Javier Castaño * 146 of how baptism took place . Such was the case when, in a very short time span, individuals were put in the deceptive predicament of choosing between conversion or exile, especially when the latter was not feasible . The period that followed the late fifteenth - century Iberian expulsions of Jews has barely received adequate attention . At the risk of distorting the subject, historians most frequently present conversion in quantitative terms, occasionally overshadowing the fact that many Jews chose to remain or returned immediately to Iberian soil by adopting new identities ( frequently assuming another person’s name ) . Such conditions hardly could efface, and certainly not overnight, the traces of their Jewish self . The transition involved outward vacillation from one identity to the other, which most probably reflected an internal ambivalence as well . Indeed, by the end of baptism day, when the sun had set on this very public ceremony, the neophyte had to resum...
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