JGSGB Specialist Talk - 16 May 2021 2pm – Dr Cecil Reid – “Breaking with the Past: The Jews of Spain before the Expulsion”
Our next meeting in the JGSGB Virtual Meeting Programme is a specialist talk on a Sephardic theme by Zoom. • Date: Sunday 16 May 2021 • Time: 14:00 London; 09:00 New York; 16:00 Jerusalem • Title: Breaking with the Past: The Jews of Spain before the Expulsion • Speaker: Dr Cecil Reid • Description: Spain was a crucible of social change in the 14th and 15th centuries. This was the case no more so than for the Jews: their remarkable millennium of cultural coexistence with their Christian and Muslim neighbours would end with their expulsion in 1492. But even before this final act, the communities came under an ever-increasing threat that was both physical and cultural. In this talk Dr. Reid considers the highs and the lows of Jewish life in these last two fraught centuries of the Middle Ages. The changes that affected the communities provide a colourful but also a tragic backdrop to a unique chapter of European Jewish history, one that had repercussions...