Join Congregation Kol Ami for the next installment in our Sunday Scholars series, as we hear the challenging history of Tomas de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, presented by Jerry Rishe.

 

 

Over centuries, the Jewish community in Spain flourished while anti-Semitic hysteria blamed Jews for everything from witchcraft to the Black Plague. A recipe for disaster was born. Converts multiplied. Those adopting Catholicism faced frequent suspicion and prejudice. A significant number of Jews converted, but kept their faith in secret. Known as Marranos, they were seen as a greater threat than those rejecting conversion and, as a result, became targets. Tomás de Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition’s first Grand Inquisitor and spearhead of the effort to cleanse his country of the imagined “Jewish infection”, has become synonymous with horror and religious bigotry. Join us as we examine his cruel fanaticism and the brutal institution he directed.

Jerry Rishe earned a B.A. degree in Political Science from CSUN and a J.D. from Whittier Law School. In the private sector he worked as in-house counsel at First Charter Financial Corporation (holding company for American Savings), the J.G. Boswell Company (the largest privately owned cotton grower in the world), and Saint John’s Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica. For the last half of his 32 year legal career he was a trial attorney with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (later the Department of Homeland Security) where he prosecuted those charged with violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act in Immigration Court, defended the Service and Department against charges in employment matters and was honored by being named Employee of the Year. He now enjoys retirement as President of SAGE, as part of the Dean’s Council of the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication at CSUN, and as a docent for the Autry National Center of the American West.