On March 31, 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, issued the Alhambra Decree, an edict requiring the expulsion or conversion of all Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon by July 31 of that year. The edict was issued shortly after Ferdinand and Isabella had won the Battle of Granada, completing the Catholic Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from Islamic forces. As noted in the decree itself, it was issued to stop Jews from trying "to subvert the holy Catholic faith" by attempting to "draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs."
Unfortunately, persecution by Catholics against the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula was not a new phenomenon in 1492. One hundred one years earlier, violence against the Jews of Castile erupted in what is known as the Massacre of 1391. After 4,000 Jews were murdered in Seville, the violence spread to more than 70 cities throughout Castile, resulting in the death of thousands of Jews while thousands others converted to Catholicism so their lives might be spared.
Violence, persecution, and forced conversion continued against the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula into the 1400s. Because of that persecution, by 1415 more than half of the Jews of the crowns of Castile and Aragon had converted to Catholicism. But, because of the Spanish Inquisition, conversion did not guarantee the safety of former Jews in the region. Out of distrust by “Old Christians”, popular revolts against the conversos broke out in 1449 and 1474.
By 1480, it was determined that the Jews of Spain should be segregated from the Catholic population. Cities began establishing Jewish quarters or ghettos that were walled off from the larger city. Within these ghettos, Jews could not leave except during daytime to carry out their professional occupations.
These are the conditions in which we find Vidal and his family in Eric Weintraub’s novel South of Sepharad. Vidal is a jewish physician living in the Jewish quarter of Granada, within sight of the famous Alhambra Palace. When Isabella and Ferdinand issue the Alhambra Decree, Vidal and his wife Bonadonna must make the difficult choice of whether to leave their home forever, forced to places unknown, or stay and convert to Catholicism, a choice between faith and survival.
Jews who chose exile had to sell nearly all their possessions, taking only what they could carry. Whole communities packed up and left, their homes and sacred areas quickly reclaimed by the Catholic communities that remained. The expulsion led to mass migration of Jews from Spain to Italy, Greece, Turkey, North Africa, and the Mediterranean Basin. As a result of the Alhambra Decree, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism, and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled.
The expulsion must have been a devastating experience for Jews across the Iberian Peninsula. That is what makes Weintraub’s historical novel so poignant and necessary. Although relying on a fictional Jewish family, it’s based on the real and tragic historical events of the Alhambra Decree to illuminate the humanity and suffering of Sephardic Jews. Relying not on facts and figures, but on the daily lives of Vidal, his family, and his community, South of Sepharad exposes readers the heartache of forced exile solely because of one’s faith.
