Jonathan Ray
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814729113
- eISBN:
- 9780814729120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814729113.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter examines the cultural self-fashioning in which the descendants of the Spanish exile would create a transnational Sephardic society built upon a shared concept of Iberia as a common ...
More
This chapter examines the cultural self-fashioning in which the descendants of the Spanish exile would create a transnational Sephardic society built upon a shared concept of Iberia as a common homeland. By the second half of the sixteenth century, the old rabbinic term Sepharadim was in common use among Mediterranean Jews as a broad reference to Jews of Iberian heritage. However, this term and the images it invoked remained quite fluid, much like the actual communities and networks of the Sephardim. Indeed, the exiles of 1492 did not bring with them any concrete sense of an ancestral “Spanish” homeland. Rather, such a notion only evolved over the course of sixteenth century as the result of three interconnected factors: the experience of expulsion and continued migration, the conflation of recent events and distant history reinforced by the native Jewries among whom the Sephardim came to settle, and the image of a distinct Sephardic society.Less
This chapter examines the cultural self-fashioning in which the descendants of the Spanish exile would create a transnational Sephardic society built upon a shared concept of Iberia as a common homeland. By the second half of the sixteenth century, the old rabbinic term Sepharadim was in common use among Mediterranean Jews as a broad reference to Jews of Iberian heritage. However, this term and the images it invoked remained quite fluid, much like the actual communities and networks of the Sephardim. Indeed, the exiles of 1492 did not bring with them any concrete sense of an ancestral “Spanish” homeland. Rather, such a notion only evolved over the course of sixteenth century as the result of three interconnected factors: the experience of expulsion and continued migration, the conflation of recent events and distant history reinforced by the native Jewries among whom the Sephardim came to settle, and the image of a distinct Sephardic society.
Jonathan Ray
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814729113
- eISBN:
- 9780814729120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814729113.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter examines the development of Jewish political structures. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Sephardic world was built upon an organic manifestation of cultural identity, but ...
More
This chapter examines the development of Jewish political structures. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Sephardic world was built upon an organic manifestation of cultural identity, but it was also shaped by a core tension within this emerging diaspora community between the government and the governed. In other words, the way in which successive generations of Sephardic Jews established and maintained political frameworks in their new lands of settlement highlights the distinction between the formation of sociocultural and sociopolitical communities. While shared cultural heritage was an important factor in organizing Iberian Jews into new congregations and communities, this same process was also marked by widespread conflict between the vast majority of the Jewish polity and those Jews who sought to position themselves as their communities' principal governing agents.Less
This chapter examines the development of Jewish political structures. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Sephardic world was built upon an organic manifestation of cultural identity, but it was also shaped by a core tension within this emerging diaspora community between the government and the governed. In other words, the way in which successive generations of Sephardic Jews established and maintained political frameworks in their new lands of settlement highlights the distinction between the formation of sociocultural and sociopolitical communities. While shared cultural heritage was an important factor in organizing Iberian Jews into new congregations and communities, this same process was also marked by widespread conflict between the vast majority of the Jewish polity and those Jews who sought to position themselves as their communities' principal governing agents.
