On This Day

Spain’s 1492 expulsion decree transformed Jewish communities through forced migration, property liquidation, family separation, and hurried negotiations with local authorities. Haim Beinart’s archival reconstruction shows that departure was not a single procession but a regionally varied process shaped by debts, transport, conversion, and confiscation. Many refugees first entered Portugal or North Africa, while others moved toward Italy and Ottoman lands. The resulting diaspora carried Iberian liturgy, language, legal habits, and communal memory into new institutions across the Mediterranean and Atlantic for generations.