Sincerely,
Me
Aryeh Pinto
The writings and philosophy of a Sephardic Jew in Los Angeles trying to make sense of it allPortuguese Anusim
The Jerusalem Post
Portal to a Portuguese Past Michael Freund
Nestled along the right bank of the Douro River in northern Portugal, the city of Oporto seems an unlikely setting for one of the more intriguing, if lesser known, dramas of 20th century Jewish history. With its wide avenues, bustling port and increasingly profitable wine industry, Oporto strikes the first-time visitor as a typical European commercial hub, one in which medieval monuments and imposing cathedrals stand within just a few blocks of modern office buildings and rows of banks and other financial institutions. And yet, down a small, unassuming street called Rua de Guerra Junqueiro, stands a majestic synagogue called Mekor Haim (Source of Life) which, some 70 years ago, was the focal point of an extraordinary, if brief, revival of Jewish life among thousands of the regions anousim (Hebrew for “those who were coerced,” as many Marranos prefer to be called). The nascent movement to return to Judaism was led by none other than a decorated Portuguese Army officer, Captain Arturo Carlos de Barros Basto, who served his country faithfully in the First World War. And while his determined efforts to spearhead a mass return to Judaism were ultimately suppressed by the authorities, they continue to capture the imagination of Jews and non-Jews alike. Born in a village near Oporto in 1887, Barros Basto was a descendant of anousim, and he grew up with vague memories of his grandparents secretly lighting candles on Friday nights and observing other Jewish rituals. There does not seem to be any doubt that his grandfather knew of his family’s Jewish origins and that he transmitted this knowledge to his grandson, notes Inacio Steinhardt, Tel Aviv correspondent for the Portuguese News Agency and co-author of a 1997 biography of Barros Basto. At an early age, says Steinhardt, Barros Basto had a tendency to abhor certain facets of the Catholicism he was raised with, and to idealize a more sublime relationship with the Creator. In 1916, while fighting on the European front, Barros Basto commanded an infantry squadron and saw action in Flanders, where he even survived a gas attack. There, according to historian Howard M. Sachar, Barros Basto had an experience that would prove to be a turning point in his life. One Friday evening, he ambled into the tent of a French liaison officer who happened to be Jewish. When he saw the officer lighting candles, the Frenchman explained that it was a Jewish Sabbath tradition. For Barros Basto, writes Sachar in his book Farewell Espana: The World of the Sephardim Remembered, the dim memory of his grandparents ritual suddenly locked into focus. He returned to Portugal a changed man. Determined to undergo formal conversion to Judaism, Barros Basto overcame numerous obstacles and made his way to Spanish Morocco, where he fulfilled his goal and returned to the faith of his ancestors under the guidance of the rabbinate in Tetuan. With a newfound zeal, Barros Basto returned to Oporto, married a Jewish woman, and set about the task of encouraging his fellow crypto-Jews to come out of the closet and openly return to the Jewish people. He established a synagogue and started a weekly newspaper, HaLapid, in which he wrote under his Hebrew name of Abraham Ben Rosh. Dressed in his military uniform, Barros Basto began visiting remote areas throughout northern Portugal, pleading with the anousim to embrace Judaism. He initiated a process of welcoming the crypto-Jews and their descendants back to Judaism, says Rufina Bernardetti Silva Mausenbaum, a writer and descendant of Portuguese anousim. He travelled to the villages and towns to reassure these frightened people that it was safe at last to openly practice Judaism once more of these trips were made with two medical doctors accompanying him to perform circumcisions when required. As a result of these efforts, Barros Basto quickly became known as the Apostle of the Marranos, and within a few years his efforts began to bear fruit when the Mekor Haim synagogue in Oporto was formally dedicated. The building, which was donated by Elie Kadoorie, and built on land that had been purchased by Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris, came to serve as a kind of headquarters for Barros Bastos movement to restore the anousim to the Jewish people. Recognizing the importance of education, Barros Basto succeeded in establishing a yeshiva on the synagogues premises, which he called Rosh Pina, Hebrew for cornerstone. The school operated for nine years, during which it trained some 90 students in subjects ranging from Hebrew to Jewish history and tradition. All these activities, however, did not go unnoticed by the church and the authorities, neither of whom looked too kindly on Barros Bastos efforts, particularly when thousands of people began to respond to his call to return to Judaism. Anti-Semitism was rampant in Europe during the `30s, working against his efforts and dreams, says Mausenbaum. This wave of anti-Semitism swept through Portugal as well, affecting the resurgence of Jewish life he had sparked, which was viewed with severe criticism by the Church and the new regime headed by Antonio Salazar [the authoritarian Portuguese premier who ruled from 1932 to 1968 - MF]. In 1935, a local Oporto priest named Tomaz Correia da Luz Almeida set in motion a series of events that would ultimately lead to Barros Bastos dismissal from the army and the disintegration of the burgeoning movement he had founded. Anxious to stem the tide of those abandoning Catholicism to return to Judaism, Almeida brought