Study: 8 million Spaniards may have "Jewish" genes

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Comment by Minerva on May 18, 2009 at 5:51pm

Hello, Yoel.

As far as I know, Christians were a group of Jews who believed Jesus was the messiah. They remained within Judaism till the Council of Nicea (year 325). This Council decided that Jesus was G-d and made Christianity the religion of the Empire. I suspect this was a maneouvre of the Emperor to divide Judaism and make the Christians predominant against those who remained in the old faith.

You do not need to explain me, Yoel :-) I am culturally a Christian. But I agree with you and have never believed a person was G-d and had to die for our sins.

Comment by Yoel on May 17, 2009 at 8:53pm

Minerva, no way can this be the truth

In fact the Jews were Spanish as they had the Roman citizenship as all the other Spaniards. And Christianity could have been spread from the synagogues. I read an article about this and think it is possible.




Jews believe that Jesus was not the messiah.

Many people believe that the only difference between Jews and Christians is that Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but the Jews do not. What they fail to understand is that there is a whole theology that supports the belief that Jesus was the Messiah. Jews, because of what the Bible says, sees this theology as diametrically the opposite of what the Bible says.

IN SHORT... Christians identify Messiah with Jesus and define him as God incarnated as a man, and believe he died for the sins of humanity as a blood sacrifice. This means that one has to accept the idea that one person's death can atone for another person's sins. However, this is opposed to what the Bible says in Deuteronomy 24:26, "Every man shall be put to death for his own sin," which is also expressed in Exodus 32:30-35, and Ezekiel 18. The Christian idea of the messiah also assumes that God wants, and will accept, a human sacrifice. After all, it was either Jesus-the-god who died on the cross, or Jesus-the-human. Jews believe that God cannot die, and so all that Christians are left with in the death of Jesus on the cross, is a human sacrifice. However, in Deuteronomy 12:30-31, God calls human sacrifice an abomination, and something He hates: "for every abomination to the Eternal, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods." All human beings are sons or daughters, and any sacrifice to God of any human being would be something that God would hate. The Christian idea of the messiah consists of ideas that are UnBiblical

Comment by Minerva on May 17, 2009 at 10:15am

An interesting discussion.

A Jewish lady told me that there are Spaniards searching for their Jewish ancestors and some have been able to trace down the first member of their families who converted to Christianity. And some are converting back to Judaism.

“Jews lived in Spain before the Moors arrived “

In fact the Jews were Spanish as they had the Roman citizenship as all the other Spaniards. And Christianity could have been spread from the synagogues. I read an article about this and think it is possible.

Indeed the Spanish Jews had an important role in culture as well as the converts. I can now remember some of our important writers and intellectuals: Rabbi Sem Tob, Luis de León, Juan de la Cruz, Teresa de Jesús, Luis de Góngora, Cervantes...

BTW, a number of expelled Jews went to America.

Comment by Yoel on May 17, 2009 at 4:27am

Luis Rivera's, A great Spanish name wouldn't it be nice to find out you are a Jew and a lot more people like you are Jews. What would you do Luis if you fond out that you were a Jew and your family are all Jews? Remain Catholic the relegion that was forced on you a people who are really Jewish knowing what they did to Jews torturing them and sending them out to other countries no matter what Luis if you remain a Catholic and believe in Yashu, and now you may have Jewish blood what are you going to do. If you remain a christian and believe in paganism than you can not be a Jew. There are no two way streets if you are a Jew than come back with your family to Judaism, remember there may have been people in your family who had rather die than convert to a pagan religion. Your choice Luis remain a christisan those who murdered Millions of Jews or come back to the true G-d of Israel. Yashu was not G-d or even the messiah. Read the Jewish bible called the Tanakh written in English and you will see how the christians lied and turned the words around. Yashu can not be the messiah he did nothing that was supposed to happen G-D said he is not a man or the son of man the christian bible said he was that was the words of man not the wordof G-d.

