Anousim Back Home

Anousim: Embarcados.

2007-07-11T05:05:00.001-07:00

Aquí estamos embarcados, mecidos por las olas, a expensas de la voluntad del mar. Perdimos nuestros remos cuando nuestros antepasados los cambiaron por la posibilidad de seguir vegetando en la barca. La barca nos ha seguido zarandeando, a pesar del trato hecho, a pesar de haber cedido los remos, de haber otorgado nuestra más preciada posesión. Ahora no podemos dirigirnos a ninguna parte. Otros compañeros han tenido mejor fortuna y pudieron dirigirse a buenos puertos. Seguimos oteando la mar, pero sólo es para observar qué lejos quedan ya nuestros amigos y llegamos a preguntarnos cuándo fuimos una familia. Egipto quedó lejos, el Faraón es una sombra del pasado, pero aquí, dentro de la barca, hay quien prefiere su evocación antes que aceptar el Shabat. Estamos limpios. Sólo un hecho extraordinario, sólo un golpe de mar hará que la barca llegue a tierra. Es posible que perezcamos en el intento, pero todo es mejor que seguir dentro de este casco, sin remos, a la deriva, venerando al Becerro de Oro que cada día aborrezco más.

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OrTorah: Vote No to Slander - by Rabbi S. Weiss

2006-03-27T07:06:00.000-08:00

Vote No to Slander - by Rabbi S. Weiss

by EduPlanet Rectorate (daniEl I. Ginerman) - Monday, 27 March 2006, 04:12 PM

Vote No to Slander by Rabbi S. Weiss Mar 26, '06 / 26 Adar 5766 From all things we must learn, say the sages, and often the world around us can teach us a thing or two about Jewish values. And so, I call your attention to a little-known town in Colombia, a place called Icononzo, 40 miles southwest of the capital, Bogota. Fed up with local residents being targeted by false rumors and turning up dead or wrongfully arrested, the mayor of Iconozo has made gossip a crime, punishable by up to four years in prison and a six-figure fine. On more than one occasion, malicious gossip in the city has had disastrous consequences. In one instance, a man was killed because somebody claimed, erroneously, that he belonged to a leftist insurgent group. On another occasion, a rumor later proved to be unfounded - that an armed gang was on its way to terrorize the town kept residents locked inside their homes for 48 hours, too afraid to go to work or send their kids to school. Finally, the town council decided to take drastic action. "Human beings must be aware and recognize that having a tongue and using it to do bad is the same as having dynamite in their mouths," said Mayor Jesus Ignacio Jimenez. Knowing that drug-ridden Colombia is no stranger to violence, and that deadly weapons are readily available, local officials decided to clamp down on gossipmongers. "It's definitely had an impact since it went into effect," said one citizen, "now people think twice about what they say before they say it." Of course, Judaism is no stranger to the evils of lashon hara. The Torah prohibits gossip, slander and tale-bearing, and the rabbis characterize the tongue as a snake with a vicious bite that must be kept behind two gates the teeth and the lips to prevent it from striking too easily and spreading its venom. One who uses the power of speech to embarrass another is considered to have shed blood, the evidence of his crime indicated by the red blush of his victim. In Jewish thought, the principal problem with malicious gossip even when it is true and accurate is that it tends to focus on only a tiny portion of the whole person. It takes a snapshot of a particular fault or feature, and blows it up into a pervasive, larger-than-life photograph of the victim. It is a sinister sound bite that can devour whole another's reputation or name, based upon a fraction of that person's behavior. That is why the Torah's punishment for slander is tzara'at, a disease of the skin that comes from too much gossip. A small lesion that ultimately renders the whole body impure, tzara'at repays, measure for measure, the gossiper, who would use one unflattering incident to paint his victim with a wide brush. Once diagnosed as afflicted, the slanderer must be quarantined, kept outside the mainstream, just as he attempted to isolate and ostracize his neighbor. All this seems most topical on the eve of Israeli elections. Watching the various parties' ads, it is clear that the main focus is not what is right about their programs or platforms, but what is wrong with their competition. Kadima's spot shows picture after picture of Binyamin Netanyahu in unflattering poses, questioning his honesty and integrity. Likud warns that Ehud Olmert is "dangerous for the nation." Meretz and Shinui blast the Hareidim for ruining their lives, with Shinui's slogan being, "We're not Shas!" And virtually all the parties let us know what an inexperienced, untested non-cosmopolitan boor Amir Peretz is. Missing from this cavalcade of lashon hara is the clear statement of what each party stands for and what it will do to secure our future. What solid ideas does it offer for improving the economy, stopping road deaths, ending violence in schools and homes, kicking corrupt officials out of government, increasing immigration and bringing the nation together? Does it have a plan, a vision, of where Israel can and should be in five years, ten years, fifty years from now? Is t here a positive reason that you, Mr. or Mrs. Candidate, should be elected, or should I vote for you just because - so you tell me - the other guy is worse? Imagine what a Colombian-like ban on gossip in this election campaign would do to transform the shape of our politicking. It would force the candidates to actually focus on their own qualifications, to impress us with their own unique wisdom, creativity and personal charisma. It would turn the spotlight directly on them, highlighting both their past performance and their future potential. It would make them tell us why they believe that they are the person best equipped to direct this nation. And maybe, just maybe, it would help to create the kind of leader we so desperately need, but cannot seem to find.

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Anousim: Of Anusim and Anti-Jewish Ashkenazi Mishegas: JEWS, LATINOS UNCOVERING THEIR HERITAGE - an article at the LA Times

2006-01-31T16:34:00.000-08:00

Of Anusim and Anti-Jewish Ashkenazi Mishegas

brought to our attention by David Ramirez

On the ongoing saga of "Latinos discovering their Jewish roots," the kind of happy facade put on the media hides a terrible reality yet to be told in the open. The present article from Los Angeles Times is yet another instance that ignores the larger issues faced by the so-called "Latinos" of Jewish ancestry. Stanley Hordes, a Jew himself and a historian who since the 1980's has been promoter of the subject of Anusim -- Spanish Jews who have lived as non-Jews to this day -- has done very little in the way of helping them to reestablish their status as Jews, while gaining fame in the publication of books on the matter.

While there is not doubt that some good has come about to spread the knowledge of the existance of Anusim, the effort of these organizations are neither concerned for Sephardic Judaism or the halakhah. The more specific benign venom injected in these type of articles is "mishmash background of European, Indian and sometimes African, Arab and Asian heritage" of the Latin American people, therefore halakhically bringing doubt to the lineage of Anusim. The understated hypocrisy in the Ashkenazi DNA obsession is that while subjecting the Anusim to these types of tests, and making their finds public, they themselves do not give information about their own DNA make up. This is of special import, as many of us know that Ashkenazi women during the Middles Ages were subject to deflowering by their rulers; they themselves do not say how much of their DNA make up is Germanic, and only publish data that would make them appear more Middle Eastern. Furthermore, what they do not mention is that DNA testing does not have any grips in the halakhah, much less that one can do endless assumptions based on any given strain of the millions upon millions of DNA strings, a science that no less is still in its infancy and indefinite.

My self being a Mexican, I cannot deny there was and still is "inter-racial" marriage among the different ethnic groups living in Latin America. But this only reached only 20% of the entire population, of which only 10% is purely Indigenous and lesser of percent African; and these marriages happened among the lower classes. What has been ignored overtly is that New Spain was mainly an endogamic society, whereby only extended members of the family would marry each other, a Converso trait that was maintained for five centuries. And this is easily noticeable on any genealogical tree from the contemporary Anusim.

The overt anti-halakhic argument set out by the assimilated Ashkenazim only helps to promote their understated hatred or ignorance for Jewish law, and more specifically Sephardic tradition, while asserting their own hegemony and self-assurance as Jews, no matter how non-Jewishly assimilated they've become.
Even sadder and more self- hateful is the Sephardic complete apathy on the issue of Anusim.

DR

Jews, Latinos Uncovering Their Heritage

By: Daniel Hernandez

Five hundred years ago, when it was still illegal for them to sail to the New World, hundreds, maybe thousands, of Sephardic Jews from Spain secretly found ways across the Atlantic.

Many were escaping the Inquisition, which eventually spread to the colony's capital, Mexico City.

In the late 1500s, facing the threat of arrest and death, some Jews in Mexico journeyed to the colony's northern frontier, eventually settling in what is now New Mexico. They were Jews in secret, or crypto-Jews. For generations, their Mexican American descendants have practiced Catholicism but retained customs suggestive of a Jewish past, such as observing the Sabbath.

This was the historical foundation established at the start of a conference this week that explored past, present and possible future connections between Jews and Latinos.

The conference, called "Latinos and Jews: A Conference on Historical and Contemporary Connections," brought together scholars, activists and people curious about their heritage.

The gathering, in a packed classroom at UC Irvine, focused on two major points of intersection for Jews and Latinos: the history of crypto-Jews and Jews in colonial Mexico, and the intermixing of Jews, Latinos and others in Boyle Heights, which scholars called Los Angeles' first multiethnic working-class neighborhood.

The example of New Mexico came up repeatedly the two communities are linked, even if those links aren't always apparent.

"The fabric of Jewish history and heritage is so much richer than we thought," said Stanley M. Hordes, adjunct research professor at the University of New Mexico and author of "To the End of the Earth: The History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico." "There is not a mutual exclusivity between being Spanish and Jewish," he said.

The all-day discussion Monday was at turns spirited, humorous and contentious. At one point, a few participants had a brief but pointed exchange on the prevalence of anti-Semitism among Latinos and Catholics.

George Sanchez, a history professor at USC, has spent years interviewing former residents of Boyle Heights. His presentation centered on a period when the neighborhood's vibrant multicultural patchwork was evident in the makeup of Roosevelt High School, which was founded in 1923.

There was a point in the school's history, Sanchez said, quoting one of his many interviews, where "you could divide the sports activities by race, with varsity football dominated by huge Russians and some Jews Mexicans and blacks in varsity track and tall Slavics in basketball."

Many audience chortled to themselves, but everyone laughed when Sanchez finished: "Debating was mostly the Jewish students."

Young people back then, Sanchez said, saw beyond their ethnic differences to create a common culture. "In Boyle Heights, as elsewhere, youth often played a critical role in initiating inter-ethnic relations, be it in interracial marriage, political coalition-building, or multiracial dance venues," Sanchez said.

The conference, co-sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and the UC Irvine Center for Research on Latinos in a Global Society, comes at a critical point in the history of Jewish-Latino relations.

Only in recent years has interest rapidly grown in the possibility that innumerable Mexicans and Mexican Americans could add a bit of Jewishness to their often mishmash background of European, Indian and sometimes African, Arab and Asian heritage. In New Mexico, some Latinos are using DNA studies to determine whether they have Jewish roots.

Jewish and Latino advocacy organizations have begun round-table discussions about potential political and cultural alliances, with many noting the 2005 election of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as an example of such coalition-building. Polls showed that Villaraigosa captured 84% of the city's Latino vote and 55% of the Jewish vote.

Villaraigosa's election led some participants at the conference to recall the election in 1949 of Edward R. Roybal to the Los Angeles City Council. The first Mexican American elected to the council since 1881, Roybal represented a heavily Jewish electorate in his Eastside district.

As a few conference panelists and participants noted, Jewish activists have been far more proactive in reaching out to Latinos than the other way around. The backgrounds of those attending the conference proved the point.

When Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, asked those in the audience to raise their hands if they identified as Jewish, most of the room responded. When he asked for the Latinos to raise their hands, only a few did.

Still, participants and speakers said they were encouraged by the dialogue.

"[Latinos are] the emerging community in L.A. and the Jewish community has been slow to become aware of the richness of the Latino community, and the potential for conflict as well," said Steven Windmueller, director of the School of Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.

Boyle Heights was once home to the largest Jewish community west of Chicago. Most in the community were Ashkenazi Jews. The neighborhood is overwhelmingly Latino today and just south of Cesar Chavez Avenue which used to be Brooklyn Avenue the Breed Street Shul is waiting to be reopened.

Built in 1923, the home of Congregation Talmud Torah fell into disrepair as Jews moved to the Westside. The Jewish Historical Society of Southern California stepped in to prevent the demolition of the shul in the 1990s. Now a renovation effort is underway to make the building a neighborhood cultural center.

The shul is an artifact of a rich cultural history that includes Jews, Latinos and many others, said Steve Sass, president of the historical society and director of the Breed Street Shul Project.

"What I understand is that people were used to living side by side, they were all immigrants, English was not their first language, there was a Depression," Sass said. "This was the other Los Angeles. We need to learn from that, learn from before, when people lived in proximity and were learning about each other's culture."

Sass was joined at the shul Wednesday by Juaquin Castellanos, a longtime Boyle Heights activist and Mexican immigrant. Castellanos is a recent addition to the Breed Street Shul Project's board of directors. "And I'm learning a lot holidays, things like that," he said.

He gestured toward busy Cesar Chavez Avenue, adding that, even among Latinos, "We still call it Brooklyn."

