Dutch Brazil and the first Jews of New York

Meeting - Sunday 17th May 2020, with the Sephardi Heritage Project

Daniela Weil will talk about the first public Jews in the Americas. After the Portuguese drove the Dutch from Brazil in 1654, some Jews traveled via the Caribbean to New Amsterdam, later New York. The product of five years of research in the Americas and Europe, Daniela's new book, 'The Diary of Asser Levy: First Jewish Citizen of New York' has just been published.

The seminar will be on Sunday at 21:00 Israel time; 20:00 Paris/Amsterdam time; 19:00 London time; 14:00 EDT; and 11:00 PST.

Join us on Zoom at:

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/76726990912?pwd=MnNkNnhvK21QMjNpbjhHWkNvMklvZz09

Meeting ID: 767 2699 0912

Password: 6XPyLz

Our first newsletter, containing links to websites discussed in our seminar on the Amsterdam archives, will be published soon. If you know anyone else who may be interested, please invite them to sign up at:

https://mailchi.mp/sephardicgenealogy/sephardi-heritage

Madrid auto-da-fé of 1680

The 1680 Madrid Auto-da-Fé - Zoom Seminar - Sunday 10th May 2020

The second Sephardi Heritage Project seminar will look at the 1680 Madrid auto-da-fé. An auto-da-fé was the event at which the Inquisition announced prisoners' sentences. 1680 was the last great Spanish auto-da-fé and happened at a key turning point in European and Sephardic history.

The seminar will be on Sunday at 21:00 Israel time; 20:00 Paris/Amsterdam time; 19:00 London time; 14:00 EDT; and 11:00 PT.

Join us on Zoom at:

Meeting ID: 731 3915 5680
Password: 1deD3V

The first Sephardi Heritage Project newsletter, including links to websites discussed in our seminar on the Amsterdam archives, will be published soon. To register for free, please sign up at: https://mailchi.mp/sephardicgenealogy/sephardi-heritage

New online Jewish genealogy classes

A free new online Jewish genealogy and history group is launching on Sunday 3rd May 2020, focused on Sephardim and also including the universal Jewish experience.

Enjoy your time at home exploring your family history. Hosted on Zoom by two of the best-known names in Sephardic genealogy, Ton Tielen and David Mendoza. We will be hosting fun and informative seminars, as well as publishing a regular email newsletter. The entire service is free, although we are hoping to find sponsors.

Our first conversation on Sunday 3rd May 2020 will explore the Amsterdam archives, including synagogue records dating back to 1615 and other free online resources. Future meetings will cover topics as varied as interviews, family histories and the Inquisition.

There will be a weekly broadcast on Sundays (excluding Jewish holidays) at: 21:00 Israel time; 20:00 Paris time; 19:00 London time; 14:00 EST; and 11:00 PT.   Please share with anyone who may be interested! To join our online discussions and receive our newsletter, please sign up at http://eepurl.com/bSSKhX

Applying for Spanish or Portuguese nationality due to Sephardic Jewish ancestry

A new video explains the Portuguese and Spanish laws granting citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula.

If you can prove you are descended from Iberian Sephardic Jews, then you are eligible to apply to Spain or Portugal for a passport. This short video by a specialist Sephardic genealogist explains the process. He can also research your Sephardic Jewish family tree for you. 

Does my DNA test prove Sephardic ancestry?

At least once a week someone posts their autosomal (‘family finder’) DNA test results to a Jewish genealogy group on Facebook, and a helpful soul proclaims that the x% of unexpected DNA is a clue to Sephardic ancestry. A couple of posts later the tester is told that their ancestors ‘fled the Inquisition’. I parody, but not much.

Is reported DNA ancestry from Iberia, North Africa, West Asia, Italy, Sicily, France, Greece, Near East, Mediterranean, etc proof of Sephardic ancestry? No. The statistical probability is that the ancestors allegedly from those places were not Jewish, but who knows?

Sometimes someone with mainly Ashkenazi ancestry wants to ‘Judaize’ unexplained segments. It is a pity because the unexplained segments may lead to insights, and those people may have been Jewish anyway.

The ethnic/geographical results of an autosomal DNA test is not a route map of your family’s travels over the last few hundred or thousand years. It approximates where different sections of your DNA - from different ancestors - may have derived. The Mediterranean has been a trade highway for thousands of years. You would expect people from different places to have migrated during that time.

You DNA results are personal to you and can open unknown doors to your family history. Why not follow the chromosomes rather than estimations derived from generalisations of data compiled from thousands of strangers? 

Website: http://sephardicgenealogy.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sephardicgenealogy/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SephardicGeneal

Sephardic Genealogy on Facebook

A Western Sephardic synagogue - This on in Rhode Island, USA

There is now a Sephardic genealogy page on Facebook. So, if your family history includes Portuguese Jews, Spanish and Portuguese Jews, bnei anusim, anousim, conversos, 'marranos', Men of the Nation or whatever other name you want to use, please click here to follow Sephardic Genealogy on Facebook.

Amishav - Religious Zionist "discoverer" of "Lost Tribes"

Amishav for the Dispersed and Banished Tribes of Judah and Israel or, more simply, Amishav (http://amishav-onetree.org/) was founded by Israeli rabbi Eliyahu Avichail in 1975 with the encouragement of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, spiritual leader of religious Zionist Judaism, including the settlement of the Gush Etzion bloc adjacent to Jerusalem. The group appears to have been registered as a charity (#580014215) in Israel in 1982. Avichail appointed Michael Freund to run the organisation but they later quarrelled and Freund left to establish Shavei Israel. 

Amishav are especially involved (as are Shavei) with the Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribe(s) of north-east India who are now known as the “Bnei Menashe”. Speaking Tibeto-Burmese languages, before their encounter with Christianity they were animists who practiced ritual headhunting. When the first Christian missionaries arrived in the 1890s they associated their believed ancestor, Manmaseh, with the Biblical Menasseh, son of Joseph. They converted to Christianity. A second wave of evangelism, from Wales, in the early 20th Century sought to extinguish indigenous customs.  A wave of Revivalism in the 1920s created a more syncretic belief system. They took a literal view of the Bible, adopting Biblical Jewish customs. By the 1970s members of the community had adopted a pseudo-Jewish identity. When Rabbi Avichail arrived in the 1980s - unqualified as a historian, ethnographer or anthropologist - he declared them to be “Bnei Menashe”. The chances of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo being descended from Jews is probably zero.

Amishav are not involved with the ‘crypto-Judaism’ or the bnei Anusim movement but are important to the development of Shavei Israel. One website costs their bringing 40 members of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo to Israel at both US$18,000/year and US$32,000/year.Their budget is only around 5% the size of Shavei's, so are inevitably overshadowed by the larger organisation.