2012-2013 Academic Catalog

Dec 07, 2025

2012-2013 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

HIST 252 - The Sephardi Jews in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America

Type of Course: Lecture, Discussion

This course analyzes the checkered history of the Sephardi Jews, starting with Jewish life in medieval Iberia. It follows their trails after the expulsion from Spain (1492) and their forced conversion in Portugal (1497), when a large number migrated to the Ottoman Empire. Many others, who remained in their ancestral lands and were forced to convert, ended up living culturally hybrid lives. In the seventeeth century, Sephardic communities in northern Europe began to blossom, while both Jews and ‘New Christians’ took part in transatlantic pursuits as merchants, planters, brokers, and financiers. In 1654, Jews first arrived on North American soil, where New York, Charleston, and Newport would soon be home to dynamic Jewish communities. As the eighteenth century advanced, the Sephardin were increasingly outnumbered by Ashkenazi Jews, setting off their marginalization in both Europe and the Americas.