From The Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2006

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Anousim: Remains of a Torah ark discovered during renovations in Portugal

2006-01-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

Remains of a Torah ark discovered during renovations in Portugal

By Amiram Barkat

Haaretz on line - January 12, 2006 Tevet 12, 5766 /www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/669180.html

A group of citizens from the city of Porto in Portugal who view themselves as descendents of Crypto-Jews want to turn a building in which the remains of an ancient synagogue were found into a museum dedicated to the history of the city's Jews.

In their view, the building, in which a recess of a synagogue ark was discovered by chance, once served as the synagogue of Rabbi Isaac Aboab. However, so far the group's request has not been acceded to, and it appears unlikely that it will.

Rabbi Aboab, also known as the "last gaon [sage] of Castile," was the head of the Guadalajara yeshiva and one of the last gaonim of Spain. In March 1492, on the eve of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Aboab and a group of Jewish dignitaries managed to obtain political asylum in Portugal.

The rabbi settled in the Judiaria, or Jewish, quarter of Porto along with a few hundred Jewish families. Five years later, the Portuguese authorities forced all the Jews in the country to either convert to Christianity or be expelled.

Many of those forced to convert continued to observe the Jewish commandments in secret. Over the years, the Jews abandoned the Judiaria, and many of its buildings were handed over to the Church or various charity organizations. The synagogue building was handed over to a state charity.

Two years ago, the organization gave the building to a priest named Agostinho Jardim Moreira to establish an old people's home in it. During renovations on the building, a recess where a synagogue ark once stood, in which the Torah scrolls were kept, was found behind a secret wall.

The niche was identified by historian Elvira Mea, a lecturer at the University of Porto who specializes in Jewish history. She happened to be passing by while guiding a tourist from Israel.

The location of the building precisely matches a description provided by 16th century writer Immanuel Aboab (a great-grandson of Rabbi Aboab), who wrote that the synagogue was located "in the third house along the street counting down from the church."

Mea, who specializes in the period of the Inquisition, maintains that the synagogue continued to be active even during the period of the Crypto-Jews, who worshiped in it secretly. However, an Israeli journalist of Portuguese extraction, Inacio Steinhardt, who knows Mea personally, disagrees with her.

"It is difficult to believe the Crypto-Jews prayed in a synagogue, because it would have been far too dangerous," he says. Steinhardt is convinced the Crypto-Jews removed the ark from the synagogue along with its other sacred artifacts and worshiped in their homes.

A group of descendants of Crypto-Jews who heard about the discovery has asked that the building be preserved and turned into a museum dedicated to the history of the city's Jews. However, Father Moreira has demanded an alternative building as well as compensation for the money that has already been put into the renovations.

Israeli ambassador to Portugal Aaron Ram has appealed to the city of Porto and the local bishop regarding the matter. In addition, the Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University has asked UNESCO to intervene.

Steinhardt says he is pessimistic regarding the chances of turning the building into a museum because only the Portuguese government is authorized to make any decisions in the matter

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OrTorah: Harry Potter is Jewish!

2006-01-04T20:05:00.000-08:00

Harry Potter is Jewish!
(A Useful Metaphor)

by Rabbi Jack Abramowitz
www.ou.org/ncsy/projects/5764/oct31-64/harry_potter_is_jewish.htm

No, sorry to say, the character of Harry Potter is not Jewish. I
think the books are quite clear on that, what with Christmas being
a major plot point what seems like every six weeks. But I think the
theme of the Harry Potter series is quite Jewish.

Some religious people of different faiths, including Judaism and
Christianity, have opposed the Harry Potter series. (I wouldn't be
surprised to find that Moslems, Hindus and others have objected, as
well.) After all, it does appear to glorify a lifestyle quite at odds with
the one they espouse. But I think they're missing the point. Harry
Potter doesn't advocate witchcraft as a lifestyle choice any more
than the Terminator movies advocate the killer android from the
future lifestyle. Harry Potter is about a boy who just happens to be
a wizard.

Personally, I think the Harry Potter story may be a perfect metaphor
for what many Jewish teens encounter in their quest for religious
growth. You see, Hogwarts isn't a school of wizardry. It's a yeshiva.
It's Yarchei Kallah. It's a Shabbaton. It's wherever you want to go to
grow in Torah observance and get closer to G-d. We'll talk more
about Hogwarts specifically soon enough.

All about Harry

Harry is Jewish. His parents died so that he might survive and
carry on their legacy. Voldemort isn't an evil wizard, but he does
represent the forces of evil. He is Egyptian slavery. He is the
Syrian-Greeks. He is Haman. He is the Roman persecution. He is
the Spanish Inquisition. He is pogroms and Crusades and the
Holocaust and the Intifada. He thought he had destroyed the
Potter family, but you know what? They survived in Harry, much the
same way the Jewish people lives on in you.

Harry didn't know the gifts he had. He knew that talking to snakes
at the zoo was a little strange, but he didn't understand the power
he had inside. Maybe you've sometimes felt different from your
peers. Maybe you've felt that spark inside you, but not known what
it was. That's your Jewish soul, baby! It's looking to get out and
express itself!

So, like you, Harry got his wake-up call. His came by owl post. Yours
probably didn't. But if you're reading this, somehow or some way
G-d sent you an invitation. It didn't say "Hogwarts" on it, but it said
"Torah." G-d invited you to come claim your heritage.

Dealing with the Dursleys

Harry had the Dursleys, his aunt and uncle, who tried to stand in his
way. They were scared of witchcraft. They said it was because it
wasn't "normal," but that wasn't the real reason. It was because Mrs.
Dursley was jealous of her sister, Harry's mother, who was a witch.
Lily Potter had something special that Petunia Dursley lacked and
she hated her for it. Historically, a lot of people have hated the Jews
for exactly the same reason: G-d gave us something special that they
don't have.

You probably have Dursleys in your life, too. In America in the 21st
Century, your Dursleys probably aren't overt anti-Semitism (thank G-d),
but there are plenty of others. People who belittle your interest in Torah
can be Dursleys. But Dursleys can also come from within. The yetzer
hara can be a big Dursley. ("Yetzer hara" is usually translated "the evil
inclination. If you were a cartoon, the yetzer hara would be a little guy
in a red suit who sits on your shoulder and tells you to keep a wallet
instead of turning it in.) Laziness, fear of change, peer pressure -
Dursleys all. Harry overcame his Dursleys. You can beat yours, too.

(But you have to be careful! Harry goes home every summer and has
to outwit the Dursleys again and again. Your Dursleys will never stop
trying to deter you from growing in your "magic," so you must be
ever-vigilant!)

Harry and his Friends at Hogwarts

Harry finally made it to Hogwarts. While he was there, he met other
witches and wizards from all different types of backgrounds. Ron
Weasley's family is all-wizard. He doesn't know any other lifestyle. He
takes for granted so much of what is new and magical to Harry.
Hermione Granger's family is all-muggle (non-wizard), but unlike the
Dursleys, Hermione's family appreciates what being a witch has done
for their daughter and they encourage her growth. Harry is a little
jealous of this positive relationship. After all, Hermione can bring her
muggle relatives to Diagon Alley (sort of like inviting them to your
Shabbos table), something Harry can never do with his family.

At Hogwarts, Harry studies magic. His course of studies includes such
varied courses as the History of Magic, Potions and Care of Magical
Creatures. This is like our study of Torah. (This gets a huge lehavdil,
which is what we say when we compare two things that really aren't
alike.) The Torah is not just a book of laws. It's the history of our
people.
It's self-improvement. It's how to treat other people. Harry's course of
study is diverse and so is ours.

Casting Spells

Harry and his friends cast spells, but the charms they cast don't always
turn out as intended. Hermione didn't mean to turn herself into a cat
with the polyjuice potion. Ron didn't want slugs pouring out of his mouth.
Gilderoy Lockhart didn't intend to remove all the bones in Harry's
broken arm. To a degree this can be compared to davening. (No, really.)
I'll explain.

We "cast our spells" (a big lehavdil, again) and ask Hashem to do
certain things for us. Sometimes He does as we ask. But, like a spell
gone awry, sometimes G-d says no. Not because He's capricious, but
because He knows what's best for us. (It's like when you refuse to stuff a
three-year-old with candy until they get sick. They think you're "mean,"
but you know that you're doing them a big favor.)

It's not a perfect parallel. Spells will probably succeed or fail based on
the wizard's proficiency, which is not the case with our prayers. But, as
with the spells, when our prayers don't get the results we asked for, that
doesn't mean they dissipate in the atmosphere. They still have an effect.
No, they won't make slugs come out of your mouth. The effect of prayer
is invariably positive, even when G-d says no.

Voldemort Returns

But all is not perfect in Harry's world. Voldemort returns and he's out
for blood. Yet, even with his meager abilities, Harry manages to defeat
him. A little magic can go a long way, but after each year at Hogwarts,
Harry becomes much more proficient! Similarly, whatever Torah we
have is what we need to defeat the forces of evil. Even a little is powerful

stuff, but every step brings us much more "power."

Harry would not have been safer back on Privet Drive, never knowing
he was a wizard. Voldemort still would have come after him, because he
considered Harry's very existence a threat. Without Hogwart's, however,
Harry never would have had the tools to survive.

It's the same with you and Torah. Those who would oppose you because
you are a Jew don't care whether you are learned or ignorant, observant
or assimilated. They consider you a threat simply because you're a Jew.
Without Torah, you lack the basic tools to defend yourself and banish the
darkness. Refusing to take up your arms, i.e. the Torah, is what they want
you to do.

I could go on, but I won't. You can draw your own parallels. A metaphor is
just a metaphor. (Or, as I like to put it, "A metaphor is like a simile.")
Harry Potter is just a book. It may be well-written and critically-acclaimed, but at the end of the day it's the product of human hands and imagination. Like all humans, J.K. Rowling is just dust and ashes. She may have her five
Harry Potter books, but we have the five Books that G-d gave to Moses on
Mount Sinai. (And we saw special effects far greater than anything ever
shown on the silver screen!) Those are the books that count. As much as
we can learn from Harry, Ron and Hermione, there is so much more we
can learn from the examples of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov (our
forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). May we merit to spend as much
effort analyzing the Torah, the true source of our real Jewish "magic."

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Anousim: Y-chromosome Lineages from Portugal, Madeira and Açores

2005-12-21T16:05:00.000-08:00

Y-chromosome Lineages from Portugal, Madeira and Açores

From: Rufina Bernardetti Silva Mausenbaum

To: saudades-sefarad@yahoogroups.com

A very interesting new paper on Portuguese Y-chromosomes. Three important conclusions are derived from the study of Sub-Saharan African, E3b, and J1 lineages in Portugal. The Sub-Saharan component seems to be small (0.7%) unlike the corresponding mtDNA component. The E3b lineages are highly heterogeneous, and include various sub-types, including the Aegean E-M78 cluster α as well as North African E3b2 and Middle Eastern E3b3. Interestingly, the North African component seems to be primarily of earlier Berber rather than historical Moorish origin:

North African component at least for mtDNA, is mainly concentrated in the North of Portugal. The mtDNA and Y data indicate that the Berber presence in that region dates prior to the Moorish expansion in 711 AD. Our Y chromosome results are also consistent with a continuous and regular assimilation of Berbers in North of Portugal. This argues against previous interpretations of Moorish mediated contributions, based on Y chromosome data (Bosch et al. 2001; Pereira et al. 2000b; Cruciani et al. 2004) and provides an alternative view of an earlier Berber presence in the North of Portugal.

Finally, the J lineages in Portugal are mainly in the J2 clade, but there is a substantial presence of the J1 clade as well, which is found in Arabs and Jews and not as often in European populations. The Portuguese J1 chromosomes cluster around the Cohen Modal Haplotype, rather than the known modal haplotypes of the Arabs. Therefore, it seems probable that these were introduced by Sephardic Jews, rather than Arabs.

Annals of Human Genetics (OnlineEarly)

Y-chromosome Lineages from Portugal, Madeira and Açores Record Elements of Sephardim and Berber Ancestry

Rita Gonçalves et al.

Summary

A total of 553 Y-chromosomes were analyzed from mainland Portugal and the North Atlantic Archipelagos of Açores and Madeira, in order to characterize the genetic composition of their male gene pool. A large majority (78-83% of each population) of the male lineages could be classified as belonging to three basic Y chromosomal haplogroups, R1b, J, and E3b. While R1b, accounting for more than half of the lineages in any of the Portuguese sub-populations, is a characteristic marker of many different West European populations, haplogroups J and E3b consist of lineages that are typical of the circum-Mediterranean region or even East Africa. The highly diverse haplogroup E3b in Portuguese likely combines sub-clades of distinct origins. The present composition of the Y chromosomes in Portugal in this haplogroup likely reflects a pre-Arab component shared with North African populations or testifies, at least in part, to the influence of Sephardic Jews. In contrast to the marginally low sub-Saharan African Y chromosome component in Portuguese, such lineages have been detected at a moderately high frequency in our previous survey of mtDNA from the same samples, indicating the presence of sex-related gene flow, most likely mediated by the Atlantic slave trade.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/04/y-chromosome-lineages-from-portugal.html

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OrTorah: "My big fat Amaraic Wedding"

2005-11-22T15:05:00.001-08:00

"My big fat Amaraic Wedding"

by Jay Bushinsky
International Jerusalem Post
April 29 - May 5, 2005

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HaTsafon

There is no better proof of modern Aramaic's vitality
than the spectacular weddings held by the Jewish "Nash
Didan" community, which hails from the remote
foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.

