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The Tragic History of the Jews of Spain (PART TWO)
The Royal Palace of Spain. Photo: Rafesmar via Wikicommons.
Part one of this article appeared on Thursday, and can be read here.
Conditions Worsen -Massacres and Forced Conversions
When Henry II ascended the throne in 1369, a new era began for the Jews of suffering and persecution. Henry II instituted decrees that weakened the Jews politically, financially, and physically. He decreed that Jews be kept far from palaces, were forbidden to hold public office, could not ride on mules, and must wear distinct badges to indicate that they were Jewish and were forbidden to bear arms and sell weapons.
Under the rule of John I in 1379, the situation deteriorated even further for the Jews, as the government began making demands regarding Judaism itself. The Jews were forced to change prayers deemed offensive to the Church, and non-Jews were forbidden to convert to Judaism.
After the death of King John I in 1390, chaos spread in Spain, which led to many attacks on the Jewish community. The riots spread across the country, synagogues were destroyed, and tens of thousands of Jews were murdered. On June 6, the mob attacked the Juderia in Seville from all sides and murdered 4,000 Jews. Many Jews chose to convert to Christianity as the only way to escape death.
On the legislative front, antisemitic laws were passed to impoverish and subjugate the Jews and, it was assumed, lead them to convert to Christianity out of desperation. Under these laws, Jews were forbidden to practice medicine; forbidden to sell bread, wine, flour, or meat; prohibited from engaging in handicraft or any form of trade; forbidden to hold public office or act as a money-broker; prohibited from carrying arms or hire Christian servants or give presents or visit Christians; forbidden to trim their beards or cut their hair. Finally, they were also absolutely forbidden to leave the country and seek an end to their plight.
Although these laws aimed to humiliate the Jews, the entire kingdom of Spain was negatively impacted in the extreme. The rules had unwittingly stopped nearly all commerce and industry and shaken the country’s finances to its foundation.
The Great Disputation of Tortosa: The End is in Sight
In 1413, a virulently antisemitic preacher, Vincent Ferrer, the Spanish anti-pope Benedict XIII, and a Jewish apostate Yehoshua HaLorki devised a plan they were sure would lead to the conversion of the remaining Jews of Spain. They would hold a massive debate between the Jews and the Christians, with the pope presiding. According to their plan, the Christian representatives would undoubtedly emerge triumphant and compel the defeated Jews to accept Christianity.
Unlike the disputation in which Nachmanides successfully defended the Jews of Spain, the Disputation of Tortosa was set up with a clear bias toward the Christians. The Christian side always had the final word, and the king who served as the judge was negatively disposed toward the Jews and not open to an honest debate.
The debate lasted over a year, and the Jewish presentation became more persuasive over time. The Christians began to pressure the Jewish representatives to limit their arguments, and the Jews realized it was not to their benefit to continue. Benedict claimed victory at the end of the debate, and copies of the Talmud were confiscated and burned.
The debate was a demoralizing experience for Jewish Spain. By the middle of the 15th century, many Spanish Jews recognized that a Jewish community was no longer viable in their homeland. Looking for alternatives, in 1473, the Jews offered to buy Gibraltar from the king as a haven for their community, but the offer was refused.
Ferdinand and Isabella
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella are remembered as the monarchs who backed Christopher Columbus in his voyage to the Americas. However, in Jewish history, they are remembered as the rulers who expelled the entire Jewish community.
The marriage of Ferdinand V of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 unified Spain and transformed it from a combination of provinces into a mighty kingdom. Ironically, the royal marriage had been arranged by a wealthy and learned Jewish leader, Abraham Senior, who tragically converted to Catholicism in 1492 rather than being expelled from Spain.
Isabella was a fervent Christian and, in partnership with the pope, set up an Inquisition in 1478 to find and fight heresy in the Christian world. The royal decree that founded the Inquisition explicitly stated that the Inquisition was instituted to search out and punish converts from Judaism who transgressed against Christianity by secretly adhering to Jewish beliefs and observing Jewish laws. No other group was mentioned, making it clear that Jews were the primary target of this decree.
