The Spanish Sephardic Nationality Fantasy

A bizarre week of disinformation. Spain (again) says they will give citizenship to Sephardim. According to one Spanish source, we are yearning to be reunited with them. News to me.

A Spanish newspaper's unsourced claim that Sephardim were besieging Spanish diplomatic posts has been uncritically repeated by sources as august as El Pais and the FT. Various Ashkenazim and Mizrahim have been excitedly pontificating on the subject. Happily, this nonsense hasn't caused a ripple in Sephardic social media.

According to Spanish sources there are 3.5 million of us, which is three million more than I would have guessed (adding both Western and Eastern Sephardim - meaning Jews of Iberian origin). The Spanish figure excludes the estimated 17 million Brazilian non-Jews of Sephardic origin. Given than Portugal only has a population of 10 million, we might expect an interesting dialogue between the Iberian neighbours.

I suppose some Israeli and Turkish Sephardim might avail themselves of the opportunity of getting an EU passport, so they can settle in Britain or Germany. Why anyone would want to settle in a country as anti-Semitic as Spain escapes me, not to mention a Spanish GDP now lower than Israel's and horrendous levels of unemployment.

Several Muslims on Twitter have reasonably suggested that they too should be included in this Spanish fantasy. Some not very bright Spanish Tweeters see an evil Israeli conspiracy, but haven't explained why Israel would want their citizens to emigrate.

What most shocks is the Spanish Government's ignorance of their country's history. I think they should also explain WHY they believe they need to make restitution to people they have never harmed. And why are they involving us in their fantasy life?

Portugal's 'Law of Return'

Portugal's 'Law of Return for Portuguese Sephardic Jews has now become law.

http://app.parlamento.pt/webutils/docs/doc.pdf?path=6148523063446f764c3246795a5868774d546f334e7a67774c325276593342734c58526c6548524263484a76646938794d44457a4c3078664e444e664d6a41784d7935775a47593d&fich=L_43_2013.pdf&Inline=true

The Isidros - History of a Portuguese New Christian family

A new Sephardi history has been published (in Portuguese). 

Os Isidros – A Epopeia de uma Família de Cristãos-novos de Torre de Moncorvo [The Isidros - The Epic of a New Christian family from Torre de Moncorvo] by António Júlio Andrade and Maria Fernanda Guimarães tells the story of the Isidros, a New Christian family from the town of Torre de Moncorvo, from 1536 to 1773.

The authors also write the excellent Os Judeus em Trás os Montes blog.

A report on the life of Uriel Acosta

A report on the life of Uriel Acosta:

"ACOSTA (Ariel) a Portugueza gentleman, in the sixteenth century: he was bred up in the romish religion, but afterwards embraced the Jewish, and was circumcised at Amsterdam. He soon perceived that the morals and rites of the Jews were not comfortable to the laws of Moses; upon which occasion it was impossible for him to be silent: upon this, he was excommunicated. He writ a book of his own vindication, wherein he shews, that the rites and traditions of the Pharisees clash directly with the writings of Moses. He had scarce begun this work, when he embraced the principles of the Sadducees. Acosta did not stop there; he imagined he had found solid reason to convince himself, that the law of Moses was merely of human invention. He returned again to the Jewish church, and retracted all he had written. Some time after, he was impeach’d by a nephew, of not observing the Jewish laws, either with respect to eating or other points; and for this was terribly persecuted. After failing in an attempt to kill his chief enemy, he shot himself."

Miller, Historical, genealogical, and classical dictionary. 1743

I think it is interesting that a Protestant, Bible-reading, commentator puts emphasis on circumcision as a meaningful equivalent of baptism, whereas the Inquisition would focus on some vague cultural practice, such as what day someone is alleged to clean their house.

Also, an encyclopaedia such as Miller's COULD NOT have been published in Spain. The Inquisition would have immediately arrested the publisher - who is simply sharing information and opinions - for heretical propositions. 

We can speculate about the differences between the mentalities of a Catholic and Protestant gentleman of the period. The former is supposed to conform to dogma and, even if he wanted, would have a problem finding books containing any alternative views. The latter is presented with the information and able to form his own opinions. 

