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The presence of Anusim or Crypto-Jews has been recorded since the earliest migrations of Spaniards and Portuguese to the territory. Researcher and writer Elyjah Byrzdett [1] explains that the Judeo-converso phenomenon in Panama can be divided into two major periods: the Castilian period and the Portuguese period.
This period was marked by the arrival of Crypto-Jews of Castilian origin, who played an active role in the colonization of the territory. When Rodrigo de Bastidas arrived at the Isthmus of Panama in 1501, he was accompanied by recent Christian converts. From the first Spanish expeditions and throughout the entire conquest, Judeo-conversos were present in the region. [2]
The governor and founder of Panama City, Pedro Arias Dávila (known as Pedrarias), had Jewish ancestry on both his paternal and maternal lines. His paternal grandfather, Ysaque Abenazar, was an influential member of the Jewish community in Segovia, who later converted to Catholicism and adopted the name Diego Arias Dávila. Although his religious beliefs remain unclear, it is known that he protected Judeo-conversos from the persecution led by Franciscan bishop Fray Juan de Quevedo. [2]
Other notable figures of converso lineage include the following captains and governors:
In his work The Pisa family: A Converso Lineage, Byrzdett documents the detailed genealogy of the Pisa family, whose descendants arrived in Panama and later settled in other regions. Although not all Crypto-Jews bore the surname "de Pisa", the author uses it as a reference, given its significance as a common ancestral trunk of several converso families in the region. [3]
The Portuguese period began in 1580, following the dynastic union of Portugal with the Spanish Crown. During this time, Portuguese Crypto-Jews, who were better organized and had greater resources, managed to establish a prayer house on Calafates Street, located behind the old Cathedral of Panama la Vieja. However, the Inquisition intensified its persecution of the Judaizers, culminating in 1640 in an event known as the "Great Conspiracy", which dismantled much of the Crypto-Jewish network in the Isthmus. From then on, their presence in historical records became more elusive, as fear of persecution led many to conceal their identity even further. [2]
One of the most documented episodes of this persecution was the arrest of the Portuguese Sebastián Rodríguez, accused of being a Judaizer, meaning a practitioner of Judaism. Rodríguez led a group of Crypto-Jews, including Antonio de Ávila, González de Silva, Domingo de Almeyda, and a Mercedarian friar, all of whom were secret practitioners of Judaism. During the judicial proceedings, four doctors certified the presence of a circumcision mark on Rodríguez, which was used as evidence against him. [2]
The organized Jewish community in Panama has existed since the 1820s. [4]
When the Isthmus joined Simón Bolívar’s Federation project, a new wave of Jewish migration took place, revitalizing Mosaic faith in the Isthmus. These early Jewish immigrants arrived under a new policy that initially promoted religious freedom in the newly independent territories. They played a crucial role as intermediaries and translators, acting as liaisons between the local population and foreigners arriving or passing through the region, thanks to their proficiency in multiple languages such as German, Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and Papiamento.
Both Sephardic Jews (Judeo-Spanish) and Ashkenazi Jews (Judeo-Germanic) began arriving in significant numbers in Panama during the mid-19th century, attracted by economic opportunities such as the construction of the transoceanic railroad and the California Gold Rush. This migratory influx marked an important chapter in the history of Panama’s Jewish community.
During the 1990s, around 7,000 Jews lived in Panama, including around 1,000 Israelis. [5] By 2014, the Jewish population was between 12,000 to 14,000. [4]
The current Jewish population of Panama is around 25,000 and is centered in Panama City. Small but growing, Panama has the largest Jewish population in Central America. Well-integrated into Panama's social and political life, Panama is the only country other than Israel to have had three Jewish presidents during the 20th century: Max Delvalle Maduro in April 1967, and Eric Arturo Delvalle Cohen-Henriquez from 1985 to 1988. Additionally, Mayer Mizrachi, another member of the Jewish community, was elected mayor.
The majority of Panamanian Jews keep kosher or maintain a kosher kitchen at home. Panama City, often considered a kosher paradise, boasts several dozen establishments offering kosher food, including restaurants, markets, bakeries, and catering services. Super Kosher is a 1,500 square meter kosher supermarket in Panama City that sells almost 10,000 kosher products, making it the largest kosher market in the world outside of Israel. Another notable kosher supermarket in panama is Deli K, which primarily sells imported products from Israel. [5]
Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the Iberian Peninsula. The term, which is derived from the Hebrew Sepharad, can also refer to the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, who were also heavily influenced by Sephardic law and customs. Many Iberian Jewish exiled families also later sought refuge in those Jewish communities, resulting in ethnic and cultural integration with those communities over the span of many centuries. The majority of Sephardim live in Israel.
Marranos is a term for Spanish and Portuguese Jews who converted to Christianity, either voluntarily or by Spanish or Portuguese royal coercion, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but who continued to practice Judaism in secrecy or were suspected of it. They are also called crypto-Jews, the term increasingly preferred in scholarly works over Marranos.
A converso, "convert", was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of their descendants.
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
Anusim is a legal category of Jews in halakha who were forced to abandon Judaism against their will, typically while forcibly converted to another religion. The term "anusim" is most properly translated as the "coerced [ones]" or the "forced [ones]".
The history of the Jews in Latin America began with conversos who joined the Spanish and Portuguese expeditions to the continents. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 led to the mass conversion of Spain's Jews to Catholicism and the expulsion of those who refused to do so. However, the vast majority of conversos never made it to the New World and remained in Spain slowly assimilating to the dominant Catholic culture. This was due to the requirement by Spain's Blood Statutes to provide written documentation of Old Christian lineage to travel to the New World. However, the first Jews came with the first expedition of Christopher Columbus, including Rodrigo de Triana and Luis De Torres.