The primary goal of the Inquisition was to expose Jews who were not genuine converts to Christianity but were still secretly practicing Judaism. In fact, this often was the case. It came to the point that the Christians would call converted Jews “New Christians” to distinguish them from the “Old (authentic) Christians.” Derogatorily, Jewish converts to Christianity were also called conversos, meaning “converts,” or worse yet, Marranos, which means “filthy pigs.”
In 1483, Tomas de Torquemada was appointed Grand Inquisitor. From this point onward, the Inquisition became infamous for its brutality. Torquemada established procedures for the Inquisition, where a court would be installed in a new area, and residents were encouraged to report information regarding Jews observing Jewish practices.
Evidence accepted included the absence of chimney smoke on Saturdays (a sign the family might secretly be honoring the Sabbath), buying many vegetables before Passover, or purchasing meat from a converso butcher. Then the court would employ physical torture to extract confessions and burn those who would not submit at the stake.
The Expulsion
The year 1492 marked the fall of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, and the year Ferdinand and Isabella decided to expel all Jews from Spain. The infamous Alhambra Decree, which ordered the expulsion, was issued in January 1492. This time, the monarchs did not target Jewish converts to Christianity but Jews who had never converted.
The main reason stated in the Edict of Expulsion was to prevent Jews from re-Judaizing the conversos. Another factor that certainly played a significant role was that Jewish money was needed to rebuild the kingdom after the costly war against the Muslims. The simplest way to acquire the funds was to expel the Jews and confiscate the wealth and property they would leave behind. (This was a method repeated numerous times during the Middle Ages in Europe, as European countries would expel the Jews to remove their debts and take the money from the Jews that were forced out of their country.)
The Jews, led by Don Isaac Abarbanel, tried to get the edict revoked. Abarbanel was a great Torah scholar and a leading rabbi, and had also served as the treasurer of Spain. As the most influential Jew in Spain at the time, he tried hard to rescind the expulsion order and even offered the monarchs 300,000 ducats for a reprieve.
He almost succeeded in getting the monarchs to rescind the edict, but Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada thwarted his attempt.
According to the legend, Torquemada, who had an enormous influence over Queen Isabella, entered the room where Abarbanel was pleading his cause. Enraged, he threw the cross at the Queen, hitting her in the head, and yelled: “Judas sold his master (Jesus) for 30 pieces of silver. Now you would sell him anew!” With that, Abarbanel’s pleas were dismissed, and the edict remained.
Yet, Don Isaac Abarbanel was so crucial to the monarchs that they offered him a special dispensation to remain in Spain without converting, including a caveat that another nine Jews could stay with him so he could pray with a minyan. He refused their offer and led the Jews of Spain as they went into exile.
The calendar date on which the Spanish Jewish community ended and went into exile was August 2, 1492. The original date was intended to be July 31, but Torquemada extended it by a few days, unwittingly switching it to the date corresponding to the 9th of Av, Tisha B’Av. This was the day of the destruction of both the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem, a message the Jews understood as a reminder that their exile was but a continuation of the original exile hundreds of years earlier. As the Jews left Spain, Abarbanel directed that music be played, even though it was Tisha B’Av, to raise the spirits of the Jews and provide comfort and hope for the future.
Tens of thousands of Jews chose to remain by agreeing to convert, at least in name. The number of Jews who left Spain is not even approximately known. Historians of the period give incredibly high figures: Historian Juan de Mariana speaks of 800,000 people, and Don Isaac Abarbanel of 300,000.
Most of the Jews who fled Spain made their way across the border to Portugal. However, only five years later, Portugal forced the choice of conversion or death upon the Jews in its country, and Jews who could get out were on the run again.
Thousands of Jews who were exiled from Spain chose to go to Turkey. The Sultan of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Bayezid II, welcomed them and observed, “They tell me that Ferdinand of Spain is a wise man, but he is a fool. For he takes his treasure and sends it all to me.”
Many Jews also chose to go to Italy, Holland, and the New World.
Christopher Columbus
On August 3, 1492, the day after the expulsion, Christopher Columbus left on his famed voyage of discovery. His diary begins: “In the same month in which their Majesties issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month, they gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of discovery of the Indies.”
With the 20-20 hindsight that history gives us, we can see the deeper connection between Columbus’s voyage to America and the expulsion. Precisely as one of the most vibrant Jewish communities of Medieval Europe was ending, God prepared for the founding of a place for Jews seeking freedom from persecution – America.