"Nash Didan" means "Our People" and its distinctive
music and dance have been immortalized by Nissan Aviv,
a brilliant composer and orchestrator who arrived in
Israel 55 years ago during the peak of the "Nash
Didan" immigration, and has devoted his life to
preserving and continuing this culture ever since.

Soon after the late Naomi Shemer's Yerushalayim Shel
Zahav ("Jerusalem of Gold") became a hit on the eve of
the Six Day War, Aviv obtained her permission to
render it in Aramaic. Translated as Yerushalayim Ai
Dheba, it is a beloved staple at "Nash Didan"
weddings.

Aviv was born in Urmia, an ancient city in Iranian
Azerbaijan.

"We spoke Aramaic at home, Turkish on the street and
learned Persian at school," he said.

"I knew a fair amount of Hebrew when we came to Israel
because it was taught in our Jewish schools. And
partly thanks to my Aramaic, I was able to speak like
a sabra in no time."

Aviv's lyrics are written in modern Aramaic and his
songs not only draw audiences from the various
Aramaic-speaking communities in Israel - located in
Holon, Givatayim and Jerusalem -- but also are played
on the Aramaic (or Syriac) radio and TV stations in
Australia, Canada and Sweden.

"Jerusalem of Gold is as popular abroad is it is
here," he said.

Aviv's music is based on three instruments: a drum
known as a dair'a, a five-stringed instrument plucked
like a balalaika or mandolin known as a kar kavkazi
and a Central Asian version of the cello known as a
kamanncha.

Aviv has won the unstinting acclaim of one of Israel's
leading experts in cognate Semitic languages, Hezy
Mutzafi, who speaks half a dozen of the Aramaic and
Syriac dialects fluently. Noting that the "Nash
Didan" community consists of "only a few thousand"
Israelis (its members constitute a relatively small
percentage of an influx of nearly 200,000 immigrants
from Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus), Mutzafi points
out that it is also one of the least known Jewish
ethnic groups.

"Its focus is on culture, folklore and spoken
Aramaic," explained Mutzafi, referring to the latter
as lishan noshan or "our language."

Mutzafi singled out Aviv as one of the outstanding
activits in the "Nash Didan" community, a man who has
contributed mightily to its spiritual and cultural
life.

Privately, Aviv is rather pessimistic about what the
future holds for the language and lifestyle he loves
and has tried to preserve.

"Our Aramaic is being forgotten," he said. "The
younger generation can understand it, but cannot speak
and in time, this too will be lost."

One project that gives Aviv hope is the Tel Aviv
University's development of an Aramaic dictionary.

"The trouble is that the project is enormous and the
funding available for it is miniscule," he said.

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OrTorah: "Other" Jewish Languages

2005-11-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

www.myjewishlearning.com/xcommon/Hot_Topics/primers_index.htm

For most of their history, Jews have been
multilingual. Hebrew is the language of the Bible, the
principal language of Jewish liturgy, and the language
spoken in modern Israel--but it has been the primary
language of only a small percentage of Jews who have
ever lived.

The geographical diversity of the Jewish people
accounts for its multilingualism. Jews have adopted
the various languages of their homelands and also
spoken numerous Jewish hybrid languages.

By the beginning of the Common Era, Aramaic had
replaced Hebrew as the spoken language of Palestinian
Jews. The causes of Hebrew's decline are not wholly
understood, but it was certainly hastened by the
Babylonian exile in 587 B.C.E. and the continued
foreign rule of Palestine during the Second Temple
period. Aramaic, like Hebrew, is a Semitic language,
and there are many similarities between the two.

Because of Aramaic's prominence during the rabbinic
era, it is arguably the second most important Jewish
language--though it was spoken by non-Jews as well.
The Talmud is written in Aramaic, as is the Zohar, the
great medieval mystical text. One of the most well
known Jewish prayers, the kaddish, also is written in
Aramaic. During the talmudic era, Hebrew illiteracy
was so high that the Shabbat Torah reading was recited
along with a verse-by-verse translation into Aramaic.

Jewish hybrid languages have existed for more than two
millennia. Linguists have long puzzled with little
resolution over whether these tongues should be
considered dialects, unique languages, or Creole
languages (languages that began as pidgins--simplified
forms of speech, often mixtures of two languages--and
are later adopted as primary languages).

During the Second Temple Period Judeo-Greek, also
known as Yevanic, was spoken by Jews in the
Hellenistic world. Over the years many other such
hybrid languages emerged. These languages tended to
adopt structural and lexical elements of the local
languages, mixing them with Hebrew and Aramaic words.
They were usually written in Hebrew script.

The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa spoke
Judeo-Arabic. As early as the eighth century, Jews of
present day Iran and Afghanistan spoke Judeo-Persian.
Many Jews in Italy spoke Judeo-Italian, a language
featuring early South Italian elements and Hebrew
characters. Most of these languages, and many other
Jewish hybrid languages, are extinct or almost
extinct.

The two most well known Jewish hybrid languages are
Judeo-Spanish -- better known as Ladino -- and
Yiddish.

Judeo-Spanish was spoken by the Jews of medieval
Spain, as well as their descendants. It received most
of its linguistic characteristics from early-medieval
Spanish, but it was written in Hebrew characters.
Though Ladino is its earliest documented name, the
language is also known as Judezmo (which is a
linguistic equivalent of Yiddish) and Spanyol.

Today there are still some speakers of Judeo-Spanish
in the Balkans, North Africa, and Israel. The
Holocaust hastened the decline of the language; the
Nazis decimated many Judeo-Spanish speaking
communities--particularly in Greece and the Balkans.

In many ways, Yiddish is the German equivalent of
Judeo-Spanish. Yiddish is almost wholly German in its
linguistic structure and vocabulary, but it is written
in Hebrew characters. Yiddish originated in the
Rhineland cities of Germany in the early Middle Ages,
though the first recognizable Yiddish texts date from
the 14th century. Over the next few centuries, Yiddish
spread all over Europe, from Eastern France to the
Baltics.

More Jews have spoken Yiddish than any other language.
Prior to the Holocaust, Yiddish-speakers accounted for
75 percent of world Jewry, but during the Holocaust,
about 75 percent of the world's Yiddish speakers were
killed. Today, Yiddish is spoken by fewer and fewer
people, though it is still the primary spoken language
of many ultra-Orthodox Jews, and there are still
probably tens of thousands of Yiddish speakers in the
former Soviet states.

In addition, the study of Yiddish language and
literature is enjoying something of a renaissance on
some college campuses. And parts of the language live
on in the many Yiddish words that have become part of
English vernacular in America, such as nosh (which
means to snack) and mentsh (a gentleman).

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Cryptic, these crypto Jews

2005-11-22T14:54:00.000-08:00

Source:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=Portugal&itemNo=646978

Cryptic, these crypto Jews

By Ruth Almog
Last Update: 18/11/2005 08:34

"Hanotzrim Hakhadashim Beportugal Be'meah Ha'esrim" ("New Christians
in Portugal in the 20th Century") by Samuel Schwarz, translated from
Portuguese and annotated by Claude B. Stuczynski, Dinur Center for
Research in Jewish History & Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History,
287 pages.

It has taken 80 years for a Hebrew translation to come out of Samuel
Schwarz's book on the Cristaos Novos ?(New Christians?), published in
Portugal in 1925, although it deals with one of the most traumatic and
unforgettable chapters in Jewish history.

It is a story whose general lines are familiar to the Israeli public:
the discovery in Portugal of the descendants of the anusim, the crypto
Jews of Iberia, who have secretly practiced Jewish customs, kept
Jewish holidays and continued to recite special prayers until today.
They live in various villages and towns in Portugal, mainly in the
northeast of the country, in Beiras and Tras-os-Montes, but can also
be found in Porto and Coimbra in western Portugal.
Advertisement

This book, with a detailed, in-depth introduction by Dr. Claude B.
Stuczynski, an expert in Portuguese Jewry, is a fascinating read, but
it also strikes an emotional chord. Appended to the text is a
collection of prayers translated into Hebrew ?(a collaborative effort
of the poet Shulamit Halevy and editor Ruth Toeg?), in addition to an
extensive bibliography.

Samuel Schwarz, born in Poland in 1880, received religious instruction
at a traditional "heder" as a child, but went on to study road and
bridge engineering in Paris. At the age of 24, with a degree in mining
engineering, he worked for oil refineries in Baku, Azerbaijan, and in
coal mines in Poland, England and Spain. At 34, he married the
daughter of a Zionist banker, Shmuel Barabash of Odessa. In the wake
of World War I, they fled Russia, finally settling in Lisbon,
Portugal. Working at a tin mine in east Portugal, Schwarz discovered
the New Christians, as the converted Jews of Portugal and its colonies
?(Brazil, Goa and Capo Verde?) were called.

When the kings of Castilla decided to "cleanse" their country of Jews,
members of the Jewish community were given the choice of converting to
Christianity or expulsion. The majority left, but a few converted.
Some of the Jews crossed the border into Portugal. Others went to
Morocco, France and Italy. Many chose to settle in the Ottoman Empire.
Scarcely five years had passed before the scenario repeated itself in
Portugal, when the king sought the hand of a member of the Castillian
royal family. But in this case, the Jews were not allowed to leave.
The entire Jewish population was forcibly baptized. A handful managed
to escape.

Burned at the stake
If it is true that close to 20 percent of the population of Portugal
was Jewish at the end of the 15th century, as the scholars claim, one
gets an idea of how many of today's Portuguese citizens have Jewish
roots. Over the years, they assimilated in Christian society, except
for small pockets of Jews who continued to practice their religion in
secret. Of those who clung to Judaism, many were tried by the
Inquisition in the 16th and 17th centuries. Such trials were even held
in Brazil. The accused were burned at the stake or imprisoned in
monasteries for the rest of their lives.

Notwithstanding all the persecution, one still finds small groups who
have preserved Jewish customs and recite Jewish prayers, albeit in
Portuguese. Three holidays are observed: Yom Kippur, Passover and the
Fast of Esther. In addition, they keep the Sabbath and pray three
times a day. They have special burial customs and do not eat pork on
the Sabbath or holidays. They marry only within the community.

As Claude Stuczynski observes, quite logically, the New Christian
phenomenon was probably more of a response to prejudice than a
"positive, self-motivated embrace of Jewish identity." The New
Christians were bitterly scorned and hated in Portugal. A pogrom in
Lisbon in the 16th century left more than 2,000 of them dead.
Stuczynski writes that until the early 20th century there were
churches in the northern provinces where New Christians were forced to
sit behind partitions.

"The Awakening," a wonderful novel by Spanish author Ana Maria Matute
published in Hebrew translation many years ago, challenges
Stuczynski's conclusion. In her account of growing up in Majorca in
the 20th century, Matute writes about the despised "chuetas" −
descendants of the local crypto Jews − who were actually devout
Catholics but were still treated with disdain and shunted to the
margins of society.

Samuel Schwarz writes about the New Christians of Belmonte and how
hard it was to gain their trust. He discovered that the women were the
ones who safeguarded these traditions and knew the prayers by heart.
At communal gatherings, they served as cantors and ran the services.
"These poor women did not know Hebrew and were not even aware it
existed," he says, "so they continued to be suspicious of me. This
went on until one evening, as we tried yet again to convince the New
Christians that we were members of the Jewish people, an old woman
asked us to recite at least one prayer in 'the Jewish language you say
is spoken by the Jews.'"

Schwarz chose the Shma prayer ?("Hear O Israel?). Each time he uttered
the word "adonay" ?("the Lord"?) the women covered their eyes with
their hands. "When we finished," he writes, "the old woman turned to
those around her and announced in a tone of great authority: 'The man
is a Jew. He said adonay!'"

Living in the dark
Schwarz, it bears pointing out, was not the first person to "discover"
the New Christians, but his encounter in Belmonte inspired him to
research the phenomenon, and the publication of his book triggered a
wave of writing on the subject, some of it anti-Semitic in tone.
Schwarz breaks new ground with his findings about the wide dispersion
of New Christian communities and the collection of prayers he appends
to the book.

One of these prayers is hauntingly similar to the "Yigdal Elhohim Hai"
?("Exalted is the Living God"?) hymn recited in the morning service −
a lyrical rendition of Maimonides' "Thirteen Principles of Faith." It
is called the "Ani Ma'amin" ?("I Believe"?) prayer and appears in the
original Portuguese, followed by a Hebrew translation, as are all the
prayers in the book. The Portuguese text is not an exact translation
of the Hebrew hymn, which is believed to have been written in Italy in
the 14th century by Emmanuel Haromi, but it is very close.

