Letter to the Editor for HaLapid If we persist in presenting our heroes and heroines without their foibles then those whose opinions differ from ours on these issues will present them for us often happily so sometimes with a vengeance In 1507 after the massacre of thousands of new Christians in Lisbon when King Manoel [...]

My name is Horacio Calle Restrepo I was born 65 years in my home state of Antioquia Colombia What follows is part only of my very own and very personal search for my Jewish Sephardic identity This is not an academic paper it is a human effort to find out where do I come from [...]

Doña Gracia and Joseph Nasi Initiate a New Paradigm in Jewish History In A Sephardic Love Song: Lion and Lamb in the Medieval Darkness© I write about four notable Sephardim in Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and how their accomplishments and contributions have enriched us all The research for this work in [...]

Late last year I received several emails regarding a conference sponsored by Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) in Scottsdale Arizona I have to admit that the conference title was very intriguing "Converso as Metaphor: A Paradigm Shift" It was to be held at the Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum I wanted to find out more [...]

"Behold I will save my people from the east country and from the west country; And I will bring them and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem And they shall be my people and I will be their God in truth and righteousness" Johannesburg South Africa My interest was first ignited a few [...]

And Adonai went ahead of them in a column of cloud during the daytime to lead them on their way and at night in a column of fire to give them light; thus they could travel both day and night Neither the column of cloud by day nor the column of cloud at night went [...]

When the first Valerio Martá­n Fernandez Valerio marched up into Northern New Mexico in 1694 what dreams prayers and fears were in his mind? He was only a twelve year old boy and there are no records of his parents They did not accompany him He walked singly up through the long harsh desert passage [...]

The word "Marrano" is not generally used in Halapid articles because of the common understanding of its pejorative nature generally believed to have come from the Spanish word for swine Exception to this policy are made when the term is inimical to an article Our page one article by David Ramirez in the Summer 2000 issue [...]

Repression of Crypto Jews intensified in Portugal with the beginning of John III’s reign On March 23 1536 Pope Paul III authorized the establishment of the Inquisition and in 1540 the first Portuguese autodafé took place Fearing the worst Crypto Jews began their immigration into neighboring France Nantes in Brittany became both a temporary and permanent [...]

This research focuses on the role of women in sustaining cryptoJudaism in twentiethcentury American society The historical significance of such women has been identified in the work of Cecil Roth (1932) and Renee Levine (1982) both of whom studied the role of women in sustaining hidden Judaism during the Spanish persecutions of the fifteenth and [...]