trumped up charges against Barros Basto to the police, alleging that he was a degenerate who engaged in homosexual acts with his students. The Oporto prosecutor brought charges against Barros Basto, leading the Portuguese Army to initiate court-martial proceedings against him. After dragging on for over two years, the case was finally dropped in 1937 for lack of evidence. But, as historian Sachar puts it, the damage was done. By the mid-1930s, parents had withdrawn their children from the Rosh Pina school, and Barros Basto had become persona non grata among his once-devoted marrano followers. In 1943, the Portuguese Ministry of Defense, citing unspecified reasons of good and welfare, revoked Barros Bastos commission as an officer and summarily drummed him out of the service, leading historians to dub him the Portuguese Dreyfus (after the French general staff officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was wrongly accused and convicted of treason in 1894). The thousands of anousim whom Barros Basto had inspired to investigate their Jewish ancestry and heritage quickly got the message: it was not yet safe to return to Judaism. And then, almost as quickly as it had begun, the movement Barros Basto initiated rapidly faded away. Climbing the stairs to the Mekor Haim synagogues top floor, I proceed down a hallway and enter the library. Lining the shelves are a variety of religious books, many of them dusty and torn, signifying both their age and the ample use to which they were once put. Impulsively, I open a cabinet on the wall, where I discover a pile of old booklets in Portuguese, carefully bound and wrapped as if awaiting distribution. Catecismo Israelita (The Belief System of Israel), a 59-page volume, discusses the mission of the Jewish people in this world as well as various aspects of Jewish philosophy and practice. Judeus & Proselitos (Jews and Converts), explains in 45 pages the meaning of conversion and Jewish attitudes toward converts throughout the ages. Both booklets proudly bear the name of A.C. de Barros Basto on their cover, and state that they are publications of Yeshivah Rosh-Pinah, the school he worked so hard to establish. Leaving the room, I proceed to the womens balcony, which overlooks the main sanctuary where untold numbers of Portuguese anousim, undoubtedly led by Barros Basto himself, once gathered to offer prayers just as their ancestors had done before them. The interior of the synagogue is strikingly beautiful, yet the silence in the room is as piercing as it is anguished. The synagogue may be empty, but you can feel the voices of the worshippers who once prayed here, says Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum, the former Chief Rabbi of Uruguay who accompanied me on the visit. Though the library and beit midrash are no longer in use, you can still feel and hear the students who once sat here, learning Torah and grappling with the age-old question of what it means to be a Jew, he tells me. And yet, I remain troubled. Here, for a few brief years some seven decades ago, an abrupt awakening had taken place. Thousands of Portuguese men and women whose ancestors had been coerced into adopting Christianity five hundred years ago, suddenly stepped out of hiding and sought to reclaim what had been taken from them by force. Could it be, I thought, that the Pintele Yid, the Jewish spark, had survived in Portugal for all those centuries only to come alive briefly in the 1930s and then be snuffed out in a spasm of intolerance by Barros Bastos persecutors? No, Rufina Mausenbaum later reassured me, Barros Bastos accomplishment was not short-lived. Though he never quite succeeded in reviving the full potential of Portuguese Judaism in his time, she said, I believe he gave hope and strength and helped nurture the Jewish soul of the secret-Jewish communities of Portugal. Today, she notes, Portugal’s young anousim look to Barros Basto as an inspiration, speaking openly and wishing for their own Ben Rosh, as he was known, to assist them in their return. Indeed, Barros Basto biographer Inacio Steinhardt says that most of the current congregations few dozen members are people that found their Jewish roots and returned to Judaism or are in the process of returning. An ambitious effort by the synagogues dynamic Israeli-born president, Moshe Medina, he notes, aims at drawing in local anousim, welcoming them into the community and educating them about Judaism. Medinas brother, Marco, confirms that a rebirth, of sorts, is underway. Just recently, he relates, he was sitting at a caf in Oporto reading a book in Hebrew. A young Portuguese man came over and asked him what language he was reading. When I told him, he got all excited because he was from the anousim, says Medina. He said to me, I love Israel and I love the Jewish people my people. So I invited him to come to the synagogue, to learn more about his heritage. I get calls every week from Portuguese Marranos seeking a connection with Judaism, Medina says. They want to learn more, celebrate the holidays, and become Jews. There are hundreds and hundreds of anousim in this area, and we need to reach out to them. It seems, then, that Rufina Mausenbaum was right, after all. Decades later, Barros Bastos efforts continue to reverberate among Oportos hidden Jews. His dreams and his deeds, she told me, were indestructible. And so, it appears, is the tenacity of the Jewish soul, which, against all odds, is struggling to reemerge in places such as Oporto. And while they may face an uphill battle, Portugals anousim can at least find solace in the fact that although their commanding officer, Captain Arturo Carlos de Barros Basto, is no more, his dream and his spirit live on.
