The 1492 Expulsion : Scholar Moshe Lazar will speak on Spain’s order that all Jews must convert or leave.

Myriad quincentennial events marking Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World have overshadowed another significant event of Spanish history that occurred the same year.

The ejection of the Jews from Spain will be the topic of a lecture at 7:30 p.m. on April 26.

USC professor Moshe Lazar will discuss that event in his lecture, “1492 Edict of Expulsion: Spain Expels All Jews” at Temple Etz Chaim, 1080 Janss Road, Thousand Oaks.

Cantor Isaac Behar of the Sephardic Temple Tiffereth Israel in Los Angeles will also participate in the program.

“The word Sephardic usually refers to Spanish and Portuguese Jews and their descendants who came originally from the Iberian Peninsula,” said Rabbi Shimon Paskow of Temple Etz Chaim. “A number of the members of our synagogue are of Sephardic descent. And they take a great deal of pride in their ancestry and heritage.”

Lazar, 62, is a professor of comparative literature and an authority in Sephardic studies.

At the international symposium on the expulsion, which Lazar organized and chaired at USC recently, Lazar said there is still disagreement about the number of Jews involved, but many scholars now believe a maximum of 80,000 left Spain and another 40,000 to 50,000 converted to Christianity to remain in the country.

It was previously believed that the numbers were in the hundreds of thousands.

The Edict of Expulsion came on the heels of a significant military victory for the armies of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille. After a long siege, the city of Granada in southern Spain was captured, ending nearly eight centuries of Muslim rule in Spain.

Urged on by Catholic clerics to achieve religious unity, the monarchs issued the Edict on March 31, 1492, ordering all Jews to leave the country within four months.

Those who agreed to be baptized could remain along with many Jews who had previously converted after a wave of pogroms that began in 1391. And from about 1480, the Inquisition--during which backsliding converts and suspected heretics were tortured and burned at the stake--influenced many more to at least ostensibly convert. All other Jews were ordered to leave by Aug. 2 and never return under penalty of death and confiscation of all property.

“People should be very clear not to make a comparison between the Holocaust and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain,” he said.

“The expulsion was a traumatic catastrophe which affected the Spanish Jews and their descendants and also Spain itself. But don’t make this gratuitous comparison. If Hitler had offered (a choice between) death or expulsion, maybe all the Jews would have left Germany.”

The Jewish Community of Camarillo will receive a Days of Remembrance Proclamation from Mayor Stan Daily to commemorate victims of the Holocaust, at Sabbath evening services beginning at 8 on May 8 at the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 3975 E. Las Posas Road in Camarillo.

Daily will give the proclamation in conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, founded by Congress in 1980 to commemorate countless people who died at the hands of the Nazis in World War II.

If you are a Ventura County resident who survived the Holocaust, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles would like to videotape your story for future generations. The center is also seeking photographs, possessions and documents from survivors and people whose family members perished for the center’s new Beit Hashoah museum of tolerance. You are also invited to attend a weeklong series of free commemoration events April 27 to May 3 at the center, 9760 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. For details, call (310) 553-9036.

* FYI

Lazar’s lecture is part of a series sponsored by the Conejo Valley Consortium of Jewish Organizations in conjunction with the Jewish Federation Council-San Fernando Valley Region. Single admission is $15. For tickets, call (818) 587-3206, and request “The Jewish Experience.”