After hundreds of years, in 1834, the Inquisition was abolished, and Jews could return to Spain. However, the edict of expulsion was only repealed in 1968. This meant that from 1868 until 1968, Jews were allowed to live in Spain as individuals but not to practice Judaism as a community.
Spain During the Holocaust
When the Second World War broke out, Spain declared neutrality but supported the Nazis in the initial stages. Yet, Spain chose not to deport Jews and, in fact, allowed 25,600 Jews to use Spain as an escape route from the Nazis. Spanish diplomats protected approximately 4,000 Sephardic Jews in France and the Balkans, although this was against the will of their superiors. Also, in 1944, the Spanish Embassy in Hungary aided in the rescue of Budapest’s Jews by accepting 2,750 refugees.
Legend has it that General Franco refused to hand over the Jews to the Nazis despite their unofficial alliance because so many in Spain had “Jewish” blood, including Franco himself, and the Nazis would have included them in their decrees.
Contemporary Antisemitism
Remnants of antisemitism continue to exist in Spain, although at times it is the “new antisemitism” of anti-Zionism. Spain did not even recognize the state of Israel until 1986, when it did so as a condition for entering the European Union. Furthermore, according to research by the Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Polls, the Spanish public still harbors many antisemitic stereotypes, more so than in other Western European countries.
Even within the culture of Spain, antisemitism, going back centuries, can be heard. For example, In León, they drink lemonade mixed with a red wine called matar judíos (“kill Jews”). Instead of “cheers,” a local drinking phrase is “We are going to kill the Jews.” For hundreds of years, a village in northern Spain was named Castrillo Matajudios (“Castrillo Kill the Jews”). The residents finally voted to change the name in 2014.
Spain Today and The Lesson that Remains
Approximately 45,000 Jews live in Spain today. The majority live in Madrid, Barcelona, and southern Spain.
The Spanish Parliament approved a measure on June 11, 2015, to restore citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jewish individuals who were expelled during the Inquisition. The law allows relatives of individuals who were expelled in 1492 to apply for dual citizenship. To date, 36,000 Jews have been granted citizenship.
Nevertheless, for Jews, the tragic history of Spain is a reminder that a Jew’s home is never in exile.
There was indeed a Golden Age of Spain, but for the Jews, it was always a bit tarnished. Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, who lived at the time of the Golden Age, wrote, “Although I am in the West, my heart is in the East.”
Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA from 2007 – 2020. He is a popular speaker and has written for numerous publications. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org. A version of this article was originally published by Aish.
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Gore Websites, Antisemitic Propaganda Radicalized School Shooters, New ADL Report Finds
A demonstration in Schwerin, Germany, with a banner reading “Against Nazis.” Photo: Bernd Wüstneck via Reuters Connect
The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism has released a new report detailing how two young persons’ drifting into viewing macabre content online degenerated into an obsession with white supremacist propaganda and, ultimately, the perpetration of a school shooting.
“Kids and teens today have lived their entire lives with easy internet access, putting them even more at risk of encountering violent extremism online,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement on Thursday. “ADL has been alerting about the dangers of these online communities and activity for years. Extremist ideas combined with gore websites can inspire others to love for evermore violent content.”
He added, “It’s a vicious cycle, especially for young people. We hope this research guides all stakeholders in taking action to prevent future attacks.”
The ADL examined the cases of Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, 15 — a rare female mass shooter who committed suicide after murdering two people at a Christian private school in Madison, Wisconsin — and Solomon Henderson, 17 — who murdered a female classmate at a public high school in Nashville, Tennessee, before fatally shooting himself. Their journeys towards unconscionable violence, the ADL explained, began in the dark corners of the internet, when each enrolled to become members of a website titled “WatchPeopleDie” (WPD).
“WatchPeopleDie” is one of hundreds of shock websites which traumatize audiences with images and videos of beheadings, sexual violence, and other appalling acts of antisemitism, sexism, and self-degradation. Such websites can also function as recruiting grounds for white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Rupnow and Henderson proved vulnerable to the content’s assault on the psyche. Within 19 months, each teenager “posted, reposted, endorsed, replied to, or otherwise engaged with extremist content,” the ADL said, including that which referenced “mass killers” and “764,” an online network of miscreants who extol “obscene” depravities.
