Leap of Faith

Based on deep archival, historical, and halakhic research, A Leap of Faith challenges decades of scholarly consensus to argue that few of the ritual objects published and displayed as representations of Jewish life in medieval Spain are actually “Jewish,” and that while the legacy of Sepharad looms large in the imagination of academics and cultural institutions, the physical remnants of Jewish Iberia are, in fact, quite limited.This book asks what happens when the desire to find surviving Sephardic material culture outweighs the evidence. Examining four objects featured in Memoria de Sefarad, a catalog produced amid renewed interest in Jewish Iberia spurred by the quincentenary of 1492, Julie A. Harris reveals the historiographic blind spots and methodological errors that led to their classification as Jewish ritual objects. Harris argues that analysis of Sephardic material culture must reckon with both academic interest and the burgeoning phenomenon of heritage tourism that, together, have produced a vision of the past influenced by wishful thinking. Verifying purported remnants of Sepharad, Harris argues, has become “a leap of faith.”A critical intervention in medieval Sephardic art and material culture, A Leap of Faith reconstructs how scholars have reached certain conclusions about these objects and confronts the difficulty of accepting absence—that little, if anything, remains. It will interest scholars and students of medieval Iberia, Jewish history, art history, religious studies, museum and heritage studies, and Sephardic studies.