Fic­tion

South of Sepharad: The 1492 Jew­ish Expul­sion from Spain

Eric Z. Weintraub
September 1, 2023

Grana­da, Spain, 1492. Vidal ha-Rofeh is a Jew­ish physi­cian devot­ed to his faith, fam­i­ly, and patients. When Queen Isabel­la and King Fer­di­nand con­quered Grana­da they signed the Alham­bra Decree, an edict order­ing all Jews to con­vert to Catholi­cism or depart Spain in three months’ time under penal­ty of death.

Against his wife’s belief that con­vert­ing is safer than exile, Vidal insists they flee. Unwill­ing­ly leav­ing behind their old­est daugh­ter with her Catholic hus­band, Vidal’s fam­i­ly joins a car­a­van of 200 Jews jour­ney­ing to start their lives anew across the sea in Fez. On the car­a­van, Vidal strug­gles to bal­ance his physi­cian duties of car­ing for the sick while strug­gling to mend strained rela­tion­ships with his fam­i­ly. At the same time, his daugh­ter back home finds her­self exposed to the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion liv­ing as a con­ver­so in a Chris­t­ian empire. 

Pre­sent­ing read­ers with a painful but impor­tant part of Jew­ish his­to­ry, South of Sepharad is the sto­ry of a father who holds tight­ly to his faith, fam­i­ly, and integri­ty while con­fronting the harsh real­i­ties of forced exile.

inqui­si­tion
spain
jbc net­work

Discussion Questions

Ques­tions cour­tesy of Eric Z. Weintraub

  1. If forced to decide between giv­ing up your beliefs or leav­ing your home for­ev­er, which would you choose and why?
  2. What did you know about the 1492 Expul­sion of the Jews before read­ing this novel?
  3. What sur­prised you most about the 1492 Expul­sion while read­ing this novel?
  4. Which char­ac­ter did you iden­ti­fy with the most? Why?
  5. Were there times you dis­agreed with a character’s actions? What would you have done differently?
  6. How was the Expul­sion sim­i­lar to oth­er per­se­cu­tions Jew­ish peo­ple have faced through­out his­to­ry? How was it different?
  7. The end of the nov­el includes a Rec­om­mend­ed Resources sec­tion that ref­er­ences non- fic­tion books the author con­sult­ed. Did read­ing South of Sepharad inspire you to seek out fur­ther books on this top­ic? If so, which books inter­est you?
  8. All loca­tions in the nov­el are real places. Which loca­tions in Spain and/​or Moroc­co would you like most to vis­it and why?
  9. What do you think the author’s pur­pose was in writ­ing this nov­el? What ideas was he try­ing to get across?
  10. Have any of your thoughts about reli­gion and faith changed or deep­ened after read­ing this nov­el? If so, how?