Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants: Returning to the Jewish Past in Spain and Portugal

by Dalia Kandiyoti (Editor), Rina Benmayor (Editor)

Overview

In 2015, both Portugal and Spain passed laws enabling descendants of Sephardi Jews to obtain citizenship, an historic offer of reconciliation for Jews who were forced to undergo conversions or expelled from Iberia nearly half a millennia ago. Drawing on the memory of the expulsion from Sepharad, the scholarly and personal essays in Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants analyze the impact of reconciliation laws on descendants and contemporary forms of citizenship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800738249
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	01/13/2023
Series:	Remapping Cultural History , #16
Pages:	343
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Dalia Kandiyoti is Professor of English at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. She is the author of The Converso’s Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Stanford UniversityPress, 2020), Migrant Sites: America, Place, and Diaspora Literatures (Dartmouth College/UniversityPress of New England, 2009), and numerous articles on contemporary Sephardi, Latinx, and migration/diaspora literatures.

Rina Benmayor is Professor Emerita at California State UniversityMonterey Bay, where she taught oral history, literature, and digital storytelling. Her books and co-edited volumes include: Romances Judeo-Españoles de Oriente (Gredos 1979; on Sephardic ballads); Latino Cultural Citizenship (Beacon 1997); Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (Duke 2001); and Memory, Subjectivities, and Representation: Approaches to Oral History in Latin America, Portugal, and Spain (Palgrave 2015).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Sephardi Jews, Citizenship, and Reparation in Historical Context
Dalia Kandiyoti and Rina Benmayor

Part I: Reparation and Reconciliation? Legal and Political Perspectives on the 2015 Laws

Chapter 1. “Reparative Citizenship”: Confronting Injustices of the Past or Building Modern Nationalisms?
Alfons Aragoneses

Chapter 2. Beyond Reparatory Justice: The Portuguese “Law of Return” as Nation Branding
Isabel David and Gabriela Anouck Côrte-Real Pinto

Chapter 3. Reparations in Spanish Parliamentary Debates about the 2015 Nationality Law for Descendants of Sephardi Jews
Davide Aliberti

Chapter 4. Personal Essay: Passport to the Past, Passport to the Future
Colette Capriles

Part II: Roots of “Returns”: Early Uses of Jewish and Muslim History

Chapter 5. “Spaniards We Were, Spaniards We Are, and Spaniards We Will Be”: Salonica’s Sephardic Jews and the Instrumentalization of the Spanish Past, 1898–1944
Devin E. Naar

Chapter 6. “Spanish Jews” and “Friendly Muslims”: The Historical Absence of a Citizenship Campaign for Muslims of Iberian Descent
Elisabeth Bolorinos Allard

Chapter 7. Personal Essay: The Story of a Spanish Dönme
Uluç Özüyener

Part III: Negotiating the Present: Between States and Official Communities

Chapter 8. Moriscos Andalusíes: Historical Reparation, Reconciliation, and the Duty of Memory
Elena Arigita and Laura Galián

Chapter 9. Negotiating Historical Redress: The Spanish Law of Nationality for Sephardi Descendants and Spain’s Jewish Communities
Daniela Flesler and Michal Rose Friedman

Chapter 10. Personal Essay: “Congratulations, You Are Portuguese!” Reflections on Identity and Nationality
Rita Ender

Chapter 11. Personal Essay: Sefarad Postponed
Ruth Behar

Part IV: Sephardi Descendants: Emotions, Identities, and Bureaucracies

Chapter 12. “La Nostalgia de Sefarad Tira Mucho, Pero No Tanto”: Attachment, Sentiment, and the Ethics of Refusal
Charles A. McDonald

Chapter 13. Affective Citizenship and Iberian Sephardi Descendants
Rina Benmayor

Chapter 14. Descendants of Conversos in the Americas: The Ancestral Past, Sephardi Identity, and Citizenship in Spain and Portugal
Dalia Kandiyoti

Chapter 15. Portuguese Citizenship for Brazilian Descendants of Sephardic Jews: A Netnography
Marina Pignatelli

Appendix: Certifying Origins for Sephardic Descendants in Portugal: A Snapshot of the Evaluation Process
Teresa Santos and Heraldo Bento

Chapter 16. Personal Essay: The Fez in the Water—Exile and Return
Victor Silverman

Coda: Directions in Citizenship and Historical Repair
Dalia Kandiyoti and Rina Benmayor

Index

Editorial Reviews

“Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants is a thorough, thoughtful, and empathetic exploration of the many issues that surround the 2015 Spanish and Portuguese nationality laws and the choice, on the part of individual Jews of Sephardi descent and conversos, to pursue (or eschew) this option. In this fascinating and compelling collection, editors Kandiyoti and Benmayor have gathered an astonishing range of perspectives on the historical, emotive, sociological, and political dynamics that underlie the Sephardi quest for “reparative citizenship.”” • Sarah Abrevaya Stein, UCLA

“Kandiyoti and Benmayor's volume brings together the legal and emotional repercussions of a return to Spain and Portugal for Sephardic Jews. Beautifully intermingling questions of expulsion, exclusion and reparation, Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants treats readers to a nuanced and multifaceted examination of Sephardim. By melding personal essays with rigorous academic studies, the editors have compiled a book that speaks to the heart and mind while addressing the discomfiting realities of an invitation six hundred years in the making.” • Sara J. Brenneis, Amherst College

From the Publisher