New Approaches to the Jewish Diaspora: The Sephardim as a Sub-Ethnic Group

The expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 created a new diaspora community spread throughout the early-modern Mediterranean. Scholarly understanding of the nature and initial development of Sephardi identity during the sixteenth century has been hampered by the enduring tendency to treat the Sephardi diaspora as part of the broader historical and cultural phenomenon of Jewish exile (galut). Greater attention to sub-ethnic identity as a defining element within Hispano-Jewish history and the subsequent recourse to current methodologies borrowed from the field of Diaspora Studies should lend greater insight into both early modern Jewish History and Diaspora Studies.