Free Genealogy Videos

A lady called Laura has compiled an excellent set of genealogy video on her website called... Genealogy Videos.

I am collecting free video links, including Laura's, on my Sephardic Genealogy website. Please let me know if I have missed anything substantial. Also grateful to receive recommendations for sites in Spanish, Portuguese and other relevant languages.

Sephardim invited back to Spain

Several friends have sent me the BBC report on Sephardim being invited back to Spain. The official regulation was published by Spain's Los Angeles consulate in December.

The BBC article gets our history wrong, but that's forgiveable. It hugely complex and subtle. It gives a couple of plugs for Doreen Carvajal's new book. All fine.

What irritates me is that the article alleges that we are some sort of historic remnant yearning for Spain. Er, no. This is as silly as suggesting that ethnic English people are pining for the German forests. Spain is part of the European Union. So too Britain, Holland, Greece, France and Italy which all have Sephardic populations. Has there been a stampede? Has ANYONE "returned" to Spain out of historic nostalgia? Not that I know of. 

The journalist found someone in Turkey (outside the EU) who has got a Spanish passport. An anonymous British Sephardic Jew is reported as saying: "I'm still Spanish in my soul and in my heart", which is surprising as (if he exists) his family probably came from Portugal via Amsterdam or Brazil via Barbados.

I think it is kind of sweet - in a ridiculous way - that some people in Spain want to apologise to us for what one group of people did to another several hundred years ago. As a once Visigoth state, no doubt they will also apologise for the destruction of the Western Roman Empire.

I suppose the Spanish government feel it is a nice gesture - which it is. I wonder if they realise that up to 17 million Brazilians have been estimated to be of Sephardic origin, and I would guess millions more in Mexico and Spanish America.

Shabbat in Trancoso, Portugal

The first Shabbat in five hundred years was celebrated in Trancoso, northeast Portugal, last week, as reported by the Os Judeus em Trás os Montes blog.

Dan Mendoza: The Movie

A film is being made on the life of Daniel Mendoza, the famous SEPHARDI boxer. Let's see if they tell his real story, or choose to channel Topol and Barbra Streisand instead.

Mantua records

The records from Mantua, Italy, have now been put online at http://www.adacta.fi.it/digitalib/archeb/index.php

Cromwell on the Re-admission of the Jews to England in 1655

Oliver Cromwell’s summing up of the 1655 debate on whether to readmit the Jews to England:

Now the Protector having heard all their [theologians] sentiments upon this affair, declared, “That he had no engagement to the Jews, but what the scriptures held forth, and that since there was a promise of their conversion, means must be used to that end, which was the preaching of the gospel, and that could not be had unless they were permitted to reside where the gospel was preached. That he had hoped, by these preachers, to have hade some clearing of the case, as to matters of conscience, but seeing these agreed not, but were of different opinions, it was left more doubtful to him, and the council, than before: And he hoped he should do nothing herein hastily or rashly, and had much need of all their prayers, that the Lord would direct them so as might be to his glory, and the good of the nation.”

Two journeys to Jerusalem: Containing first, A strange and true ..., Volume 1. Page 152

Sephardim eligible for Spanish citizenship

The Jerusalem Post reports that:

Spain has decided to offer automatic citizenship to anyone who can successfully prove their Sephardi origins, Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz Gallardón announced during a ceremony last week at Madrid’s Casa Sefarad-Israel.

Sweet, I suppose.