Episode 56 with David Graizbord

In this episode, we explore the development of Jewish identities during the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. Amongst other topics, we discuss the origins of Jewish communities in Europe, the creation and impact of Judeoconversos in medieval Iberia, and the development of a unique Jewish civilization and identity during the Early Modern Period.

The Episode

The Guest

David Graizbord is a historian of early modern and modern Jews. To date his research has focused mostly on the Western Sephardi Diaspora of the seventeenth century. In particular, Graizbord’s writing approaches questions of religious, social, and political identity as these questions shaped the lives of so-called “New Christians” or “conversos” from the Iberian Peninsula who became Jews in exile.  He has also written about Judeophobia and the culture of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions; marginality and dissidence in Jewish and Ibero-Catholic societies of the seventeenth century; ethnicity and religion among Sephardim from medieval times to the 1700s; and converso trading networks in the Atlantic. More recently he has published research on Jewish ethnic identity and Zionism among American Jews.

Suggested Readings

• Bodian, Miriam. Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation.Indiana University Press, 1999.
• ———. Dying in the Law of Moses.Indiana University Press, 2007.
• Graizbord, David. Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora.University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
• Nirenberg, David. Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. Norton, 2013. (especially Chapter 6)
• Perelis, Ronnie. Blood and Faith: Family and Identity in the Early Modern Sephardic Atlantic. Indiana University Press, 2016.
• Pulido Serrano, Ignacio. Injurias a Cristo: religión, política y antijudaísmo en el siglo XVII.Alcalá, 2002.
• Roth, Norman. Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict.Brill, 1994.
• Salomon, H.P. Portrait of a New Christian: Fernao Alvares Melo (1569-1632).Gulbenkian, 1982.
• Stroumsa, Sara. Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain.Princeton University Press, 2019.