Forgotten Giants

The Expulsion From Spain in 1492 is the central event of Spanish Jewish history. Forgotten Giants explores the lives, works, and ideas of twenty-six prominent Sephardic rabbis in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, in the time period straddling this upheaval. Three generations ate included: those who were born and lived in Spain, those who were born in Spain but left at a young age, and those who were sons of Spanish refugees. This fascinating series of tableaux of the lives of great Sephardic rabbis paints a vivid picture of Jewish life and thought in Spain before the 1492 expulsion (including the struggles of the rabbinical leadership against the missionary efforts of the Church to convert the Jews, and the theological debates of the fifteenth century), during the tumultuous years of exile from Spain and then Portugal, and after the reestablishment of the Sephardic communities in the Diaspora and in the Land of Israel. Rabbi Bit ton here revives the legacies of forgotten Sephardic giants and brings them to life for a new generation.