Canary Islands: Crypto-Jewish history

Thanks to Harry Stein's Sephardim.com, Tracing the Tribe learned about a century-old paper on Crypto-Jews in the Canary Islands, delivered by Lucien Wolf to the Jewish Historical Society of England in London on December 12, 1910.

The paper is a treasure chest of Jewish names and history. Here's a map of the islands:


Read the complete paper here, but understand that it was posted using OCR (optical recognition software) and there are many errors caused by software inaccuracies (for various reasons). I recommend reading the online version carefully.

Information covers secret synagogues, kosher butchers, the Inquisition, Sephardim in London, buccaneers, sea captains, French merchants, Holland, the plague. Records discussed refer to dates as early as 1480. For many of those names listed below, there is detailed information on their fates, by public burning or other means, such as serving 10 years in the galleys.

In May 1524, several anti-Converso edicts were published in the Cathedral Church of St. Ana in Las Palmas:

-- 1. A general call for the elimination of heresy and confession of erroneous practices.

-- 2. This was directed specifically at Jews and Moslems, providing detailed accounts of their religious and social manners and customs at great length. It is a record of Jewish ceremonies and customs which had survived among the Conversos and helped informers to detect the heretics.

-- 3. This prohibited masters, owners and ship's captains, visiting and leaving the Canary ports, from allowing on board or providing passage to "converts or New Christians, converted to our Holy Catholic Faith from Judaism " under pain of excommunication and confiscation of their ships and other property.

These three edicts generally encouraged "religious maniacs," according to Wolf, and resulted in a large number of denunciations (1524-26).

Here are the names from the paper. If these are of interest, then do read the paper to learn more such as occupations and many geographical location.

Antonio Fernandez Carvajal
Duarte Henriques Alvares
Antonio Rodrigues Robles
Simon de Souza
Domingo de la Cerda
Antonio de Porto
Rodrigo de Leon
Beltran
Rabbi David
Goncalo de Burgos
Luis Alvares
Mayorga
Luis de Niebla
Goncalo de Cordova
Juan de Ler
Juan Fernandez
Pedro Dorador
Alvaro Esteves
Beatrice de la Cruz
Gutierrez de Ocana
Diego Frances
Alvaro Gonsales
Mencia Vaes
Silvestre Goncales
Maistre Diego de Valera (Isaac Levi pre-1496)
Pedro Gonsales
Alonzo Yanez
Ana and Duarte Goncales
Hector Mendes
Hernan Rodrigues
Fernando Jaryam
Aldonca de Vergas y Vargas
Duarte Goncales
Duarte Perez
Pedro Berruyo
Pedrianis
Juan Yanez
Catalina Nunez
Fernan Pinto
Jorge Fernandez
Duarte Henriques Alvares
Diego Rodrigues Aries
Duarte Henriques Alvares
Antonio Rodrigues Robles
Leila Henriques
Antonio Fernandes Carvajal
Domingo Rodrigues Francia
Jorge Francia
Domingo de la Cerda
Joseph Carrera y Coligo
Lourenco Rodrigues (Isaac Lindo) Lindo and wife Perpetua
Goncalo and Lucina Rodrigues Vaes
Manuel Lindo
Manuel Pereira
Jaques Faro
Nunez
Antonio Fernandez Nunez
Juan de Tarifa

Place names include:

The Canaries:
Santa Cruz
Tenerife
Los Santos
San Lucar
San Lucar de Barremeda
Las Palmas
La Laguna
Gibrileo

Spain:
Andalucia
Seville
Cadiz
Cordova
Castile
Marchena, Andalucia

Portugal:
Castel Blanco
Villaviciosa
Lisbon
Coimbra

Elsewhere:
Dublin
London
Azores
Morocco
Cape Verde
Bayonne
Nantes
Rouem
Bordeaux
Rochelle
Amsterdam

A very interesting paper! For more resources on Sephardic names, go to Sephardim.com and SephardicGen.com.

Cape Verde project launched

I first heard about the Cape Verde Jewish Heritage back in 2003, when Carol Castiel spoke extensively about her hopes and plans to promote this project, at that year's International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Washington, DC.

This week, the Cape Verde Jewish Heritage Project was formally launched by Aziz Mekouar, the Moroccan ambassador to Washington.


Castiel's project, which she has been trying to organize since the 1990s, includes restoration of cemeteries in the former Portuguese colony, writing the community history, descendant interviews and research.

