The history of the Jews of Spain is a remarkable story that begins in the remote past and continues today. For more than a thousand years, Sepharad (the Hebrew word for Spain) was home to a large Jewish community noted for its richness and virtuosity. Summarily expelled in 1492 and forced into exile, their tragedy of expulsion marked the end of one critical phase of their history and the beginning of another. Indeed, in defiance of all logic and expectation, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain became an occasion for renewed creativity. Nor have five hundred years of wandering extinguished the identity of the Sephardic Jews, or diminished the proud memory of the dazzling civilization, which they created on Spanish soil. This book is intended to serve as an introduction and scholarly guide to that history.

A concise retelling of the Sephardic Jews' grim story

An award-winning historian presents an emotional history of Jewish refugees biding their time in Portugal as they attempt to escape Nazi Europe This riveting book describes the experience of Jewish refugees as they fled Hitler to live in limbo in Portugal until they could reach safer havens abroad. Drawing attention not only to the social and physical upheavals of refugee life, Kaplan highlights their feelings as they fled their homes and histories while begging strangers for kindness. An emotional history of fleeing, this book probes how specific locations touched refugees’ inner lives, including the borders they nervously crossed or the overcrowded transatlantic ships that signaled their liberation.

"This volume is a reprint of newspaper reports of a series of lectures delivered by the author from the pulpit of Congregation B'nai Jehudah, Kansas City, Mo., during the Fall and Winter of 1885-1886. The lectures were prepared to fulfill the requirements of popular discourses, and designed to convey information upon a highly important epoch of the world's history, that is almost neglected in English literature. The thought of publishing these lectures in book form was utterly foreign to the author throughout their preparation, until an urgent solicitation from very many persons, both Jews and Gentiles, in all parts of this country, whose interest in these lectures was aroused by their wide-spread republication by the Press, made it a duty."--Goodreads.com.