One cannot help but wonder how this hymn survived. The mind boggles to
think that Maimonides' "Thirteen Principles of Faith," composed in the
12th century and chanted toward the end of the morning service on
weekdays, became part of a Portuguese prayer recited by crypto Jews
who did not even know the Hebrew language existed and refused to talk
to Schwarz because they believed that secrecy was integral to their
religion. Incredibly, Maimonides' "Thirteen Principles," or the hymn
based on it, has survived in Portuguese for 500 years − and they never
even heard of Maimonides. Which shows how cultural values can live in
dark and unknown corners for hundreds of years until one day they
burst forth into the light, virtually unchanged, despite a change of
language.

The Jews of Sicily: Jewish Names

2005-11-22T14:53:00.000-08:00

http://dieli.net/SicilyPage/JewishSicily/JewishNames.html

The Jews of Sicily: Jewish Names

posted by Rufina Bernardetti Silva Mausenbaum to Saudades-Sefarad @YahooGroups

Sicilian-Americans conducting family research have some excellent published guidelines to follow. Italian Genealogical Records by Trafford R. Cole is one and Finding Italian Roots by John Philip Colleta, is another. By following their suggestions your own research approach would include documenting stateside sources such as: information from relatives, immigration and naturalization records, census records, ship manifests, passports, etc. In Sicily your research would then go to municipal and provincial records which go back as far as the 1820s, then religious records which go back as far as about 1556 and then possibly earlier records such as tax and notary records which go back several hundreds of years farther.

With Ferdinand's Edict of Expulsion of 1492, all Sicilian Jews who did not want to convert to Christianity had 90 days to get out of the Spanish realm under penalty of death. The fire sale was on. The fraction of the Jewish population that were merchants, and had property, had to sell it, pay the tax that was imposed, and leave. This included the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. They all had to sell their tools and workshops, pay the taxes, and leave.

Of course, all transactions had to be dutifully notarized.

As a result of this painful circumstance, some fragments of notary records going back to 1492 exist in Sicilian Provincial State Archives that record the names of the Jewish sellers and the Christian buyers. Francesco Giunta and Laura Sciascia published a paper in Italia Judaica that contains their transcriptions of some of those fragments.

Here's an alphabetical listing of the Jewish surnames and given names extracted from their paper:

Abadara Iesu
Abrac aurifici Paxi
Actuni Busacca
Actuni (Attuni)
Adili David
Allegrottu Simone
Alluxi Sabet
Aluxu Salomone
Anaf Aron
Arnac Salamone
Asunsi Vita
Attuni Bestet
Attuni Busacca
Attuni Manuel
Attuni Samuel
Attuni (Actuni) Azarono
Aurifice Busacca
Aurifice Isacco
Aurifice Leone
Aurifice Sadia
Aurifice (Laurifice) Abram
Azarini David
Azarini Iuda
Azeni Aron
Azeni Bracon
Azeni Geremia
Azeni Manna
Azeni MosË
Azeni Nissim
Azeni Pietropaolo
Azeni Sadia
Ben Iosep Iacob
Ben Iosep Leone
Ben Iosep Salomon
Benassai Benedetto
Bina Mardoc
Bonet Iosep
Bonu Busacca
Calabrisi David
Calabrisi Nissim
Calabrisi Salomon
Canet Crixi
Canet Donato
Catalano Nissim
Chicheri Gaudio
Chippet Xibita
Chispi Abram
Chispu Manuele
Cuino Abram
Cuino Bonavogla
Cuino Geremia
Cuino Muxa

Cuino Rafael
Cuino Salomone
Cuino Senia
Dat Iuda
Elevi Muxa
Faudali Mardoc
Ficart Busacac
Finei Tobia
Fineni Manuele
Fineni Ricco
Fineni Rinona
Fineni Manuli
Fisico Beniamino
Furnari Iosep
Gazi Grazia
Gibet Xibita
Girachio Gabriele
Girachio Salomone
Girgenti Sadia
Guillelmo Mussuto
Guini Savita
Insize Xibita
Isac David
Isac Muxa
Isac Simone
Isac Xibita
Iuzufi Vita
La Bonavogla Prospero
Laurifice (Aurifice)
Levi Busacca
Levi Lia
Lincio Braxa
Lincio Gabriele
Lincio Iacob
Linzio Sadia
Lisia Xibita
Lu Medicu Abram
Lu Medicu David
Lu Medicu Salomone
Lu Medicu Samuele
Lu Presti Busacca
Lu Presti Iacob
Lu Presti Scibita
Lumedicu Sadono
Lupu Zactarono
Marsili Sabet
Matrimora David
Matrimora Muxa
Millac Muxa
Millac Sabet
Mira Muxa
Mugnay Graziano

Muxa Maxalufo
Muxarella Gandio
Nagira Nissim
Nalini Aron
Nanu Xibita
Polizzi Anna (Xanna)
Rabiki Muxa
Raskisi (Falichisi) Iuda
Rausa Grazia
Russo Attono
Russo Salomone
Sabuti Iesus
Sacerdotu Aron
Sacerdotu Barono
Sacerdotu Busacca
Sacerdotu Gabriele
Sacerdotu Leono
Sacerdotu Lia
Sacerdotu Mardoc
Sacerdotu Salomon
Salamon Abram
Samuel Xue
Sanzato Gentile
Simonis Muxa
Siracusa Abram
Stozu Iosep
Sufi Leone
Sufi Nissim
Susan Salomone
Tagul Asaraz
Tagul Mardoc
Tolu Iosep
Veri Manuele
Veri Perna
Vigivani Muxa
Vigiveni Gabriel
Visa Abrac
Vita Manuel
Xaccaruni David
Xafini Abram
Xamuel Rabin
Xane
Xareri Mardoc
Xattarini David
Xifuni Abram
Xunina David
Xunina Muxa
Xunina Iacob
Xunina Zibita
Zel Abram

Another List

Here's another alphabetical listing of Jewish surnames and given names used in Sicily before 1492. These names were extracted from Professor Martino's paper on The Jews of Messina.

Abbanascia MosË
Abraham Rabbi Jacob ben
Abulafia Abraham ben Shemuel
Abulrabbi Aaron
Amato
Amergi
Aurifici Aron
Aurifici Vitali
Balsamo
Barone
ben Nachman Mosheh
ben Shalom Rabbi Abraham
Ben Yij˜ Abraham
Ben Yij˜ Mubaschir
Ben Yij˜ Surur
Ben Yij˜ Shamwal
Ben Yij˜ Moshe
Ben Yij˜ Yusuf
Bonanno
Bonavoglia David
Bonavoglia (Heftz) MosË (Mohe)
Bonfiglio

Brigandi
Bruno
Burrada
Campagna
Catalano MosË
Chanchio Sacerdote (prob. Rabbi)
Chaninello Muxa
Compagna Aron
Compagna Muxa
Conti Jacob
Conti Rosa
Costantino
da Bertinoro Obadiý
di Dioniso GiosuË
di Minisci. Salomone
di Minisci. Azaria
Fermo Elias
Finzi
Gaudio
Gini Salomone
Gini Guglielmo
Hadad Rabbi Nathan ben Sa 'adiah

Hasdaj MosË
Lagumina G
Marino
Marmici Elia
Mazza
Medici MosË
Monomato Giovanni
Monomato Pagana
Romano
Sanguinetti Rav Ismaele
Scivinell Isacco
Sigilmasi Rabbi Sa 'adiah ben Izahaq
Sigtune
Spangnolo Abramo
Spangnolo Iacopo
Spangnolo MosË
Staiti
Syminto
Tudela Benjamin
Tzarfati Rabbi Natronay
Zacco Giuseppe
Zacco Gaudio

Community email addresses: Portuguese-Jewish History: http://www.saudades.org Celebrating Our Portuguese-Jewish Heritage

The Jews of the North Caribbean

2005-11-22T14:52:00.000-08:00

The Jews of the North Caribbean

By ROBERTA SOTONOFF
November 8, 2005
www.juf.org/news_public_affairs/article.asp?key=6569

Way before there were packaged trips to Aruba, Jews
have been visiting the Dutch Caribbean. They didn't
come just for sun and fun. It was for the usual
reason-to escape persecution.

The Dutch have always been benevolent toward the Jews.
So it follows that the Dutch Caribbean Islands would
be a refuge for them. Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao
(pronounced cur-as-ow), Saba (pronounced say-ba), St.
Maarten, St. Eustatius (called Statia and pronounced
stay-sha), and
Surinam (formerly Dutch Guyana) offered them a better
life. Jews prospered in the fields of commerce, sugar
cultivation and finance.

Ironically, the first Jew to come to the New World was
Christopher Columbus's interpreter, Luis de Torres.
The Inquisition banned the Jews from participating in
an expedition, but de Torres wanted to live and make a
living. He converted to Christianity alongside the
ship, just before it sailed.

De Torres didn't stay, but Marranos did. As early as
1502, they lived secretly in Brazil-many settled in
Recife. Freedom came with the Dutch capture of the
territory. But, in 1654, the Portuguese returned and
resumed the Inquisition. The Jews quickly relocated to
Surinam, Curacao and Statia.

SURINAM
Surinam lies just east of Venezuela. Crypto-Jews
arrived as early as 1536, but another Jewish colony,
Torarica (rich torah), was formed in 1639.

Under the sponsorship of the English governor, Lord
Willoughby, migration from England began in 1652.
Given religious rights, the colony, Joden Savanna,
thrived, and prosperity continued when the Dutch took
over in 1667.

Neve Shalom Synagogue was built in Paramaribo. By
1736, one-fourth of the sugar plantations were owned
by Jews. They even had their own militia. Bitter
disagreements soon arose between the Ashkenazim and
the Sephardim. The Sephardim ceded Neve Shalom and
built Tsedek Ve Shalom, complete with sand floor. (It
is said that sand floors were originally used to
muffle the sound of crypto-Jews' footsteps and
prayers. It also symbolized the desert wanderings.)

The settlement decline is attributed to the plunder of
plantations and the 1832 fire in Joden Savanna. The
bankruptcy of the Amsterdam business house, Dietz, and
the introduction of beet sugar didn't help much
either.

Today there are about 70 Jewish families in Surinam,
many of them high-level civil servants. The entire
contents of Tsedek Ve Shalom are in Israel's Jewish
Museum. Neve Shalom is still used, and alongside it
is a Moslem mosque.

CURACAO
Curacao is the Jewish jewel of the Caribbean. Since
1634, when Samuel Coheno was appointed Chief Steward
of the native Indian population, Jews have called it
home. Refuges escaping Inquisitions in Recife and
Europe
began arriving in 1651.

The Dutch totally accepted the Jews. In fact, Jews
were the only foreigners who didn't have to leave the
city at night. Immigration swelled, and by the 19th
century, the island had the largest Jewish population
in the Americas.

Jews began as planters, but were most successful as
merchants and ship owners. Language skills made them
interpreters, which helped to establish commerce
between Europe and the Americas. Ironically, many
dealt in the slave trade.

The first temple, a wooden house founded in 1659 in
the De Hoop (The Hope) area, became Mikve Israel. A
rift in 1864 brought the founding of Temple Emanuel, a
reformed congregation. It took 100 years and two
floundering congregations to solve their differences
and merge.

The 1920s brought the Ashkenazim. Not surprisingly,
they had differences with the Sephardim. Their
Orthodox shul, Shaarei Tzedek, is located in the
Scharloo neighborhood.

Today, the former Temple Emanuel, with its steeple and
stained glass windows, is a government law office. But
the famous, sand-floored Mikve Israel-Emanuel,
consecrated in 1732, is legendary. Its bima and seats
of the finest mahogany, huge chandelier, organ and
four columns-one for each of the matriarchs-make it
elegant. The Dutch colonial-designed structure is the
Western Hemisphere's oldest synagogue in continuous
use. It is also one of the island's biggest
attractions.

Involvement ended at Beit Chaim Bleinhelm, located
west of the Joden Kwartier. It is estimated that
between 5,200 and 5,500 people are buried here at the
Western Hemisphere's oldest cemetery. Unfortunately,
many of the elaborately sculptured tombstones have
been damaged by erosion.

The Jewish community, about 600, is still very much a
part of the island. They welcome landsmen.

ST. EUSTATIUS
Not many people are aware of the seven-square-mile St.
Eustatius, affectionately known as Statia. It was a
big deal in the mid-1800s-the hub of commerce between
the Americas and Europe. A free port, it supplied the
U.S. with arms during the Revolution.

David Seraiva and Abraham Henriquea, the isle's first
Jews, came here from Recife in 1660. Other Jews
followed, leaving abruptly each time French pirates
took control of the island. When the Dutch regained
control, they returned, and the Jews prospered. In
1739, they erected their synagogue, Honen Dalim
(Merciful to the Poor), which was so affluent, it had
two rabbis. A hurricane destroyed it in 1772, but it
was rebuilt.

