Emek ha-bakhah (Valley of Tears)

Granada was under control of the Ishmaelites for seven hundred years, until Ferdinand and Isabel, the monarchs of Spain, besieged it, for many days, and captured the whole region of that kingdom in their great might, and also the great city of Granada was delivered into their hands in the month of January 1492. The Jews dwelling in that land had their possessions looted and plundered at that time.

The number of forced converts increased in the days of Fray Vicente and they intermarried with the dignitaries of the nation and became very powerful. The Jews also rose in stature until the time of Ferdinand and Isabel, the lords and monarchs of Spain. However, these monarchs appointed investigators to look into the forced converts, to see whether they actually followed their ways, and made them a notorious and a shameful byword and example [see Deuteronomy 28:37], and many were burned [at the stake]. Moreover, the hand of the Lord was against them, to discomfit them (Deuteronomy 2:15) and thus they acted arrogantly toward each other, each man with his fellow, a young lad toward an elder, and a lowly person with an honorable one. If a woman asked her neighbor or the woman living in her house for a silver or gold vessel [see Exodus 3:22], and she did not give it to her, she would inform on them. They wearied of their lives [as forced converts]. When those two monarchs saw that many people were joining the House of Israel, they expelled the Jews from their land, lest other forced converts might follow in their ways, as many had done to that day.

All the armies of the Lord, the exile of Jerusalem that was in Spain (Obadiah 1:20), left that cursed country in the fifth month of the year five thousand two hundred and fifty-two, which is the year 1492, and from there they were dispersed to the four corners of the earth. Sixteen large ships full of herds of men departed from the coast of Cartagena on Friday, the tenth of Av. [ . . . ] They went where the wind sent them [see Ezekiel 1:20], to Africa and Asia, to the lands of Greece and Turkey, where they dwell to this day. They underwent many sorrows and bad times, and various tribulations, and the seamen of Genoa did great harm to them, and the people suffered along the way [see Numbers 21:4]. For the Ishmaelites killed some of them, to remove the gold they had swallowed in order to hide it. Some drowned in the sea, others were destroyed by plague and hunger; some were thrown naked by the sea captains onto islands in the sea, while yet others were sold as slaves and maidservants in malicious Genoa and her tributaries in that cursed year. [ . . . ]

Many [of the Jews] stayed in Spain, as they did not have the strength to leave, or because their hearts were not touched by God, and many rejected Him at that time. See, O Lord, and consider, to whom You have done thus? (Lamentations 2:20) [ . . . ] Please, Lord, all this befell us in the year “for the children of desolation multiplied” in the fifth millennium, in the month of Av. We did not forget You, nor did we betray our covenant. And now, God, do not distance Yourself; make haste to help us, O Lord [see Psalms 70:2]. For Your sake we are killed every day; we are regarded as sheep for the slaughter (Psalms 44:23). Make haste to help us, O God of our Redemption; take up our cause and redeem us for the sake of Your name.

The King of Navarre did not expel them from his land, and many of the Jews of Aragon went to live there. After a year, the people whose hearts God had touched asked to leave the iron furnace because they feared for their lives, and the King of Aragon allowed them to pass through his border. They went to Provence by ship, and stayed in Avignon for a while. Among those who came were Don Bonafous, my uncle, his mother Preciosa, and his wife Orocite, and my mother Dolza in her youth when she was among her mother’s household, and his sons, and Don Abraham Official and his wife Mira, and many others, whose names I will not mention. [ . . . ] They went from there to Turkey where they have lived to this day. A short while later, the king expelled the remaining Jews from Navarre, but they could not leave because he had closed the way to them [see Exodus 14:3], and they were driven from the Lord God of Israel [see 2 Kings 17:21].

The Jews in Provence were also expelled at that time, but they did not want to leave in the midst of the overthrow [see Genesis 19:29], and so they chose other gods, and they live there still. There remained in Provence only those who dwell in Avignon and the cities there that belong to the Pope.

The Lord was zealous on behalf of His people, and He extracted retribution from those two monarchs for their deeds: their daughter died in Portugal, and Ferdinand’s eldest son died in an epidemic, and no son was left to them as a Crown Prince. The cursed Isabel, his wife, despaired of her life and the evil and powerful disease of cancer ate half her flesh [see Numbers 12:12], and she died. The Lord is righteous!

Thus says Joseph ha-Kohen: those expelled from France and the bitter and hasty expulsion [from Spain] aroused me to write this book, so that the Children of Israel will know what was done to us in their land and their courts and their castles.

For behold days are coming.