ABOUT FLAMES OF FREEDOM
The Story
The Flames of Freedom Podcast is a historical drama occurring in 1733. Forty-two Jews eager to escape the cruel inequities of the Portuguese Inquisition, murderous pogroms in Eastern Europe in the 18th Century, and virulent antisemitism in England sought to build a future filled with religious freedom and economic opportunity by gambling with their lives and sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on the slim chance they would be allowed to settle in the new American colony of Georgia founded by James Oglethorpe.
Flames of Freedom Backstory
Flames of Freedom: A story with roots in the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions
For the past thousand years, Jews living in Europe have experienced an ever-escalating onslaught of violence, massacres, torture, burnings at the stake, public humiliation, and confiscation of their belongings and wealth. Often, they had to choose between forced conversion to Catholicism, death by the sword, or exile from their countries. By the latter part of the 15th Century, the Inquisition was raging in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, sparked by the Roman papacy. In Prussia, Poland, and Ukraine, pogroms were a regular feature of Jewish life. By the beginning of the 18th Century, hundreds of thousands of Jews had been murdered throughout Europe by hateful, marauding mobs. In response, many fled to more tolerant and less antisemitic countries, including England, which reopened its doors to Jews in 1656.