With an 11-gun salute to the American Brig-of-War, the
"Andrew Doria," on Nov. 16, 1776, Statia became the
first country to recognize U.S. independence. For this
goodwill gesture, British Admiral Rodney raided and
torched the warehouses five years later, which
economically destroyed the island. Merchants, most of
them Jews, were looted and deported to St. Kitts and
Antigua. Ironically, the Pollack brothers, Americans
who escaped to Statia because they were pro-British,
suffered the same fate.

Today the shell of Honen Dalim still stands on "Jews
Way" or "Synagogue Path." It has been refurbished. The
stairs leading to the women's level are still in
place. A mikvah and the cemetery, surrounded by a
stone wall and two iron gates representing the Ten
Commandments, are located at the end of Princessweg
Road. No Jews currently reside on the island.

ARUBA
In 1754, Moses Solomon Levie Maduro sailed to Aruba
from Curacao to established a branch of the Dutch West
India Company. Others followed, but a true Jewish
community never really took hold. Evidence of a Jewish

presence from that time is a small cemetery in
Oranjestad.

The Holocaust started a Jewish migration in 1938. With
the establishment of Palm Beach's Jewish Country Club
four years later, the community was officially
launched. The club no longer exists, but the community
does. Beth Israel Synagogue was built in 1962. Today
it has a full-time rabbi. And for a little nosh, there
is the Kineret Aruba Kosher Deli.

ST. MAARTEN
Rodney's 1781 raid on Statia spurred the Jewish
settlement on the neighboring island of St. Maarten.
It never really thrived. A synagogue erected on
Archerstaat (Back Street) became a pile of rubble
within 40 years. The Guavaberry Emporium is thought to
be the site of an old synagogue and off Front Street
there is a small alley-like street known as Jews
Cemetery Way. The walkway leads past the synagogue and
cemetery complex.

Tourism has brought a resurgence of the St. Maarten
Jewish community. There is no synagogue, but one is
planned. About 20 Jewish families reside on the island
as well as a Torah which is kept under lock and key.

Return to Judaism: Crypto Jews (Anousim) Around the World

2005-11-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

Tuesday,
November 8, 2005, 7:00 PM

RETURN TO JUDAISM: CRYPTO JEWS (ANOUSIM) AROUND THE WORLD

Yaffah daCosta will join Rabbi Marc D. Angel of Congregation Shearith Israel to talk about an extraordinary and growing phenomenon of our time the desire of forcibly converted Jews or anousim from Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and parts of the Americas to return to the religion of their ancestors. Yaffah daCosta is founder and director of Ezra L'Anousim, a Jerusalem-based organization dedicated to reconnecting crypto-Jews with their Jewish heritage. Of "Anousim" background, the story of her discovery of and return to Judaism is fascinating and inspiring. Ezra L'Anousim is playing a vital role in reaching out to crypto-Jews throughout the world.

Co-sponsor: Congregation Shearith Israel

Admission: Free admission
Location: 8 West 70th Street, NYC

www.americansephardifederation.org/sub/events/featured.asp#118

An Article about the Early Relations between the Jewish Communities in the Caribbean and the Guianas and Those of the Near East 17th to 19th Centuries

2005-11-22T14:50:00.000-08:00

An Article about the Early Relations between the Jewish Communities in the Caribbean and the Guianas and Those of the Near East 17th to 19th Centuries

by Mordechaï Arbell

sent to the Saudades-Sefarad forum by Carlos Valencia

The Jewish exodus from Portugal, in the beginning of the 16th century was caused mainly by the installation of the "Holy Office of the Inquisition" there. Since the forced conversion of the Jews to Catholicism in 1497, they had lived as so-called "New Christians." For those who wanted to continue to profess their Judaism in the privacy of their homes, in a quiet, discreet manner, there was no clerical authority that could punish them for doing so. In Spain where the Inquisition was very active throughout the Spanish provinces following the activities of the "conversos" and persecuting them if they were caught continuing their Jewish practices, the newly converted Jews of Portugal could keep their Judaism silently and unobtrusively.

As an exodus of small groups, families, and even individuals, the exodus of the Jews from Portugal was not similar to the massive one from Spain. It continued from the 16th century to well into the 19th. The emigrants from Portugal proceeded mainly to Western Europe - France (Bayonne and Bordeaux); The Netherlands; Germany (Hamburg); Denmark (Copenhagen as well as Altona and Gluckstadt which at that time were in Danish hands); Italy (Leghorn, Venice, and Florence); and to the Mediterranean ports of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), Salonica, Istanbul, and Izmir. Some of the Jewish exiles from Portugal left for North Africa or to the Far East. In most of these places conversos returned to Judaism.

In the beginning of the 17th century interest in the economic potential of the Americas grew among the non-Iberian powers of Europe: France, England, The Netherlands, and later on Denmark. Netherlands started settling parts of Brazil (Recife, Olinda) which was held by Portugal, the so-called Wild Coast (between the Amazon River and the Orinoco), Cayenne (now French Guyana), Pomeroon, Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo
(now the Republic of Guiana), and Curaçao which was held by Spain. England settled the island of Barbados, the island of Jamaica which was held by Spain, the island of Nevis and Surinam on the Wild Coast. France occupied Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti. Denmark settled the Virgin Islands. the new colonizing powers, except France, were Protestant, such that Jews who reconverted from Catholicism to Judaism were not liable to persecution. Jews leaving Portugal saw these colonies as very suitable for their settlement. The colonizing powers saw the Jews as a very positive human element for settlement. Their expertise in trading, shipping, and banking, their knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese was useful for commerce with Spanish and Portuguese America.

With the reoccupation by Portugal of the Dutch-held parts of Brazil, in 1654, the Jews were forced to leave Recife and Olinda, and seek other places of settlement. Now they were also regarded as experienced planters and traders in tropical produce - sugar, cacao, vanilla, and indigo - and people coming from Brazil were used to life in tropical conditions and therefore were very much needed in the American colonies. These exiles from Dutch Brazil took their place among the main producers of sugar in Cayenne, Pomeroon, Surinam, Barbados, Jamaica, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. The "Black Code" promulgated in 1683 by the French king Louis XIV instigated the expulsion of the Jews from the French-held islands.

This fresh diaspora of Jewish exiles from Spain and Portugal formed communities that remained, despite significant distances, very closely linked with the Sephardi centers the world over with sentiments of kinship and brotherhood. The most observant of the exiles made the effort, despite the difficulties and hardship, to return to the Land of Israel and settle there -. they were a minority. Others that left Portugal joined their coreligionists from Spain in the Balkans and in the Eastern Mediterranean, where they could join the centers of Jewish leaning and observance. Those who reached America somehow decided that their return to the land of their forefathers could be postponed. This is very well illustrated in the diary of Jeosua Nunes Netto and Joseph Pereira written in September 1657 on their arrival to the Jewish settlement of New Middelbourg on the Pomeroon river on the Wild Coast:

Thank God who has brought us from hell to the peace of this beautiful land. Here our bodies will lay to rest, until the time comes when they will be transferred to the land of our forefathers - Jerusalem.1

The decision to see America as their more or less permanent place of settlement, their life for several generations as "New Christians" with no Hahams (i.e., rabbis), no Jewish schools, no synagogues, all had taken its toll on their knowledge of Judaism. With their return to the faith of their ancestors, they had a strong desire to observe it fully. At the same time their weakness in religious matters made it impossible for them to produce the necessary spiritual leaders.

The very generous "rights and privileges" given to the Jews of the Caribbean area and in the Guianas in the 17th century allowed the religious leaders to assume special responsibilities. The English in Surinam and the Dutch in Cayenne, Pomeroon, and Curaçao permitted the Jews to administer their own lives, to have their own courts of law for litigation among themselves, to maintain their own schools, to build synagogues, and to observe the Sabbath. Such rights were available to Jews at that time in very few places in the world.

The Haham, with the help of the community leaders - "the Mahamad" - had to take care of the synagogue, the schools, the courts, the cemeteries; to perform circumcisions, marriages, funerals; to arrange for cantors, ritual slaughters, sextons, and community physicians; to provide for widows, orphans, and the needy (haspacoth); to take care of dowries for unmarried women
("santa compania para dotar donzelas"), assistance to transients, ransom of captives, contributions to the Holy Land; and relations with the authorities and other religious groups. They also had to promulgate the rules and regulations of the community (Haskamot).

The communities depended on the religious centers around the Near East or in Amsterdam in their correspondence and on the import of Hahams, preferably originating in the Balkans or the Mediterranean region, or individuals born as conversos in Spain and Portugal who had returned to Judaism, studied in rabbinical academies, and were renowned for their knowledge and piety.

At the time of the expulsion from Spain, those who left the country were the hardcore Jews, not willing to convert. They preferred a life of exile and diaspora to one of genuine or false converts. The largest group left for Portugal where they were condemned to live the life of forced converts while maintaining their Judaism in secret. Jews who headed for the Ottoman Empire were able to continue their Jewish life without restraint and strengthen and enhance their Jewish identity. Those who left Spain and Portugal after living for several generations as secret Jews and wished to bolster their Jewishness turned in their new places of residence in Europe to schools and academies to reimmerse themselves in Jewish studies and expand their Jewish consciousness.

The Caribbean Jews preferred spiritual leaders from the two groups mentioned above as they felt they would obtain better understanding of their special situation as well as leadership that would meet their needs. Responsa, correspondence with a rabbinical authority featuring questions on how to act on religious matters, was usually directed to Istanbul, and in some cases to Salonica (usually when regular contact with Istanbul was very difficult). For instance, we learn from the responsa of Hayim Shabbetai, compiled in 1772, that early settlers in Brazil, having no rabbinical authority among them wrote to Hayim Shabbetai of Salonika, asking whether the seasonal prayer for rain should be altered, given the difference in the seasons in the southern hemisphere.2

When the number of Jewish settlers in Dutch Brazil grew almost to the number of Jews in Amsterdam, the community members saw the need to import a Haham. In 1641 Isaac Aboab da Fonseca arrived in Recife. Aboab was born in 1605 in Castro Daire, Portugal, into a converso family which fled to St. Jean de Luz in France; Aboab had his Jewish upbringing in Amsterdam. He became the first rabbi in the Americas and served in Brazil until 1654 (the Portuguese occupation) when he returned to Amsterdam and followed a brilliant career.

With the foundation of the "Mikve Israel" community on the island of Curaçao in
1659, the community began to expand with the newly arrived Jews from Amsterdam and then with Jews who came after the destruction of the Jewish communities of Cayenne and Pomeroon, and the unsuccessful attempt to have a Jewish settlement on the island of Tobago. The community needed a spiritual leader and the choice fell on the Haham Josiau Pardo, a descendant of a Salonica family of Hahams.

Pardo arrived in Curaçao in 1674. He updated the community regulations
(Haskamot) and founded the first rabbinical academy in the Americas, "Etz Hayim." In 1683 he went to serve as the Haham of Port Royal, Jamaica. It is not known whether he perished in 1692 after the disastrous earthquake and tidal wave that destroyed the city of Port Royal, including its synagogue, or whether he died earlier.

His son David served at the beginning of the 18th century as the Haham of Surinam. Curaçao continued with its custom of preferring Hahams and spiritual leaders who either came from the Near East or were born as conversos in Spain and Portugal. Being the spiritual center of the Jewish communities in the Caribbean area, and often called the "mother" of the Jewish communities of the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its religious administration and its rabbinical academy influenced all the communities in the area.

At about the same time, the Jewish community of Barbados, "Nidhei Israel," was organized, and here again the members were anxious to have a leader. Their choice was a Haham stemming from Spain, Eliau Lopez. Born as a converso in Malaga in 1648, Lopez returned to Judaism in Amsterdam. His arrival in Barbados in 1678 to serve the two Jewish communities there, Bridgetown and Speighstown, was very remarkable - a tall figure with flowing robes as worn by the Hahams of the Mediterranean area - even the English authorities on the island were impressed.3

Barbados was one of the rare places in the Caribbean where the authorities and the population had distinctly pronounced anti- Jewish feelings. Haham Lopez, however, was held in great respect by all residents. This was the reason that in time of crisis the bigger and more prestigious community of Curaçao, nominated Haham Lopez to serve as their spiritual leader. He arrived in Curaçao in 1693, after a cholera epidemic, and following the exodus of groups of Jews to Newport, Rhode Island,4 and Tucacas, Venezuela.5 He organized the Jewish cemetery, founded the synagogue erected in 1703, and administered the community and its Jewish schools.

A Chief Haham of the same origin Lisbon-born (1699) Samuel Mendes de Sola, who reconverted to Judaism in Amsterdam where he pursued his rabbinical studies. In 1744 he was contacted by the Curaçao community. During his tenure one can see the growing difference between the Hahams, who wanted to introduce customs acquired in Amsterdam, influenced by the proximity to the German communities, and the Caribbean Jews, who had become accustomed to the lax tropical atmosphere in their everyday life and who had no desire to change the familiar traditional ways inherited from their forefathers in Spain and Portugal. Angry exchanges between the Chief Haham and the community lay leaders became more and more common.

