Isaac Halevy, King of the Jews

Historical context for this excerpt:

The action in this novel begins in Inquisition-era Spain. A group of crypto-Jews sail from Spain to the New World to conquer and settle territory, like Hernán Cortés and the other Spanish conquistadores.. Once on the high seas, they openly revert to Judaism, change their assumed Christian-Spanish names to their original Hebrew ones and ban the use of the Spanish language in favor of Hebrew. They settle in the most inaccessible reaches of the Mexican jungle and convert the local Indians, with whom they intermarry, to Judaism. These Jewish Indians have been waiting centuries for the Messiah to arrive and lead them to the Promised Land. By the 20-th Century, members of the village begin abandoning their homes to follow Mexican political leaders or revolutionaries, like Emiliano Zapata, whom they believe to be the Anointed One. Still others leave the village to see the wonders of Mexico City, or to travel to the Promised Land of California with other illegal immigrants. In the 20^th Century a group of them is brought to Israel, where the media believes them to be part of a political hoax. 

So many years had passed that he no longer remembered how many, and the most recent events seemed inextricably confused, while those from long before became clearer and more real, as though to give testimony that the only thing men truly possess is memory. And it was exactly the night of the great fire, the night in which this Mexican jungle was filled with flames and houses were collapsing closer and closer to his own, when Isaac Halevy remembered the afternoon so long ago back in Spain on which the news of the conflagration that destroyed the Jewish quarter  reached his parents’ home.

The men arrived in clothing that was blackened and torn, with poorly bandaged wounds. They had been flogged as they stumbled along the roads, robbed by the soldiers at the gates of the city and robbed and beaten once again as they moved along the streets, there where the beggars fought over the few belongings the soldiers had scorned.

The Jewish quarter had been torched and its houses were nothing but heaps of ashes and wreckage. It had been another religious pilgrimage that drove them out of that city, where their ancestors had put down roots centuries before, and on to the roads, which had been their true home for fifteen hundred years, and to which they always returned.

Wanderers, seafarers without a safe harbor, thought Simon Benveniste. He had never believed the stories told...