Pablo de Santa Maria The Purim Letter and Siete edades del mundo

Pablo de Santa Maria a converso whose original name was Solomon Halevi was born in Burgos in the middle of the fourteenth century A teacher scholar and chief rabbi of Burgos before his conversion to Christianity he later became an important member of the Castilian establishment and a highranking Christian prelate While still a Jew he [...]

Turmoil: The Abject Life A Portuguese Alien in Elizabethan England

It is the contention of this paper that Dr Hector Nunes’ mean spirited reaction to William Fox’s petition to the Lord Chancellor of England Sir Christopher Hatton in 1588 can be attributed to the weight of financial losses and debts incurred since 1569 In particular this paper will emphasize specific events that led to his [...]

SPANISHJEWISH “ROOTS”

A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY DALLASFORT WORTH RESIDENTS ARE RECLAIMING THE HERITAGE THEIR ANCESTORS WERE FORCED TO CONCEAL TO SURVIVE When Dallasite David Sifuentes Jimenez 40 signed up to take a class at the Jewish Community Center about the medieval Spanishbased language Ladino he thought he was merely adding to his storehouse of knowledge of linguistics [...]

The Key to the 500Year Old Door

This article was printed in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the forced conversion of the Jews of Portugal It was 7:am on Corpus Christi Day 1989 when my travel companion and I left Lisbon for Belmonte 7 1/2 hours later we stepped off the train at the tiny blue and whitetiled station nestled in [...]

The Forced Conversion of The Jews of Portugal

(From an address at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel Los Angeles October 1997) The story of the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Span is well known Not so well known is what happened five years later in the neighboring country of Portugal Of those Jews who chose to flee Spain in 1492 large numbers went [...]

Mestizo Jews: The Hidden Treasure of The World

For about 100 years before the official start of the Spanish Inquisition bloodshed and tension had been taking place in Spain due to different religious beliefs held by Jews Moors and Catholics In 1391 Catholics staged horrible bloody massacres of Jews and Moors in the cities of Castile Aragon and Seville Spanish Jews (Sephardic Jews) began [...]

Finding Our Lost Brothers and Sisters: The Crypto Jews of Brazil

Helio Daniel Cordeiro has been on a quest A quest for his Jewish roots He found them and he has been helping other Brazilians find theirs In October 1996 I traveled to Brazil with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn and the Society For CryptoJudaic Studies We were interested in contacting the descendants of Spanish andPortuguese Jews who had [...]

The Search for Family Origins

As delivered at the December 1996 Conference of the SCJS in Albuquerque Translated from Spanish I am grateful to God and to you for allowing me to share with you my experiences as I searched for the origins of my family I will begin by mentioning that this quest was begun in my early youth [...]

A Matter of ConjectureCrypto Jews In Early California?

In 1967 during an archeological dig at the Royal Chapel site of the Santa Barbara Presidio a student from UCSB one Janet Karen discovered a complete chicken skeleton in the corner area of the sanctuary where it had been resting for over 200 years Karen had worked earlier in the year at Masada in Israel [...]