‘Umot ha-‘Olam (The Nations of the World): Relations with the Other(s): IBERIAN WATERSHEDS: The Crisis of judeoconversos and the Evolution of Anti-Jewish Bigotry

This chapter addresses Jews’ relations with their non-Jewish neighbors. Part I begins with a discussion of the mass conversion of half- to two-thirds of Iberian Jews to Christianity, and the resulting phenomenon of New Christians or (judeo-)conversos, as well as their fate under inquisitorial and ethno-racist persecution. Axel Kaplan-Szyld’s ensuing contribution treats the phenomenon of “learned” anti-Judaism and bigotry against New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula, detailing a momentous shift in perceptions of Jews that foreshadowed modern, pseudoscientific antisemitism. Part II of the chapter treats the high degree of socioeconomic integration that Jews enjoyed in the Ottoman Empire, and their concomitant preservation of their culture as a “protected people” under Muslim law. The section explains the genesis of a conglomerate (Eastern) “Sefardi” identity, focusing on socioeconomic factors that promoted stability, coalescence, and economic advantage. Relations between Jews and Christians in an era of endemic religious and political conflict in Central Europe form the focus of the ensuing section. Through a discussion of the phenomena Christian Hebraism, Christian Kabbalah, Christian Millenarianism, Protestant and Catholic anti-Judaism, and the Thirty Years’ War, the chapter explains how Jews navigated the collapse of Christian unity. The last section relates the development of the culture of Newly Judaicized Iberians, the Western Sefardim of the North Atlantic during an age of burgeoning state mercantilism. Of interest here is the culturally liminal nature of these subjects, creative and enterprising people whose Ibero-Catholic backgrounds deeply shaped their worldviews and behaviors.