Of course, France is always the exception to the rule, being a Catholic country but encouraging Enlightenment values (which, of course, ended in an anti-clerical Revolution). It seems obvious (to me!!) that the Enlightenment countries would pull ahead commercially and scientifically, while the Inquisition countries would fall behind.

Uriel Acosta questions Religion, 1617-1624

Uriel Acosta (AKA Uriel da Costa, AKA Gabriel da Costa) was born in Porto to a successful and religiously Catholic New Christian family. He was profoundly Catholic, but his religious studies eventually persuaded him that the New Testament and Catholic practice was wrong, and he decided to adhere to the Old Testament.

He reports that “my Mother, Brothers, and myself embarked on Board a Ship, though at a very great hazard (it not being lawful for those that are descended from the Jews, to depart the Kingdom without the King’s special Licence.)”. Arriving in Amsterdam he immediately had himself circumcised as a Jew.

Acosta, having grown up in a Catholic country, had read the Written Law (the five Books of Moses) but knew nothing of the existence of the Oral Law (written down and codified in the Talmud) and did not accept it. The rabbi – who may have been Saul Levi Morteira or Isaac Uzziel of Fez – demanded strict adherence to a set of rules that were meaningless to Acosta. Heavy-handed self-regarding rabbis are not unknown in the Spanish & Portuguese Jewish community even today. Acosta had abandoned a position of wealth, risked his life and that of his family, and then had a delicate operation. He reacted badly to a rabbi demanding conformity and threatening Excommunication. In his own words:

“But as it was unworthy of him, who so lately left his native Country, and been content to forego many other temporal Advantages for Liberty of Conscience, to be overaw’d and forced to submit to Men, who had no right to such a Power; besides, I thought it both sinful and beneath a Man to be a Slave in things pertaining to Conscience; therefore I resolved rather to suffer the worst they could inflict rather than recants: Accordingly they excommunicated me from their Society, insomuch that my own Brothers , who before took me for their teacher, in spiritual Things, durst not take any Notice of me as they passed by me in the Street for fear of the Rabbins.”

Acosta wrote a pamphlet attacking what he saw as the Pharisee-ic position of the rabbis, which had the effect of also alienating Christians. Children threw stones at his front door (which, compared to what would have happened to him in Portugal, was nothing). The Mahamad reported him to the secular magistrates as someone who attacked all religion. He was imprisoned for eight or ten days.

His experiences led Acosta to question all religion but, not being able to cope with the social isolation of being excommunicated, he recanted. He was quickly denounced by his nephew for not keeping properly kosher. His wife having died, he was prevented from remarrying. His brother froze his business activities. Acosta felt pressured on all sides, from his family’s “domestick War” and the pressure from the rabbis and the community. 

When two men (I suspect New Christians) asked his advice on converting to Judaism, he told them not to bother. This infuriated the synagogue authorities. They demanded a recantation or that he would be excommunicated for a second time. They demanded what I can only describe as a Jewish auto-da-fé:

“that I must make my entrance into the Synagogue dressed in a mourning Vestment, holding a black Wax taper in my Hand, and there to read distinctly before the whole Congregation in a Form of Recantation penned by them, in which they had described in black and odious Colours, the great Enormity of my Crimes: Then I was to submit to be whipt in the same publick Manner, with a Scourge made of leather Thongs: After that to prostrate myself at the Door or the Synagogue, that they might all pass over me, and moreover to fast certain Days.”

He refused, was again excommunicated and – for seven years – had to experience being spat at in the street. He felt pressured by both his family and the synagogue authorities. Eventually, unable to withstand the social ostracism any more he submitted to the synagogue authorities, while privately hating them even more than previously. He was stripped to the waist and given forty three lashed of the whip by the shamas while everyone else sang a Psalm.

“I was ordered to sit down on the Ground, and then the Doctor came to me and absolved me from my Excommunication; so now the Gate of Heaven, which was doubly lock’d and bar’d against me before, was flung open all of a sudden. O the ridiculous Notions and Conceits of Mortals! After this I put on my Cloaths, and went to the Door of the Synagogue, where I prostrated myself, the Door-keeper holding up my Head, whilst all both old and young passed over me, stepping with one Foot on the lower Part of my Legs, and behaving with ridiculous and foolish Gestures, more like Monkeys than human Creatures. When they had all done, I got up, and being washed and made clean by the Man who stood by me for that Purpose, I went home.”

