Between the wave of anti-Semitic violence in 1391 and the expulsion of all Jews in 1492, many thousands of Spanish Jews were baptized. Many of them remained in close contact with their Jewish relatives, and no small number also observed some traditional Jewish rituals in private. Concerns about such behavior, and the beliefs it suggested—as well as the equivalent practices of baptized Muslims and, later, the infiltration of Protestant doctrines—led the monarchy to create the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. This office of the Church was responsible for investigating Catholics suspected of harboring heretical ideas or engaging in blasphemous activities. (Unconverted Jews and Muslims were excluded from its jurisdiction.)

The Holy Office also kept meticulous records of its interrogations, which generally began with the simple question, “Tell us about yourself.” For Richard Kagan, these documents have been an invaluable source about the lives of former Jews and their descendants. He discusses his findings with Nachi Weinstein. (Audio, 74 minutes.)

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.