May 22, 2016 through Dec 31, 2016
In 1492, Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella issued a royal edict ordering all Jews to either leave the country or convert to Catholicism. The Spanish Inquisition (and later, the Portugese and Mexican Inquisitions) stood ready to persecute anyone who failed to abide. Violators would endure prisons, torture and death.
Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities, opening May 22, 2016, leaps into the ensuing diaspora, a journey that stretches back to biblical times. For the first time, a major institution tells the comprehensive story of how Spain’s Jewry found a tenuous foothold in North America. Despite continued persecution, its people persisted—sometimes as upright Catholic conversos, sometimes as self-identifying “crypto-Jews.”