For more information on the anousim of Portugal, visit www.saudades.org
Israeli Racism? Or Arab Neglect?
Lately there have been a lot of accusations of Israel being a racist state that oppresses the Palestinian people. These accusations are nothing new, but because of the recent operation in Gaza and Israel apartheid week, we’ve been seeing this more and more. It’s easy to accuse the Jewish state of being racist, oppressive, or of being any other negative connotation that you please. But I believe it is important to explore the treatment of Palestinians that left during, and after the 1948 war in their “friendly” Arab neighbors.
The current number of Palestinians in refugee camps is about 4.5 million, over 4 times the number in 1948 following the war. The way they ended up in refugee camps ranges from people fleeing war in general, those expelled, and those who thought they would be returning home within a very short period of time after the coalition of Arab nations crushed the new Jewish state. As we know, to the shock of the world Israel won the war. Israel went on to grant citizenship to Palestinians and for the first time in the region, women were allowed to vote. Israel even allowed families that were separated during the war to be reunited if they wished. Those that fled, left to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, amongst other places. The Arab world, united over their hate of the Jewish state after suffering the devastating upset in 1948 had no choice but to take in the refugee population.
The camps set up by the Arab countries were overcrowded and conditions were not good. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was set up in 1949, and is the only agency dedicated to helping refugees from a specific region or conflict. It helps about 4 million people and is the single largest United Nations agency. The United Nations actually has a totally separate agency to deal with refugees anywhere else. In fact, the smaller agency that helps refugees anywhere else in world has to help over 21 million people with less help. The UNRWA is responsible for providing free education, social and relief programs, free health care, and emergency help. The UNRWA on average spends over $72 per Palestinian refugee while the UN agency that deals with refugees anywhere else in the world only spends $53 per refugee.
One would think that support for such a program by Arab world would great considering the people being benefited by this particular program are living within their nations and helps relieve them of the burden of taking care of these people on their own. Yet in 2000, Arab nations only contributed barely 2% of the annual budget. The majority of the budget actually comes from the United States and Europe. Although Arab nations have billions of dollars of oil money coming in, build lavish hotels and towering high rises, make man made islands, and buy exotic cars, they barely extend a helping hand to their fellow Arabs. This isn’t the first time Arab nations have failed to come through to help Palestinians. Many Arab nations have been known to pledge huge sums of money following a conflict involving Palestinians, including the recent Operation Cast Lead, only to fail to keep their promises. Instead the Arab world is too busy convincing Palestinians and their fellow Arabs that Israel and the West is the source of their problems. They claim the very nations that contribute the most financial help are the problem, not the Arab nations of empty promises. Is “Israeli racism” the problem people should be focused on? Or is Arab neglect of their own people the source of misery for Palestinians who have been demoted to second class status within their fellow Arab nations. Nations that have been instructed by the Arab league to never grant Palestinians citizenship and that bar refugees from many jobs and travel restrictions that have left them confined to the squalor of the camps for the past 60 years.
Once-secret Jews of Spain, Portugal show Israel support
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1243346491599
Prompted by the recent rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment across Europe, particularly in Spain, dozens of descendants of Bnei Anusim (whom historians refer to by the derogatory term “Marranos”) gathered at Barcelona’s Jewish Community Center last weekend to participate in a seminar aimed at training them to be effective advocates for Israel.
The seminar marked the first time since the creation of the state that Bnei Anusim – Jews from Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert to Catholicism in the 15th century but secretly retained their Jewish identities and/or traditions – had formally taken part in an effort to defend a positive image of the Jewish homeland.
It was during Operation Cast Lead, when a group of Bnei Anusim, some of whom had traveled for hours, gathered in Madrid in support of Israel, that the idea for the seminar arose.
Michael Freund, founder and chairman of Shavei Israel, which ran the event, explained the desire of Bnei Anusim to advocate for Israel: “They are seeking to have a connection to the Jewish people, whether spiritually, culturally or intellectually.”
Among the experts brought in to help run the seminar were Dr. Ra’anan
Gissin, a spokesman for former prime minister Ariel Sharon, and Deputy Ambassador to Spain Einat Kranz-Nieger. The participants were provided with the tools to advocate for Israel in the local and international media.
