A blog: Jewish Maritime Historical Society

Tracing the Tribe discovered the blog of the Jewish Maritime Historical Society, billed as being
"dedicated to Jewish captains, pirates, sailors and all seafaring people."

Unfortunately, it now seems defunct with the most recent post in November 2009. Its posts covered personalities, historical events, maritime instruments like astrolabes, archaeological evidence and more. The articles come from major and minor websites and publications.

Posts that Tracing the Tribe found interesting: Jews and Navigation, First Hero of the Portuguese Discoveries and Jewish Traders of the Diaspora. In these days, when immigration issues are part of the conversation, read  Aaron Lopez's Struggle for Citizenship.  For parts farther afield, there's an article on the Jews of Cochin.

If this area of Jewish history interests you, or if you had ancestors who sailed the seven seas, take a look.

Food: 2,000 years of Jewish cooking in France

Where do our family's foods come from? And where exactly is that?

Head's-up on a new cookbook by famed author Joan Nathan covering 2,000 years of Jewish cooking in France.

"Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France" ($40, Knopf) should be out in November 2010.

According to Publishers Weekly:

This well-researched, fascinating cookbook encapsulates 2,000 years of Jewish history in France. Nathan, the James Beard Award–winning doyenne of Jewish cooking (Jewish Cooking in America), applies her culinary detective skills to sniffing out the Jewish influence on French cuisine, and vice versa.


Her rich subject matter yields both vast diversity and unexpected commonalities. Friday night Sabbath dinners alone can range from the Alsatian pot-au-feu to Moroccan adafina (meat stew with chickpeas and rice). The Germanic Alsatian specialties like potato kugel will be familiar to many Jewish Americans, while the North African dishes like brik with tuna and cilantro and m'soki (a Passover spring vegetable ragout originating in Tunisia) reflect Sephardic customs.


Nathan also explores cross-cultural concoctions such as Provençal brassados (a precursor to the bagel), brandade potato latkes, and a Bordeaux haroset by way of Portugal, all of which embody both the complicated migratory paths and acculturation of the Jewish people.


This being France, though, there are lovely renditions of native dishes, too--chestnut cream gâteau, braised endive, cassoulet. Nathan's multi­layered, narrative approach makes this treasury of tempting flavors an entertaining and compelling read.

There are more reviews at Nathan's site, such as this one.

Sounds like an excellent read, regadless of where your family hails from, so look for it at your favorite bookstore. It's on my wish list.

New York: Gastro-genealogy, eating Jewish

Hey, if we can have "geneabloggers," we can have "gastrogenealogy," right?

Love Sephardic food from Italy, Spain, Portugal, North Africa, South America and other parts, but don't want to cook it at home?

According to the New York Times, chef Nikki Cascone's new restaurant, Octavia's Porch, will offer Jewish dishes from those places and more. Named for the Via del Portico d’Ottavia, in Rome’s Jewish ghetto, he opening is planned for November at 40 Avenue B (Fourth Street).

Info in other articles and blogs indicate the theme is "global Jewish cuisine." See the Village Voice blog - Fork in the Road - for an interview with Cascone on September 16. Here's a bit of it:

What's the status of your new restaurant?

The restaurant's name is Octavia's Porch. It's named after the Roman Jewish ghetto. There's a pizza there called Porta Octavia. We really wanted a story behind our name and that was one of the first places I realized that there were Jews all over the world -- even places like Italy -- doing unbelievable food that had an influence on the cuisine in the countries they resided in. I didn't know that before then and felt pretty naive being that I had a Jewish mom and an Italian dad.

Are you working on menu items yet?

We started recipe testing this week and tasting. There's Eastern European influences, Egyptian, Ukrainian, Hungarian ... you name it. It is global Jewish cuisine. I wanted to emphasize that Jewish food is more than just deli, which really was invented here in New York City. I'm trying to do classic dishes with a modern "Nikki" twist and expose people to less traditional dishes that they may not have seen from some other parts of the world. You eat it and think, "Oh, that's Jewish?" Things like eggplant caponata that the Arabics and Jews introduced to Italians, then Italians got all the credit for it. Jewish really was the first fusion cuisine.

Will the food be kosher?

The restaurant is Jewish by culture and not by religion. So, although we're not going to be kosher, we are not going to serve shellfish and pork.

The second part of the interview is here; learn what the chef ate at her post-Yom Kippur break-fast.

Spain: Anti-Jewish riots began today in 1391

On this day, June 6, in 1391, anti-Jewish riots began in Seville, instigated by Ferrand Martiniz, and soon spread across the country, decimating the Jewish populations of major communities and resulting in mass forced conversions to Catholicism and massacres of those who refused.

Some 10,000 Jews are estimated to have been murdered, many more forcibly converted. Some communities were complete destroyed, such as the 400-year-old Barcelona community, others were re-established in some way. While thousands of individuals went underground and maintained secret Jewish lives, other families and individuals left for other geographic areas.

This was a precursor to the later Inquisition and the 1492 exile.

Click here to learn what else happened this day in Jewish history. Here are some important facts - the list goes through 2010!

1242: Two dozen wagonloads of Talmudic volumes and 200 other rabbinic manuscripts were burned at Paris.1247: Pope Innocent IV contacts the king of Navarre. In a dispatch he requested the king compel Christian debtors to pay off their debt to Jewish lenders.

1506: Birthdate of King John III of Portugal. Persecution of Marranos and Conversos intensified during his reign with the arrival of the Inquisition. On the other hand he met with David Reubeini in 1525 and the two negotiated over the possibility of the King supplying this adventurer with as many as eight ships to use in a fight against the Moslem leader, Selim I. Since much of the life of Reubeni is shrouded in myth and half truths, we cannot be sure as to the reason the negotiations failed.1539: The Inquisition was introduced into Mexico.

1808: Birthdate of Jacob Raphael De Cordova, Texas land agent and colonizer. A native of Jamaica, he settled in Philadelphia in the 1820’s with his father before moving to Texas in 1839. Jacob and his brother Phineas De Cordova operated one of the largest land agencies in Texas. Jacob was one of three men who helped lay out Waco in 1848. He passed away in 1868.

1855: Isaac Kaatz, Gottlieb Milhelm and Anton First were arrested today on charges of having been involved in the theft of eight cows from a farm belong to Colonel Lewis Morris. The three carcasses found in the possession of the accused all bore a mark indicating that they were Kosher.

1859: In Australia, Queensland is established as a separate colony from New South Wales. By 1865, there were enough Jews living in the Queensland city of Brisbane that a congregation was formed that held services in a local Masonic hall until 1886 when a sanctuary with a seating capacity of 400. In 1879, the Jews of Toowoomba, Queensland, built a synagogue which, as the community shrunk in size, was only used on the High Holidays.

1875: Birthdate of Novelist Thomas Mann. Mann was not Jewish but in 1905 he married Katia Pringsheim, daughter of prominent family of Jewish intellectuals. They had six children. Mann left Nazi German in 1933, four years after having won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lived in the United States for many years. He died in Switzerland in 1955, never having lived in his native land again.

