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Lecture

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
The Expulsion(s) from Spain

Tuesday 29.04.2025

How to watch

This lecture starts on 29 April at 5:00pm (UK).

Summary

The unification of Spain under Isabela and Ferdinand in 1492 was accompanied by a decree expelling all Spanish Jews out of the Peninsula. About two-thirds of Iberian Jewry chose to stay and convert to Christianity, a third kept their faith and left. This presentation looks at the various factors that led to this dramatic historical event.

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

An image of Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite teaches Chinese History, Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and sometimes Jewish history, at NYU. He is author of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Harvard, 2005); The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford, 2009); He is co-editor of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Culture, and Politics (Brandeis, 2013); The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept (Columbia University Press, 2017), and Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History, (Hawaii University Press, 2023).