I CLOSE-UP I

ECHOES of the BIG

BANG!

Jews were expelled from Spain
500 years ago.
The shock waves still reverberate.

Special to The Jewish News

Illustrations by
Tim Lee

testament to the sor-
row of exile lies at
the base of the
Statue of Liberty.
It tells of the har-
bor where tempest-tossed refugees
could find solace, the harbor that
would welcome the unwanted, the
persecuted, the tormented.
Emma Lazarus, a Sephardi,
may have had her family's histo-
ry in mind when she wrote "The
New Colossus." But her sonnet
describing the new immigrants,
the "huddled masses yearning to
breathe free," speaks as much of
Spanish Jewry, expelled in 1492,
as for the European immigrants
of the 1940s.
Five centuries have passed
since that terrible year when
Ferdinand and Isabella, fresh
from their conquest of all Spain,
sought to dedicate the kingdom to
their Catholic faith. To cleanse
the land, the monarchs drove the
Moslems across the narrow Strait
of Gibraltar to North Africa. They
offered the Jews, who had lived in
the land for more than a thousand
years, the choice to convert or
follow the Moslems into exile.
Between destruction of the Se-
cond Temple in Jerusalem in the
year 70 and the Naii Holocaust,
no event so shook the Jewish
world. The expulsion from Spain
— ironically on the eve of Tisha
B'Av, the day of mourning for the
destroyed Temple, and the begin-

ning of Columbus' first voyage of
discovery — was a historic Big
Bang whose shock waves still re-
verberate.
"As they spread around the
Mediterranean and eventually
the New World, the Sephardim
created a sea change in the Jew-
ish world," says Aron Rodrigue,
associate professor of history at
Stanford University.
The expulsion of the Spanish
Jews — known as Sephardim
after the Hebrew word for Spain
— shifted the hub of the Jewish
world from West to East. It led to
the popularization of mysticism
and the rise of false messiahs.
And it created for a Jew with dual
identities — the Marrano —
foreshadowing the modern Jew-
ish experience.
Until it was eclipsed by the
Holocaust — when 800,000
Sephardim were murdered — the
expulsion was The Great Event to
which all Jews could relate, Dr.
Rodrigue says.
"The whole expression of exile,
which is a leitmotif in Jewish his-
tory, was reenacted in the expul-
sion. This is why a lot of people
pick up on it: The theme of exile
has such a great resonance."
On the eve of its quincenten-
nial, the expulsion is coming
under renewed scrutiny. Sephar-
dim are planning to com-
memorate the anniversary, at the
same time throwing light on a
people and culture many Ameri-

DAVID HOLZEL

A

30

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1991

