Joseph Perez – författare

Few events in the history of Spain have provoked as much controversy as the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Conflicts within the Catholic Church, suspicions within the newly unified Spain, and the claims of Spanish merchants combined to make the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella intolerant and inquisitorial. Yet the roots of Spanish anti-Semitism went deeper.  In this concise survey of the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews, Joseph PÉrez studies the evolution of the Jewish community in Spain from the time of the Visigoths to the reign of the Catholic kings. He explores the Jewish community’s role in creating and sustaining the vibrant cultural, political, and economic world of medieval Spain, and how growing religious intolerance, a pervasive resentment of the “others,” and a string of escalating encroachments culminated in expulsion.

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 156.Space is dominated by plasma and a myriad of physical processes through which it has been evolving for billions of years. In our effort to understand what the universe has been and what it will become, we turn to the nature of matter, space, and the various interactions that change this environment. Our contact with the remote regions of the universe is dominated by the photons and high-energy particles produced there long ago, with light often the result of physical processes that involve particles accelerated to high energy. Developing our knowledge of particle acceleration across all spatial scales and energies is one of the keys to understanding the evolving universe. It is also the subject of this book.

La cultura sefardí siempre ha despertado gran interés más allá de la historiografía especializada. Tras la expulsión en 1492 y durante siglos, los judíos desterrados prolongaron su relación con España a través de numerosas manifestaciones en las que se citan, sin solución de continuidad, el resentimiento, la idealización y la nostalgia. El caso quizás no tenga parangón en la historia: raras veces una comunidad expulsada ha mantenido semejante fidelidad a sus orígenes. Incluso en las peores horas del siglo XX volvieron su vista a la tierra que aún contemplaban como refugio, España, donde tal vez no pueda hablarse de racismo antisemita pero sí de antijudaísmo. Ésta es la historia, bella y traumática, que trata de resumir el presente libro.