Language:
English
Year of publication:
1990
Titel der Quelle:
The Expulsion from Spain and the Holocaust
Angaben zur Quelle:
(1990) 18-25
Keywords:
Jews History Expulsion, 1492
;
Sephardim History 16th century
;
Rabbinical literature History and criticism
Abstract:
As part of the process of rebuilding Jewish life in new surroundings, the need to supply religious guidance induced authors to write many more treatises than had been composed earlier in Spain. In some new centers of Spanish Jewry there were confrontations between the autochthon customs and types of religious thought on one hand, and Sephardi customs and religious thought on the other. This was so in regard to differences in customs between Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the new arrivals from Spain, or with regard to encounters between the Spanish Kabbalah, with its particularistic tendencies, and the Italian Kabbalah, which was much more inclined to philosophy. The friction between different types of mystical trends contributed to productive literary activity in the new centers of Kabbalah. Not the trauma of the Expulsion, but more mundane processes played an important role in the explanation of the developments of Sephardi Jewry after the Expulsion. The huge post-Expulsion corpus of the Spanish rabbis suggests that messianic aspirations also did not play a crucial role in their writings. The literary creativity of the first generations of exiles seems to be motivated by the necessity to recreate Jewish life and communities in new places - e.g. in Northern Africa, Italy and the Ottoman Empire - based on the Jewish religion, but not on its apocalyptic-messianic aspects.
Note:
Record created automatically from multi-article record # 000087468
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