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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

from the July 25th edition of the newspaper Folha de Sëo Paolo HERITAGE: Venha Ver founded in 1811 in Rio Grande do Norte still preserves vestiges of its Jewish origins A little town lost in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte maintains vestiges of the Jewish origins of it population whose founders in 1811 were descendents [...]

Following is a passage from La Historia De Espana by Balisterros published in 1957 It was the textbook used in Spanish public schools Someone sent me a photocopy of this page I don’t have the next page so it ends in mid sentence Rabbi Garzon of Spain has assured me that the Spanish schools have adopted new [...]

David and Esther Rafael recently gave me a book that I find very enjoyable It is The Beauty of Sephardic Life by The late Sam Bension Maimon The book consists of a series of articles written by Mr Maimon for La Boz (The Voice) the newsletter of the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregaton of Seattle The [...]

Jewish food oral traditions culture and secret religious customs are showing up today in the folklore habits and practices of the descendants of early settlers in southern Texas and the surrounding areas of Mexico In northern Mexico and what today is Texas the Jews of Nuevo Leon and its capital Monterrey Mexico lived without fear [...]

The Visigothic Code also  known as Forum Iudicum or  Libro de los Juicios were a set of laws promulgated by the Visigothic king of Hispania Chindasuinth in 642 and 643AD They were later expanded by other Visigothic Kings Their intent was to make all of the ethnic groups of the kingdom become hispaniThe laws were especially applicable to the Jews and were the first to restrict [...]