1894: Governor Davis H. Waite ordered the Colorado state militia to protect and support the miners engaged in the Cripple Creek miners' strike. Famed financier Bernard Baruch was one of those who got his start in the “strike it rich” world of Cripple Creek. Arriving from the east, Baruch bought shares of stock in the San Francisco mine. During the day he worked as a “mucker” and at night he played at the roulette wheel in a local gambling joint where he was so successful that he was barred by the owners. Baruch took his winnings and headed back to New York where he gained fame and fortune. Sam Butcher, a Hungarian Jew, was one of the few Jews who actually made money in industrial mining in Cripple Creek. Because many of his fellow miners were blatant anti-Semites, Butcher “took pains to conceal his identity” until he had gained financial success. Sam and Bertha Flax were one of the first, if not the first Jewish couple to marry in Cripple Creek. They tied the knot in 1909. Sam was not much of a miner but he would prove be a successful restaurant owner in Denver, Colorado.

For more, visit This Day in Jewish History.

Sephardim: The Portuguese story

Here is a new and fascinating book of great interest to Sephardim around the world. Unfortunately, it is currently available only in Hebrew.

Thanks to Ruth Almog for her Haaretz review of "Portuguese Jewry at the Stake: Studies on Jews and Crypto-Jews," (Hebrew) edited by Yom Tov Assis and Moises Orfali (Magnes Press and the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, 259 pages, NIS 89).

In the preface to "Portuguese Jewry at the Stake," Yom Tov Assis writes: "This is the first book in Hebrew that is dedicated exclusively to Portuguese Jewry, a subject that has been rather neglected by scholars in Israel. This book is designed to partly remedy the situation."

This extremely interesting compilation of scholarly articles does indeed reveal new facets of an extinct Jewish community. That said, it is not by chance that the study of Portuguese Jewry has been neglected, but because Portugal's Jews have in large part been lumped together with those of Spain, since the two countries, whose borders fluctuated throughout the Middle Ages, were both part of medieval Iberia.

There's a short description of how Portuguese came to be. It developed in the 11th-12th centuries following encounters between Galician and Lusitanian languages, and influenced by Arabic. Historically, Moslems conquered much of Portugal in 713. It was reconquered at the end of the 9th century and only a century later did Portugal separate from Galicia. In the second half of the 12th century, Lisbon was conquered when Portuguese were assisted by troops on their way to the Second Crusade. The Moslems left, the Jews stayed. At the time, estimates are of only 35,000 people in the whole country.

The Jewish history of Portugal is short, some five centuries:

The first Portuguese king, Alfonso Henriques (1109-1185 ), encouraged Jews to settle in the areas he had conquered. By appointing a Jew, Yahya Ibn Yaish (also known as Yahia Ben Rabbi), as state treasurer, Alfonso paved the way for his successors to employ Jews in financial and administrative positions. Ibn Yaish was not only "chief rabbi," but also the "chief cavalier." The king's heirs expanded the employment of Jews as administrators in the kingdom. So it was that during the reign of Portugal's first five kings, the situation of the Jews was good and they lived in security. The problems began later, but even during the period surrounding the 1391 pogrom against the Jews of Spain, Portugal served as a haven for the Jews of Castile.

According to Assis, the well-organized community (alfama) lived in its own neighborhoods was headed by a chief rabbi, was recognized by the crown and protected by the king. Persecution came from the church. The Jewish population increased and after the 1492 Expulsion from Spain, some 120,000 of them went to Portugal.

The Jews were never expelled from Portugal in 1496. Manuel I wanted to marry the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who demanded he first get rid of his Jews. He didn't want to lose them, but announced a plan for their departure. When the Jews arrived to board the ships, priests demanded they convert, and no one was allowed to leave. Thus baptised, the king could claim there were no Jews in his country and he could marry the princess.

Says Assis, most of the Jews became Conversos - converted under force - and the Jewish percentage there was the highest in Europe. Many of them succeeded in leaving and reaching other safe geographic destinations. There are the Conversos of Belmonte, whose matriarchal society has kept Judaism alive since the Inquisition.

Articles include:

-- Historian Elvira Azevedo Mea's "New Christian Women and the Inquisition" is based on her study of Inquisition files, which suggest that almost until the 20th century, it was the women in New Christian families who were responsible for passing on Jewish traditions.

-- Eric Lawee writes about philosopher and financier Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508 ), during his Portuguese years.

-- Late historian Elias Lipiner deals with Jewish religious law problems that concerned the Conversos.

-- co-editor Moises Orfali's "Jews and Judaism in Christian Polemics in Portugal," shows how, even after Jews had "disappeared," accusatory writing against them did not stop. This article also relates the long reach of the Inquisition - into Goa, India (then a Portuguese colony) - where many Sephardim lived. In 1560, the Goa Inquisition center was founded and persecuted Jews, Hindus and Moslems.

-- Edgar Samuel writes about the Curiel Sephardic family over a century (16th-17th centuries) as some branches remained in Portugal, others went around the world, some were burned alive at the stake, others acquitted, some became devout Catholics and others became public Jews again in South America.

-- Historian Jose Nunes Carreira's "Portuguese Diaspora in the Near East (in the 16th and 17th Centuries ) in the Light of Travel Reports," covers the travelogues of Portuguese missionaries. He describes travelers who reported on meetings with Portuguese Jews in Aleppo, Tripoli, Basra, Cairo, Persia and Palestine. He includes clergyman Gaspar de Bernadino who says most Jews he met in Aleppo were Spanish speakers; he met Portuguese Jews in the Galilee, where there were more than 400 "Portuguese origin" households. The reports reveal that Sephardim were on the Persian Gulf island of Hormuz and Syria's community longed for Portugal. And he includes Frey Pantaleao de Aveiro, who discovered many Portuguese Jews in the Middle East (in Jerusalem, Galilee, Damascus and Tripoli). Aveiro wrote about Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi who leased Tiberias from the Turkish sultan in 1558. In Damascus, he met a man from Braga, Portugal, who had fled after his father was burned.

-- Claude (Dov) Stuczynski's article deals with religious identity and economic activities of the "New Christians."

Now we need the English version to make these articles accessible to the worldwide community.

DNA: Portuguese conversos' genetic identity

"How has a small Portuguese Jewish community retained its genetic identity," is the title of a recent Haaretz story, concerning a new genetic study recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Of course, the writer meant a Converso or Crypto-Jewish community. Those of us with interests in Sephardic, Converso and crypto-Jewish history, as well as DNA and genetics, answered the question posed by this story rather quickly: How about not marrying others with different backgrounds?

Tracing the Tribe asks why this is always so surprising to people who don't know or don't want to believe the history of these communities? In various Southwestern US states, the same marriage pattern prevails in many families of Jewish descent. Even though they do not declare themselves public Jews, they tend to only marry others "like" themselves. We know what "like" means - why don't these scientists?

A genetic analysis of northern Portuguese crypto-Jews recently yielded a mysterious discovery: It exposed an isolated Jewish community that has somehow retained its genetic identity for centuries - while avoiding the inbreeding that usually occurs in such situations.