These pious Hahams had to adapt themselves to the special conditions of the Caribbean. One issue was how to deal with children born as a result of the not uncommon relations between Jewish men and their servant girls. Another problem was that of the wives of numerous Jewish seafarers who had disappeared or not returned to their homes for many years. In the search for solutions the Hahams had to reconcile strict obligations to Jewish law with the unique conditions of Jewish life in the Caribbean. The fate of the rule promoted by the Surinam community, namely, that every Jew must grow a beard, serves as a typical example. In response to the rule, many Jews presented the Haham medical certificates attesting that the growing of a beard causes rashes and skin diseases to the bearer of the certificate and that he must be exempted from doing so.6 There were strict Hahams who often resorted to the punishment of excommunication (Herem) of those who did not abide by the rules. This was a very severe punishment in a society of islanders who lived in groups who had no external social relations.

These discussions continued during the tenure of the Haham Lopez da Fonseca
(served 1764-1815), the son-in-law of Haham de Sola, and resulted in an open clash with the arrival of Cantor Piza in 1816.

Piza, a descendant of a very prestigious family of Istanbul Hahams, was invited to Curaçao to serve as a cantor and to eventually become the Chief Haham.7 Born and educated in Amsterdam, he was already influenced by the customs and usages of modern European Sephardi Jews. His way of service clashed with the majority of the community members. On one side, angry voices called for his dismissal. On the other, he had a strong group of supporters. The rift degenerated into the secession from the established community of the protesters against Piza. They left the synagogue as well and prayed in private houses. Curaçao Jewry broke into two communities with separate cemeteries, separate administration of Jewish laws
(marriages, births, funerals, ritual slaughter, and so on).

The Jewish population of Curaçao was an important part of this Dutch colony, and at times comprised over half of the white population of the island. Thus it was imperative that the rift be mended. By order of the Royal house of Holland and with the help of the head of the rabbinical court, Daniel Lopez-Penha, reconciliation was achieved, but Cantor Piza had to go. The hunger for religious leaders was so great that Piza obtained a contract to serve the Jewish community of Charlotte Amalie on the island of St. Thomas where he remained for many years.8 His descendants became quite prominent in the Jewish communities of Panama and Costa Rica.

The lack of suitable Hahams forced the Curaçao community to use leaders from their own midst, known as "assessors," as substitute Hahams. The most prominent, Daniel Lopez-Penha, descendant of an Izmir, Turkey, family which played an active role in maintaining Jewish life on the Caribbean coast in Curaçao, Barranquilla (Colombia), and the Dominican Republic.9 For communities smaller than Curaçao and Surinam, the expense of importing and maintaining a Haham was quite high, but when the community felt the need, they did not hesitate to hire a spiritual leader.

A typical example is Barbados. The relatively small community there saw that Jewish observance was waning. They decided to hire Meir Hacohen Belinfante, a descendant of a family of Hahams, cantors, teachers, and writers which had settled in Dalmatia (Dubrovnik and Split)10 when fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition. In this instance, too, there was a clash between the strict, disciplined, pious Haham from the Balkans and the lax tropical life of Barbados (1752). With difficulties, he instituted and orderly religious administration. His death in 1773 found the Barbados community as a whole in mourning. The depression was so all pervasive that when an emissary of the Holy Land, Haham Raphael Haim Isaac Carigal (see below for further information on him), passed through Barbados, the state of the community convinced him to remain there as its Haham until his death in
1777. Other members of the Hacohen Belinfante family served as religious teachers in Jamaica.11 Jamaican Jews were dispersed in at least 13 locations all over the island. Over 16 Jewish cemeteries have been located. A need was felt for a Haham who would be able to serve the entire island. The choice fell on Joshua Hizquiau de Cordova. He was a member of a Sephardi family originating in Istanbul. Born in Amsterdam, he arrived in Curaçao to teach the Bible and Talmud in Ladino translations and also to hold services and preach.12 In 1755 he accepted the invitation of the Jamaican community to serve there as the Chief Haham of all the important communities, "Shaar Hashamaim" in Kingston, "Neve Shalom" in Spanish Town, and "Neve Zedek" in Port Royal. He fulfilled this function until his death in 1797. He wrote several books, the most important being Reason and Faith, considered the first American volume of Jewish apologetics, in which he defended the Jewish religion against the pronouncements of Spinoza, Voltaire, and Hume.

Caribbean communities had to rely on the services of itinerant emissaries from the Holy Land or from the Mediterranean ports for guidance, instruction, and maintenance of Jewish traditions. Sometimes those emissaries remained and serves as rabbis for limited periods of time. Their main aim was to collect funds and donations for the communities in Palestine and for the rabbinical academies there. Their mission was also to maintain the continuation of Jewish life in the Americas.

Portuguese Jews considered contributions to the Holy Land as part of life and as a must. Donations were sent by special carriers through Venice, Vienna, Istanbul, and Izmir. Committees for funds for Holy Land were formed in every Sephardi community as were bodies for community aid "para gozar la morada del Cielo" (to enjoy the place where God is present). The rabbinical academies in Palestine, which in the 16th and 17th centuries were mainly Portuguese Jewish and located in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias, usually reciprocated by sending sand from the Holy Land in the Caribbean (in Surinam, Curaçao, Jamaica, and St. Thomas) where synagogue floors are covered with sand, the sand of the Holy Land was mixed with the local grains.13 Sand from the Holy Land was also used for burials.

Emissaries from the Holy Land were sent to the Americas to collect funds for synagogues, rabbinical academies, and communities in Palestine. These messengers were received with greatest respect and were lodged in the best Jewish homes. Usually accompanied by two local dignitaries, the emissary would visit the contributors, pay official visits to the authorities, and participate in family feasts. At the same time, the emissaries preached in the synagogue, instructed the circumcisers and ritual slaughterers and oversaw their performance, and helped the communities write their rules and regulations.

Usually, the emissaries bore official letters of presentation, which gave them official recognition. The first such document addressed to the "Holy Communities of Israel who had settled in parts of America" was given in 1772 to Shmuel Hacohen of Hebron who went to Barbados. The list of emissaries is quite long: 1749, R. Moshe Haguel; 1750, R. Selomo Zeeli of Hebron;
1757, R. Eliah ben Araya; 1758, R. Moshe Malki of Safed.

The most impressive emissary was Raphael Haim Isaac Carigal. His life is typical of what an emissary had to do in his double capacity of collecting funds and striving to maintain Judaism. Born in Hebron in 1729 to a Portuguese Jewish family, after visiting communities in Asia and Europe he arrived in Curaçao in 1761. There he was also engaged as a Haham for over two years. In 1771 he was in Jamaica where he stayed for a year. After a well-publicized stay of five months with the Portuguese Jewish community in Newport, Rhode Island, founded by Jews from Barbados and Curaçao, he sailed for Surinam (1773), where he remained for half a year before proceeding to Barbados in 1774.14 Special emissaries were sent to the Caribbean if there was a large-scale disaster in the Near East or the Mediterranean. The mutual help flowing between the communities in the Caribbean and those of the Mediterranean was limited to Spanish-Portuguese Jews only.

Haham Yahacob Saul of Izmir came to Curaçao in 1744 to collect funds to "overcome the misfortunes that befell that community";15 in 1759, Haham David Florentin collected funds for Salonica after the plague had struck there;16 Haham Haim Modahi collected funds after the 1765 earthquake in Safed;17 and Haham Abraham Leon was sent as an emissary to Curaçao, St. Eustatius, and St. Thomas to raise funds after a fire destroyed nine synagogues in Izmir in 1774.18 One of the duties of a Jewish community was to obtain the release of Jewish captives, slaves, and hostages. Many Caribbean Jews were shipowners and also captains of their own ships. In the conduct of their business they often acted against the interests of Spain by importing and exporting merchandise from the Spanish colonies in Latin America to Dutch and English territories, activity considered illegal by Spain. Spanish warships in some instances captured these ships, and if on them they caught Jews who had been born Catholic and reconverted to Judaism, the Jews were brought to the tribunals of the Inquisition in Spain itself (to Cadiz or San Sebastian).19 In such cases the Dutch ambassador in Madrid had to intervene, most often with little success. It was the Spanish-Portuguese communities in Gibraltar and Bayonne that invested effort towards obtaining the release of the Caribbean Jewish captives by paying high sums to ransom them. Usually, those communities were reimbursed by the prisoners' home communities.20 Jews lived in Dutch, English, and Danish colonies in the Caribbean. Yet, their language in the 17th and 18th centuries remained Spanish or Portuguese. They physically observed their religion in America, but spiritually they remained in the Mediterranean basin.

The employment of learned individuals from the Near East and the Mediterranean area to serve as Hahams in the Caribbean continued well into the
20th century. With the destruction of most of the Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communities in Europe during the Holocaust and the emigration of the Caribbean Jews to Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic, the Jewish communities in the Caribbean began to diminish in number and could no longer rely on communities in the Balkans or around the Mediterranean to provide spiritual succor.

Bibliographie :
1. 1 Dr. J. Meijer, Pioneers of Pauroma (Pomeroon), Paramaribo (1954), pp. 23-24, based on the compilation by R. Bijlsma, Archief for Nederlandisch Portugeesch-Israelitsche Gemeente in Suriname, Gravenhage.
2. Hayim Shabbetai, Torat Hayim, Saloniki (1722), p. 192.
3. Wilfred S. Samuel, "A Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados in the Year
1680," in Transactions of the Historical Society of England, 13
(1932-35): 6-7.
4. Isaac S. and Suzanne A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Nederlands Antilles, Cincinnati (1970), pp. 90-91.
5. MordechaiArbell, "Rediscovering Tucacas," in American Jewish Archives, 48
(1996):36-37.
6. Robert Cohen, Jews in Another Environment, Leiden (1991), pp. 154-55
7. Vida Lindo Gutherman, "The Chronicle of Joshua Piza and His Descendants," manuscript copy with M. Arbell, pp. 3-4.
8. Lindo, pp. 5-6.
9. Mordechai Arbell, "The Annals of the Lopez Penha Family-1660-1924," in Pe'amim, 48 (1991),
10. Yakir Eventov, A History of Yugoslav Jews from Ancient Times to the End of the 19th Century, Tel Aviv (1971), p. 4.
11. Mordechai Arbell, "The Cohen Belinfante Family of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) and Their Diaspora in Barbados, Jamaica, Amsterdam, and Hamburg-16th to 19th Centuries," manuscript, 1998, p. 11.
12. Bertram W. Korn, AJA,. 18 (1966), 141-50.
13. Gerard Nahon, "Les Relations entre Amsterdam et Constantinople au XVIIIe Siecle d'apres le Copiador de Cartas de la Nation Juive Portuguese d'Amsterdam," in Dutch Jewish History, Jerusalem (1984), p. 165
14. Abraham Yaari, Sheluhei Eretz Israel, Jerusalem (1951), pp. 580-83.
15. Emmanuel, p. 166.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p. 167.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., p.222-26.
20. Ibid., p. 225.

The long road home

2005-11-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

The long road home

More than 500 years after their ancestors were forced to convert to Christianity, thousands of descendants of Marranos living in South America are returning to their Jewish roots. But they are running into obstacles on the way back to Judaism.

_{By Kobi Ben-Simhon}

It seems like they can still hear the rolling laughter of the Inquisitor. Tens of thousands of descendants of the Marranos - the Jews of Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert to Christianity more than 500 years ago - continue to carry the lost identity of their forebears, despite the passage of centuries.

The Internet is buzzing with forums of the descendants of the Marranos, also called anusim, forced converts in Hebrew. On a forum called "Saudades" (Longings; www.saudades.org), more than 1,000 people are engaged in an intensive process of clarifying and crystallizing their identity. They write about Hebrew accents, Israeli Nobel Prize laureates, Torah precepts, Talmudic sages, the Jerusalem prayer book and even about the quality award that went to the olive oil of Kibbutz Revivim in the northern Negev, in a worldwide competition.

One of the participants in the forum styles himself "The 7 Noachian Laws." Another, Mordechai Lopes, from Recife, Brazil, writes about Shabbat observance, and a woman contributes an article that was published in a local American paper about descendants of Marranos who live in the United States, urging people to read it. Anabela from the village of Soago in Portugal writes about a DNA test she recently had done. She says she knows she is of Portuguese descent and asks any forum participants who have also had DNA tests to check whether there is any compatibility with her results (which she includes in the message).

Besides Saudades, an English-language site, there are many sites serving virtual com munities of Spanish-speaking Marranos - Mexicans, Peruvians and Colombians. Here, too, at the heart of their discourse lies their great trap: their past. The Marranos' descendants, who are formally Christians in every respect, deal with questions such as "who is a Jew" and how Jewish history has ignored them. They talk about various archives that document the Spanish Inquisition and their personal genealogies, whose roots extend all the way back to that dark period in Spain.

