Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History

Sephardi identity hasmeant different things at different times, but has always entailed a connectionwith Spain, from which the Jews were expelled in 1492. While Sephardi Jews havelived in numerous cities and towns throughout history, certain cities had agreater impact in the shaping of their culture. This book focuses on those thatmay be considered most important, from Cordoba in the tenth century to Toledo,Venice, Safed, Istanbul, Salonica, and Amsterdam at the dawn of the seventeenthcentury. Each served as a venue in which a particular dimension of SephardiJewry either took shape or was expressed in especially intense form.Significantly, these cities were mostly heterogeneous in their population andculture—half of them under Christian rule and half under Muslim rule—and thistoo shaped the Sephardi world-view and attitude. While Sephardim cultivated adistinctive identity, they felt at home in the cultures of their adopted lands.Drawing upon a variety of both primary and secondary sources, Jane Gerberdemonstrates that Sephardi history and culture have always been multifaceted.Her interdisciplinary approach captures the many contexts in which the life ofthe Jews from Iberia unfolded, without either romanticizing the past ordiluting its reality.