Acosta concluded that everything good in religion already existed in the Law of Nature. Everything religious denominations add on is worthless. “How much happier would it have been, if Men had kept within those Bounds which Nature had set, and not given themselves up to such abominable Inventions! Why need I mention the Horrors and Anxieties, with which some superstitious Men have filled the Minds of their fellow Creatures, and which had they observed only the Dictates of Nature, they would have been entirely free from.” He felt that people should “lay aside those Impositions, which are only fit to frighten Children and simple Folk”. This is incendiary stuff to be saying in the mid-17^th Century, a generation before Spinoza. As Catholicism and Protestantism were battling for supremacy, and Judaism struggling for survival, Acosta is saying that it is all nonsense. One can almost hear scandalised people all over Europe reaching for their smelling salts.

Acosta’s diatribe was published in English with a refutation by the eminent Dutch theologian, Philip a Limborch, who has interesting things to say. Limborch feels that Acosta is involved in a private fight with the Amsterdam Mahamad and should not include Christians. In so far as Acosta anticipates atheism (once Darwin has removed the need for God as a prime mover), Limborch anticipates the evils of social Darwinism. “The Law of Nature does not enjoin us to love an Enemy, or declare it unlawful to return his Hatred, or to revenge an Injury; but rather seems to allow a Kind of Right in Vengeance, and to return like for like, by doing to others as they have done by us.” I am not sure that Limborch draws the correct inferences, but am impressed by the man. Of course, Acosta’s main gripe was with the Catholics and Jews. Limborch and Amsterdam were Protestant. One wonders if they would have been quite as tolerant of Acosta if he had specifically taken shots at the Protestant religion.

While Acosta clearly had a bit of a martyrdom complex, he was one of those rare people able to step outside his culture and see a bigger picture. He suffered considerable psychological abuse from those who might have been expected to care for him. Maybe he had the misfortune of being born a hundred or two hundred years too early. Considering what would have been done to Acosta in Portugal, Limborch comes across as a thoughtful and good man.

Acosta was the subject of a play the German playwrite Karl Gutzkow. It was later translated into Yiddish and became well-known in Ashkenazi eastern Europe. Acosta is sometimes seem as an intellectual 'grandfather' to Spinoza, who in turn is seen as an intellectual grandfather to Karl Marx. A fanciful 1901 painting by Samuel Hirszenberg is of a very Ashkenazi-looking Acosta with a long beard and Medieval-looking clothes, showing a book to the young Spinoza.

English State Papers, 1607

Portuguese merchants, living as concealed Jews, frequenting mass, expelled from London

English State Papers, 1607

The Jews and the Slave Trade

Some years ago the Nation of Islam, a Muslim-ish African-American group, published a book claiming that “the Jews” had dominated the slave trade. I think the point was to say that the alleged activity of one group of people in the 16th-19th Centuries says something about another group of people in the 20th-21st Centuries. The book was shredded by scholars, but they did say that for a moment Jews were significant in the Brazilian and Caribbean slave trades.

I am no expert, but have been reading a little around that period. Of course, the “Jews” in question were baptised Christians of Jewish origin. We don’t know what they believed. The strong probability is that all or most of them had never seen an Ashkenazi Jew and – if we focus on the mid-16th Century – it would be another two hundred and fifty years before any of their descendants who returned to Judaism might have considered an Ashkenazi Jew as belonging to the same “tribe”, someone they might consider marrying.

My impression is that a few New Christian families were involved in the Atlantic slave trade for a period starting in the mid-16th Century. I keep seeing the Dias name. I suspect that one or some of them had been involved in the Portuguese trade with India, and had seen an opportunity along the way.

Some of the Dias’ presumed relatives owned sugar plantations in Brazil, so will have owned slaves. These Brazilian relatives fought for the Catholic Portuguese against the philo-Jewish Protestant Dutch in the 1640s. A few decades later a slave-trader in Cartagena, in Spanish Latin America, was accused of “judaising”. I suspect he was somehow related to or connected to the Dias family, and possibly also to my own ancestors.

