Cultural and Religious Boundary-Crossing in Early Modern Spain

Introduction: Cultural and Religious Boundary-Crossing in Early Modern Spain.- Reading Against the Grain, Readings of Substitution: Catholic Books as Inspiration for Judaism in Early Modern Iberia.- Conversos, Moriscos, and the Eucharist in Early Modern Spain: Some Reflections on Jewish Exceptionalism.- The Conflation of Judaism and Islam in Hernando de Talavera’s Conversion Plan.- Entangled Discourses of Dissent in Early Modern Spain.- Rabbi Isaac of Rus’ and His Esoteric Teachings.- A Sage of the Golden Age of Safed: Rabbi Moses Najara.- Jews, Economic Metaphors, and the Healthy Body Politic: The Jewish Role in Christian Economic Narratives and the Birth of Modern Economics.

Miriam Bodian is a historian of early modern Jewish cultural history. Her research interests include Iberian Jewry, Inquisition studies, and European Jewry in the Reformation period. She joined the faculty of the UT History Department in 2009, and is an affiliate of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies there. Her book Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (1997) won two major book awards. It deals with identity issues in a Jewish community whose members had fled from Iberian lands where they were forced to live as Christians. Her book Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in Iberian Lands (2007) studies the careers of a set of celebrated “judaizing” martyrs who drew inspiration from Reformation currents.