Now scientists are trying to understand how these Jews managed to bypass a condition which worries most small, closed Jewish communities in the world.

The new study by researchers from Porto and Coimbra Universities showed that Jews from the Braganca area are genetically closer to Middle Eastern Jews than to the surrounding Portuguese - even after living there for 500 years. This emerged from an analysis of the Y chromosome, which is passed exclusively from father to son with negligent recombination.

[NOTE: What is more interesting is that the article indicates in several places that there appears to be a larger converso population than these small communities indicate. They retained their genetic identity without inbreeding, meaning that the pool of individuals is much larger. While earlier studies indicated that Spain's genetic analysis showed some 2o% of Jewish descent, Portugal's should be similar.]



The story indicates that genetic match was observed also in the Jews of Belmonte, a small town about 200 kilometers south of Braganca. This study is the first time that the genetic makeup of northern Portuguese Jews had been analyzed.

[NOTE: Anyone reading up on Sephardic Jewish history and the Inquisition knows that many Jews escaping the 1492 Exile went through Braganca into Portugal where they thought they would be safe, although it was short-lived.]

However, the genetic analysis of Belmonte Jews showed a dramatic drop in genetic diversity, indicative of inbreeding. This is normal for isolated communities, simply because less genetic material is introduced each generation.

"All small-sized gene pools tend to lose diversity, but the communities from the Braganca area have succeeded in maintaining a very high diversity, with a relatively small non-Jewish introgression," said Professor Antonio Amorim, a
geneticist from the University of Porto who performed the research.

The recently published - a few weeks ago - research in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology showed paternal lineages of 57 unrelated males of established Jewish origins from around Braganca.

A high lineage diversity was found, at both haplotype and haplogroup levels (98.74 and 82.83%, respectively), demonstrating the absence of a strong genetic drift, the research said. Professor Amorim was surprised at both the low level of inbreeding and the retention of Jewish genes.

[NOTE: Tracing the Tribe knows that if you marry only others with your same background in a small number of local families or "similar" families in a wider geographic region, the Jewish genetic identity will be retained.]

"These results can only be explained assuming that the effective size of the population is much greater that it would seem at the first sight," Amorim concluded, "and/or that there is a reproductive strategy minimizing the loss of male lineages but not avoiding totally the input of non-Jewish males."

The research team indicates that "a deeper and more detailed investigation is required to clarify how these communities avoided the expected inbreeding caused by over four centuries of religious repression." The team is still waiting for the mtDNA (maternal DNA).

[NOTE: Considering the fact that women were the leaders of the Belmonte community for centuries and kept the spark of Judaism alive, and that converso communities around the world often have matriarchal leaders who preserve tradition and knowledge, Tracing the Tribe expects that mtDNA results will show the same Jewish connection.

Jews have lived around Braganca since the late 12th century at least, but the major influx was after the 1492 Expulsion during the Inquisition. At first, they thought they would be safe, and they were for a few years, but then Portugal demanded, as Spain had done, that they convert to Catholicism. Some left again, some had their children forcibly kidnapped (and sent to Sao Tome Island, where many died) to force the parents to convert, and larger numbers converted publicly, but maintained their adherence to Judaism in secret.

Over the centuries, without interaction with established Jewish communities, the people lost much of their Jewish knowledge but maintained what they knew. The families in this genetic study are part of that community.]

Michael Freund, head of Shavei Israel, says that thousands of people - in Portugal and elsewhere - are turning towards Judaism as they believe they are descendants of crypto-Jews.

"This study demonstrates the extent to which the Jews of Portugal who were forcibly converted more than five centuries ago sought to preserve their Jewishness down through the generations," he said. "They made heroic efforts to sustain their Jewish identity in secret, and many only married among themselves, as the findings of this study indicate," he said.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Portugal: Faro Jewish Heritage Center

Jewish history is found in surprising places, often by visitors who simply stumble by chance onto something rather interesting.

Tortoise Tales (a diary of motor home adventures) is a blog covering slow travel in a motorhome through Europe by two rather adventurous UK retirees Frances and Bernard Platman, who began their travels in October 2003.

In this post, they discuss their December 2009 visit to Faro, Portugal, in the Algarve region.

The Faro Jewish Heritage Center is the focus of this post.

The site covers the center, the cemetery, the museum and much more, as well as activities and events for the tiny permanent Jewish community (augmented by visitors) in this area - all thanks to former South Africans Ralf and Judy Pinto, who host holiday celebrations and other activities. If you're planning a trip to the Algarve, contact them.

At right, see a photo of the Faro Jewish cemetery.

How did Frances Platman learn about the Pintos?

Shortly after arriving at Armacoa de Pera, on the Algarve in Portugal, I was reading the Portuguese English paper and noticed in the “what’s on” columns for 13th December a snippet saying if we wanted an invite to a Chanukah party just phone….. So I did and spoke to a charming man who originally hailed from South Africa but had been living full time in Portimao on the Algarve for a number of years.

He and his wife are instrumental in setting up the Algarve Jewish Community,

They have been organising events for special occasions since their arrival in Portugal. He is also the director of the Faro Jewish Heritage Centre, Cemetery and Museum, and offered to take us there.

The Centre is the only remaining vestige of the first post Inquisition Jewish presence in Portugal and the cemetery contains marble gravestones from the period 1838 to 1932. The small museum has many artefacts and original furniture from an 1820 synagogue together with a video, “Without the Past”.

There's more in her blog post and much more on the Faro Jewish Heritage Center.

How was the Chanukah party?

The Chanukah party on the 13th December was very jolly, held in our hosts’ apartment. There were people there who were visiting just like us but also residents from all over the Algarve , some permanent and some who come and go from their country of origin. Fried foods were eaten, candles were lit and songs sang to remember the miracle of the holy oil in the temple which lasted for eight days although there was only enough for one when the Jewish people were besieged.

Jewish visitors to the area are always welcomed by this enthusiastic couple. We intend to keep in touch with them in the future as we have enjoyed our new friendship.

Thanks, Frances, for this post.

Readers interested in mobile home travel will also find Tortoise Tales interesting.

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.

Washington DC: Jews of Brazil program, Oct. 20

The Library of Congress will host Daniel R. Pinto of the Embassy of Brazil for an illustrated lecture on the Jews of Brazil at noon Tuesday, October 20.

The free program is open to the public and is sponsored by the LOC's African and Middle East Division (which incorporates the Hebraic Section) and the Hispanic Division.

Pinto was born in Rio de Janeiro to Egyptian Jewish refugees. He attended Rio's French School and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Candido Mendes University. Prior to joining the Brazilian Foreign Service in 1999, he worked in the tourist, health care and banking industries. He has been posted at the Brazilian Embassy in Washington since 2006, and follows intellectual property and trade policy issues.

The history of the Jews in Brazil is long and complex. Jewish settlers came to Brazil in 1500, fleeing persecution in Portugal in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. Under Dutch rule, the Jews of Brazil worked on sugar plantations and were allowed to practice their religion. They established a synagogue in Recife in 1636, the first synagogue in the Americas.

