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INTRODUCTION
In the summer of 2015, more than five centuries after unconverted Iberian Jews were expelled from the place known as “Sepharad,” the Spanish parliament approved “Law 12/2015 of June 24th Granting Spanish Nationality to Sephardi Jews Native to Spain.”1 Declared an “historic reparation” by Spanish Minister of Justice Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, passage of what was popularly dubbed the “law of return” was widely covered by international media, and even the stodgiest of hard news outlets found it difficult to refrain from echoing the rhetoric of the state as they described a long-awaited “return” of Sephardi descendants to Spain. The law portrayed Sephardi Jews as exiled Spaniards with deep attachments to the country, transmitted through language, culture, and blood, that were presumed to manifest as love, nostalgia, and a desire to “return to Sepharad.” Jews around the world enthusiastically celebrated the news at homes and synagogues, in newspapers and magazines, and on social media. Since plans for the law were announced in 2012, it had frequently been depicted as a progressive achievement by an increasingly democratic state that was atoning for the past by finally establishing a right of return, which the descendants of those it had injured were eager to claim. Perhaps what made these redemptive narratives compelling was that it seemed so surprising that Spain would be extending such an offer to the Jews. After all, Spain has long been figured as a primordial font of anti-Jewish hatreds, tightly linked in the minds of many with that bastion of purportedly anti-modern violence, the Inquisition. Yet for some the existence of this law seemed to suggest a different sort of Spain coming into focus, one that was ready to reconcile with the past by including the descendants of those who had been excluded—a Spain that had finally become modern.
Contrary to what the Spanish state and various media outlets suggested, there was little that was novel about the spirit or the letter of the “law of return.” It was only the most recent in a series of initiatives stretching back more than a century that had offered some form of Spanish citizenship or repatriation to Jews. Although the 2015 law was touted as a new avenue for nationalization, Sephardi Jews outside of Spain had...