“The interconnected network of accounts that post extremist content on WPD included Rupnow and Henderson, who both followed and were followed by other explicitly white supremacist accounts,” the ADL explained. “Because both teens would commit their shootings roughly 19 months after joining the site, this shows that online engagement with extremist ideologies and depictions of heinous acts of violence can lead to on the ground attacks. Furthermore, this network acts as an echo chamber that normalizes violence, gore, and white supremacy.”
The ADL said that the teenagers’ stories and the atrocities they committed showcase the dangers of failing to supervise the online activity of the youth, at home and at school, and it is launching a campaign to brief 16,000 superintendents on its findings and mobilize law enforcement, parents, and teachers around a course of action for thwarting online predators.
“Extremism, hate, and violent gore are just a click away for many children, making it urgent for schools and parents to implement safeguard,” said Oren Segal, senior vice president of counter extremism and intelligence at ADL. “These toxic online spaces can cause devastating harm in our communities and are increasingly becoming central to the broader violent extremist landscape.”
The ADL is spearheading multiple efforts to combat antisemitism.
Earlier this month, it launched the Jewish Policy Index (JPI), a “first interactive tool of its kind” for evaluating the efficacy of policies that US states have adopted to combat antisemitism.
According to the ADL, JPI has already identified positive and negative trends. Nine states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia — have all passed legislation to address a surge of antisemitic discrimination and violence across the country, earning a JPI designation as “Leading States.” But, the ADL noted, 41 other states failed to merit the distinction.
The distribution of the first JPI ratings forms a bell curve, with most states, 29, clustered in the middle, having been classified as “Progressing States” which have adopted “some key pieces of the policy agenda” the ADL recommends. Twelve received the poorest mark, “Limited Action States,” for showing “little systematic effort to address antisemitism through policy.”
The ADL and its partners say the JPI can facilitate democratic action which “empowers residents” to challenge their states to fight antisemitism with vigor.
“Jewish communities know that if we are to flourish through difficult times, we must mobilize to fight antisemitism,” Eric Fingerhut, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in a statement commending the initiative. “The most important responsibility of government is keeping its citizens safe. The Jewish Policy Index is an important tool to help inform and advance how state governments respond to antisemitism and protect their Jewish communities.”
The advent of JPI came on the heels of harrowing new FBI statistics which reveal the extent to which violent antisemitism has become a pervasive occurrence in American life.
While hate crimes against other demographic groups declined overall last year, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
Additionally, a striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims, the second most targeted religious group, were victims in 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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UC Berkeley Discriminated Against Israeli Professor, Lawsuit Alleges
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
An Israeli professor has filed a lawsuit against the University of California, Berkeley alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim the university’s own investigators corrobroated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed on Wednesday in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint seeks justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance.
After nearly two years, the situation remained unresolved, prompting Nativ to file suit and seek damages as well as the apology UC Berkeley refused to pronounce.
“Since the Hamas attacks on October 7th, Jewish and Israeli professors, researchers, and academics like Dr. Nativ have been unfairly targeted, their work questioned, and their livelihoods threatened because of the rampant antisemitism that has overtaken college campuses,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus, a former assistant secretary for civil rights in the US Education Department, said in a statement. “For a university to deny the invitation of a respected professor simply because of her national origin is not only distasteful, it’s illegal.”
He added, “If the campus administration doesn’t hold themselves up to the same accountability standards that they hold their students, what is stopping their students from acting on their own discriminatory beliefs? The vicious and illegal targeting of Israeli faculty and researchers is unfortunately a disturbing new trend we are seeing nationwide that must stop.”
UC Berkeley was the site of one the most shocking antisemitic incidents in recent memory, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In February 2024, a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at UC Berkeley featuring an Israeli soldier, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach Hall while an event featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat — who visited the university to discuss his military service during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion — took place inside. The mob then stormed the building — breaking glass windows in the process, according to reports in the Daily Wire — and precipitated school officials’ decision to evacuate the area.
During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — which was recruited by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
“You know what I was screamed at? ‘Jew, you Jew, you Jew,’ literally right to my face,” the student who was attacked said to a friend. “Some woman — then she spit at me.”
Shaya Keyvanfar, a student, told The Algemeiner that her sister was spit on and that the incident was unlike any she had ever witnessed.
