The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies ("SCJS"), founded in August 1990 by Rabbi Joshua Stampfer of Portland, Oregon, and Dr. Stanley Hordes of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the major academic organization conducting and encouraging research on the Crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal and their descendants today. This also involves significant attention being given to the Inquisition and to its ramifications for Sephardic Jews as well as for the general Jewish community.
Membership in the SCJS is composed of scholars interested in crypto-Jews, descendants of crypto-Jews, and others interested in the topic from a historical, sociological, anthropological, religious, ethnic, literary, philosophical, or other perspective. The Society is nonreligious, and membership is open to all. Today, there is much interest, both academic and personal, in the history and contemporary status of crypto-Jews, and a number of distinguished scholars have published in the area. Especially in recent years, a number of people, especially, but not limited to, Hispanics, have returned or converted to Judaism, frequently in part because of knowledge of a previously-suppressed Jewish heritage. New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California are major areas of interest, but significant interest also is found in Miami, Florida, Orlando, Florida, New York City, Portland, Oregon, and other areas with large numbers of Hispanics. This contemporary phenomenon of returning/converting also is of specific interest to some academic researchers.
The SCJS publishes HaLapid: The Journal of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, a combination newsletter and journal. Published four times per year, HaLapid (Hebrew for The Torch) mostly includes refereed academic research articles, personal stories by descendants of crypto-Jews, and news items, but also includes occasional poetry, links for related websites, and other items of interest. The SCJC also hosts a website, and helps answer questions and make referrals for interested persons.
The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies meets annually for a three-day conference which includes a keynote speaker, sessions on recent research findings, personal stories of returnees, business sessions, and various forms of entertainment. At the 2003 annual conference in San Antonio, Texas, the keynote speaker was retired Rabbi Samuel Lerer who spent much of his 51-year career working with anusim in Mexico. The SCJS has taken a lead in interest in DNA studies, especially as it applies to crypto-Jews, other Sephardim, and the Jewish community in general.
Sephardi Jews, also known as Sephardic Jews, Sephardim, or Hispanic Jews by modern scholars, are a Jewish ethnic division originating from traditionally established communities in the Iberian Peninsula. The term "Sephardim" sometimes refers to Eastern Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa. Although they have no ancestry back to the Jewish communities of Iberia, the vast majority of them adopted a Sephardic style of liturgy and Sephardic law and customs from the influence of the Iberian Jewish exiles over the course of the last few centuries. This article deals with Sephardim within the narrower ethnic definition.
Marranos were Spanish and Portuguese Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula who converted or were forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages, yet continued to practice Judaism in secrecy.
A converso, "convert", was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of his or her descendants.
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
Jewish religious movements, sometimes called "denominations", include different groups which have developed among Jews from ancient times. Today, the main division is between the "traditional Judaism", and Reform, with several smaller movements alongside them. This denominational structure is mainly present in the United States, while in Israel, the fault lines are between Haredi Judaism (Haredim), Religious Zionism (Datim), Masortim (traditional) and Hiloni (secular) 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]".
In Judaism, apostasy refers to the rejection of Judaism and possible defection to another religion by a Jew. The term apostasy is derived from Ancient Greek: ἀποστάτης, meaning "rebellious" Equivalent expressions for apostate in Hebrew that are used by rabbinical scholars include mumar, poshea Yisrael, and kofer. Similar terms are meshumad, and min or epikoros, which denote the negation of God and Judaism, implying atheism.
"Who is a Jew?" is a basic question about Jewish identity and considerations of Jewish self-identification. The question pertains to ideas about Jewish personhood, which have cultural, ethnic, religious, political, genealogical, and personal dimensions. Orthodox Judaism and Conservative Judaism follow Jewish law (Halakha), deeming a person to be Jewish if their mother is Jewish or if they underwent a halakhic conversion. Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism accept both matrilineal and patrilineal descent as well as conversion. Karaite Judaism predominantly follows patrilineal descent as well as conversion.
New Christian was a socio-religious designation and legal distinction in the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire from the 15th century onwards used to describe primarily the descendants of Jews and Muslims who were baptised into the Catholic Church, following the respective orders to convert or be expelled under the Catholic Monarchs following the completion of the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula. Most of the history of the "New Christians" refers to the Jewish converts, who were generally known as Conversos, while the Muslim converts were known as Moriscos.
Jewish studies is an academic discipline centered on the study of Jews and Judaism. Jewish studies is interdisciplinary and combines aspects of history, Middle Eastern studies, Asian studies, Oriental studies, religious studies, archeology, sociology, languages, political science, area studies, women's studies, and ethnic studies. Jewish studies as a distinct field is mainly present at colleges and universities in North America.
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 in order 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 history of the Jews in Belmonte, Portugal, reaches back over five hundred years.
Abraham D. Lavender is a professor of Sociology at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, where his special areas of interest include ethnic relations, Judaica, political sociology, urban sociology, the sociology of sexuality, and social deviance. He is Editor in Chief of the 'Journal of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Crypto Jews', and is past president of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies. He has previously been a professor of sociology at St. Mary's College in Maryland, and at the University of Miami. He has taught at FIU since 1990.
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 immediate generations following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.
The history of the Jews in Mexico can be said to have begun 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 neofiti were a group of Italian anusim, also known as crypto-Jews, living in Southern Italy.
M. Miriam Herrera is an American author and poet. She teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and currently teaches Introduction to Mexican Studies as well as Composition and Rhetoric and Creative Writing. She is a Lecturer with the Department of Writing Language Studies, and a Mexican American Studies Program (MASC) Affiliate. Her poetry often explores Mexican American or Chicano life and her Crypto-Jewish and Native American (Cherokee) heritage, but mainly the universal themes of nature, family, myth, and the transcendent experience.
Benzion Netanyahu was an Israeli historian. He served as Professor of History at Cornell University. A scholar of Judaic history, he was also an activist in the Revisionist Zionism movement, who lobbied in the United States to support the creation of the Jewish state. His field of expertise was the history of the Jews in Spain. He was an editor of the Hebrew Encyclopedia and Ze'ev Jabotinsky's personal secretary. Netanyahu was the father of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yonatan Netanyahu, ex-commander of Sayeret Matkal, as well as Iddo Netanyahu, a physician, author and playwright.
América Ladina is a 2011 documentary film directed by and starring Israeli independent filmmaker, Yaron Avitov.
Sephardic Bnei Anusim is a modern term used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of an estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardi Jews who were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th century in Spain and Portugal. The vast majority of conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, and their descendants in both these countries numbering in the millions. The small minority of conversos who did emigrate normally chose destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but also more tolerant cities in Europe, where many immediately reverted to Judaism. Although a few travelled to Latin America with colonial expeditions, doing so was particularly difficult, since only those Spaniards who could certify no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were allowed to travel to the New World. But the constant flow of Spanish emigration to Latin America until well into the 20th century resulted in many Latin Americans having Converso ancestry, in the same way as modern Spaniards do.
