A Way Back Home: The Defiant Return of Jews to Cervantes’s Spain
Grant
Overview
Affiliation
View All
Overview
Abstract
The goal of my project A Way Back Home: The Defiant Return of Jews to Cervantes’s Spain is to publish an interdisciplinary book that would appeal to both scholars and the general public. The 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain, and the accounts of Jews who secretly practiced their religion thereafter, have generated tremendous critical attention; however, openly-practicing Jews who returned to Madrid in the first half of the 17th century, in both real life and as fictional characters, have been mostly overlooked.
My book will bring to life the stories of those Jews who openly identified as such and who thrived in the heart of the Spanish Empire by integrating the following: unpublished Spanish archival material, lesser-known autobiographies of Catholic captives who interacted with free Jews in the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean works of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, and those of his rival Lope de Vega, the Spanish equivalent of Shakespeare.
Finally, the epilogue will bring the reader into the 21st century, as it will recount the return of open Judaism to Madrid not only from the perspective of the author, who lived in Madrid and witnessed this rebirth from 2008 to 2009, but also from the Jewish leaders and Chief Rabbi of Madrid who led this Jewish renaissance in the Spanish capital.
