(25w4) Sephardic Origins: An overview of the history of Iberian Jewry (9 Feb 2025)

February 9th, 2025, 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

The recording of this class is at https://youtu.be/yOsQkriM2KI

This class will provide a glimpse into the glories and tragedies of Iberian Jewry, how its end marked so many new beginnings, and how the ripple effects of its destruction are so strongly felt to this day. 

Join us in a voyage through time to uncover …

  • how the Muslim conquest in the early 8th century saved Iberian Jewry from extinction.
  • how events far away set the stage for a Golden Era of Iberian Jewry between the 10th and 12th centuries
  • how geopolitical realities that led to a decline during the 13th and 14th centuries, the so-called Silver Era.
  • how Massacres of 1391 marked the beginning of the Iron Age, a period of persecutions and conversions.
  • events leading to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
  • the forced conversions of 1497 in Portugal that marked the end of Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula.
  • the birth of large-scale crypto-Judaism.
  • the many diasporas of the Iberian Jews.
  • current echoes of a distant Sephardic past.

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Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Pereira is a native of Lisbon, Portugal and moved to the United States in 1982.  Aside from Judaic Studies and Economics, his passions include history, in particular Iberian Jewish history.

Rabbi Pereira received his rabbinical ordination in Jerusalem in 2004 and has served in the last two decades as assistant rabbi and education director at Chabad of Virginia.  He has taught extensively in topics ranging from Jewish history and law to Jewish philosophy and mysticism and is the founder-director for the Richmond chapter of the Jewish Learning Institute.  He is the author of two widely circulated research documents — Hadrat Melech, biographical notes on the Jewish sages throughout the centuries and Chachmei Halacha, an overview of the major works in Jewish law over the last fifteen hundred years.  More recently, he co-authored with Rabbi Eli Rosenfeld of Chabad Portugal two bilingual books of commentaries by rabbis who called Portugal home in the fifteenth century — Jewish Voices from Portugal on commentaries on the Torah portion and Jewish Ethics from Portugal on commentaries on Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”).

An economist and university professor by trade, Rabbi Pereira received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University in 1987 and has been a faculty member at the College of William and Mary since 1995 where he is the Thomas Vaughan Professor of Economics and Public Policy.  His main research and teaching interests are in the area of economics of the public sector, specifically on taxation, social security reform, infrastructure policies, and environmental issues.  Having served frequently as advisor for successive Portuguese governments over the last two decades, he made a definite technical contribution toward the introduction of a carbon tax in Portugal in 2015.  He is the author of over 120 refereed research articles in international journals and of several policy books.

Rabbi Pereira lives with his wife Elisheva in Richmond, Virginia. They have five children and eleven grandchildren who live in the USA and in Israel.


 

 

The Sinagoga del Trânsito in Toledo, Spain was constructed 1357 by Samuel HaLevi Abulafia who was the Treasurer to King Peter of Castile.  It is currently a Sephardic Museum and library.