By Fire Possessed

Sandra K. Toro's By Fire Possessed is historical fiction that tells the life of Dona Gracia Nasi, the most important Sephardic woman of the sixteenth century. Some people argue that she ranks among the most important Jewish women of the last 500 years. She inherited a wide reaching business empire, escaped the Inquisition in Portugal and again later in Venice, and re-settled in the Ottoman Empire that was friendly to Jews. She used her ships and wealth to rescue thousands of Sephardic Jews from the Spanish Inquisition and created communities, synagogues, and even businesses were they could work in the lands of the Ottoman Empire, which included present day Greece, Turkey, and Israel. She had a major role in creating the Ladino world of the Eastern Sephardim. She was a heroic Jewish woman to be remembered. For More Information on this Book and the Life of Dona Gracia Nasi, Click Here.