Being raised Catholic didn’t seem to make me Catholic Some how I never felt as if I fit in to what seemed to be the religion of my ancestors I can remember praying with my Granny three times a day when we were around one another At her house she had a little altar facing the [...]

Reviewed by Arthur Benveniste The pages of HaLapid have presented reviews of many books dealing with the history and culture of crypto Jews some of them quite scholarly others written in a more popular style some fiction and some histories But until now the books have been directed towards an adult readership What a pleasure [...]

This article concerns the commonly shared ideology of those Sephardim who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula as well as those who were forced to undergo conversion and remained there or immigrated to other countries The messianic hope for religious and national restoration was for them a commonly held one that would bring an end [...]

Captain Barros Basto whom the noted historian Cecil Roth called "the apostle of the Marranos" was the subject of the first of a series of tertulias or salons in September sponsored by Ladina a registered nonprofit society in Porto Portugal which focuses on the history and culture of the Sephardic Jews of Portugal The event which [...]

A Couple’s Odyssey Too much of Daniel Ramos" childhood revolved around the church His mother Elizabeth Garcia Ramos a minister’s daughter who became a minister’s wife and his father Ismael spent a lot of time on his ministry and as a result so did their family Daniel the youngest of five siblings was never at [...]

INKIZISION I KRIPTODJUDAIZMO EN CANARIAS SIGLOS XVIIXVIII reprinted by permission from Aki Yerushamayim (Translated from Ladino by Michele Greene) The reestablishment of Crypto Judaism in the Canary Islands dates from the first quarter of the Seventeenth Century The peace achieved in 1604 between Spain and England greatly increased the trade of sugar and wine from the [...]

Considering the diverse origins of the Israelites the large numbers of conversions into and out of the Jewish community and major disasters which have befallen Jewish communities throughout history what is the genetic composition of Jewish communities today? In the days before genetic testing the famous Jewish anthropologist Raphael Patai used cephalic indexes and blood [...]

The Jewish Publication Society Philadelphia 2003 Reviewed by DOLORES SLOAN In presenting the background and biographies of Jewish women for more than 2000 years the authors of this comprehensive sourcebook have undertaken to correct the picture usually presented in works of history Their final product The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 BCE1900 can be [...]

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (15471616) had led a colorful life long before he became the author of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (published in two parts in 1605 and 1615) He fought against the Ottoman Turks in the victorious battle of Lepanto (1571) where he lost the use of his left hand or arm (therefore [...]

Land of the Hebrew Golden Age In 1492 Jews in the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were given a stark choice: baptism or departure from a land where they had dwelt since the days when their ancestors had called it Sepharad While Fernando of Aragon and Isabel of Castile are rightfully held accountable for [...]