According to Freund, whose organization reaches out to “lost Jews” to help them reconnect with their Jewish heritage and identity, there are tens and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of Bnei Anusim spread throughout Spain and Portugal who are aware of their unique connection to the Jewish people.
While a majority of Bnei Anusim are Catholic, Freund noted that many of those who decided to partake in the Shavei Israel seminar were from a group that has been more active in strengthening its Jewish identity, including some who are seeking conversion and becoming observant Jews.
In the past three decades, as the societies of Spain and Portugal have opened up, Bnei Anusim have felt more comfortable revealing their connections with Judaism and Israel, he said. However, in some cases, those open connections have prompted harsh criticism and acts of hatred against them.
Review of “Jews, God, and History” by Max I. Dimont
“Jews, God, and History” attempts to give a layman’s version of the history of the Jews. The author seemed to give only headlines of certain topics and went into great depth on many others. Overall, it is a very informative book and I did learn quite a few new things. I do take issue with a few things in the book though. Because I have studied Jewish history and find it fascinating, It’s very hard to ignore some of the major events that the author didn’t mention or chose to not focus on so much. He spent quite a bit of time focusing on Christianity, and although I think the information he provided was interesting, I would have preferred if he used those pages to expand on other topics he neglected. For example, the author did spend a decent amount of time writing about the inquisition and the plight of Sephardic Jewry, but provided almost no info on anything that happened to them after 1492. He does mention a few things about marranos later on in the book, but does not mention the huge Sephardic communities in Turkey, Greece, and Morocco, amongst other places. I would have liked to have seen some information about how Jews prospered and struggled under their Muslim rulers in the Ottoman Empire and in particular, in the land of Israel. The author also provides virtually no information about Mizrahi Jewry. There is no mention of Jewish communities in Yemen, Persia, Iraq, Syria, or other places with communities in the Mizrahi world in the last 2,000 years. Instead, the author focuses on the European Askenazi communities and their struggles. I didn’t mind the attention on the plight of Ashkenazi Jews because I’m also very interested in it, but the book would have been much more well rounded if it spent equal time discussing Sephardic and Mizrahi history and then comparing and contrasting them all. The extent of Mizrahi history that was mentioned was the fact that hundreds of thousands of Mizrahi Jews fled Muslim lands after the creation of the State of Israel as well as some ancient history of Jews in those lands. If I recall correctly, they weren’t referred to as Mizrahi Jews either. The book was drastically Eurocentric and without the history of these two groups, reading about Jewish history seems somewhat empty. To the average non-Jewish reader, nothing will seem out of the ordinary, but for those who really want to learn about Jewish history, you simply can’t skip the last 500 years of Sephardic history and the last 2,000 years or so of Mizrahi history.I also take issue with the political bias of the author. I am very much against instilling personal political leanings onto history books, be it to the left or right. Several times in the book, the author described either good Jewish figures or ideas as being “liberal” and bad ones as “conservative”. This would even occur when the nature of the things he was writing about were not political. To treat these things as political by assigning them political ideals is not responsible and takes away credibility. I would have wished to see the politics taken out and more facts instead of opinion. The last major issue I have with the book is in regards to Chassidism. Very little is devoted to teaching the history of the movement and it’s tremendous impact on Jewry worldwide today. While the Baal Shem Tov is briefly mentioned, the impact of his teachings and the ensuing controversies are largely ignored. The single largest controversy in the Jewish world in the 18th century was the Mitnagdim vs the Chassidim. When the Vilna Gaon excommunicated the entire Chassidic movement, hundreds of thousands of families and were torn apart and it changed the way people lived and thought throughout the Ashkenazic world, yet this was not mentioned. The author also seemed to put down the Chassidim at times where it just felt unnecessary. I’m not too sure whether or not these were done intentionally or not, but they certainly felt out of place. The author also seems to promote the ideas of Spinoza time and time again and speculates that his ideas will form the version of Judaism that everyone will practice in the future. The fact that he was promoting this also left me a bit uneasy, not because I have problems with Spinoza but because it felt like he was promoting an agenda and it didn’t feel honest.
