In just four short months, from April to July of 1492, the Jews of Spain—a community that had persevered if not prospered for more than a millennium—faced a bleak choice among three repugnant alternatives: conversion, flight, or death. The expulsion decree rehashed many familiar themes permeating the anti-Jewish sentiment that had intensified in Spain over the previous few centuries: the corrupting influence of Jews on Christians, the threat posed by their laws to Christian law, and the larger falsity that