Less than two decades later Brazil fell under Portuguese rule, which caused many Jews to leave the country. Some of these refugees fled to New Amsterdam (New York), founding the first Jewish community in America in 1654.

When a Portuguese royal decree abolished discrimination against Jews in 1773, Jews began to return to Brazil. By 1920, more than 7,000 Jews lived in Brazil. More than 100,000 Jews—less than .01 percent of the population—live in Brazil today.

The program will be held in the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) Reading Room, Room 220 of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

Massachusetts: Portuguese American Archives

A new archive located at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth may provide information for those of Portuguese Sephardic ancestry.

The location of the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese American Archives is important as it is located between the cities of New Bedford and Fall River, at the center of a region with one of the largest Portuguese-origin immigrant communities.

Indeed, there is evidence that numbers of Portuguese immigrants were of Sephardic converso heritage, although this is not addressed in the archival material read by Tracing the Tribe. See "The Sephardic Connection" below.

Read more about the collection here.

Endowed in 2005 and named for Affonso Ferreira-Ferreira Mendes, a well-known radio personality and producer in Taunton, the archives has been actively collecting, since 1996, records of social, cultural, educational and religious organizations and personal and family papers of the Portuguese community in the United States.

There are 19 collections: Manuscripts documenting local and national Portuguese American families and organizations, photos on a wide range of topics, an oral history collection of 87 interviews(see the surnames), more than 150 boxes of original newspapers from the U.S. Portuguese press, and personal papers collections of local politicians, educators, authors and businessmen. There is information on the Azores and Cape Verde.

In 2007, the Archives received an endowment from Edmund Dinis to establish the Edmund Dinis Portuguese American Political, Legal and Public Service Collection. Later the same year the Government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores pledged significant funds to support the archives and share digital resources.

The Archives also seeks additional family papers, business or organizational records to be a part of the permanent history of the Portuguese community in the U.S. See the announcement above for more information on contributing material to the Archives.

The Archives is also sponsoring events through December [Note the PDF takes a long time to load], and topics include: Portuguese Ethnic Media: Quest for Survival; Community, Culture and the Makings of Identity: Portuguese-Americans Along the Eastern Seaboard; Recording Oral Histories Workshop; Finding Your Ancestors Workshop on Portuguese genealogy presented by genealogists Cheri Mello and George Pacheco; Our Lady of the Artichokes and other Portuguese-American Stories; Organizing and Preserving Your Family History Workshop; and others.

There are several additional links: PAA Collection guides, Diário de Notícias, Newspaper Digitization Project The Archives has the only complete run (1919-1973) of the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias. Available on microfilm for many years, it is now available free at this link. If you are searching for your Portuguese link, check out the weddings, births, deaths and social gatherings, passenger ship information and ads and photographs; PAA Photographic exhibit.

The Sephardic Connection

Many Portuguese of Sephardic Jewish ancestry came to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Anecdotal events include families privately visiting synagogues to be married Jewishly before public church weddings. In Providence, Rhode Island, in particular, Portuguese sweet bread looking and tasting exactly like very good challah is found in many bakeries.

The Jewish history in the Azores and Cape Verde is another piece of the puzzle, as was the tragedy of Sau Tome island. When many Spanish Jews escaped to Portugal in 1492, they thought they would be safe. However, in 1497, Portugal began clamoring for them to convert or leave. Because few converted, the plan to force them to convert included removing their children by force and sending them to the inhospitable island of Sau Tome, where many died in the first few years.

It is possible that those of Portuguese converso background may find information on their own families in this collection. The surnames listed on the 87 oral history interviews are found in many Sephardic name sites and books.

Portugal: The secret is out

Tracing the Tribe is getting ready for Rosh Hashanah and trying to get out new posts on interesting stories. This story on the Jewish community of Lisbon, Portugal is in that category.

The story in Haaretz focuses on crypto-Jews, forcibly converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition.

They trace their Jewish roots to the 15th and 16th centuries, to the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions in which thousands of Jews were murdered and countless others were forced into exile or to convert. Many became crypto-Jews, practicing secretly. They were classified in Jewish law as Anusim, Jews who are forced to abandon their religion against their will, but continue to practice insofar as possible.

Their modern-day descendants call themselves Bnei Anusim - sons or children of the Anusim. They are also known by the derogatory Spanish term "Marranos" ("swine").

It includes information on the recent genetic study indicating that one-third of Portugal's people have Jewish ancestry, as well as the facts surrounding the Bnei Anusim phenomenon. This is challenging the mainstream Portuguese Jewish community, for Israel's Chief Rabbinate in Israel and for the Bnei Anusim themselves.

Architect Joao Santos, in his late thirties, says he found out he was Jewish a few years ago when he came upon typical Jewish candlesticks that had been passed down through his family. Others speak of deathbed confessions by grandparents, unexplained family customs or the findings of extensive genealogical research.

While he is not seeking conversion because he knows who he is, other Bnei Anousim are looking for formal recognition and conversion. Shavei Israel, in Jerusalem, is an organization working to assist these individuals and organizes conferences attended by numbers of these conversos.

The organization works with Jose Ferrao Filipe, leader of Porto's Jewish community. He is the only Bnei Anousim who heads a community formally recognized by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

The article also details the story of Captain Artur Carlos de Barros Basto, the "Portuguese Dreyfus." A military hero - descended from Anousim - he was falsely charged, court-martialed and expelled from the army in 1943.

Barros Basto converted to Judaism in the 1920s, established a synagogue and seminary in Porto, and visited rural areas to encourage others to rejoin public Judaism. He served as rabbi and mohel (ritual circumciser) of his small community. Because he had not been certified, the Jewish mainstream community was not happy and a smear campaign was directed at him, aided by Jews.

He died in 1961, and efforts to clear his name go on. Porto's synagogue has a small museum dedicated to Barros Basto.

Although the Porto site was built to accommodate hundreds, Filipe says they have trouble maintaining it. Jewish tourism is seen as a possible source of funding; some towns are planning projects:

- Covilha is renovating its old Jewish quarter, planning to build a Jewish museum and culture center on the ruins of an ancient community structure.

- Trancoso offers tours by Bnei Anousim guides, has completed a catalog of door panel markings demonstrating missing mezuzot, and plans to hold a Jewish festival.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Sephardic researchers: Book sale

If you're a Sephardic researcher or know someone who is, this sale will be of interest.

Here's a digital Sephardic reference library at one shot. Hispania Judaica is on sale for libraries and scholars only through Friday, August 14. Read all about it here at eBookShuk.com.

Published by Magnes Press, the acclaimed Hispania Judaica Series is a research project at the Dinur Institute, Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The editorial board includes Haim Beinart, Yom Tov Assis and Raquel Ibáñez-Sperber.

The CD-ROM collection, priced at $259, includes 11 monographs and documentary collections on the life of Jews in Spain before, during and after the Expulsion. The regular digital price is $298, but all titles are purchased separately, it would cost $558.