Despite the problems with this book, it’s still is very informative, especially when it deals with the early history of Christianity and its relationship to Judaism, and the Talmudic period. I started the book about 2 years ago, and after around 100 pages in out of about 500 I picked up another book and kind of forgot about this one. About a week and a half ago, I decided to just focus on finishing it and I did. When I first started the book 2 years ago it seemed so fascinating and informative because I knew so little about Jewish history. Since then, I’ve learned so much that when I came back to this book, it just wasn’t the same. I found myself frustrated over and over again due to how much interesting history was skipped. But the history of the Jews is a very long and dense one. It’s amazing how little of it can be crammed into 500 pages, a more comprehensive history would require a book at least 10 times as large and comprehensive is not what this author was going for. I would recommend it as a very basic introductory to Jewish history. But at the same time it’s hard to recommend this because it doesn’t go into great detail on many topics and because of that, you don’t get the whole picture of things at times. With over 1.5 million copies in print, it still remains a very popular book because the author’s style of writing makes it interesting and won’t bore the reader like other history books. By no means is this book comprehensive, but it’s a decent starting point for someone interested in Jewish history.
How Hebrew came under consideration to be the offical language of the United States America
A lot of people are not familiar of this story, so I thought I’d share it.
In the 1770’s the largest Jewish community in the United States happened to be in Charleston, South Carolina, but there were other communities dotted all along the east coast. The Jewish community in America consisted of almost all Sephardic Jews, mostly looking for safety and better opportunities in the New world. Rabbi Haim Isaac Carregal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haim_Isaac_Carigal) arrives in America during the early 1770’s from Jerusalem, Israel as an emissary. He visits various Jewish communities a long the east coast and the community in Newport, Rhode Island holds a Shavuot celebration and invites him to give a sermon. The local Jewish leaders invite all the local non Jewish dignitaries to come hear this rabbi from the Holy Land speak. People back then were fascinated by the thought of meeting someone from the holy land so many people showed up. Rabbi Carregal’s sermon was titled “The Salvation of Israel”, and he delivers the entire sermon in Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish). Although the non Jewish dignitaries did not understand a single word, they are greatly impressed. One of the audience members was a man named Ezra Stiles. Ezra Stiles was so impressed by this rabbi that he eventually convinces him to teach him Hebrew. Rabbi Carregal and Ezra Stiles meet 28 times for extended sessions where they have deep conversations and the rabbi teaches him not only Hebrew, but also kabbalah, Tanach, and about life in the Holy Land. Although Rabbi Carregal only stays for 6 months in Rhode Island, it made a deep impact on Ezra Stiles. A few years later, Ezra Stiles goes on to become the president of Yale. One of the first policies he implements is to require all students at Yale to learn Hebrew. This is why on the seal of Yale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yale_University_Shield_1.svg) it says Urim V’Tumim אורים ותמים in Hebrew. Ezra Stiles also delivered his first commencement speech as president of Yale in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. The valedictorians of 1785 and 1792 gave their speeches in only Hebrew. After the formulation of the constitution, there were many serious talks going around about whether or not English would be the official language of the United States of America. One of the languages seriously considered amongst others, was Hebrew. Although Hebrew obviously didn’t win out in the end, it’s very interesting to imagine what life would be like today if it did.
Short Open Letter to the Palestinian Supporters
Dear pro-Palestinian/Anti-Israel supporters,Let me get this straight: You’re mad because there are civilian casualties in one of the most densely populated regions on Earth, which is controlled by a group notorious for using civilians as human shields. A group that fires thousands of rockets packed with ball bearings and scrap metal at civilians hoping to kill and maim as many innocent people as possible every year. If Hamas is shooting at Israeli troops from a building full of civilians and the Israelis kill civilians in the process of killing those Hamas terrorists, all of the sudden Israel is the devil. Not Hamas for being cowards by using their own people as human shields to garner international sympathy because they know people will be outraged by civilian casualties. Israel was being smart by bombing Hamas instead of immediately sending troops in. Israel survives by being smart about military operations and learning from their mistakes. You don’t send troops into an urban warfare setting where they are at a great disadvantage without softening up the targets first. That would be suicidal. Someone that uses their brain to achieve their goals is not a coward, sorry.There have been several wars fought over Israeli land, and every time Israel is out gunned and out numbered, yet they always come out on top. Even when you cowardly attack Israel on the holiest day of the Hebrew calendar, Yom Kippur hoping to gain an advantage, you lose. Jordan and Egypt have learned their lesson, but somehow it doesn’t register with you guys. Let me lay it out. In 1948 Israel fought