"All the signs indicate that there is an awakening of Marranos who are looking for their Jewish roots," says Prof. Avi Gross, an expert on Spanish and Portuguese Jewry and on the Marranos from the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva. Gross returned last month from a visit to the Marrano communities in Brazil as part of his activity in Ezra La'anusim (Help for the Marranos), an association which became operative this year. On the screen of his laptop is a photograph of a family of Marranos: the husband took a picture of his wife and two children as they lit the Shabbat candles.

"More and more people nowadays are discovering their Jewish past," Prof. Gross notes. "That is quite clear to anyone who is engaged in the history of Brazil and Portugal. It is a very broad phenomenon - thousands of Marranos who want to return to the tradition of their forebears, to the life their ancestors were deprived of by Catholic fanaticism. The potential for a return to the Jewish religion is of numbers that I am not willing to cite, because I just cannot. The possibilities are tremendous. I am not interested in citing a number."

Apersonal,authenticfeeling

A new study by Prof. Gross deals with the wave of religious awakening among the descendants of the Portuguese Marranos who immigrated to Brazil. "Jewish blood flows in the veins of a very high proportion of Christian Brazilians of Portuguese origin," he says. "The fact that vestiges of Judaism exist in astounding quantities is cle ar; it is a statistical matter. Historians say that 15 percent of the Portuguese emigrants who settled in Brazil in the 16th and 17th centuries were of Marrano - that is, Jewish - descent. A simple arithmetical calculation will give you seven-digit figures today. In my opinion, the numbers are far smaller. We are talking about unconscious Judaism which was totally assimilated. Most of them assimilated a thousand times since then."

On the other hand, he describes a conversation he had in Sao Paulo with Prof. Anita Novinsky, a world expert on the Inquisition. "She denies the persistence of Judaism among the Marranos, yet she admits, as she told me, that `Brazil is seething with Judaism below the surface.' I will not forget what she said about one of the descendants of the Marranos I met - that he `carries history in his flesh and blood.' From my point of view as a historian, that is a definitive statement. After all, she is highly critical of the way historical research has idealized the Marranos' preservation of Judaism, and when she says something like this she apparently knows whereof she speaks."

There are large concentrations of Marranos (the word, used derogatively of the converts, means "pigs" or "the accursed") in Brazil, especially in the country's northeast. It is in these arid areas, deep in the interior of the continent, that Gross found huge families that maintain a Jewish way of life, at least as far as they are able. The area borders four states: Pernambuco, Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte and Paraiba.

"These are vast extended families that have remained in marriage ties and have hardly assimilated with the surroundings," says Gross. "They lived in social separation and did not even know why. It's amazing, but they preserved a Marrano framework of life into the 20th century. I met one person there whose family numbers 9,000 members. Their whole life is conducted under what they call the `family laws.' It is a huge family in which the members are bound to each other by marriage. I cou ld not find an explanation of why they went so far into the interior, into the arid region, apart from the fact that they wanted to maintain quiet, to follow a different community life, by conscious choice. Those who sought money and better sources for a livelihood went further south. There is no reason for people to go so far into desert regions like these."

The Marranos' descendants are far from being a monolithic bloc, Prof. Gross relates. Because the Marrano reality was concealed until now, it became an individual matter, so there are some Marranos who are more Zionist and others who are more religious. There are also some who consider themselves pure Sephardim [from the Hebrew word for Spain] and therefore decided to follow in the footsteps of Maimonides and express powerful opposition to mysticism and kabbala. In general, they all feel Jewish and Israeli, even if they are totally cut off from that way of life.

"They do not meet much, mainly because of the large distances. This is an imagined community," Prof. Gross says. "A community where they all cry together on the Internet. It is together, in the common troubles, in their shared pain, that they find warmth. They are religious people, with religious feelings, who are unable to find themselves within the Christian framework. In some cases the return to Judaism begins with the rejection of the Church - people who from a young age were unwilling to accept Catholic dogma. They arrived at this place by way of their own searching. It is not a herd phenomenon and not a matter of fashion. It is a very personal and authentic feeling."

Rootoftheevil

The Marrano phenomenon came into being in Spain and Portugal in the wake of several separate periods of conversion. The first occurred in the summer of 1391, in Seville, as part of a tidal wave of anti-Jewish riots that swept the country. Thousands of Jews were murdered that summer, and about a third of the Jews - approximately 100,000, according to one estimate - were forced to unde rgo Christian baptism. Additional conversion actions followed, with another one occurring in 1492, during the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, when they were given the choice of becoming Christians or leaving the country. Again the number of converts was in the tens of thousands. By this time, the well-oiled machinery of the Inquisition was operating, systematically persecuting the Marranos in Spain, with the aim of interrogating those among the "new Christians" who continued to observe Judaism in secret and punish the impostors mercilessly.

In 1497, the Jewish community in Portugal was also obliged to convert to Christianity. A royal edict ordered all the Jews to come to Lisbon, where they were forced to convert. Here, too, estimates speak of 10,000 or 20,000 converts. In 1540, the Inquisition was established in Portugal, and the Portuguese version was considered more brutal than that of neighboring Spain. Hebrew parchment scrolls that were hidden in caves and later found, and thousands of interrogation files that document accusations of observing the Mosaic laws in secret show that the Marranos maintained a Jewish way of life of some kind in secret for many years.

After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the general conversion in Portugal, most Marranos were cut off from the Jewish world. A paradoxical situation emerged in which the Church succeeded in turning the Jews into "new Christians," but Christian society rejected them. The entry of the new Christians into the social system was perceived as a threat by former Jews, certainly in the first generation. By the 16th century a view gained credence in Spain and Portugal that there was a stubborn core of heresy in the Jews, who were Christians on the outside but remained Jews in their homes. This outlook was manifested in the form of the "blood purity" laws, which were not necessarily promulgated by the state but were adopted in various areas by certain institutions, such as universities and monasteries, in order to exclude anyone with Jew ish origins.

The source of the evil in these laws lay in their timelessness. As soon as the Jewish past of new Christians was discovered, even 200 years later, their entire social and economic infrastructure was destroyed and they could expect to be persecuted and suspected of observing Judaism. It was to escape a life of unbearable fear that they fled to the Islamic countries, to Amsterdam and to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas.

As is only natural, in the course of time, a gradual erosion occurred in the Jewish way of life of the Marranos. Within two or three generations, most of them were assimilated into Christian society, and the Jewish religion among them was relegated to cellars and unseen places - to an oral tradition. After hundreds of years only vague signs remained of a Jewish heritage.

BornanddyingasJews

On Shabbat, he relates, he takes his children to the far end of the lake. Standing on a broad wooden bridge, they scour the skies together for three stars, indicating the end of the Sabbath. Fabio (Ariel) Fonseca, 32, the spokesman of the Federal Police in the state of Alagoas, Brazil, understood from a young age that he was a Jew. "At the age of 15 I started to read about Judaism," he says in an interview conducted by e-mail. "The first time I encountered the fact that my family had a Jewish past it seemed like total nonsense. I thought the Jews were from Israel."

He left the church at the age of 20. "It was hard to be outside. After I was married, my mother helped me get to relatives and talk to them." His path into the Jewish world was forged through his grandfather's sister; it continued on the Internet and led him to a school in the coastal city of Natal, where descendants of the Marranos learn about Judaism. Fonseca now presents himself as a Jew - last summer he underwent circumcision. He is learning Hebrew from poems an Israeli friend sends him and reads the Jerusalem Post and the English-language edition of Haaretz on the Internet e very day. His two children kiss the mezuzah affixed to the door of their home and can recite the Shema prayer.

Dr. Luciano Oliveira, a 27-year-old family doctor from the state of Paraiba, has bigger plans. He intends to establish a Marrano community in Brazil, like the model of the famous Marrano community in Belmonte, Portugal, where forced converts managed to preserve Jewish religious observance in secret from the time of the Inquisition until the 1970s, and train people to carry out religious tasks in the community. He himself has already learned the burial ritual from the Orthodox burial society of Sao Paulo. "In all the generations of my family," he writes by e-mail, "the women preserved the customs and transmitted the tradition. For example, the burial tradition - my mother was responsible in the family for purifying the dead and for the interment."

Dr. Oliveira views himself as a public emissary with deep responsibility. But the more he tries to resolve the tangled problem of the Marrano society around him, the angrier he becomes. Despite his tremendous efforts to return to the fold of Judaism, he feels that the Jewish institutions are rejecting him outright. "The rabbinate is today succeeding in doing to us what the Inquisition did not succeed in doing for hundreds of years. I am not ready to go back to Judaism as a convert," he says in frustration. "I cannot do that to my family; that would be to betray them. Officially I am still a Catholic, but the family laws are what decide. My mother says, `I was born into these family laws and I will die in them.'"

The bitter irony is that statements in this spirit can be found in the files of the Inquisition, when Marranos who were caught observing Jewish customs declared defiantly before they were murdered that they "were born and will die in Judaism."

TheOrthodoxbarrier

Families like the Fonsecas and the Oliveiras are trapped in a cruel process that is the lot of many Marrano families who are aware of their Jewish past. The Marranos' journey back to Judaism runs into the insensitivity of the religious institutions, even though the Marranos have undergone a profound process of self-discovery. In general, the Orthodox Jewish religious institutions in Israel and abroad view the descendants of the Marranos as gentiles and demand that they undergo a full conversion. The Marranos, for their part, say they want to return to Judaism under the status of people "returning to the religion of their forebears," not as converts.

From their point of view, the difference is critical. Only a very few religious courts in South America might restore the Marranos to Judaism in this way, but even if an Orthodox court in Brazil does so, there is no guarantee that its ruling will be honored in Israel, still less if a court of Reform Judaism was involved.

Sisa Shlomovitz, 33, understood this and thought she would find an answer in Israel. Four years ago, she immigrated to Israel with her Jewish husband, Asher Ben Shlomo, who established the Federation of Israeli Marranos. "We realized that there was no point in undergoing any conversion or return process abroad, because it simply would not be honored in Israel," Ben Shlomo says. "When we arrived in Israel, my wife was made to undergo a conversion process. But to this day, I have not found a court that is willing to restore her to Judaism and whose ruling will be honored. Today she is not considered Jewish according to law. The truth is that she has not even been granted citizenship - she is still going through the procedures, even though I am Jewish."

Shlomovitz first became aware of her Jewishness at the age of 20, from her mother. Her extended family consists of 1,000 people, most of them residing in the state of Alagoas in Brazil. "Generally in my family this information was kept from the children, and they only told us about our Jewish past at a later age," she says. "The military dictatorship in Brazil was in league with the Catholic Church, and that made us afraid. But even before I became aware of my Jewish past, I observed Jewish customs such as waiting for three hours between eating meat and dairy, the prohibition on eating eggs tainted with blood and the tradition of marriage within the family. My family still observes those customs.

"We are in a situation in which the Christians consider us Jews and the Jews consider us gentiles," she sums up. "Today my family has the desire to define itself as Jewish, but they do not take that step because they know that in Israel the return to Judaism is not recognized. In Israel neither I nor my children are considered Jewish. A solution has to be found for us because under no circumstances are we willing to undergo conversion. There are some who want to humiliate us very greatly in the conversion process."

The rabbinate in Israel has not adopted a uniform approach toward the Marranos. There is no coordination between the religious courts on the subject. A halakhic response on the subject written in 1995 by a former chief rabbi, Mordechai Eliahu (after concluding his term as chief rabbi), demonstrates the absurdity involved. According to this ruling, the Marranos do not have to undergo a conversion process, but one of returning to Judaism.

"Those who wish to perform all the precepts of the Torah openly today should be praised," Rabbi Eliahu wrote. "After undergoing all the processes of Torah study, accepting the Torah and the burden of the precepts, circumcision and immersion as stipulated in the Law, they should be given a certificate headed, `Certificate for one who returns to the ways of his forefathers.'" Halakhically, this ruling puts the Marranos through the same strict process that a convert undergoes, but despite this, the rabbinical courts in Israel do not abide by this ruling.

On Tu Bishvat (Arbor Day) this year, a rainy day in Jerusalem, a group of people decided to put an end to the humiliating situation. The Ezra La'anusim association was established with the goal of making it possible for the Marra nos to return to Judaism and overcome the halakhic obstacle posed by the rabbinate. The organization's members include Prof. Gross; attorney Aryeh Barnea, former principal of Gymnasia Herzliya high school in Tel Aviv, who is the association's legal adviser; and Rabbi Zalman Cohen. The head of the association is Yafa da Costa, a resident of the West Bank city of Ma'aleh Adumim, who is from a Marrano family herself.

Da Costa grew up in a town near Boston, Massachusetts, and attended church every Sunday. "We did what we had to in order to adjust ourselves to the framework," she says about her family. "At the age of 19, I got the feeling that it was not for me, an inner feeling that is hard for me to explain. The family's Jewish past was forgotten in certain parts of the family - my mother, for example, didn't know about it."