The offer is made to libraries, individuals or institutions. The CD works on PC, Mac or Linux. Those who order by August 14, will also receive, without charge, "Medicine and Medical Ethics in Medieval and Early Modern Spain" (regular price, $49).

The collection includes these 11 digitized, searchable volumes (plus the bonus volume above):

Vol. I: J. Régné, History of the Jews in Aragon: Regesta and Documents 1213-1327 748 pp. More than 3,500 regesta in French, and original documents mostly from the Archivo General de la Corona de Aragon, in Barcelona, throw light on 114 crucial years of Jewish history in the Aragonese-Catalan region.

Vol. II: H. Beinart, Trujillo: A Jewish Community in Extremadura on the Eve of the Expulsion from Spain, 384 pp. + 8 plates.Based on documents published for the first time, this book reveals the life and surroundings of a community lulled into a false sense of security and endeavoring to build its life in peace while the war against Granada continues.

Vol. III: H. Beinart, Conversos on Trial: The Inquisition in Ciudad Real, 352 pp. + 16 plates. This story is eloquently related on the basis of Inquisition files which depict the Conversos’ deep yearning to their Jewish past and the ultimate sacrifice they were prepared to offer for their continued adherence to their ancestral faith.

Vol. IV: B. Leroy, The Jews of Navarre in the Late Middle Ages, 278 pp. Based on documents from archives, the book relates various aspects of Jewish life, the economic activities of the Jews and their work at the service of the Crown in this Christian kingdom.

Vol. V: A. S. Selke, The Conversos of Majorca: Life and Death in a Crypto-Jewish Community in XVII Century Spain, 290 pp.This volume focuses for the most part on the Conversos of XVII century Majorca, the so-called Chuetas, a phenomenon without parallel in all of Spain.

Vol. VI: Y. T. Assis, The Jews of Santa Coloma de Queralt, 290 pp. This volume attempts to describe Jewish life in a small community of which little is known, on the basis of notary acts found in local archives.

Vol. VII: L. Coronas Tejada, Conversos and the Inquisition in Jaén, 279 pp. This book describes the fate of the Conversos in the Kingdom of Jaén at the hands of the Inquisition Tribunal which operated there for 43 years, from 1483 until 1526.

Vol. VIII: J. Doñate Sebastià & J. R. Magdalena Nom de Déu, Three Jewish Communities in Medieval Valencia: Castellón de la Plana, Burriana, Villarreal, 343 pp. The book describes the history of three neighbouring communities in the medieval Kingdom of Valencia on the basis of archival material from local archives.

Vol. IX: J. Hinojosa Montalvo, The Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia, 721 pp. This book brings to life a comprehensive study of the Jews in this kingdom from the massacres of 1391 to the Expulsion and contains 881 documents found in various archives and published in part here for the first time.

Vol. X: E. Lipiner, Two Portuguese Exiles in Castile: Dom David Negro and Dom Isaac Abravanel, 173 pp.The book contains more than 30 documents related to Portuguese Jewry in general and David Negro and Isaac Abravanel in particular. The book sheds new light on the life of these important personalities.

Vol XI: J. L. Lacave, Medieval Ketubot from Sepharad, 268 pp. + 30 plates. Examination of legal aspects and historic significance of the thirty ketubot (marriage contracts) from various medieval Hispanic kingdoms. and their detailed comparison. The book presents illustrations of the ketubot, some handsomely decorated.

While a number of these books have been indexed on Sephardic websites, the digitized books enable researchers to see the context of names of interest in their own homes, without visiting libraries to find copies of the books in question.

Features:

- The collection is downloadable; purchasers also receive a CD.
- Includes the entire series published to date.
- Each volume indexed separately.
- Scholar PDF format.
- Volumes scanned to match the original printed edition.
- Sophisticated navigation system.
- Table of Contents linked to Chapter pages.
- Endnote references hyper-linked to endnotes and back.
- Subject Index entry linked to corresponding text.
- In several volumes, extra care was taken to link Subject Index entries to proper documents regardless of their pages, to make location very easy
- Volumes searchable individually or collectively in diverse ways.
- Printing/copying unrestricted (for personal use).
- Infinitively expandable.
- Can be installed on up to three computers at the same time
- Accessible off-line from any Windows PC, Mac or Linux
- Optional online delivery service for libraries and institutions available

See the link above for more details and ordering information.

Who's a Jew? Who isn't?

The New York Jewish Week tackled the reverse of the "Who's a Jew?" issue with Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's take on "Who isn't?" with his article, "Everybody's A Little Bit Jew-ish."

Jewish genealogy gets a mention:

Prior Pew surveys have shown how Jews have been more successful than other groups in stemming the tide of assimilation. But with sectarian lines dissolving rapidly, in a century or two, how many more millions of non-Jewish Americans will be searching their family trees for Jewish ancestry?

The article is here.

Considering its timing at Shavout and its connection with King David's great-grandmother Ruth, whose "conversion" would likely not be accepted today by the Orthodox rabbinate, the story talks about 10 million Iberian descendants of those who were forced to leave Judaism and become Catholic during the Inquisition.

He mentions the recent DNA studies indicating that 20% of today's Iberians - some 10 million individuals - have Jewish roots. And that number is only in Iberia. There are millions more who descend from conversos who left Iberia and settled in the New World. While they might not be Jews today, they are Jew-ish, it's in their DNA.

There's a midrash that every Jew was present at Sinai, including all future generations. What about those Iberians whose ancestors were forced to convert. "We can’t retroactively crop them out of the Sinai family picture."

Hammerman believes in traditional standards determining Jewish identity, but adds "the world has become far too complicated to ignore everyone else. So, yes, there are Jews, the ones who fall within normative halachic parameters; and then there are those who are Jew-ish, a group that includes many millions more."

He says that a lot of unconditional love - chesed (Hebrew) - is needed to reach out beyond those who are Jewish to those who are generations removed from their heritage - those he calls "Jew-ish."

Thinking bigger, is his advice - to look beyond the farthest fringe, "to millions of once-were-Jews," whose spiritual search will lead them back.

A team of geneticists has uncovered explicit evidence of mass conversions of Sephardic Jews to Catholicism in 15th- and 16th-century Spain and Portugal. The study, based on an analysis of Y-chromosomes and reported first in the American Journal of Human Genetics, indicates that 20 percent of the population of the Iberian Peninsula has Sephardic Jewish ancestry. That’s about 10 million people.

While anti-Semitism remains pervasive and the Jewish population microscopic, there is a deep fascination with all things Jewish. “We’ve gone from a period of pillaging the Jews and then suppressing and ignoring their patrimony to a period of rising curiosity and fascination [about them],” said Anna Maria Lopez, the director of Toledo’s Sephardic Museum in a New York Times interview.

Of course, Hammerman isn't counting the more than 6,000 in Barcelona's Jewish community, those in Madrid and smaller communities in cities throughout Spain. There are dedicated activists among them who attempt to reclaim Spain's Jewish history and get involved in restoration and preservation projects. There are Jews in Spain today who are vocal about Jewish heritage, and people are returning to the public Jewish community.