Comment by Luis Rivera on May 17, 2009 at 2:53am

They should do this DNA in a place like Costa Rica....Well, I live in the United States, but my family is from Costa Rica. My great-grandfather and his family established there around 1830 from Spain. There has been rumors in my family that we came from sephardic jews. In my case I started doing research and found out alot of interesitng things about Costa Rica and sephardic jews. For example, according to the historian Samuel Stone, most of the population in Costa Rica were marranos that established themeselves there running away from the inquisition, which explaiins why many of the families in Costa Rica have sephardim last names. He mentions in his book that in the eighteen hundreds, the bishop of Nicaragua excomunicated the people from Costa Rica because they established themeselves away from Catholic churches. Also 1/4 of the Costa Rican population today wears the star of David (especially my grandma) and our first national flag in 1823 was white with a red star of David in the center. Also, the first constitution (which was the one for the first law school in Costa Rica) was written in hebrew and not in Spanish (according to El Congreso Judio Latinoamericano). Also I found out that various traditions that we have come from the sephardim. For example, we have a dish called "tamal mudo" which is plain and supposedly the sephardim used it as a way to create "matzah" because the only product found in the region was corn. Also during Passover we tend to make "flor de itabo" which is basically a very sour flower that we eat with egg and according to El Congreso Judio Latinoamericano is has origins in sephardic traditions. My question is: How come many people from my country are so ignorant about these things? It's almost like they don't know their past or it was wiped out some way or another. BTW here's a cool article I found out on the internet website http://www.kulanu.org/newsletters/2001-summer.pdf
Sephardi Roots in Costa Rica
The overwhelming majority of the Costa Ricans have names of the
original Sephardim. According to the notable historian Samuel Stone,
in his book The Dynasty of the Conquistadors, it is very likely that
the majority of the colonizing population were conversos. Even more
intriguing is that 80 percent of the population is white complexioned.
Also, he comments about the possibility that the colonizing conversos
chose Costa Rica in order to establish for themselves insulation
with respect to the rest of South America and thus flee from the Implacable
Inquisition. Samuel Stone comments that in the 18th century
the bishop of Nicaragua excommunicated all the inhabitants of
Costa Rica, noting that they distanced themselves from the villages
in which there was a church.
The large majority of the family names here are of Sephardic
origin. The proof is in the telephone directory. Also, the first flag of
Costa Rica had the star with six points

Comment by Yoel on December 7, 2008 at 10:54pm

Cynthia, another article you may be interrelated in

The Inquisition: Full Circle
by Michael Freund
500 years after being forced to abandon Judaism, some descendents are starting to return.


Queen Isabella of Spain must be turning over in her grave. Five centuries after the Spanish despot sought to erase all vestiges of Jewish life on the Iberian Peninsula, a growing number of her victims' descendants are now emerging from the shadows, seeking to reclaim their long-lost heritage.

One such person is Nuria Guasch Vidal, whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism in Spain. At great personal risk, her forefathers secretly preserved their cherished, yet hidden, Jewish identity, handing it down from one generation to the next, clandestinely defying the Spanish Inquisition and its henchmen. As a child growing up outside Barcelona, Nuria never did quite understand why her family did not celebrate Christmas or go to church like their neighbors, or why every Friday evening they would set an elaborate table for dinner and proceed to dip the bread in salt before the meal.

It was only when her 88-year-old grandfather lay on his deathbed and pulled Nuria aside that she began to learn the truth about her family and her past.

After firmly instructing her not to allow a priest in the room once he passed away, Nuria's grandfather cryptically said, "I want you to reflect on your heritage and think for yourself. And then you will find the answer to all those questions you have been asking. It is your duty to return."

For Nuria, those words had a profound impact on her life, propelling her on a mission of self-discovery. Her research and persistent questioning of other relatives left little room for doubt: her forefathers had been Jews. And were it not for the persecution they had faced at the hands of the Inquisition, that is what they would have remained.

Who knows what suffering and trauma they had been forced to endure, living publicly as Catholics but secretly as Jews, surrounded by hostility, antagonism and outright hatred? From the records of the Inquisition, we know that its practitioners employed an array of tools designed to ferret out and quash any remaining Jewish embers in Spain.

Torture, informants, denunciations and public executions were part and parcel of the reign of terror they imposed on anyone suspected of "relapsing" to Judaism.

According to historian Cecil Roth, over 30,000 so-called Judaizers were put to death by the Inquisitorial zealots in Spain and Portugal, many of them burned alive at the stake in front of cheering crowds of onlookers, while hundreds of thousands of others were tried and convicted by its courts for following Jewish practices.