Da Costa found her Jewish roots in Israel, following a chance conversation in which someone casually suggested to her that she examine whether her Portuguese past ended in a Jewish home in Portugal. After that, things moved quickly. "I started investigating and I understood, as happens to many Marranos, that a lot of the customs we followed at home were actually Jewish customs. There were also customs that we did not observe, but which my mother told me had been observed in her house. In the end, I carried out the process of my return to Judaism in New York, in a highly regarded and well-known court, so that the Interior Ministry in Israel accepted my Jewishness."

In this sense, the Da Costa case is a precedent, and she is now trying to get that precedent extended to other Marranos. "My mission in life is to help the Marrano families," she says. "I started in the United States five years ago and I am continuing here in Israel through the association. It is important for me to make it clear that we are legitimate Jews. We must not let the Inquisition win. The Marranos have waited for years for the doors to be opened to them; they are waiting for historical justice. The assoc iation has begun to direct Marranos to courts abroad that work with us, and thus resolve their Jewish identity. Whoever goes through the process can decide afterward what he wants to do - remain in his community or immigrate to Israel."

"I think we are obligated to find a way to draw the Marranos' descendants close to us and to draw closer to them," Aryeh Barnea says in a determined tone. "This is a humane story. We have to understand that this means the whole world to these people - to connect with their Jewish roots. There is a matter here that the Israeli establishment is not aware of: the Marranos' descendants are Jews and we must find a way to bring them back into the fold of Judaism and Israel. We have to help them come back home. The estimate is that hundreds of thousands might return, and as I see it this is a demographic issue that constitutes a meaningful contribution to society in Israel. From my point of view, a step in this direction is definitely the realization of Zionism."

There have been attempts in the past to assist Marrano communities, though only on a small scale. An organization called Amishav has been active in recent years in urban centers in Spain and Portugal in an effort to restore descendants of the Marranos to the Jewish fold. (This organization, which was founded by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, is also active in trying to find descendants of the 10 lost tribes.)

Ezra La'anusim has hopes for a genuine shift of attitude, one that would verge on the historic. "Our primary goal is to find conversion courts with Orthodox authority," Prof. Gross explains. "When that court rules in favor of a Marrano's right to return to the ways of his forefathers, no one will be able to dispute it."

Rabbi Zalman Cohen, the association's halakhic adviser, has already begun to contact rabbinical courts abroad. "The problem was that those who dealt with the subject of the Marranos until now were rarely authorized religious court judges, and they did not have the necessary knowledge of the subject," he says after concluding a Torah class in his home close to midnight. "We have made contact with rabbis of the first rank who will be able to resolve the problem. When a Marrano enters the court, these rabbis begin clarifications to ensure that he preserved a Jewish identity. The rabbis whom we have started to work with are authorized to do this."

Could you elaborate?

"To explain exactly what they are doing is like trying to explain how the atomic bomb works to someone who has no knowledge of physics. What's important is that at the end of the hearing the Marrano leaves with a certificate stating he is Jewish and that there is no one in the world who will dare cast doubt on his Jewishness."

What is happening now is only the beginning. The number of Marranos who have benefited from the system described by Rabbi Cohen is negligible compared with the potential. He has no hesitation in assailing the conversions usually performed in Israel. "In Israel we have what is known as wholesale conversion, loose conversion, so there are many people who are unwilling to trust the conversion process that is done here," says Cohen. "Right-wing political forces have taken over the conversion processes here and this is the result. They want cheap labor for the settlements - that is the approach, regrettably. Three weeks ago a Marrano couple arrived who thought that they would find a way out of the dilemma in Israel, but the problem they came up against is that there is no institution here that will restore them to Judaism. These are people who preserved their Jewish identity with selfless devotion, and are treated as though they were gentiles. What a slap in the face this is for them. It's enough to make one cry."

The Chief Rabbinate states in response: "Recently Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar met with representatives of descendants of forced converts from Portugal who are interested in returning to Judaism. With the aim of facilitating the process of the return of the descendants of the anusim to the fold of the Jewish people, the subject will be examined in depth, because of the fear of assimilation among the descendants of the anusim. To examine the Jewishness of the descendants of the anusim, the chief rabbi sent two representatives who are to submit a conclusive report on the subject very soon."

In the meantime, Ezra La'anusim has begun to operate an educational site for the Marranos on the Internet. Miguel Staroi, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Mitzpeh Yericho, teaches a group of 40 students from Colombia twice a week. "I give them lessons in Jewish religious law," he relates. "The subject that they are now taking an interest in is family purification laws. It is a virtual class, in which they listen and watch and can ask questions. Nearly all of them have a university education, nearly all of them have an M.A. It is very thrilling for me to work with them."

Prof. Gross admits, "If I had not thought in terms of large numbers, I think I would not have become involved in the subject. After my meeting with a number of Marranos in Brazil, and endless hours of correspondence via the Internet, I feel that some of them are holding onto me as an anchor. I felt their need for someone to pull them out of the whirlpool. I try to separate the various emotional elements, but there is no doubt that I feel a sense of belonging at the human, national and religious level with these people. If we succeed in the mission we have set ourselves in the association, I will be able to say that this is the greatest thing I was part of in my life."

_______________________________________________________________________________

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=556543

Hispanics Uncovering Roots as Inquisition's 'Hidden' Jews

2005-11-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

This is re the NY Times article that was mentioned yesterday on the list.
Since the NY Times needs registration, I thought I'd send the article
referenced so everyone can read it.

Barbara

sent by tavernab@rochester.rr.com To: Anousim@yahoogroups.com

October 29, 2005
Religion

Hispanics Uncovering Roots as Inquisition's 'Hidden' Jews
By SIMON ROMERO

HOUSTON, Oct. 28 - When she was growing up in a small town in southern
Colorado, an area where her ancestors settled centuries ago when it was on
the fringes of the northern frontier of New Spain, Bernadette Gonzalez
always thought some of the stories about her family were unusual, if not
bizarre.

Her grandmother, for instance, refused to travel on Saturday and would use
a specific porcelain basin to drain blood out of meat before she cooked it.
In one tale that particularly puzzled Ms. Gonzalez, 52, her grandfather
called for a Jewish doctor to circumcise him while he was on his death bed
in a hospital in Trinidad, Colo.

Only after Ms. Gonzalez moved to Houston to work as a lawyer and began
discussing these tales with a Jewish colleague, she said, did "the pieces of
the puzzle" start falling into place.

Ms. Gonzalez started researching her family history and concluded that her
ancestors were Marranos, or Sephardic Jews, who had fled the Inquisition in
Spain and in Mexico more than four centuries ago. Though raised in the Roman
Catholic faith, Ms. Gonzalez felt a need to reconnect to her Jewish roots,
so she converted to Judaism three years ago.

"I feel like I came home," said Ms. Gonzalez, who now often uses the first
name Batya. "The fingerprints of my past were all around me, but I didn't
know what they meant."

It is difficult to know precisely how many Hispanics are converting or
adopting Jewish religious practices, but accounts of such embraces of
Judaism are growing more common in parts of the Southwest. In Clear Lake, a
suburb south of Houston, Rabbi Stuart Federow has overseen half a dozen
conversions of Hispanics in recent years. In El Paso, Rabbi Stephen Leon
said he had converted almost 40 Hispanic families since moving to Texas from
New Jersey 19 years ago.

These conversions are the latest chapter in the story of the crypto-Jews,
or hidden Jews, of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, who
are thought to be descended from the Sephardic Jews who began fleeing Spain
more than 500 years ago. The story is being bolstered by recent historical
research and advances in DNA testing that are said to reveal a prominent
role played by crypto-Jews and their descendants in Spain's colonization of
the Southwest.

For more than two decades, anecdotal evidence collected by researchers in
New Mexico, Colorado and Texas suggested that some nominally Catholic
families of Iberian descent had stealthily maintained Jewish customs
throughout the centuries, including lighting candles on Friday evening,
avoiding pork and having the Star of David inscribed on gravestones.

The whispers of hidden rituals coming from thoroughly Catholic communities
were at times met with skepticism. One explanation for these seemingly
Jewish customs was that evangelical Protestant sects active in the Southwest
about a century ago had used Jewish imagery and Hebrew writing in their
proselytizing, and that these symbols had become ingrained in isolated
Hispanic communities.

Skepticism aside, some rabbis view assistance to or conversions of
crypto-Jews as a responsibility. "The American Jewish community provided
support in bringing Soviet, Albanian or Syrian Jews to the United States,
and helping them in their transition," said Rabbi Leon of Congregation B'nai
Zion, a Conservative congregation in El Paso. "I don't see how the
crypto-Jews are any different."

Modern science may now be shedding new light on the history of the
crypto-Jews after molecular anthropologists recently developed a DNA test of
the male or Y chromosome that can indicate an ancestral connection to the
Cohanim, a priestly class of Jews that traces its origin back more than
3,000 years to Aaron, the older brother of Moses.

Family Tree DNA, a Houston company that offers a Cohanim test to its male
clients, gets about one inquiry a day from Hispanics interested in exploring
the possibility of Jewish ancestry, said Bennett Greenspan, its founder and
chief executive. Mr. Greenspan said about one in 10 of the Hispanic men
tested by his company showed Semitic ancestry strongly suggesting a Jewish
background. (Another divergent possibility is that the test might suggest
North African Muslim ancestry.)

"The results have just blown me over, reminding me of something out of
Kaifeng," Mr. Greenspan said, referring to the Chinese city of Kaifeng,
where a small Jewish community persisted for about 1,000 years until the
mid-19th century when it was almost completely assimilated. "Lots of
Hispanic people tell me they're interested in something Jewish and they
can't explain it. Well, this helps explain it."

Not everyone who discovers Jewish ancestry, either through genealogical
research or DNA testing, has decided to convert to Judaism, but some
Hispanics who have found links still feel drawn to incorporate Jewish
customs into their life. For instance, the Rev. William Sanchez, 52, a
Catholic priest in Albuquerque, spent years researching his family's past in
New Mexico before a DNA test three years ago showed that he almost certainly
had the Jewish Cohanim marker.

Since then, Father Sanchez has sought to educate his parishioners on the
connections between Catholicism and Judaism, and has helped oversee the
Nuevo Mexico Project, which tries to identify Sephardic ancestry among
Hispanics from New Mexico. He has encouraged more than 100 of his
parishioners to take DNA tests.

Father Sanchez has also introduced some Jewish customs at St. Edwins Church
in Albuquerque, where he serves; he blew the shofar, or ram's horn, this
month during the Yom Kippur holiday. At another parish where he used to work
in rural northeastern New Mexico, in the village of Villanueva, he would
hold an annual Passover supper.

"I have a pluralistic, not an antagonistic, view of our religions," Father
Sanchez said.

Still, others feel they have to make a clean break upon exploring their
Jewish roots. John García, a lawyer in El Paso whose family moved to the
United States two generations ago from northern Mexico, said he had heard
stories since he was a boy that his family had a Sephardic Jewish past.

He formally converted to Judaism in 2001 and last year had a bar mitzvah in
El Paso, at the age of 53, together with five other crypto-Jews. These days
Mr. García, a lawyer in the public defender's office in El Paso, never works
on the Sabbath and is an active member of Temple Mount Sinai, a Reform
congregation in El Paso.

"I've had to go beyond my comfort level in something I would call a
reversion rather than a conversion," Mr. García said. "There were an
intervening 400 years when my family had become Catholic, but something
about Judaism, I don't know exactly what it was, was kept alive."

on the Jewish-Anousim origin of Cervantes

2005-11-22T14:46:00.000-08:00

sent by Miguel Aguirre to sephardic_list@yahoogroups.com

Some time ago. It was posted in this list that one possible clue to the Jewish origin of Miguel de Cervantes was that in the chapter were Sancho Panza acts as as judge (Chapter XLV of the second part), he makes a judgment that could imply that he knew the Talmud. The thing that I have never seen pointing out, is that this same chapter the narrator of the history says: me siento tibio, desmazalado y confuso I do not think that I have ever seen the very Sephardic verb desmazalar in any other Spanish writer _______ maamcs

	Re: on the Jewish-Anousim origin of Cervantes by EduPlanet Rectorate (daniEl I. Ginerman) - Friday, 28 October 2005, 01:27 PM
	appeared later in the same forum: Tahe only Spanish dictionaries I have ever seen that contains "desmazalado" is the Edwin B. Williams "Spanish-English Dictionary," New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955 and the current dictionary of the Real Academia de la Lengua which is accessible on-line. Leonard Gilman, Purcellville, VA

Welcome to OrTorah Jewish Sparking Network

2005-11-22T14:43:00.000-08:00

Welcome to OrTorah Jewish Sparking Network!

If you have not done so already, you should edit your profile page
within the course so that we can learn more about you:

http://eduplanet.net/user/view.php?id=12234&course=61