for and won the land. Simple as that. Do you really expect them to just give it to the palestinians and leave? Would you be willing to give America back to the Native Americans? I mean we did fight and conquer their land, right? I don’t know about you, but I’m not moving out of my house and giving back to them. How about giving Texas back to Mexico? Sound like a good idea? What if Mexicans decided they wanted Texas back and started shooting rockets into Texas and killing innocent civilians? If we fought back to stop the rockets and killed Mexican civilians in the process of defending our country, what would you do? We fought a war with them and conquered the land, it’s ours now. This is coming from someone who’s father was born in Mexico. America fought, America won, Mexico lost. That’s how war works kids, stop crying about it. To the people claiming that half of all Israelis have no business in Israel because Ashkenazic Jews “aren’t real Jews” and are just descendants of Khazars. It’s already been proven that Ashkenazic Jews are descendants of Biblical Jews. Archaeological evidence proves that the Khazar royal family converted to Judaism, while the vast majority of the other Khazars remained pagans. If you’re not satisfied with that answer, even more concrete evidence is within the Cohen Modal Hapoltype. All Cohanim share the same Hapoltype. Doesn’t matter if they’re from the Ukraine or Morocco. If Ashkenazim aren’t really Jews then their Cohen’s would not share the same Hapoltype as the Sephardic Cohens. DNA tests prove they match over and over again. The Khazar non-sense was devised by anti-semites trying to divide the Jewish people, but we are all one in the same. The operation in Gaza was not a genocide, it was not a holocaust. If Israel really wanted to kill civilians, it wouldn’t take them 3 weeks to kill a fifteen hundred people. Gaza would have been a parking lot in 1 day if Israel REALLY wanted to kill civilians. Considering how many bombs have been dropped over a 21 day period, how many people live in Gaza, and how dense it is, it’s shocking there aren’t more dead, really. Plus Israel drops fliers telling people to get out because they are going to bomb a building. They warn people yet some are too stupid and end up staying and dying. Then Israel is a terrible country. Hamas got pounded, and their top commanders are under the ground or under piles of rubble. Israel will be triumphant, no matter how many times you protest in the streets, no matter how many synagogues you firebomb, and no matter how many rockets you shoot into Israel. That is what pisses you off.
Sincerely,
Sincerely,
Why Islamic leaders want Israel to Defeat Hamas in Gaza
In September of 1970 the Palestinian community in Jordan rose up against their host country that took them in after the creation of the state of Israel. Lead by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat, they were determined to overthrow king Hussein and create their own state out of Jordanian land. The Events that followed would be known as “Black September”.In the years leading up to 1970, Palestinians in Jordan began collecting taxes, arming themselves, setting up military bases, and checkpoints. They openly defied king Hussein and began creating not only their own society within Jordan, but their own country.After a failed assassination attempt on the life of king Hussein and coup d’etat by these Palestinians, the monarch started losing complete control of his kingdom. When king Hussein began a military offensive on September 16th to take his country back, many of his commanders refused to attack the Palestinians. The situation was so dire for king Hussein he begged the United States, the United Kingdom, and many also say Israel for help. Why didn’t he ask his Arab neighbors for help? The answer is that he didn’t have many options within his own region. Saudi Arabia was giving financial support to the Palestinians in Jordan and Egypt was giving them political support for their own country made out of Jordanian land. Furthermore, Syria sent in the Syrian branch of the Palestine Liberation Army and 300 tanks to fight on behalf of the Palestinians. Only after Israel fulfilled a request by the United States to pretend to attack the invading Syrians with airplanes did they quickly retreat back to Syria. The retreat of Syrian forces proved to be a blow to Palestinian moral so large that they were never able to overcome it. Soon, the Jordanian military was shelling the headquarters of Palestinian organizations within their own capital. Bloody urban warfare broke out in the streets of Amman as Jordanian forces moved from house to house searching for Palestinian militants. On September 27th at the Arab League Summit in Cairo, king Hussein was humiliated as he was forced to sign a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat that allowed Palestinians to continue to run their organizations within Jordan but forced them to leave the cities. Unfortunately for Arafat and the Palestinians, their main protector; Egypt’s president Nasser died the next day. Upon Nasser’s death, kind Hussein immediately ordered the Jordanian military to continue fighting and they crushed the Palestinians. On October 31st, Arafat had no choice but to sign a new peace agreement in which Palestinian bases had to be dismantled. By July 1971, after several more agreements and several violations of these agreements by Palestinians, it was eventually over. Thousands of Palestinian militants were driven out of Jordan and into Lebanon. Jordan expelled the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat, and Palestinians within Jordanian society became outsiders. Estimates of the number of dead due to the Black September events reach up to 25,000 with the vast majority being Palestinians. The infamous terrorist