Example Image
Civitas Outlook
Topic
Pursuit of Happiness
Published on
Mar 4, 2025
Contributors
Joel Kotkin

Jewish Geography

Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Joel Kotkin
Senior Research Fellow
Joel Kotkin
Summary
The Jewish future has a southern accent.
Summary
The Jewish future has a southern accent.
Listen to this article

You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler, he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!”

The Ottoman sultan Bayezid II is said to have made this disparaging remark about Spain’s Catholic king upon the latter’s expulsion of Jews and Muslims in 1492. Knowing what an asset the Jewish community of al-Andalus had been to the Arab kingdoms there, the sultan was astonished at Ferdinand’s edict and welcomed the Jewish refugees from his Christian foe.

Jewish history has been defined in large part by expulsions, and the search for places that accept them. In the past this included Muslim rulers. In 1940, Mohammed V of Morocco famously refused to implement the antisemitic edicts of the French Vichy regime allied with Nazi Germany. Considering himself Amir al-Mu’minin (Commander of the Faithful) like his namesake the prophet, Mohammed V saw the Jews not as the wandering people as portrayed in Christian legend, but as People of the Book deserving of protection. “There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only Moroccan subjects.”

Continue reading at SAPIR

10:13
1x
10:13
More articles

Dissident Blessings in the Negative World

Pursuit of Happiness
May 1, 2025

Why Reciprocal Trade Negotiations Will Fail

Economic Dynamism
Apr 30, 2025
View all

Join the newsletter

Receive new publications, news, and updates from the Civitas Institute.

Sign up
More on

Pursuit of Happiness

Estimating the Productivity of Community Colleges in Paving the Road To Four-Year College Success

Despite a relatively rich literature on the community college pathway, the research base on the quality differences between these institutions has been decidedly thin.

Scott Carrell, Michal Kurlaender
Pursuit of Happiness
Feb 7, 2025
Brains Versus Brawn: Ordinal Rank Effects in Job Training

Is it better to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond?

Scott Carrell, Alexander J. Chesney
Pursuit of Happiness
Jan 28, 2025
Civic Thought: A Proposal for University-Level Civic Education

An intellectual mission in the fullest sense requires a coherent program of teaching and research in a specific and demanding discipline. This report sketches the outlines of such a program, which we call “Civic Thought.”

Benjamin Storey, Jenna Storey
Pursuit of Happiness
Dec 11, 2023
No items found.
Religious Charter Schools Should Pass the Supreme Court Test

A case from Oklahoma will determine whether American education becomes more or less centralized, homogeneous, and anticompetitive.

Michael Toth, Gavin Schiffres
Pursuit of Happiness
Apr 29, 2025
‘American Oasis’ Review: The Lure of the Desert

The Southwest has recently sent left-leaning senators to Washington. As more minorities move there, the region might shift to the right.

Joel Kotkin
Pursuit of Happiness
Apr 9, 2025
California’s Population Bump Won’t Make Up for Its Long Term Slide

People are leaving, or not coming to California, for rational reasons — and most of them are economic.

Joel Kotkin
Pursuit of Happiness
Apr 1, 2025
How Federal Lands Can Be Used to Ease the Housing Crisis

To create affordable homes on federal lands, the federal government shouldn’t sell lands for development — it should lease them.

Joel Kotkin, Michael Toth
Pursuit of Happiness
Mar 10, 2025

Populism Unpacked: Voices from the Heartland

Pursuit of Happiness
Mar 4, 2025
1:05

Jeff Rosen on What “The Pursuit of Happiness” Meant to America's Founders

Pursuit of Happiness
Jan 26, 2025
1:05

Arthur C. Brooks on the Pursuit of Happiness in an Unhappy World

Pursuit of Happiness
May 8, 2024
1:05

Arthur C. Brooks on The Art & Science of Getting Happier: Live at The Texas Tribune

Pursuit of Happiness
Mar 29, 2024
1:05

Melissa Kearney on Two-Parent Privilege and Social Mobility

Pursuit of Happiness
Mar 18, 2024
1:05
No items found.
No items found.
Dissident Blessings in the Negative World

Christian churches of all kinds have tended to stagnate when the church has been a part of the official regime.

Brian Smith
Pursuit of Happiness
May 1, 2025
When Life Becomes Unending Variations on Disease

Are we getting sicker?

Ronald W. Dworkin
Pursuit of Happiness
Apr 30, 2025
The Quantum Revolution and the Human Spirit

Klavan’s book reveals what interesting times we live in—perhaps uniquely so.

Rob Koons
Pursuit of Happiness
Apr 25, 2025
The Civis in Civic Architecture

A return to the old ways, to traditional and classical architecture, is a return to order, a return of the citizen as the measure of a structure, of an institution.

Paul Zepeda
Pursuit of Happiness
Apr 17, 2025
No items found.