Ships of Sorrow : Columbus...

At a Westside synagogue this week, scholars and Sephardic Jews remembered the other landmark event of 1492.

As everyone knows, Columbus reached the New World in 1492. But that same year, Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, also ordered the nation’s Jews either to convert to Christianity or to leave the country under pain of death.

At least 50,000 Jews--some believe as many as 300,000--were banished from Spain. Scholars say that Columbus sailed from Palos because larger Spanish ports were packed with Jewish exiles. Known as Sephardim from the Hebrew word for Spain , the banished settled in the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Italy and wherever else they were allowed to live in relative peace.

The scattering of the world’s largest and most accomplished Jewish community in 1492 was the theme of a two-day conference, sponsored by the Sephardic Educational Center of Los Angeles, that concluded Monday.

As organizer David Raphael explained: “I want people to be aware of the full spectrum of events in 1492. I want them to know there was this tragedy that occurred alongside Columbus’ epic discovery of America.” Like Native Americans and others, Raphael thinks 1992 should be not so much a year of celebration as one of sober re-evaluation.

Raphael, who lives in North Hollywood, is an anesthesiologist who has published two novels about the expulsion and is completing an anthology of documents about the event. As he pointed out, the banished Jews were not allowed to take gold, silver, horses and other valuables out of the country with them.

“Jews were literally stripped of their money,” he said. Jewish property, including debts owed to Jews by Christians, were taken over by the crown. Columbus’ second voyage, with its fleet of 17 ships, was financed with assets confiscated from banished Jews.

The expulsion conference was held in Sephardic Temple Tiferet Israel in Westwood, where King Juan Carlos of Spain made a historic visit in 1987. Although Spain began reaching out to the Sephardim during the Franco regime, anti-Jewish legislation, such as that prohibiting the slaughtering rituals used in preparing kosher meat, remained in effect until recently.

Between talks, many of the 300 attendees compared notes in Ladino, the admixture of Spanish and Hebrew that has survived for centuries among the Sephardim.

Among the speakers was Allan Abravanel, an attorney from Portland, Ore., who writes a quarterly newsletter for descendants of Don Isaac Abravanel, the near-legendary leader of the Spanish Jewish community in 1492. Abravanel said he sends out 500 copies of the newsletter to relatives throughout the world.

Local newsletter recipients at the conference included Alvin and Marianne Barbanell of Beverly Hills and Jay and Jean Abarbanel of West Los Angeles. The attorney said there is an old Ladino expression that translates “It’s enough that my name is Abravanel.” He said that the adage goes on to imply that the proud family name (however it is spelled) is no guarantee that the bearer will have enough to eat. Despite terrible losses in the Holocaust, there are probably at least 3,000 living descendants of Don Isaac, Abravanel said.

Many of the speakers emphasized that Spain’s decision to expel its Jews had been a boon to other nations, particularly the Ottoman Empire. Jewish physicians, scientists and business people were valued by the Ottomans, and the Jewish community was protected by the ruling sultans from persecution by Christians. Turkey, at the heart of the old Ottoman Empire, is celebrating 1992 as the quincentennial of its providing refuge to Spain’s banished Jews and Moors.

Historian Joan Ullman, of the University of Washington, argued that 1391 was a more crucial year in Jewish history than 1492. In that year, 50,000 Jews were massacred throughout Spain, often by mobs inflamed by clerics. An estimated 100,000 more were forcibly converted to Christianity. In the 15th Century it was the Conversos, or New Christians, who were scrutinized by the Inquisition for backsliding and often imprisoned, tortured and even burned at the stake. The Inquisition was headed by Queen Isabella’s confessor, Torquemada, who, like Ferdinand, is believed to have had Converso blood.

Several speakers argued that Spain lost its intellectual vigor along with its Jews. According to Judith Elkin, a historian at the University of Michigan, the New World also suffered from the anti-Semitic legislation of 1492. Jews and most Conversos were officially excluded from the Spanish territories in the Americas until the beginning of the 19th Century.

Elkin said that medieval stereotypes about Jews were often promulgated by the church in the New World, where the paucity of Jews did not preclude fear and suspicion of them. Anti-Semitism persists in much of Latin America today, she said, as evidenced by discrimination against Jews in the armed services and elsewhere.

Raphael said he thinks it is important for everyone to remember the ferocity with which Ferdinand and Isabella dealt with Spain’s Jewish and Moorish minorities.

“What really irritates me is this characterization of them as being such benign monarchs,” he said. Whatever else Isabella may have been, she was no saint, said Raphael, who believes it would be an affront to Jews for her to be canonized, as has been proposed.