group Black September was organized by Fatah shortly after these events. Fatah which was a part of the Palestinian Liberation Organization was controlled by Yasser Arafat. Black September took its name after the events in Jordan and was founded to seek revenge king Hussein and his followers. In November of 1971, four members of Black September assassinated the prime minister of Jordan in Cairo and in 1972, they carried out the infamous Munich Olympic Games massacre. After Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian militants were expelled from Jordan, they moved into Lebanon, and helped precipitate the Lebanese civil war. The 1982 Hama massacre in Syria in which up to 40,000 people were killed also was a move by an Arab leader trying to put down an Islamic radical movement within their country. This time involving the Muslim Brotherhood. What does all of this have to do with the current situation with Hamas in Gaza, and why do leaders of Islamic countries want Israel to win? The answer is simple: They are scared to death of Hamas and militant Palestinian groups. Egypt is trying to hard to keep the peace between Israel and Hamas because they are afraid that groups sympathetic to Hamas will up rise within Egypt. Hamas was founded by a Muslim Brotherhood activist as a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Egyptian Islamic militant group. Egypt does not want the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the world’s oldest and largest Islamic group to rise up and take over the country. This is why Egypt won’t take over the Gaza strip. I believe a viable solution to the problem of what do with Gaza would be to let Egypt take it over, but Egypt has to be strong. Egypt is big enough and powerful enough to control the tiny Gaza strip. However they won’t do it because by doing that, they will be allowing Hamas into their country and they would be responsible for controlling Hamas. Imagine what would happen if Egypt was forced to kill thousands to put down a Hamas revolt within Gaza? The Muslim Brotherhood within Egypt and all of the Egyptians sympathetic to the Palestinian cause would not stand for it. We might see these radical groups ban together to try to overthrow the government and suddenly, we could have another Iran but this one right in Israel’s back yard. Egypt doesn’t have the will to stand up to these radical Islamic groups. Under president Nasser they did, but Anwar Sadat reversed all the progress they made by freeing Muslim Brotherhood prisoners and eventually was assassinated by Islamic militants himself. The Muslim Brotherhood had up to 2,000,000 members in Egypt and currently controls 20% of the Parliament, proving their influence is strong within the country. With the rapid growth of radical Islam world wide, countries such as Egypt must take a hard stance against Hamas and other radical groups if it hopes to survive. Lebanon has also seen the effects of radical groups within it’s own country with Hezbollah causing havoc throughout. Lebanon knows that if Hamas is allowed to survive, it will only empower Hezbollah and in turn will cause more problems in Lebanon. The Saudi kingdom, is at a constant battle with radical groups denouncing the monarchy for cooperating with the United States and has been largely complacent to their calls for stricter sharia law over the years. They know the danger of Hamas and other radical groups. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef once told the Washington Post that the Muslim Brotherhood is guilty of “betrayal of pledges and ingratitude” and is “the source of all problems in the Islamic world.” This brings us to Iran, which is already run by Islamic fundamentalists who want to destroy Israel. There has never been a better time for Iran to attack Israel. They would have the excuse that they are attacking on behalf of the Palestinians and radical Muslims as well as Palestinian sympathizers from around the world would support their cause. So why don’t they? They obviously aren’t afraid of Hamas. In fact, they are the primary supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran is supplying all of the weapons and money for these groups to keep fighting. The reason Iran doesn’t attack now is because they are scared of Israel. World opinion of Israel is so low right now, that it really couldn’t get much lower even if Israel invaded Iran. Iran knows this and knows that Israel is too powerful for them to handle. If Iran was really concerned about saving Palestinian lives, they wouldn’t give $25,000 to families of suicide bombers and they wouldn’t keep supplying arms and money to Hamas and Hezbollah so that their fighters can die by an Israeli missile. Jordan remembers Black September and knows it was almost taken over by militant Palestinians. They’ve had a hard time dealing with their own Palestinian population and would greatly struggle if Hamas were to get a hold of them. In fact, Jordan is home to 3,000,000 Palestinians, the country that has second highest number of Palestinians in the diaspora is Syria with only about 450,000. If Hamas were to prevail in Gaza and build a large following in Jordan, it would be disastrous. The same goes for Turkey and other moderate Islamic countries such as Morocco. Leaders of Islamic countries know they have nothing to gain by Hamas prevailing in Gaza. They only stand to lose if the Palestinians and their sympathizers within their countries become inspired by Hamas and join militant groups. We’ve all seen the thousands of Palestinian sympathizers in the streets of various countries these past couple of weeks. Even Russia now has to be careful about supplying Iran. How long will it be until Iran starts supplying Islamic Chechnyan rebels with money and arms to fight Russia? If Hamas prevails, the world has nothing to gain.
