Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Sephardic Jews invited back to Spain after 500 years

The BBC Magazine reports that today, about 500 years since Spain's Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand threw out Muslims and Jews during the Inquisition, Spain is offering "fast-track" citizenship to Jewish descendants of the original Jewish community. If you teach the reconquista in World history, you might find this an interesting story.

The story profiles one descendant who found the offer enticing but found that she did not qualify. Her descendants converted to Catholicism in order to avoid death or expulsion. Consequently,their descendants are not Jewish, so technically did not qualify for the fast-track citizenship.

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