The story of Esther Brandeau known to many as the first person of Jewish origin to set foot in New France exemplifies the situation that many possible Jewish emigrants faced when they arrived in this northern land today known as Quebec Esther Brandeau was the daughter of David Brandeau of Bayonne France Esther disguised as a [...]

Image of Santo Niño de La Guardia on wall of Cathedral of Toldeo Spain Rabbi Baruch Garzon called to me "Arturo ven aqui" He was standing at the side door of the great Cathedral of Toledo Spain He wanted to show me something It was 1992; we were part of the group from the American Sephardi [...]

The Holy Office followed Spanish settlers to New Spain How did this affect everyday life for cryptoJews in the area to the North near Monterrey? What is now Mexico endured as the Spanish colony New Spain from 1521 to 1821 Within this territory crypto Jews had immigrated from Europe the Azores and the Middle East [...]

Moshe ben Maimon or Maimonides was the most important Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages His writings on the Torah are well known What is less well known is the fact that he was also the most important Jewish physician of the Middle Ages When forced to convert to Islam by the Almohad dynasty in Córdova [...]

After the disruptions of the many expulsions of Jews from most West European kingdoms from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries¸ it is no wonder that Jews as medical practitioners tended almost everywhere to fade away The two places where they remained in evidence however were those lands where major disasters had not yet taken [...]

In crossing the Atlantic Ocean en route to the Iberian Peninsula I could imagine the journey my ancestors made from Barcelona to the New World in the eigthteenth century In many ways my journey to Madrid Spain can be described as a return journey to an obscure homeland It is from this obscure homeland that [...]

The Society of CryptoJudaic Studies like most academic organizations devotes most of its attention to the written word either findings from scholarly research or personal stories by descendants of the Jews of Spain and Portugal (Sephardim) many of whom had to keep their heritages and identities secret in order to survive Poetry and dramatic plays [...]

Reviewed by Arthur Benveniste Almost every day headlines announce another story of sectarian violence somewhere in the world And in most cases radical Moslems are involved Their advisories are Jews in Israel Hindus in Kashmir Christians in the former Yugoslavia and Christians and Animists in Sudan Travel the world and you will find churches converted [...]

On September 8 of this year the impressive Kadoorie synagogue (Mekor H’aimfountain of life) in Porto Portugal came alive with singing and dancing on the occasion of the dedication of a sefer torah donated by a rabbi whose grandfather was saved from the nazis by the then fledging anusim community founded by Captain Barros Basto [...]

The history of the anusim while often not on the forefront of Jewish historical studies is well known to many scholars Oftentimes Crypto Jews are considered the primary example of a culture and religion kept alive by secretive cultural and religious expression during an era of extreme oppression and genocide (Jacobs 2002) What is less known [...]