Hammerman lists descendants of historical and contemporary figures:

--None of Theodore Herzl's three children were Jewish.
--Nancy Pelosi has Jewish grandchildren.
--Eight of Moses Mendelssohn’s nine grandchildren were baptized.
--Thomas Jefferson reportedly had Jewish ancestors and African-American descendants.
--Fiorello La Guardia had a Jewish parent.

Hammerman says "We’ve become the La Guardia Airport of faith traditions; so many coming in, so many going out," and mentions websites which identify famous half-Jews, such as Halfjew.com and Half-Jewish.net.

Read the complete article at the link above.

New Journal: Iberian Judaism

"Iberia Judaica," edited by the Asociación Hispana de Estudios Hebraicos (Madrid), is an annual yearbook of some 400 pages focused on the scientific research of Iberian Judaism (from its origins through the Expulsion).

It is intended to promote research in the field. Three sections include a monograph (first issue: Jews in Al-Andalus), a text section (unedited, original or translation) and a bibliography (reviews and listing of scientific publications in the field).

The international journal accepts articles in Portuguese, Catalan, English, French, Italian, German and Latin, as well as sections in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic.

The yearbook price is 50 Euros (Spain/Portugal); 62 Euros (EU); $105 (other countries).

For more information or to obtain a copy, contact the Asociación Hispana de Estudios Hebraicos here.

Portugal: Kosher cheese made again

Portugal has seen the first kosher wine, the first kosher olive oil, and now, the first kosher cheese - a hard, goat's milk cheese - since the Inquisition, detailed in this Haaretz story.

As Tracing the Tribe's readers know, bnai anusim (Hebrew; conversos, Spanish) are the descendants of Jews forced to convert to Christianity during the Inquisition, such as Jose Braz featured here:

Last year, Jose Braz, owner of the Queijos Braz factory, contacted Daniel Litwak, the chief rabbi of Portugal's second-largest city, Porto, and asked him to arrange a kashrut certificate for Serra da Estrela cheese, which Braz manufactures. Braz believes that his own family were members of Portugal's Jewish community in the 14th and 15th centuries, but like many others were forced to convert to escape persecution by the Inquisition.

"When I spoke to Jose, he told me he wanted to reconnect to his Jewish roots - this was the reason for contacting me," says Litwak, who was born in Argentina. "I was surprised because his brand was doing rather nicely all over Europe. He did not need the certificate to increase his turnover."

New York-born Michael Freund, the chairman of Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization that helps people with Jewish roots become more involved in their Jewish community, who immigrated to Israel some 10 years ago, told Haaretz that Portugal "is seeing a Jewish revival over the past few years."

Freund adds that he sees a definite connection between how many anousim are rediscovering their roots and the increased interest.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Sephardim: Etymology of marrano

Tracing the Tribe has received what can be best described as a reader's comment with some not-very-nice political comments. This is a genealogy blog and not a political blog, and therefore I rejected the offensive political comments.

However, the reader did pose a legitimate question and comment based on my request to readers not to use the term marrano to refer to anousim/Conversos.

The writer asked:

Why is marrano pejorative? Marrano, contrary to what one has been led to believe doesn't come from castilian "pig" but from Catalan marda: sheep, lamb.

Although I know why the word is pejorative and why my Converso friends consider it insulting and extremely rude, I asked my good friend researcher Maria Jose Surribas in Barcelona to research the etymology.

Writes Maria Jose:

About the meaning of the word marrano, as it has been discussed, I've looked at the best etymological dictionary in Spain, by Coromines.

He speaks about the discussion on this word origin, and says that Farinelli, in his book "Marrano, Storia di un vituperio" (Ginebra 1925), provided a rich number of documents to state that this word was used to call the newly converted Jews and Moors, as they hate pork and marrano is a figurative meaning for pig.

According to Coromines, the word marrano as pig or swine was already used in a document from the year 965, and was applied to the converted Moors as they were also forbidden to eat pork. In Portugal, the word was marrao, and both of them probably come from the Arabic máhran (forbidden thing).

The word used in Catalan is marrá. Coromines also says that the use of sheep to describe the conversos was used by the Moors to call the converted Jews, as marrano described both Jews and Moors.

The rest of the reader's comments will not be addressed as they were political in nature and have no place on Tracing the Tribe.

DNA: The Iberian "Pintele Yid"

Yes, a strange Yiddish phrase to use in describing Sephardim, and a good piece by Michael Freund in today's Jerusalem Post.

I can only hope that the international Jewish community sees this as a force for assisting converso families around the world to return.

I would hazard a guess that many Tracing the Tribe readers are not as aware as I am of the spread of messianic churches in the American southwest, and particularly in New Mexico, where an extremely high percentage of early residents - called the "old families" or "familias viejos" - are converso descendants. Many of these families are recruited by the messianic movement which is spending a huge amount of money on this effort. Many of these families have lost much of their knowledge over the centuries, since their arrival with various expeditions in the early 1600s.

Despite this, there are families wishing to return to Judaism. Historically, some who wished to return previously were rebuffed by the Ashkenazi community who knew nothing about Sephardic history or traditions and did not believe what those families claimed to be.

That situation over the years caused many converso families to retreat and to simply not call attention to themselves. Many families over time left the Catholic Church and joined Protestant movements as their ancestors had told them not to trust the Catholics. Many of them know their ancestors were burned alive and some have found actual documents in Inquisition court records.

And, while there are growing numbers of personal stories appearing about such individuals or families - some have willingly spoken to researchers - many more families will never speak to researchers or reveal family secrets. Some families with whom I am acquainted have preserved - in great detail - their traditions, customs and knowledge, have maintained birth and marriage registers and other essential details since arriving in the New World.

More than five centuries after the expulsion and forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jewry, the results of a new genetic study might just spur a return of historic proportions to Israel and the Jewish people.

In a paper published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, a team of biologists dropped a DNA bombshell, declaring that 20% of the population of Iberia has Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

Since the combined populations of Spain and Portugal exceed 50 million, that means more than 10 million Spaniards and Portuguese are descendants of Jews.

These are not the wild-eyed speculations of a newspaper columnist, but rather cold, hard results straight out of a petri dish in a laboratory.

Michael details the study, led by Mark Jobling (University of Leicester, UK) and Francesc Calafell (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona), analyzed the Y chromosomes of Sephardim in communities where Jews had migrated after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. Those Y-DNA signatures were compared with those of more than 1,000 men living in Spain and Portugal. Because Y-DNA is passed from father to son over thousands of years, the scientists could measure the two groups, leading to the finding that 20% or 1/5th of Iberians are of Jewish descent.

While many stories on this study use the target date of 1492 as the date of mass conversions, this is not completely accurate. Michael correctly mentions the 1391 pogroms across Spain which resulted in thousands upon thousands of forced conversions, murders and finally the exodus of many Jews.

THIS RESULT underlines the extent to which our ancestors suffered so long ago in Spain and Portugal .

From the historical record, we know that as early as 1391, a century before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain , widespread anti-Semitic pogroms swept across the country, leaving thousands dead and many communities devastated.

