Remie Constable, 496-499. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
Ray, Jonathan. “Iberian Jewry between West and East: Jewish Settlement in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean.” Mediterranean Studies 18, (2009): 44-65.
[1] Gerry Hadden. “Sephardic Jews Invited Back to Spain after 500 Years,” BBC, March 6, 2013, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21631427; Kitku Adatto, “Spain’s Attempt to Atone for a 500-Year-Old Sin,” The Atlantic, September 21, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/09/spain-offers-citizenship-sephardic-jews/598258/.
[2] Haim Beinart, “Order of the Expulsion from Spain: Antecedents, Causes, and Textual Analysis,” in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391-1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 79.
[3] Annette Benaim, “Chapter One: Introduction,” in Sixteenth-Century Judeo-Spanish Testimonies: An Edition of Eighty-Four Testimonies from the Sephardic Responsa in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Annette Benaim (Boston: Brill, 2012), 21.
[4] MJL, “Types of Jews: The Many Ethnic and Religious Subgroups Within the Jewish Community,” My Jewish Learning, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/types-of-jews/.
[5] MJL, “The Many Ethnic.”
[6] Beinart, “Order of,” 93; Yom Tov Assis, “The Jewish World after the Expulsion: From Destruction to Revival,” Hispania Judaica 8, (2011): 5.
[7] “Charter of Expulsion, 1492,” in Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 508-9.
[8] Amira K. Bennison, “The Peoples of the North in the Eyes of the Muslims of Umayyad Al-Andalus (711-1031),” Journal of Global History 2, (2007): 158; Hernando del Pulgar, “Crόnicas de los reyes de Castilla, 1492,” in Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 496-7.
[9] Beinart, “Order of,” 79; Jonathan Ray, “Iberian Jewry between West and East: Jewish Settlement in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean,” Mediterranean Studies 18, (2009): 45.
[10] Beinart, “Order of,” 79; Jessica A. Boon, “Violence and the “Virtual Jew” in Castilian Passion Narratives, 1490s–1510s,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 8, no. 1 (2016): 116.
[11] Ray, “Iberian Jewry,” 45.
[12] As cited in Beinart, “Order of,” 84.
[13] Beinart, “Order of,” 93.
[14] Judah Abravanel, “Poem to His Son (1503),” in Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 517.
[15] As cited Benaim, “Chapter One,” 23.
[16] Richard Gottheil and Abraham Danon, “Bajazet II,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 2, 1906; online ed., 2021, https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2377-bajazet-ii.
[17] Ray, “Iberian Jewry,” 44.
[18] Ray, “Iberian Jewry,” 44.
[19] Assis, “The Jewish World,” 14.
[20] Benaim, “Chapter One,” 21.
[21] Ray, “Iberian Jewry,” 62.
[22] Ray, “Iberian Jewry,” 62.
[23] As cited in Ray, “Iberian Jewry,” 50.
[24] Benaim, “Chapter One,” 23.
[25] Assis, “The Jewish World,” 13; Andrew Petersen, “Safad,” in Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine, 6. S-Z, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 259.
[26] Rabbi Yosef Caro, as cited in Assis, “The Jewish World,” 6.
[27] Assis, “The Jewish World,” 9-10.
[28] Assis, “The Jewish World,” 11.
[29] Ray, “Iberian Jewry,” 64.
[30] Assis, “The Jewish World,” 10.
[31] Assis, “The Jewish World,” 10-11; Benaim, “Chapter One,” 22; Ray, “Iberian Jewry,” 45.
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