With hindsight, the African slave trade is a unique phenomenon. At the outset – and I am speculating – maybe it was no different from other forms of 16th Century slavery. Muslims enslaved Christians, including prisoners of war. There were Algerian slave raids as far north as England and Ireland. In Iberia and elsewhere, Christians enslaved Muslims and Jews. Criminals could become galley slaves.

Christians, Muslims and Jews were all clear that their adherents could not enslave other adherents, but people of other religions did not merit human rights. Before it developed onto an industrial scale, the African slave trade seems to have involved members of one African tribe traded by another tribe for European products.

But what about the Dias and other families involved in slavery? Confessionally they were Catholics of Jewish origin and, as far as I can tell, their descendants seem to have been overwhelmingly Catholic. The probability is that their parents or grandparents would have been Jewish. My first thought is that how can someone whose family has been exiled and persecuted then commit the same crime to other people. Historians would tell us that we should not use our values to judge people from another age, but still… Aren’t basic values unchanging?

Perhaps a psychologist would tell us that these people had been severely traumatised and therefore were willing and able to objectify other people, especially when they might have benefitted from the crime (and it was a crime).

Of course, to blame one group of 21st Century people for the actions of an unconnected group of 16th Century people is silly. Arguably it requires the same mentality as the slave traders: to dehumanise people in their imagination, and then draw unethical conclusions.

Cayenne and Suriname

Is it true that the Portuguese government approved a Jewish colony?

THE SCATTERED PEOPLE.—In 1639, David Nasci, a Portuguese Jew, obtained from the Portuguese India Company authority to form a Jewish colony at Cayenne [today capital of French Guiana, South America]. On the conquest of Cayenne by the French, in 1644, the Jews retired to Surinam, where their numbers prodigiously increased.

The Church of England Magazine, 1862

Jewish Exodus from Spain and Portugal, 1720-40

Mirabeau appears to say that 20,000 Sephardim left Iberia for England between 1720 and 1740. This figure seems very high.

It is a somewhat extraordinary circumstance, that the Spanish and Portuguese Israelites consider their German and Dutch brethren as vile remains of the tribe of Benjamin. With regard to themselves, they affirm that they are descended from the tribes which Nebuchadnezzar had transplanted to the banks of the Euphrates. The Arabian Caliphs, becoming masters of Asia, extended their conquest, by degrees, to Spain, where several Jewish families came to establish houses of commerce; and where they multiplied to such a degree, that, if we may believe them, all the families, both in Spain and Portugal, most distinguished for noble birth or opulence, are of Jewish extraction. The Spanish and Portuguese Christians warmly defend themselves from this imputation. They prefer, contrary to all probability, representing themselves as descended from Visigoth or Arian soldiers. Strange enough, for the Jewish race, being the most ancient, is consequently the noblest, in the world.

These Jewish families, after the establishment of the Inquisition, found means to compromise matters with that body. For money, and external conformity to the Christian religion, the inquisitors winked at them: they gave vent to their rage only against such fanatics as were obstinately determined to get themselves burnt. Tired of such a state of constraint, disgusted with the contempt which accompanied it, and allured by the tolerating spirit of the English, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews crossed the seas in great numbers, with immense wealth. From 1720 to 1740, the number exceeded twenty thousand.

Honoré-Gabriel de Riquetti Mirabeau. Mirabeau's letters during his residence in England: with anecdotes ..., Volume 2. 1832

Portuguese anti-Semitism and Sephardi arrogance

In Portugal the very name of Jew is a term of such high reproach, that the government enacted a law which forbade any person to call another by that appellation: if a man who was styled a Jew to his face, stabbed the offender, the law did not condemn him. When we consider the horrid persecutions with which these unhappy people were assailed in that country to drive them from their faith, and the tortures with which the inquisition was ready to receive those 'new Christians,' whom anguish and fear had cast violently into the pale of the Romish church, we cannot wonder that we find the Portuguese Israelites although preserving still a remembrance of the sunny country of their fathers' exile, so much more like their own land than our northern regions, should yet be found dwelling upon more hospitable shores, exiled even from that, which was in itself banishment.

