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The Age-Old Iberian Rivalry and the Jews

March 21, 2004 | Norman Berdichevsky

Psychiatrists use the term "sibling rivalry" to express the jealous and sometimes resentful feelings between brothers and sisters in the same household and apparently this applies to nations as well as individuals. This rivalry has had the unintended consequence of benefiting the Jews on four major occasions - the temporary refuge offered by Portugal from 1492 to 1497, the Portuguese twenty-year moratorium on the activities of the Inquisition in the early 1500s, the Spanish policy dur