Articles

    1. Masked Jews: Conversion and Secret Identities in Late Medieval Iberia 2021

      Ifft Decker, Sarah

      Journal Of Jewish Identities, Vol. 14, Issue 1, pp. 71 - 91.

      According to a query they sent to Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret—chief rabbi of Barcelona in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries—there was a convert to Christianity who "was going from plac... Read more

      According to a query they sent to Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret—chief rabbi of Barcelona in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries—there was a convert to Christianity who "was going from place to place, and in one city he tells the non-Jews that he believes in their idol worship, and in another city he enters the House of Israel and says that he is a Jew, and we do not know if he is a Jew or not. The thirteenth-century Christian "dream of conversion" relied on the central assumption that Jews (as well as Muslims) might be persuaded of the truth of Christianity, and that their subsequent conversion would bring about a complete and seamless transformation.3 Converts who failed to fully transition to an exclusively Christian identity found themselves subject to inquisitorial prosecution and, if they failed to repent and change their behavior, execution.4 The French royal authorities who exercised jurisdiction over this particular convert might have worked to preserve their own authority over Jews in the face of that of the Inquisition, but ultimately provided little protection to converts who illicitly reverted to their previous faith.5 In other words, medieval Christian authorities would have immediately sought to categorize this convert—not as a Jew or a Christian—but as either a repentant Christian or an irredeemable one. [...]texts permitted him to target Jews directly, whereas the Latin polemics of his new coreligionists primarily addressed an internal Christian audience.8 His linguistic and textual skills, combined with his convert status, also endowed him with a certain authority as a polemicist in the minds of his new coreligionists, if not his former ones.9 In more prosaic contexts, converts regardless of sincerity maintained social and economic ties to Jewish communities and to their own past Jewish selves. Convert polemicists like Pau Cristià and Alfonso of Valladolid overtly wielded their Jewish past as a weapon against present Jews. [...]while converts in theory could disappear into the Christian majority, in practice many maintained family connections with Jews, or made economic claims rooted in actions and relationships from their Jewish past. Read less

      Journal Article  |  Full Text Online

    2. Invisible Concealment of Invisibility Crypto-Judaism as a Theological Paradigm of Racial... 2018

      Lapidot, Elad

      Religions (Basel, Switzerland ), Vol. 9, Issue 11, p. 339.

      The motif of secret, crypto-Judaism has a history that reaches further back into the theological tradition. It no doubt structurally arises from or closely related to the epistemo-political challen... Read more

      The motif of secret, crypto-Judaism has a history that reaches further back into the theological tradition. It no doubt structurally arises from or closely related to the epistemo-political challenges posed by the unworldliness and absolutely inner being of faith, which in the political or inter-subjective dimension immediately raises the question of evidence. The question of evidence, i.e., for the invisible faith, becomes acute in the case of conversion, where the basic premise is the initial absence of faith. Paradoxically, conversion is consequently the establishment of the convert’s fundamental faithlessness, of her originally non-Christian element, which the convert, in the very same act of conversion, claims no longer exists. It is easy to see the conceptual constellation that would present the convert as structural deception. At the Iberian threshold of modernity, in the face of mass Jewish conversion and assimilation, this paradox appeared in the image of the “new Christians”, the marranos, structurally suspected to be crypto-Jews, to the effect that the ultimate evidence of faith was a certificate of limpieza de sangre, “purity of blood”. This paper will follow the historian Yosef HayimYerushalmi in tracing the conceptual link between the Inquisition’s notion of crypto-Jews and the racialized figure of the Jew in modern anti-Semitism. Read less

      Journal Article  |  Full Text Online

    3. From Christian Polemic to a Jewish-Converso Dialogue: Jewish Skepticism and Rabbinic-Christian... 2018

      Yisraeli, Yosi

      Medieval Encounters : Jewish, Christian, And Muslim Culture In Confluence And Dialogue, Vol. 24, Issue 1-3, pp. 160 - 196.

      Abstract This article presents a new reading of the polemical strategies and arguments embodied in the “anti-Jewish” tractate by the converted bishop of Burgos, Pablo de Santa María (c.1352–1435), ... Read more

      Abstract This article presents a new reading of the polemical strategies and arguments embodied in the “anti-Jewish” tractate by the converted bishop of Burgos, Pablo de Santa María (c.1352–1435), the Scrutinium scripturarum (c.1432). It suggests the Scrutinium reflected a unique polemical dynamic that emerged between converts and Jews following the mass conversions of 1391 and the early fifteenth century, regarding the spiritual assimilation of converts to their new faith. Grappling with the new challenges faced by converts, the Scrutinium articulated a Christian approach toward rabbinic traditions and Jewish skepticism that differed dramatically from the scholastic–polemical traditions that were employed at the disputation of Tortosa. Its introduction of rabbinic esotericism provided its Latin-reading audience new historical and theological grounds for the integration of rabbinic authority within Christian scholarship and history. In doing so, it embodied what could be considered a distinct “converso voice,” which challenged the customary religious boundaries between Judaism and Christianity. Read less

      Journal Article  |  Full Text Online

    See all 48 article results

    Books & Media

    1. The Marrano specter : Derrida and Hispanism

      Erin Graff Zivin, editor.

      TRLN Shared Print Collection | Book

    2. The Forgotten Diaspora : Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World

      Peter Mark, José da Silva Horta.

      Online Resources DS135 .S34 M37 2011 ebook | Book

    3. Menasseh ben Israel : rabbi of Amsterdam

      Steven Nadler.

      TRLN Shared Print Collection | Book

    See 3 books & media results


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