The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of practising Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year. The primary purpose was to eliminate the influence of practising Jews on Spain's large formerly-Jewish converso New Christian population, to ensure the latter and their descendants did not revert to Judaism. Over half of Spain's Jews had converted as a result of the religious persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391. Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415. A further number of those remaining chose to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra Decree and persecution in the years leading up to the expulsion of Spain's estimated 300,000 Jewish origin population, a total of over 200,000 had converted to Roman Catholicism in order to remain in Spain, and between 40,000 and 100,000 remained Jewish and suffered expulsion. An unknown number of the expelled eventually succumbed to the pressures of life in exile away from formerly-Jewish relatives and networks back in Spain, and so converted to Roman Catholicism to be allowed to return in the years following expulsion.:17
The history of the Jewish community in Belmonte, Portugal, dates back to the 13th century; the community was composed of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who kept their faith through crypto-Judaism.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
The community of Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam, was of major importance in the seventeenth century. The Portuguese Jews in the Netherlands did not refer to themselves as "Sephardim", but rather as "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation." The Portuguese-speaking community grew from conversos, Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal, who rejudaized under rabbinical authority, to create an openly self-identified Portuguese Jewish community. As a result of the expulsions from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, as well as the religious persecution by the Inquisition that followed, many Spanish and Portuguese Jews left the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, in search of religious freedom. Some migrated to the newly independent Dutch provinces which allowed Jews to become residents. Many Jews who left for the Dutch provinces were crypto-Jews. Others had been sincere New Christians, who, despite their conversion, were targeted by Old Christians as suspect. Some of these sought to return to the religion of their ancestors. Ashkenazi Jews began migrating to the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century, but Portuguese Jews viewed them with ambivalence.
The history of the Jews in Brazil begins during the settlement of Europeans in the new world. Although only baptized Christians were subject to the Inquisition, Jews started settling in Brazil when the Inquisition reached Portugal, in the 16th century. They arrived in Brazil during the period of Dutch rule, setting up in Recife the first synagogue in the Americas, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, as early as 1636. Most of those Jews were Sephardic Jews who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal to the religious freedom of the Netherlands.
The name Veragua or Veraguas was used for five Spanish colonial territorial entities in Central America, beginning in the 16th century during the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
The history of the Jews in Mexico began in 1519 with the arrival of Conversos, often called Marranos or "Crypto-Jews", referring to those Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism and that then became subject to the Spanish Inquisition.
The history of the Jews in Amsterdam focuses on the historical center of the Dutch Jewish community, comprising both Portuguese Jews originally from both Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi Jews, originally from central Europe. The two separate groups have had a continuing presence since the seventeenth century. Amsterdam has been called a Jerusalem of the West and the "Dutch Jerusalem". The Holocaust in the Netherlands devastated the Jewish community, with the Nazis murdering over 80% of Amsterdam's 79,000 Jews, but the community has managed to rebuild a vibrant and living Jewish life for its approximately 15,000 present members.
The predominant religion in Panama is Christianity, with Catholic Church being its largest denomination. Before the arrival of Spanish missionaries, the various ethnic groups residing in the territory of modern day Panama practiced a multitude of faiths.
Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast in Cochin. After the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in the 1498, a number of Sephardic Jews fled Antisemitism in Iberia which had culminated in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 and Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal. They settled in Portuguese Indian trading places so that they could continue practicing Judaism secretly while still remaining within the Portuguese Empire. After the Portuguese Inquisition was established, an additional number of falsely-converted Sephardic Jews made sea voyages to settle in India, because it would then be difficult for the Inquisition to investigate and punish them. They spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom and some of them also Arabic.
The history of the Jews in Colombia begins in the Spanish colonial period with the arrival of the first Jews during the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Sephardic Bnei Anusim is a modern term which is used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of an estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jews who were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th centuries in Spain and Portugal. The vast majority of conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, and their descendants, who number in the millions, live in both of these countries. The small minority of conversos who emigrated normally chose to emigrate to destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but some of them emigrated to more tolerant cities in Europe, where many of them immediately reverted to Judaism. In theory, very few of them would have traveled to Latin America with colonial expeditions, because only those Spaniards who could certify that they had no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were supposed to be allowed to travel to the New World. Recent genetic studies suggest that the arrival of the Sephardic ancestors of Latin American populations coincided with the initial colonization of Latin America, which suggests that significant numbers of recent converts were able to travel to the new world and contribute to the gene pool of modern Latin American populations despite an official prohibition on them doing so. In addition, later arriving Spanish immigrants would have themselves contributed additional converso ancestry in some parts of Latin America.
The Expulsion of Jews from Spain was the expulsion of practicing Jews following the Alhambra Decree in 1492, which was enacted to eliminate their influence on Spain's large converso population and to ensure its members did not revert to Judaism. Over half of Spain's Jews had converted to Catholicism as a result of the Massacre of 1391. Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415. Many of those who remained decided to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra decree and the prior persecution, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism, and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. An unknown number returned to Spain in the following years. The expulsion led to mass migration of Jews from Spain to France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Mediterranean Basin. One result of the migration was new Jewish surnames appearing in Italy and Greece. The surnames Faraggi, Farag and Farachi, for example, originated from the Spanish city of Fraga.
The recorded history of the Jews in Angola stretches from the Middle Ages to modern times. A very small community of Jews lives in Angola mostly in the capital city of Luanda with a handful scattered elsewhere of mixed origins and backgrounds. There are also a number of transitory Israeli businesspeople living in Angola.