The Spanish and Portuguese Jews (or the Sephardim as they are called) claim their descent from the tribe of Judah ; and found these pretensions on a supposition which prevails among them, that many of their ancestors removed, or were sent into Spain, at the time of the Babylonian captivity. In consequence of this supposed superiority, they would not until of late years, by marriage or otherwise, connect themselves with their brethren of other nations. They had separate synagogues,; and if a Portuguese Jew, even in England or Holland, married a German Jewess, he was immediately expelled from the synagogue, deprived of every civil and ecclesiastical rite, and ejected from the body of the nation.

Souce: Emanuel Hecht, Max E. Lilienthal. Synopsis of the history of the Israelites: from the time of Alexander. 1857.

English report of the Expulsion from Spain, 1689

The English is a bit tortuous, but I think historians tend to accept that Jews went to Italy before settling in Islamic territories. I suppose, if nothing else, there wouldn't have been transport from Spain to their mortal enemies.

It is a matter of little moment to know whether the Jews that departed from Spain and Portugal retired amongst the Moors or elsewhere, since it is without doubt, that there are at this day Jews of the Spanish Rite in the Levant, who beside that of the Places where they reside, have still preserved their ancient Spanish Tongue. This is the ground of the present Dispute: and by this it is made appear, that it is not impossible that the Jews should retain their ancient Language where there is another that is vulgarly spoken. We see moreover, that the Portugal Jews of the Spanish Rite, who are settled at Amsterdam, do keep the Portugal, with the Language of the Country; and that their Rabbins do also preach in Portugaise in their Synagogue.

Furthermore, it is not true that all the Jews that were driven out of Spain and Portugal took refuge among the Moors: there were many that withdrew themselves into Italy, from whence some passed afterwards into the Levant. However it were, it is certain that there is at this day, in the Turkish Territories, a considerable number of Jews, who follow the Spanish Rite; and besides that of the Places where they remain, do speak their ancient Spanish Language. I believe also, that a Party of these Jews was in those Countries before those of their Nation were expelled out of Spain and Portugal.

Richard Simon (oratorien). Critical History of the Versions of the New Testament. 1689.

Amsterdam and Freedom

A book about Abbé Nudham was published in Brussels in 1783, so I would guess the story below is from the mid 18th Century. It has a ring of truth. And it made me laugh.

Observations on the Portuguese

It is remarked, that one-third of the Portuguese nation, though they profess themselves to be catholics, are in reality Jews; that are an infinite number of them so, the following little narrative, as related by Abbé Nudham, who died some time since at Brussels, will strongly confirm:

The Abbé, some time since, was passing from Lisbon to Amsterdam, on a Dutch bottom; among many other passengers, were a large and opulent Portuguese, who frequently called on the Abbé for his spiritual assistance, at which time, they counted their beads, and appeared righteous over-much; nor had the good Abbé the least doubt, but they were as sincerely devout, as he himself was – But they had no sooner arrived so near the city of Amsterdam as to perceive that neither wind or weather could prevent their being safely landed, than they took out their beads, their breviaries, crucifixes, &c. &c. and, in the face of the Abbé, threw them all into the sea, observing to him, that “now it was high time to have done with such trifles.”

Gleanings of Wit, From the Works of an Old Military Officer. 1805. Pages 79-80

Who are the Sephardim?

The Book of Obadiah (1:20) refers to “The captives of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad”. In his commentary on the text, the 12th Century scholar Abraham Ibn Ezra said that Sepharad was Spain. He said the community descended from Jews exiled after the Roman Trajan destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

According to DNA tests, some Iberian Jews have patrilineal lines back to the ancient Middle East. They probably descend from Jewish merchants who arrived in Roman times. Others descend from Berbers or members of the pre-existing Romanised population who converted to Judaism some time before around 600AD.

Today, Sephardi often means any Jew who is not Ashkenazi (a Jew originating in Germany and eastern Europe). The category includes Jews from the Middle East whose ancestors were never in Spain, Jews from central Asia, India and even Ethiopia. This blog is specifically about those people whose ancestors were Jews, or former Jews, in 15th Century Iberia (today’s Spain and Portugal).