Most people probably don't realize it, but the Inquisition continued functioning for centuries, hunting down "secret Jews" as far afield as Angola and South America. It was only in the 19th century that the persecutions were formally stopped.

"Since history began, perhaps," writes Roth in his seminal work, A History of the Marranos, "in no spot on the earth's surface has so systematic and so protracted a persecution ever been perpetrated for so innocent a cause."

This past Sunday, however, the sad and tragic journey of Nuria's forebearers finally came to a happy end. Together with her husband Edward, Nuria underwent conversion before a rabbinical court in Jerusalem, which formally welcomed them back to the people of Israel.

Welcome Back

What Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain's 15th century monarchs, had sought to demolish through Inquisition and expulsion, Nuria was determined to bring back to life. Her return to Judaism was the culmination of a spiritual quest, one that led her and her husband to study with an Orthodox rabbi in Barcelona who embraced them and received them with warmth and understanding.

Slowly but surely they made Judaism the focal point of their lives, adopting the rituals and lifestyle of traditional Jews. They now attend synagogue regularly, observe Shabbat and keep kosher. Nuria has even organized a local group of activists, who took upon themselves the thankless task of defending Israel's good name in the local Spanish media, where the Jewish state comes under frequent, and rather fierce, attack from its critics.

After the rabbinical court judges accepted them, Nuria decided to become "Nurit," and Edward fittingly took the name of "Yitzhak," after the patriarch who was nearly sacrificed on the altar, only to be saved at the last minute by Divine intervention.

When I saw Nurit the following day, she was at the Western Wall, her eyes filled with tears. The first thing she had done, she told me, when she approached the ancient relic of the Holy Temple, was to touch its stones. She then cast her eyes heavenwards, and addressed her grandfather: "I did it, grandpa. I have returned. I am a Jew."

Hearing this story, I was overcome with emotion. What greater testament could there be to the power of the Jewish soul, to the eternal and unbreakable spirit of the pintele Yid, the Jewish spark that can never be extinguished? Across Spain and the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, there are untold thousands, possibly more, who still carry this spark within them, longing to return to their people, to come home again to the faith and beliefs that were so cruelly torn away from them over the centuries.

The Jewish people owe it to them and to their ancestors to recognize the anguish and suffering they have endured and to facilitate their return. The descendants of the Anousim (Hebrew for "those who were coerced") are grappling with profound issues of identity, history and faith. They should not have to do so on their own.

Specifically, there are a number of steps that can and should be taken to help them, including publishing more material on Jewish topics in Spanish, opening small and accessible Jewish libraries throughout Spain, and raising awareness about them among rabbis and communal leaders to ease their reintegration into the Jewish community.

Israel should also consider establishing a national memorial to the victims of the Inquisition, and it should press the Spanish government to do the same. This would be a highly symbolic, though important, measure, one which would both educate future generations about the trauma of the Inquisition, and confer upon its victims the recognition they justly deserve.

At a time when so many young Jews are leaving the fold, Israel now has an opportunity to recover countless numbers of its long-lost brethren. From Spain to Brazil to the southwestern United States, the number of Anousim coming out into the open is surging. The time has come to welcome them back home.

Comment by Israel Insider on December 7, 2008 at 9:17pm

Judaism is a religion and a non-Jew can convert and become Jewish. But Jews also trace their origins (some more credibly than others) to the Land of Israel, with a genetic heritage and a bloodline that reaches to the patriarchs.

Comment by Edmund Stahl on December 7, 2008 at 9:01pm

I just don't know. For some reason or other I have always thought that "Being Jewish" is a form of religion or certain beliefs. After reading this article, It leads me to think that Jews are a "Race" Can anyone furnish a good answer?

Comment by Yoel on December 7, 2008 at 12:07am

Marranos - Returning to Judaism
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2008/08/marranos-returning-to-judaism.html

It took a long time - 500 years - but at least some of the Marranos, victims of the Inquisition forced to convert to Catholicism, are returning to Judaism and renewing their connection with the Jewish people. This movement is all the more remarkable because the rabbinical establishment has done little or nothing to encourage this movement. The Marranos must have lifted a collective eye-brow when they heard the Pope lecturing Muslims about compulsion in religion. It would be quite interesting to see a debate between a Marrano who had returned to Judaism, and a Jews for Jesus fanatic.