In the decades that followed, there were waves of forced conversions as part of an increasingly hostile and dangerous environment for Jews. This reached a climax in 1492, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella gave Spain 's remaining Jews a dire choice: convert or leave forever.

Large numbers chose exile. American historian Howard Morley Sachar has estimated the number of Spain 's Jewish exiles at around 100,000, while Hebrew University 's Haim Beinart has put the total at 200,000. Others have spoken of even more.

But untold numbers of forcibly converted Jews, as well as those who voluntarily underwent baptism, remained.

These include, of course, the Anousim (Hebrew for "those who were coerced"), many of whom bravely continued to cling to Jewish practice, covertly passing down their heritage from generation to generation. In recent years, a growing number of Anousim from across Europe, South America and parts of the US have begun to return to Israel and the Jewish people.

He also details the grisly success of the Spanish rulers in persecuting, converting and eventually assimilating the Jews into the Christian majority.

For centuries thereafter, the ruthless arm of the Inquisition hunted down and killed suspected "Judaizers" or "secret Jews," ultimately forcing many to abandon the faith to which they had remained so heroically, and secretly, loyal. According to the late historian Cecil Roth, the Inquisition's henchmen murdered more than 30,000 "secret Jews." Some were burned alive in front of cheering crowds, while countless others were condemned for preserving Jewish practices.

This finding, says Michael, will likely take Iberia by storm. The New York Times story said that these results "provide new and explicit evidence of the mass conversions of Sephardic Jews" which took place more than five centuries ago on Spanish and Portuguese soil. Additionally, in 1493, the Jews of Sicily were then persecuted with the same "convert or else!" decree.

He calls it "the biological equivalent of the pintele Yid, the eternal and unbreakable Jewish spark that can never be extinguished.

And it is not only what this study says about the Jewish past. What does it say about the future? If the Jewish people undertake, he writes, a concerted outreach effort toward our Iberian genetic brethren, it could have a profound impact in a variety of fields, ranging from anti-Semitism in Europe to the future of Jewish demography.

Imagine if just 5% or even 10% of Spanish and Portuguese descendants of Jews were to return to Judaism. It would mean an additional 500,000 to 1 million Jews in the world.

And even if many or most choose not to return, it still behooves us to reach out to them. The very fact that such large numbers of Spaniards and Portuguese have Jewish ancestry could have a significant impact on their attitudes toward Jews and Israel , possibly dampening their anti-Semitism and anti-Israel slant.

For when someone discovers they are of Jewish descent, it is likely to create a greater sense of kinship for Jewish causes. Hence, we should seek to promote and cultivate their affinity for Israel and the Jewish people.

Michael adds - and I believe - that we have a historical responsibility to reach out to these descendants of forced conversions and the Inquisition, and to facilitate their return.

Through no fault of their own, their ancestors were cruelly taken from us. Centuries ago, the Catholic Church devoted enormous resources to tearing them away from the Jewish people, and it nearly succeeded.

Our task now should be to show the same level of determination to welcome them back into our midst.

Michael Freund is the founder and chairman of Shavei Israel which assists Anousim in Spain, Portugal and South America to return to the Jewish people.

I think Shavei Israel needs to add a major outreach component in the American southwest (and other US areas) to its plans.

DNA: New study reveals 20% of Iberians have Sephardic ancestry

Today's New York Times reported on a new DNA study in Spain and Portugal revealing that some 20% of the Iberian Peninsula's population has Sephardic ancestry and indicating a high level of conversion among Jews, as reported online in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The study offers "new and explicit evidence of the mass conversions of Sephardic Jews and Muslims to Catholicism in the 15th and 16th centuries." Nicholas Wade's story is here.

Of course, most Sephardim know this already and know that the events of 1391 and 1492 figure prominently in these mass conversions. Millions of Hispanics in the US and worldwide are descendants of those forcibly converted and many either know it or are learning about it. As one example, on one day in 1391, some 4,000 Jews were forcibly converted in Barcelona; others who resisted were murdered. Figures for other cities are available in the subject literature. Several books list the old Jewish family names of individuals and their "new" Catholic names. I have several of these lists and may devote a posting or two to this subject.

It is nice, however, to have scientific corroboration to what we've always known, and what has been supported by historical evidence over centuries.

However, I've been in communication with some people who have seen the actual text of the journal article. The markers used are not what are tested at FamilyTreeDNA.com and only a few were tested. It will be difficult to correlate with testing done at that company. I am attempting to get a full report so readers can understand what was exactly tested. Stay tuned for more.

Twenty percent of the population of the Iberian Peninsula has Sephardic Jewish ancestry and 11 percent have DNA reflecting Moorish ancestors, the geneticists have found. Historians have debated how many Jews converted and how many chose exile. “One wing grossly underestimates the number of conversions,” said Jane S. Gerber, an expert on Sephardic history at the City University of New York.

The finding bears on two different views of Spanish history, said Jonathan S. Ray, a professor of Jewish studies at Georgetown University. One, proposed by the 20th-century historian Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, holds that Spanish civilization is Catholic and other influences are foreign; the other sees Spain as having been enriched by drawing from all three of its historical cultures, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim.

The study, based on an analysis of Y chromosomes, was conducted by biologists led by Mark A. Jobling of the University of Leicester in England and Francesc Calafell of the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. They developed a Y chromosome signature for Sephardic men by studying Sephardic Jewish communities in places where Jews migrated after being expelled from Spain in 1492 to 1496. They also characterized the Y chromosomes of the Arab and Berber army that invaded Spain in A.D. 711 from data on people living in Morocco and Western Sahara.

After a period of getting along under the Arab Umayyad rulers, Spain was the center of religious intolerance. Muslim Berbers forced Christians and Jews to convert to Islam, and the victorious Christians then expelled Jews and Muslims or forced them to convert.

Because most of the Y chromosome remains unchanged from father to son, the proportions of Sephardic and Moorish ancestry detected in the present population are probably the same as those just after the 1492 expulsions. A high proportion of people with Sephardic ancestry was to be expected, Dr. Ray said. “Jews formed a very large part of the urban population up until the great conversions,” he said.

Dr. Ray raised the question of what the DNA evidence might mean personally. “If four generations on I have no knowledge of my genetic past, how does that affect my understanding of my own religious association?”

Dr. Calafell, one of the study's authors, has confronted this himself. His Y-DNA may be Sephardic and his surname is that of a Catalunya town. Genealogists know that it is common for Jewish families to take geographic names.

The issue raised by Ray and by Calafell is another reason why more people of Spanish and Portuguese ancestry should be DNA tested. My hope is that they will test at FamilyTreeDNA.com which already has the largest DNA database of all companies in the field, and within that database, already has the largest Jewish DNA database. The more people who test, the more information can be gleaned and the more connection

Some historians believe that more than 24 million Hispanics - I have heard even larger numbers - in the US have Sephardic roots and were forcibly converted during either 1391 or 1492, when mass conversions were forced on the Jewish population. As an example, nearly all original settlers in New Mexico were of Converso ancestry.