“Once the doors were closed, the protesters somehow found a side door and pushed it open, and a few of them managed to get in, and once they did, they tried to open the door for the rest of them,” Keyvanfar said. “It was really scary. They were pounding on the windows outside — they broke one — they spit at my sister and others. They called someone a dirty Jew. It was eerie.”
In July, the chancellor of UC Berkeley described a professor who cheered the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre across southern Israel as a “fine scholar” during a congressional hearing held at Capitol Hill.
Richard K. Lyons, who assumed the chancellorship in July 2024, issued the unmitigated praise while being questioned by members of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which summoned him and the chief administrators of two other major universities to interrogate their handling of the campus antisemitism crisis.
Lyons stumbled into the statement while being questioned by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), who asked Lyons to describe the extent of his relationship and correspondence with Professor Ussama Makdisi, who tweeted in February 2024 that he “could have been one of those who broke through the siege on October 7.”
“What do you think the professor meant,” McClain asked Lyons, to which the chancellor responded, “I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on October 7.” McClain proceeded to ask if Lyons discussed the tweet with Makdisi or personally reprimanded him, prompting an exchange of remarks which concluded with Lyons saying, “He is a fine scholar.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Senate Democrats Urge State Department to Investigate Deaths of Gaza Journalists
Journalists and media workers protest after Al-Jazeera personnel killed in Gaza, in Barcelona, Spain, Aug. 13, 2025. Photo: Marc Asensio/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
A group of 17 US senators — all Democrats except for Bernie Sanders, an independent — is pressing the State Department over reports of Israeli military strikes that have killed and injured journalists in Gaza, despite Israel maintaining that Hamas has consistently embedded its fighters among civilians and exploited media workers as cover for its terrorist operations.
In a letter sent on Wednesday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators raised concerns about a recent strike in Gaza that killed six media workers, including Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif. Israeli officials have said al-Sharif was linked to Hamas, though critics in Washington argue Israel has not provided enough public evidence to bolster that claim.
The senators warned that the incident fits into what they called a “pattern of violence” against journalists. But Israel and its supporters argue that the reality is far more complex. Hamas often operates within civilian populations, including hospitals, schools, and media offices, making it difficult for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to avoid collateral casualties during precision strikes.
The lawmakers asked the State Department to assess whether Israel has complied with international law and US policy in its targeting decisions. They also raised questions about accountability for previous strikes, including an October 2023 attack in southern Lebanon that killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and wounded American reporter Dylan Collins.
Israel has repeatedly said it investigates battlefield incidents involving civilian or journalist casualties, but the Isreal Defense Force (IDF) stresses that Hamas’s deliberate use of human shields makes complete protection of journalists impossible. Supporters of Israel note that Hamas has used press credentials to disguise operatives, a tactic that directly endangers legitimate media workers.
The senators also pressed the administration to ask Israel to allow greater access for foreign journalists to Gaza. But Israeli officials have long maintained that Hamas tightly controls who can operate inside the territory and uses journalists as tools in its propaganda war. Israeli officials also point out that while international media demand full access, Hamas has routinely censored coverage, intimidated reporters, and staged events for cameras.
The letter cited reports of Palestinian journalists held in administrative detention. Israel counters that many of those detained are suspected of aiding Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al allied terrorist group in Gaza, and that security-based detentions are lawful under both Israeli and international emergency regulations.
Israeli officials have also emphasized that outlets like Al Jazeera have played an active role in spreading Hamas messaging, prompting Israel’s government to restrict some of its operations.
Since the war erupted in October 2023, around 190 Palestinian journalists in Gaza have reportedly been killed. However, Israel insists that many were targeted because of ties to terrorist groups.
Moreover, records and public footage indicate al-Sharif worked on a Hamas-linked media team before joining Al Jazeera, maintained ties with senior Hamas leadership, and was singled out by anti-Hamas protesters in March 2025 as part of the group’s ruling establishment.
The Israel Defense Forces claimed that al-Sharif, who was killed on Aug. 10 along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike near Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, was “the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and advanced rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops.” IDF international spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani added on X that Israel obtained intelligence showing al-Sharif was “an active Hamas military wing operative at the time of his elimination” and even received a salary from the terrorist group.