Descendants of Marranos arrive in Israel

Delegation of 16 Europeans, whose ancestors were forced to convert to Catholicism during inquisition over 500 years ago, seek to renew their ties with Jewish people, state

Ynetnews Published: 08.27.08, 06:56 / Israel Jewish Scene

A delegation of 16 Bnai Anousim from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France arrived in Israel over the weekend. Bnai Anousim (referred to as "Marranos" by historians) is the name for Mediterranean European Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism on pain of death during the Spanish Inquisition.

In the late 14th and 15th century, at the time of mass expulsions of Jews from Spain and Portugal, the Bnai Anousim remained behind, where they continued to preserve their Jewish identity and to practice the Jewish faith covertly.

As a result, this unique phenomenon is still evident even today, even though the Inquisition invested enormous efforts over the centuries to eradicate it.

The trip is being arranged by the Shavei Israel organization, a non-profit organization with the aim of strengthening ties between the State of Israel and the descendants of Jews around the world.



The organization is currently active in nine countries and provides assistance to a variety of different communities such as the Bnei Menashe of India, the Bnai Anousim in Spain, Portugal and South America, the Subbotnik Jews of Russia, the Jewish community of Kaifeng in China, descendants of Jews living in Poland, and others.



In the framework of their visit to Israel, the Bnai Anousim participants will travel across the country and visit places such as Jerusalem, Rachel's Tomb, Safed, Tiberias, Haifa, Beit Shearim, Kibbutz Lavi, and more. In addition, they will take part in special classes on Jewish history, culture and religion being held for them in Spanish and Portuguese as well as learn some Hebrew.




According to Shavei Israel founder and Chairman Michael Freund, large numbers of Bnai Anousim around the world have started to openly embrace their Jewish heritage in recent years and many are seeking to renew their connection with Israel and the Jewish people after centuries of preserving their identity in secret.

"This visit to Israel by a delegation of Bnai Anousim is part of the process of forging a renewed relationship with the Jewish people and the State of Israel. I believe that we have an historic and moral obligation to reach out to the Bnai Anousim and to assist them as much as we can," Freund said.

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Marranos come home

New phenomenon sweeps Portugal: Descendants of Marranos rediscover their Jewish roots and the Jewish faith. One Porto community undergoes mass conversion

Gabi Newman

Yosef Pero Philip is professor psychiatry at the University of Porto. Arieh Ben Avraham is a renowned film director. Yosef Eduardo Albas is a soccer player in Portugal's Second Division. All three men have recently converted to Judaism, observe the mitzvoth, and are distinctly proud of their Jewish heritage.


These three men are also representative of a noticeable recent trend among descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Marranos, that is Sephardic Jews forced to adopt the identity of Christians, who are now rediscovering their Jewish faith and reclaiming their ancient heritage en masse.


Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum of the "Shavei Israel" Foundation, which oversees the conversion process among these Marrano descendants, said that over the years individual Marranos have converted to Judaism , but now, thanks to the foundation's efforts, entire communities of Marrano offspring are converting to Judaism and reclaiming their ancient heritage.


"If you asked people in Israel, they would probably tell you that Marranos are merely a blurb on the annals of history, but here we see definitive proof that people still view themselves as Marranos and children of Marranos, and that this is a very real, spiritual phenomenon," said Rabbi Birnbaum.


Indeed, many Portuguese are now becoming reacquainted with their Jewish lineage. Aaron Ram, Israel's Ambassador to Portugal, told Ynet that "when people find out that I'm the Israeli ambassador, many end up telling me that they are Jewish, or rather that they are of Jewish descent. Many of these Marranos are not Jewish anymore, nor do they intend to convert, but they nevertheless mention their heritage with great pride. I would say that 10% of all Portuguese are offspring of Marranos of Jewish descent."

What led to this spiritual reawakening among these former Jews? The waning power of the church in both Spain and Portugal is a definite factor leading to this trend, as is the quest for belonging and identity so prevalent around the world today.


The Marano descendants in question tend to come from a high socio-economic background, and are typically well integrated into the Christian society that they live in. They claim that their return to their Jewish heritage does not invoke scorn or hatred in their peers, and that they are typically applauded for their resolve and bravery.

Comment by Cynthia on December 6, 2008 at 9:00pm

I'd like to see more articles on this subject featured on Israel Insider. I believe part of my family originated in Spain.