Marlena Tanya Muchnick
LDS author, speaker and researcher
In this article I want to clear up questions I have been asked that refer to the main geographic categories of Jewish people.
They are: Mazrachi (Eastern), Ashkenazi (Eastern European) and Sephardi (Latin).
Mizrahi Jews descend from Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus. The term “Mizrahi” refers to Arab-ruled and Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and adjacent countries, including some in Israel. Ethiopian Jews are called Falashas. They are considered outsiders in Ethiopian culture and live on the outskirts of their cities in poverty because they reject the dominant religions there – Muslim, Orthodox Christianity, Catholic, Protestant.
<I am descended from Ashkenazim, the Jews of Eastern European countries of Germany, Western and Central Europe. Many of these Jews migrated eastward including Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and elsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries. With them, they took and diversified Yiddish, a High German language written using the Hebrew alphabet. It had developed in medieval times as the lingua franca among Ashkenazi Jews.
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The Sephardic (Spanish) history is one of great romance, conflict and tragedy. Historically, they may have come to the Iberian penisula with the Roman Legions, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 b.c. They were merchants, purveyors, pirates, entrepreneurs. Many Sephardic families may have descended from King David’s lineage. The author Norman Roth wrote that more Jews lived in Spain than in all the countries of Europe combined.
Around a.d. 400 the Visigoths invaded the Iberian area and brought with them intolerance of all non-Arian-Christian minorities, ruthlessly killing and plundering.Jews were mercilessly slaughtered for their denial of Christ.
In that day and forward, many thousands of Sephardim became Conversos, that is, they allowed themselves to publically be declared Christians, accepting baptism because of the restrictive laws and persecution caused by the Catholic clergy of the time and the onset of the Inquisition. But in their hearts and in secret they practiced Judaism. The Jewish aristocracy was particularly encouraged to convert because they were needed to continue their traditional roles as counsellors to the government. Since the Sephardic Jewish aristocracy was largely secular at the time, great numbers did accept baptism but maintained old traditions, such as not eating pork and similar. Many of them married extensively into the Spanish nobility where their wealth was a great asset to historic but empovrished nobility.
Conversos were really neither Jews nor Christians. But these Sephardim had to pay heavy fines to the clergy when they converted, and thousands were beaten, their families killed, their lives ruined by the public degradation they suffered because of their Hebraic culture and Jewish beliefs. Their businesses and entire fortunes were taken by force, even as these people accepted the Christian mantle.
Many of the conversos were extremely prominent, wealthy, governors and intermarried with the highest nobility. They could not at first believe that these actions could affect people of their calibre but they were sadly mistaken. The Inquisition, backed by the monarchy, was too powerful. Accusing hundreds of fellow conversos of judaizing was encouraged by the Inquisitors as a way to possibly save oneself from the flames, thus pitting one against the other.
Aware that many conversos did in fact practice Judaism in secret, rabbis and Jews were ordered to report Jewish activities of conversos or suffer death themselves. If conversos were heretics, Jews were the root cause of the heresy and needed to be removed so as to avoid contaminating good Catholics. The old blood libel of Jews murdering Christian children and using their blood for Passover was resurrected. Jews were demonized by quoting the gospel of John in which he stated Jews were the children of the devil while Christians were the children of God.
In 1492 the expulsion edict was announced and Jews had two months to leave Spain or embrace Catholicism. Thousands were baptized. Others left for North Africa, France, Portugal. Jewish cemetaries were plowed under, synagogues destroyed. Then in 1497 Portugal expelled its Jews. The Inquisition continued for about 350 years. Many Jews are now found in South America, Mexico, New Mexico and all around the world. Christopher Columbus himself was a converso, a secret Jew. In fact, some of his travels were purposely and secretly to find a new home for the Jewish conversos where they could live free from the Inquisition. He accidentally discovered the island of Jamaica in 1494 on his fourth trip, and fought to keep his provisions and his gold against great odds. Those events led to the mining of gold in Jamaica. They were the beginnings of the prosperous nation that exists today. Jews came there disguised as conversos from Portugal, approved by the Spanish crown. So Jamaica is a land of the chosen people!
This Diaspora of Spanish Jews to other religions and other lands makes it impossible to successfully trace their genealogy throughout history. Knowledge of one’s Jewish ancestry and identification through the last one thousand years gets shipwrecked upon the forced conversions to Catholicism, Protestantism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Mohammedism and other religious affiliations and cultures.
Thanks to Wikipedia and to SephardicGen Resources
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