Cape Verde includes 10 islands 300 miles from Africa's west coast. It experienced two immigration waves. The first, in the 15th century, included Conversos, escapees from the Inquisition in Spain. This community is still very secretive and thus the projects focuses on the second wave of immigrants, who came from Morocco in the mid-19th century.

The Cape Verde and Portuguese ambassadors attended the launch. B'nai B'rith helped Castiel, a Voice of America staffer, set up the project. When Castiel was stationed in Portugal she learned about the colony's Jewish history. Although there is no Jewish community today, many of its citizens of Jewish ancestry are proud of their heritage.

Also participating in the launch were Cape Verdean immigrants to the US, who descend from its Jewish immigrants.

Tracing the Tribe has written previously about the Cape Verde project here and here. The International Jewish Cemetery Project also has information, with additional links. A 1996 paper at Saudades.org offers very interesting history. The Cape Verde Project also has a blog and a Facebook page.

Cape Verde: Jewish memories

Cape Verde's Jewish roots are discussed in Naomi Seck's Voice of America broadcast. Here is the text and the broadcast itself is available as well.

In Cape Verde, a small stretch of islands just off the coast of West Africa, nearly everyone is Catholic. But as Naomi Seck reports for VOA from the capital, Praia, some residents talk about what it means to them to be the heirs of the islands' Jewish past.

At the main cemetery in Praia, white crosses stretch in every direction.

But a quick question to the guard, and he leads visitors sure-footedly up the hill to the left.

Here, a few stone tombs lie flat in the ground, and there are no crosses.

Jose Levy describes what he sees.

"Some of the graves have descriptions in Hebraic, others have descriptions in both Hebraic and Portuguese," he explains.

These are the graves of some of Cape Verde's former Jewish population. There are about half a dozen here. They mostly come from the late 1800s.

He shares his name with a man buried here. Only a few generations ago, the family were practicing Jews.

The island's Jews arrived in the 1400s, when Portugal colonized the uninhabited islands and it became an important trading post. The Portuguese Jews came under pressure when Portugal, following Spain's earlier example in in 1492, required all Jews to convert or be expelled.

The second wave of Jews came from Morocco in the 1850s, looking for economic opportunities. Levy's family descends from this group. At one time, says his father, Abraão Levy, his family owned and farmed a lot of land on Santiago, where Praia is located. Abraão also says the descendants of the Jewish immigrants have played prominent roles in Cape Verde, including a former prime minister and a finance minister.

"My grandfather and my great-grandfather came from Portugal and they married Catholic women, and I think the Catholic aspect was much stronger, because I never saw anything, my father told me he has never seen any practicing any rites in the house," Levy says.

Yet a gold Star of David, a symbol of the Jewish faith, dangles from a bracelet on his wrist.

Levy says he wears it to quietly remind himself of his Jewish heritage.

Read the complete article and listen to the program at the link above.

Tracing the Tribe has previously written about Cape Verde here and here.

Cape Verde: Jewish roots

Journalist Carol Castiel spoke about the history of the Jews of Cape Verde at the last international Jewish genealogy conference in Washington, DC (2003), and presented an excellent look at their Jewish roots.

The Boston Globe carried a story yesterday on Cape Verdeans joining together for a Passover seder in Roxbury.

This is what Joel Schwartz had in mind when he organized the first Cape Verdean Seder three years ago. After all, Jews have long used the themes of Passover, commemorating the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, to reach out to other communities.

Schwartz, who has worked with Cape Verdeans as program manager with the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization for 16 years, didn't realize then what many Cape Verdeans have quietly known for generations: Many of them have Jewish ancestry. Nor did he know until last week that this year's Seder would draw Jews and Cape Verdeans from as far away as Washington, D.C., seeking to reforge this historic bond.

The Jewish presence on Cape Verde can be traced back to its earliest days, when Portugal discovered and claimed the tiny chain of islands off the west coast of Africa in the mid-1400s. With the start of the Inquisition, many Jews, forced to convert or hide their identity, fled to Cape Verde and other Portuguese colonies in hopes of getting out from under the heel of the religious authorities.

Starting in the mid-1800s, Jews from Morocco began going to the islands. While these newcomers eventually assimilated into the general population, their imprint remains in family names like Cohen, Levy, and Wahnon, a name borne by the country's first elected prime minister. There is also a village called Sinagoga (synagogue) and a few cemeteries with Hebrew inscriptions.

