The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain

On 31 March 1492, in newly conquered Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella signed the edict: every Jew who would not accept baptism must leave the kingdom by the end of July. Its driving force was the Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, who argued that converts would never become true Christians while open Jews lived beside them. This was a land where Jews had lived for more than a thousand years, where the Kuzari, the Mishneh Torah and Nachmanides' commentaries had been written.

Don Isaac Abarbanel, treasurer of the crown, and Don Abraham Senior, head of the Castilian communities, offered an enormous ransom to have the decree annulled. According to the chronicle Shevet Yehudah, Torquemada burst in with a crucifix and threw it on the table: 'Judas sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver — now sell Him yourselves.' The edict stood. Senior converted; Abarbanel went into exile.

The deadline fell in the first days of Av, and the last ships sailed as the Ninth of Av — the date of both Temples' destruction — drew to a close. Between one and two hundred thousand people left for Portugal, North Africa, Italy and the Ottoman Empire, whose Sultan Bayezid II welcomed them, remarking that a king who impoverishes his own realm to enrich another is no wise ruler.