After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry

4. Community and Control in the Sephardic Diaspora

76 > 77 rise to multiple categories of belonging under the broader rubric of Jewish society. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Sephardic world was built upon an organic manifestation of cultural identity, but it was also shaped by a core tension within this nascent Diaspora community between the government and the governed. That is to say, the way in which successive generations of Sephardic Jews established and maintained political frameworks in their new lands of settlement highlights the distinction between the formation of sociocultural and sociopolitical communities. While shared cultural heritage was an important factor in organizing Iberian Jews into new congregations and communities, this same process was also marked by widespread conflict between the vast majority of the Jewish polity and those Jews who sought to position themselves as their communities’ principal governing agents. Traditionally, studies of Jewish communal organization in the Middle Ages have focused on the relationship between the Jews and their host societies , particularly regarding the question of political autonomy. Salon Baron, perhaps the most influential historian of Jewish social and political organization , characterized the premodern Jewish community as one that possessed “almost ‘extraterritorial’ status and ‘sovereign’ political powers.”1 Scholars who have followed this same basic approach have assumed that forces external to the Jewish community determined the nature of Jewish political life, rather than the attitudes and actions of that community’s constituent blocs. As discussed in chapter 1, this presumptive notion of a natural political solidarity among medieval Jews fails to capture the challenges and complexities the exiles faced in building new communities in their adopted homes. The present chapter will examine the ways in which the obstacles to Jewish selfgovernment that were so prevalent before 1492 continued to shape Jewish communities in their transition from Iberia to Diaspora, and from the medieval to the early modern world. The Concept of the Jewish Polity As had been the case throughout the Middle Ages, the terms used by sixteenth -century Jews to express the concept of community, polity, or nation did not have precise and universally agreed-upon definitions. Terms such as kahal, kehilla, and ‘edah were used interchangeably to denote a variety of corporate Jewish entities. This diversity in terminology reflects an implicit recognition of the amorphous nature of Jewish political life. Early modern Jews had a keen awareness of the multiplicity of categories of belonging and the ways in which they overlapped. Furthermore, this awareness appears to have led many Jews 78 > 79 curtailment of Jewish rights oscillated over the course of the sixteenth century , and the level of protection afforded the Jews differed from one ruler to the next. But neither group demonstrated a desire to change the status quo with regard to Jewish communal organization in the lands that came under their control. Even with regard to the question of Jewish rights, the popes and dukes of Counter-Reformation Italy were ultimately influenced as much by financial need and by the problems caused by the spasms of Jewish refugees that passed through their domains as they were by shifting ideological concerns. In Christian Europe, religious attitudes toward the Jews played an important role in determining where Jews could settle, and for how long. Yet, once settlement rights were granted, the principal external factor that shaped the nature of Jewish communal organization was that of taxes owed to the non-Jewish government. The situation was the same throughout the Islamic world. The Ottoman government, which by the mid-sixteenth century had become the regime under which the majority of Iberian Jews had come to reside, did not demonstrate any particular interest in the cultural identities of its Jewish communities. Nor was the Ottoman government concerned about the religious profiles of Jews who may or may not have passed through baptism, as was the case in Christian Europe. The defining factor with regard to Ottoman Jews was their status as a religious minority (dhimmi or zimmi) that was required to observe a certain set of rules and pay a poll tax. The Jews were allowed to organize themselves as they saw fit, as long as their taxes were paid in a regular and timely fashion. Strictly speaking, the Muslim legal system did not recognize any corporate Jewish entity beyond the essential religious divisions between Muslims and dhimmis. However, the realities of daily life made such adherence to legal theory impractical. The Jews residing in Ottoman lands separated themselves...