When my Jewish dad was visiting Spain in the 1960s as a kid with his parents, they were received by friends there. Those friends went to church and were seemingly as Christian as anyone else, except that they had a tradition passed down through the generations for which they didn't know the reason, but they did it anyway: they'd go down into the cellar every Friday night and light a candle.
Hi Michael- that's really interesting! There's actually a lot of crypto-Jews in Iberian and Latin countries, and a lot of them are slowly coming out now! If you want to know more, here's a great talk on some incredible crypto-Jewish stories: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5ymReQE7iY8.html
If this story is true, actually, even if is not, the idea of continuing the tradition over hundred of years in secret, and in way, make me shear a tear for some reason.
*Calls the Vlachs Romanians* Youʻre lucky if this video doesnʻt have many Greek and Romanian viewers, because that would certainly start some arguments
Many cristãos novos (dare I say most?) came to Brazil, and some were marranos (crypto-Jews). In several small towns in the Northeast region there are families who keep to certain Jewish traditions to this day, and some even have openly reverted to Judaism over the past years.
I am a relatively new subscriber and am just devouring your videos. So awesome! Thank you so much for all your hard work! You made a small comment in this video about King Ferdinand's 4 great-grandmother being a Jewess. (Medieval girl gone wild?) That was HUGE for me, as I do genealogy and while I hadn't yet found any Jewish ancestry, I am a descendant of Ferdinand & Isabella. :( Now I have gone from there and traced it back to the Exilarches and even Biblical times. Thanks so much, it really helped validate my recent conversion to Judaism! :)
I have spent a fair bit of time in Cyprus and hadn't heard of the community there, hopefully I will be there later this year to visit my parents I will see if I can find any reference to them. The remainder of the Spanish Muslim community were expelled in 1609, some of them would have been genuine converts to Christianity others carried on in secret, it didn't matter to Phillip the Third. Hope you have a good break.
@@MitzvosGolem1 Many many many more did. Spinoza is considered as one of the founding fathers or secularism, skepticism and modernity. Which of course without skepticism there would be almost no science.
I mean I am not Jewish but even I had to swallow after you told your story with the descendants of the Conversos. I mean, wow that's so incredibly sad. And as a relatively non-religious person confuses me. Obviously in the beginning their ancestors would still say the blessings and all that. But how did the change happen. At some point they just stopped for whatever reason. This implies that they didn't tell their children and so forth the reason for the family ritual. Perhaps out of fear? Children can be blabbermouths. Man so sad... Though have you heard of the Portuguese village whose name I have forgotten where Jews "just lived" completely forgotten by everyone and history alike till a Polish Jew accidentally encountered them and was entirely confused by what he had discovered. I think that's wild. Sure Portugal is "off the path" when it comes to Europe but that the country was so purged of Jewish life that one village just continued to exist. Great series, even if I enjoy the antiquity parts more :D
thank you for informative,educational and interesting videos; in particular the Jews of medevil England (16,000) left England in 1290,but i've never been able to learn where any of them went,and why ,after 200 years of living in England,there are no vestiges of surname in any of the lands they might have gone too;
@@SamAronow that's true,not to late middle ages did they become common in usage;but i'm still puzzled that there seems to be no record of what happened to those thousands of english jews;no historical memory,just nothing;
@@earlforman3030 I think Chaucer mentions them. And also there’s the Old Jewry in the City of London. Like I said, they pretty much all went to France, and only a few years later went to Spain. If you want to know more about their ultimate fate, check out my video “The Sephardic Silver Age.”
Yes I did, sorry. I went way too long between making recap videos, and at a certain point I had to make some sacrifices to keep this from being an hour long.
@@MrEVAQ being that "j" doesn't actually exist in old Hebrew, and is usually translated from a "y" (Jesus was actually Yeshu), maybe the original hebrews would pronounce it "yew" instead of "jew". Just my guess though.