The flip side, of course, is finding out that numbers of Sephardim escaped these mass pogroms in 1391 and left Iberia for Europe and Eastern Europe where they were absorbed into the larger Ashkenazi populations - some have only a family myth to sustain their research ("that was our name when we left Spain."). With some judicious research, it is becoming increasingly common to do successful research and locate documents in Spanish archives.

In our IberianAshkenaz DNA project at FamilyTreeDNA.com, we continue to find genetic matches among today's Conversos with ostensible Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe.

Additionally, here's another plea for removing the term marrano to describe those of converso ancestry. Conversos hate this pejorative, insulting term. If you hear someone using it, please explain to them that it is insulting and should not be used. Many conversos - with whom I am in frequent contact - continually tell me how angry and insulted they feel when the word is used, usually by people who do not know its meaning.

Education is key. I find that when I explain that the term is not nice ( in the same way that other epithets are aimed at various ethnic/religious communities), those individuals apologize and think before using it again. The Hebrew term for converso (Spanish) is bnai anousim (children of the forced) or simply anousim.

Portugal: After 500 years of hiding

Belmonte, Portugal is undergoing a renaissance of sorts.

After 500 years of hiding, its Jews are bringing prosperity.

Conversos, to be exact. Belmonte, a town of 3,600, is home to some 300 descendants of Jews who survived the Inquisition by practicing their religion in secret - the only sizable community of these "secret Jews" to remain on the Iberian Peninsula.

Until the 1990s, the Belmonte conversos kept their history to themselves. But since warily emerging from secrecy, the Jews here have generated a small local economy in one of the most economically depressed regions of Western Europe - one that is benefiting Jew and non-Jew alike.

There is employment in tourist-related industries, such as a sewing collective that embroiders sachets sold at the new Jewish Museum. Says a woman who works there, "[The tourists] come for the museum," she said. "They come to see the Jews."

Interest in Jewish Portugal is growing. Main city synagogues see more visitors, and frequent discoveries of a Jewish past are made. A Catholic priest making home renovations, knocked down a false wall to find the remains of a pre-Inquisition synagogue.

What is special about Belmonte is that it has not only Jewish history but real Jews, unlike many other Iberian communities which have silent Jewish quarters.

But Belmonte has more than Lisbon and Toledo, both with Jewish history but very few Jews. While other towns might still have a crypto-Jewish community still in hiding, another may never be discovered.

This interest resulted in a French donor providing funds for a small synagogue in 1997. The Jewish Museum has had more than 14,000 visitors since 2005, when it opened.

Abilio Henriques, the 68-year-old elected president of the Jewish community, now spends Sunday afternoons collecting entrance fees and directing visitors into the wood-and-velvet interior of his local synagogue.

"Kippah for men, none for women," Henriques explains as people walk in.

Henriques's aunt, Ana Marão, 72, sews Stars of David on the challah covers and tablecloths that she crochets for a living. "Now, the symbol is fine, but earlier..." Marão said as she drew her hand across her throat.

Sephardic Jews may have lived in Portugal since 10 BCE. An inscribed granite reliquary dates to 1297, the community's first synagogue. In 1492, Jews were expelled from Spain and many went to Portugal where they thought they'd be safe. However, in 1497, Portuguese Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism or flee.

As in other countries, many decided to go underground and become secret Jews, following rituals as best they could. Even after the Inquisition finally ended in 1821, local Jews stayed hidden.

"It was a matter of tradition," said University of California, Los Angeles's Eduardo Mayone Dias, professor emeritus, who has written about Belmonte. "That had been their only method of survival. The fear of Inquisition and of outside influence was very real."

In 1994, change began. An Israeli rabbi visited to convert a Belmonte group. The community wanted contact with other Jewish communities, and a French documentary ("The Last Marranos" 1990) showed footage of Belmonte, triggering arrivals of tourists.

A number of tour companies cater to the tourists. "One brochure urges visitors to try 'Inquisition-defeating sausage,' a local recipe in which chicken is substituted for pork."

Although many Conversos are coming out of the woodwork, some families still avoid the synagogue and the tourists, continuing to practice as they have for 500 years. Women lead ceremonies at home that have developed in isolation and are somewhat different than Jewish rites and rituals today.

When rabbis began arriving, it caused tension in the community, whose women were the leaders for 500 years. Orthodox rabbis who came there reportedly told the women their services were no longer needed.

Several years ago, in fact, I was visiting a rabbi in Barcelona when he fielded a call from a Belmonte resident. The gist of the call was that the community could live with the Inquisition but not with the Orthodox rabbis who had no idea of the role the women had played for five centuries.

In any case, the article is interesting. Read more here.

Portugal: A visit to Porto

The New York Jewish Week's editor and publisher Gary Rosenblatt detailed his recent trip in "Shadows of Jewish Life in Portugal." The story covers Porto's synagogue, community and rabbi, the bnai anusim (descendants of the forced) and more.

The huge synagogue in Porto, once the center of Jewish life in Portugal, is as lovely as it is unused. Built in Sephardic style about 80 years ago, it has several hundred dark wooden seats and includes a balcony for women. The earnest young rabbi, Eliezer Shai di Martino, 30, told his six American visitors on a recent weekday afternoon that he walks several miles through the hilly streets of this coastal city to the shul every Shabbat in hopes of finding a minyan. But the last time he was able to read from the Torah on the Sabbath was seven months ago.

As Rosenblatt notes, "It will never be known how many sought to preserve their religious traditions and observances in private after being forced to publicly convert to Christianity at the turn of the 16th century."

He visited synagogues in Porto, Belmonte, Tomar and Lisbon and met with Jews, bnai anusim and students.

On a tour of Trancoso, an ancient walled city dating back to the 14th century, a young history professor showed us some of the 177 symbols etched into the stone walls of various homes where New Christians lived. Crosses were supposed to indicate their dwellings, but some of the crosses appeared to be in the shape of a menorah, suggesting the residents wanted to indicate to coreligionists that they still kept their Jewish faith.

Rabbi di Martino was sent to Porto by Shavei Israel (Return to Israel), an Israeli group which assists "lost Jews," directed by former New Yorker Michael Freund, which sends Orthodox rabbis to these communities. According to Rosenblatt, however:

In the last several years, the Conservative movement has reached out to Marranos in Portugal, who feel rejected by the Orthodox establishment. Rabbi Jules Harlow of New York and his wife, Navah, have made seven extended trips to Portugal in the last two years, teaching Jewish traditions and Hebrew to a number of people, at least seven of whom flew to London for a Conservative conversion after extensive study. They underwent brit milah and/or mikveh, and accepted the mitzvot, including kashrut. But these new converts say they are not counted in the Orthodox minyan.

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On some of my visits to Barcelona over the past few years, I have spoken to clergy who had fielded calls from individuals in the Portuguese bnai anusim communities. One problem was that the contributions of the women of these communities, who had kept the remnants of Judaism alive throughout the centuries, were ignored and dismissed by the Orthodox rabbis. One rabbi quoted a caller, "We could live with the aftermath of the Inquisition, but not the rabbi who was sent."