All of this piqued the curiosity of Carol Castiel when she was working in West Africa for a US aid agency in the mid-1990s.

"Over the years, I began noticing these names that were typically Jewish, and these connections somehow came out," said Castiel, a Jewish journalist who traveled from Washington, D.C., to attend last week's Seder.

The discovery sent her on a mission to preserve the islands' Jewish heritage. She recently founded the Cape Verde Jewish Heritage Project, with the aim of raising funds to restore the cemeteries and promote education and tourism centered on the country's Jewish history.

Over the years, the connections have been impacted by time and intermarriage, although, according to the story, some 30% of the Cape Verdeans thought they had Jewish ancestry. Although this was news to Schwartz, Cape Verdeans have long been aware of their Jewish roots.

"My father told us about the Jews in our family," said Jacinto Benros, who is 75 and lives in Providence. (New England is home to the largest population of Cape Verdean immigrants and descendants in the country, estimated by the US State Department at a few hundred thousand.)

Other Cape Verdeans have taken recognition of their Jewish heritage much further. Gershom Barros, whose father was Cape Verdean, underwent the exhaustive process of converting to Orthodox Judaism. Barros didn't know his father had Jewish roots until after he died.

"My mother told me she used to call my grandmother a crazy lady for lighting candles in the closet," he said, suggesting that she practiced secret Jewish customs passed down for generations, as has been noted among other descendants of Portuguese and Spanish Jews who were forced to hide their identities.

Although not mentioned in this story, we heard in Washington DC stories of families first having a Jewish marriage and then going to the Church for a Catholic ceremony.

Boston University Jewish history professor Marilyn Halter wrote a book on this community's immigration and married a Cape Verdean-American.

Click on the link above to learn more.

Cape Verde: Jewish presence

YNet recently posted a story about Israel's ambassador to Senegal, Gideon Bachar, who visited the island nation of Cape Verde to present his credentials and was astonished to discover the Jewish heritage of a local young woman.

I guess Bachar missed the IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Washington, DC in 2003, when we listened to a fascinating program on the history of the island and its Jewish roots by Carol Castiel of the Jews of Cape Verde Project.

Castiel spoke about two major waves of immigration. In the late 15th century, Jews and New Christians fled to Cape Verde to escape the Inquisition. In the mid-19th century, Jews from Morocco and Gibraltar arrived. Gravestone inscriptions reflect this wave, found in cemeteries on the islands of Sao Tiago, Santo Antao, Boa Vista and Sao Nicolau. Common names, said Castiel at the conference, are AUDAY, COHEN, LEVI, BENROS, BENOLIEL, WAHNON, PINTO, FERRERA and SERUYA.

In 1994, a group of descendants of those Jews created a committee within the Cape Verde-Israel Friendship Society (AMICAEL) to press for the restoration of cemeteries throughout the islands and create a permanent archive documenting their ancestors. In 2003, the president of AMICAEL was Januario Auday Nascimento, who was then a Member of Parliament. Castiel was AMICAEL's U.S. representative.

The YNet story is about the meeting between the ambassador and Katya Ben Shimol, 17, on Cape Verde, which is off Africa's west coast. Her ancestor - Shlomo Ben Shimol - immigrated from Morocco in the 19th century, part of a group seeking economic opportunities. Many were bachelors; they married into the island's local population. There are Jewish cemeteries, and a village named Synagoga.

Their descendants are aware of their heritage although they've been Christians for generations.

While the ambassador was in Cape Verde, a Spanish-Jewish doctor, Dr. Jose Tristan, was there to operate on 20 local children born with cleft palates. During his visit, Bachar met Katya:

The girl displayed curiosity about Judaism and proudly showed the ambassador a small notebook, written in Portuguese, in which she recorded her genealogy along with copies of photographs of her ancestors.

One of the photos shows the gravestone of the Jewish founder of her family, Shlomo Ben Shimol, who came to Cape Verde from Tetouan in Morocco and passed away in 1904.
Moved by the surprising meeting with the young woman, the ambassador and the doctor decided to set out to find Ben Shimol's grave.

Between soaring basalt mountains in the center of the island of Santiagu, the two located the lone grave. Ambassador Bachar said Kaddish over the grave. "The man probably never got to have Kaddish said over him," Dr. Tristan said.

For more on Cape Verde Jews, click here, here, and here .

Here is a listing of more sources on the subject.