I strongly recommend that you research a fascinating and tragic period of Jewish history that stretched for more than three hundred years yet is little known. The story of the Anusim, the Secret Jews, is a valuable and significant, yet rarely discovered, Jewish event that, in its world range, the numbers of Jews killed or affected by it for centuries can be called the longest genocide in world history. I refer to the fate of the Spanish and Portugese Jews at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. The campaign of the Catholic Church to eliminate the Jews went beyond the borders of Spain and Portugal. The plague of Ant-isemitism swept through north Africa, across the Atlantic to South and Central America, and to the Caribbean in pursuit of the Jews. Under threat of deportation, torture, and death by being burnt alive at the stake many Jews adopted an overt Christian [...]
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The saga of Jewish history has no simple chapters, and the chapter on Sicilian Jews is certainly no exception. While the histories of Galician, Indian, and Japanese Jews have been studied extensively, one of the oldest communities of the Diaspora has been generally neglected. The biggest island of the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily, has been for millenn ...
The good deeds of the ancestors contribute to the welfare of their descendants. The expression, "You remember the good deeds of the patriarchs," is repeated three times daily in the opening benediction of the Shemoneh Esrei prayer. The zechut avot concept, in Jewish theology, is expressive of the idea that individuals profit in the their ...
Yom Kippur,יום כיפור means "Day of expiation". It occurs on the tenth day of the month of Tishrei and puts an end to the "Ten Days of Awe" which are the days of repentance that start on the first day of the month of Tishrei, for Rosh Hashana. Each one is called on this special day ...
…In the seventh month, on the first of the month, there shall be a sabbath for you, a remembrance with shofar blasts, a holy convocation. -Leviticus 23:24 (Note: when any Bible holiday falls any day, that day becomes Shabbat / Sabbath, even if it is Tuesday). Rosh Hashanah occurs on the first and second days of Tishri. In Hebrew, Rosh Hashana ...
הבשורה טובה הגאולה What language was the Besora Tova HaGeula (Good News of Redemption) written in? Most people will tell you it was written in Greek. They go on to tell you that it was the "language of the day". They say everything during that ...
The beginnings of Jewish history in Iran date back to late Biblical times. The biblical books of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Esther contain references to the life and experiences of Jews in Persia. In the book of Ezra, the Persian kings are credited with permitting and enabling the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their T ...
Chol HaMoed Pesach or Chol Ha-Moed Pesach (also transliterated from Hebrew as: Hol HaMoed Pesach or Hol Ha-Moed Pesach) refers to the intermediate or middle days of the Passover or Pesach festival as well as another Jewish festival, the autumn harvest festival of Sukkot. Literally-speaking, Chol HaMoed means "The Non-Holy Appointed Time" ...
Benei Anusim is the Hebrew term for people whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism over five centuries ago, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Historians have often referred to them by the derogatory term "Marranos." “There is a real awakening taking place among the Anousim, many of whom feel a strong and end ...
Speak to the children of Israel, saying: “In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a Shabbat-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation” (Vayikra / Leviticus 23:24). The shofar is/was blown on the first of Tishri, the seventh month of the Jewish religious calendar. It is Yom Teruah, “the ...
Yitro, Yithro, or Yisro (יתרו — Hebrew for “Jethro,” the second word and first distinctive word in the parshah) is the seventeenth weekly Torah portion (parshah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the fifth in the book of Exodus. It constitutes Shemot / Exodus 18:1–20:23. Jews in the Dias ...
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