Anusim

We went to a lecture by Gloria Mound on the Crypto-Jews (Anusim or 'kidnapped'
in Hebrew, Marranos or 'swine' in Spanish). She runs an "Institute for
Marrano-Anusim Studies" in Israel called "Casa Shalom." In her lecture she
focused mostly on the Balearic Islands, including Ibiza and Formentera as
well as Majorca and Minorca which are the largest islands off the east coast
of Spain. When there were massacres of Jews in Spain in 1391 and when the
Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, Jews fled to isolated places.
One of the nearest were the Balearic Islands, which are still quite isolated
and remote.
Starting with an innocent vacation on Ibiza in 1978, because they were
observant Jews, Gloria and her husband immediately met crypto-Jews. One
thing led to another and they went back every year and gradually met a whole
network of these people.
They discovered that in order to penetrate this secret community, that had
managed to survive because of its remoteness, they had to get permission from
the "head" of the particular family or clan. Often he would be a farmer living
up in the hills, and someone who they met would have to send to get permission
to talk with them and reveal their secrets. Because the islanders speak a
version of Catalan, not Spanish, and because they always considered themselves
distinct from the mainlanders and suspicious of all outside authority, the
secret Jews were able to live there without too much interference. The
Inquisition came to the islands, but only one secret Jew is recorded to have
been turned over to them.
She described their first meeting with the Bishop of Ibiza, who kept a menorah
on his desk and was a crypto-Jew, and they discovered that the only convent in
the town of Ibiza had a "secret" synagogue underneath it. This must have been
known to the nuns, but apparently it operated for hundreds of years. The
secret Jews, who outwardly were strict Catholics had a very specific secret
life. They only allowed their children to marry other crypto-Jews (sometimes
in strict family pacts of up to 250 families), the women lit Shabbat candles
in secret, they often had cellars where Hebrew books were kept, the children
were de-brainwashed after returning from Mass each Sunday, some of them
learned to say the shema before going to sleep. Nevertheless over the period
of 500 years, many of these practices were lost in specific families. They
also discovered a remote house with a mikva, in the village of Hueneja near
Granada in Spain, but the lady living there was a strict Catholic who had lost
interest in her crypto-Jewish roots, and was using it as a store room.
There was a particular connection between the crypto-Jews and the pirates who
sailed in and controlled many of these areas. The Jewish merchants made deals
with them, and often the pirates were themselves crypto-Jews. They used this
means to maintain communication between communities in Greece, Turkey,
North Africa and as far away as Cuba and the Caribbean. Hebrew books and
people were smuggled in and out. They know this from papers that were discovered.
In one case three young Sephardic men who were smuggled into Ibiza were
caught and imprisoned, one of them was turned over to the Inquisition (he was
the one mentioned) and so there are records of what was done and said. After
some years he was eventually bought out. At the bottom of a contract dating
from the early 1700s she found a postscript that asked the captain of the boat
to take these boys to Italy where they would be educated and the signer of the
contract would guarantee all expenses for them.
Over many years they met crypto-Jews in Spain and throughout the
Mediterranean and in the US. There is a large community of crypto-Jews in New Mexico and an expert Stanley Hordes has written a book about them entitled "To
the End of the Earth: a history of the crypto-Jews of New Mexico" (listed in
Amazon. Many years ago I met a Professor Albuquerque at the University of
Maryland in Baltimore, who confessed to me that he was a secret Jew, and that
there were many such families in Albuquerque. Gloria Mound told us that in the
Cathedral in Albuquerque there is an arch of Magen Davids above the altar. We
also met a Monsignor of the Church at a wedding of one of my technicians in
Baltimore who told us he was descended from crypto-Jews.
She also spoke about the crypto-Jews of Sao Tome and Principe, which is now
an independent country. I mentioned in a previous message that the King of
Portugal sent thousands of kidnapped Jewish children into exile on those
islands during the forced conversion of 1497. Now every year there is a
commemoration of this event at the spot where they landed. Although many
died, their descendents, some of them black, still adhere to their secret
Jewish practices, including the President and their Ambassador to Israel.
Although she started out as an amateur, Gloria Mound is now a recognized
expert on the subject, has amassed a collection of books and papers on the
history of the Anusim, that is being computerized for study and has aided
many crypto-Jews who come to Israel to convert to Judaism and to become
Israeli citizens.
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For further information see www.casa-shalom.com
For my past messages see: www.commentfromisraelblog.blogspot.com