THE EXPULSION 1492 CHRONICLES

This dreadful tempest was soon followed by the lash of an even rougher storm. The Portuguese king, eager to find some logical excuse to vex me, called for an investigation to see if the number of my people who had entered his kingdom exceeded the stipulated six hundred families. Since the haste with which my children had left Castile did not allow time for a census, or for anyone to wait and see if there was sufficient number, they found that they had exceeded the number.

The king claimed the excess as his captives and slaves; he could thus vex the Jews at will and carry out his evil designs against them. Their willingness to redeem themselves for the price at which the rest had entered, or a higher price, proved of no avail.

To my misfortune, the island of Sao Thome had recently been discovered. It was inhabited by lizards, snakes and other venomous reptiles, and was devoid of rational beings. Here the king exiled condemned criminals, and he decided to include among them the innocent children of these Jews. Their parents had seemingly been condemned by G-d's sentence.

When the luckless hour arrived for this barbarity to be inflicted, mothers scratched their faces in grief as their babies, less than three years old, were taken from their arms. Honored elders tore their beards when the fruit of their bodies was snatched before their eyes. The fated children raised their piercing cries to heaven as they were mercilessly torn from their beloved parents at such a tender age.

Several women threw themselves at the king's feet, begging for permission to accompany their children; but not even this moved the king's pity. One mother, distraught by this horrible unexampled cruelty, lifted her baby in her arms, and paying no heed to its cries, threw herself from the ship into the heaving sea, and drowned embracing her only child.

Thus those innocent souls were removed from their parents' sweet tenderness by such inhumanities and delivered into the power of merciless enemies. O brothers, who could describe to you the hidden and visible anguish which cloaked all my children - the sighs, the tears, the bloody and febrile groans which were heard in all their houses; for there are no words of consolation to relieve a pain so great, though each one had good reason to hope for consolation.

This monstrous cruelty would have induced many people to take their own lives before the time allotted them by G-d's will, if others would not have suffered by their absence. But husbands feared their beloved wives would be widowed and alone among enemies, while wives were restrained by the hope of seeing their children again.

Finally, when those innocent children arrived at the wilderness of Sao Thome, which was to be their grave, they were thrown ashore and merciless left there. Almost all were swallowed up by the huge lizards on the island, and the remainder, who escaped these reptiles, wasted away from hunger and abandonment. Only a few were miraculously spared that dreadful misfortune.

O L-rd, whose power encompasses the dominion of the entire universe, how shall I fortify my heart and soul with patience so that the great force and onslaught of such tribulations does not shatter it? Consider that "You have oppressed us and broken us in a land of dragons, and have covered us with a shadow of death," as my son David had once foreseen and lamented (Ps. 44:20).

In addition to the misfortunes in England, your threats against me were again executed here: "Your children shall be delivered to other peoples, and when your eyes see this they shall continually shed tears, and you shall have no strength to be able to bear it" (Deut. 28:32). "Because I shall set the teeth of beasts against them and the fury of serpents against the people" (Deut. 32:34). "And at this time I shall not hear when you call Me and are afflicted" (Jer. 11:11).