"In the Shadow of History"

From the introduction to In the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity by Jose Faur

‘The Jews are pious with God, with their own, with the aliens, with the pilgrims, with the enemies, with the animals, with the birds, with the trees, and in sum the entire Law is a compendium of kindness, and a declaration of love.’

A principal thesis of this book is that the conversos (singular, converso) were a factor in the collapse of the ecclesiastical society of the Middle Ages and the rise of secularism and modernity. This follows a general rule whereby, when a social group coerces another to forfeit its own values and to integrate with them, the coercers in turn become affected by the very people they wanted to proselytize. Within this context the impact of the forced conversion of Jews in the Iberian peninsula will be explored, and the bearing that these conversions had on Jews and the Christian world. When studying the large number of Jews converting to Christianity in Spain and Portugal, scholars are quick to point out to the Maimonidean tradition—the cultural and philosophical heritage developed in Jewish Andalusia—as a principal factor in the collapse of Jewish life. The general premise is that secular knowledge and sophistication foster defection from Judaism. This judgment itself and the basic suppositions it comprises are the product of one of the most profound religious controversies during the Jewish Middle Ages: whether to accept the religious notions of Christian society as the perimeter of Jewish spiritual life.

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