Thoughts on pro palestine protest in LA 12/30/08
I knew there was going to be a protest today at the Israeli consulate in LA. I literally work in the building next to it. I didn’t know how big or small the protest was going to be, but when I came into work at 7:30pm, 3 and a half hours after it started, it was winding down but it was still crazy. Cars were parked everywhere, I had to park 2 blocks from my building. People were driving up and down the street with Israeli flags, people were walking through residential neighborhoods above Wilshire with palestinian flags. At one point a girl in a car driving through the street with an Israeli flag hanging out her window gets yelled at by an Arab lady, “Fuck you, you fucking Jew!” she screams at her before she gets into her own car. To say the situation was tense would be an understatement. Afterall, they were potesting next to the most heavily Jewish part of LA. Arabs were yelling at Jews getting out of a synagogue, where they just finished praying. “Fuck you Jew!” they yelled at them before police intervened. As I walked to the building where I worked I decided to get a closer look. Hopefully I would even make it to work, I was wearing my kippah. I saw a large crowd of pro palestinian protesters waving flags and yelling in unison “Allahu akbar”. The protest was put on by a coalition of pro palestinian groups, spearheaded by A.N.S.W.E.R. which is vehemently anti-Israel and claims Israel is a racist state. A.N.S.W.E.R. stands for “Act Now to Stop War & End Racism”. Ironically, many of these Arab protestors were screaming “Heil Hitler” and giving the Nazi salute. They were walking up to Jews and doing this. This wasn’t about the bombings in Gaza, these people hate Jews and they are on the same level as neo Nazi scum. This is not nearly the first time that this has been done by Arabs at pro palestine protests and it won’t be the last. The fact that this was put on by a group that claims to want to end racism is pathetic and it shows the true aim of palestinian sympathisers. I just got done watching an excellent documentary the night before the protest on the history of Islam in Europe. It focused mostly on Al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) and showed how Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in harmony, as many people already know. I actually walked away from the documentary feeling good that someday we can all live in harmony again, with understanding. After seeing the treatment of Jews by these animals on the street, I am once again very pessimistic. The core of these pro palestinian groups is racism. Even if the people in the group aren’t palestinian and have no Arab ancestry, they hate Jews with a passion, just like hamas. There is no reasoning with radicals like hamas, they lack the fundamental ability to compromise, and these pro palestinian groups suffer from the same disability.
After 500 years in hiding, Jews bring prosperity to Iberian town
By Rachel Nolan, The Forward
Belmonte, Portugal – While most of the towns in central Portugal are suffering through difficult economic times, this small village northeast of Lisbon is enjoying a revival: The past decade has seen the construction of a luxury hotel and a museum, and tourism is booming.The cause? Jews.Conversos, to be exact. Belmonte, a town of 3,600, is home to some 300 descendants of Jews who survived the Inquisition by practicing their religion in secret – the only sizable community of these “secret Jews” to remain on the Iberian Peninsula. Until the 1990s, the Belmonte conversos kept their history to themselves. But since warily emerging from secrecy, the Jews here have generated a small local economy in one of the most economically depressed regions of Western Europe – one that is benefiting Jew and non-Jew alike.”We are so happy to have work,” said Ana Maria Monteirineho, who, along with fellow Catholic Maria de Coneceição Mendes, found new employment with a sewing collective that opened in 2004 in the town center. One of the collective?s tasks is embroidering “shalom” onto lavender sachets to be sold at the new Jewish Museum. “[The tourists] come for the museum,” she said. “They come to see the Jews.”Indeed, companies that specialize in Jewish tourism are noting that Belmonte is an easy sell. For starters, interest in Jewish Portugal in general has been growing. Functioning synagogues in Lisbon and Porto that mostly serve Eastern European immigrants are seeing more visitors. And last year, a Roman Catholic priest in Porto knocked down a false wall to find vestiges of a pre-Inquisition synagogue while renovating his home. But Belmonte is special. It seems to offer more than Lisbon and Toledo, both of which are full of Jewish history but empty of actual Jews, not to mention that a discovery of another community of crypto-Jews is unlikely to happen anywhere else, ever again.Distinctive Belmonte has attracted international funds, including enough from one French donor to build the small but magnificent synagogue in 1997. And then there is the large Jewish Museum, which has seen more than 14,000 visitors since its opening in 2005. The museum guestbook shows that Portuguese, Israeli and American tourists are the most common, but there have also been visitors from places as far away as Mozambique, Montenegro and Japan.Abilio Henriques, the 68-year-old elected president of the Jewish community, now spends Sunday afternoons collecting entrance fees and directing visitors into the wood-and-velvet interior of his local synagogue.”Kippah for men, none for women,” Henriques explains as people walk in.Henriques’s aunt, Ana Marão, 72, sews Stars of David on the challah covers and tablecloths that she crochets for a living. “Now, the symbol is fine, but earlier…” Marão said as she drew her hand across her throat.It was this fear that kept Marão’s ancestors from practicing their Judaism. Sephardic Jews are thought to have inhabited Portugal since 10 BCE. The earliest relic of Jewish life in Belmonte is an inscribed granite reliquary dated to 1297 from the town?s first synagogue. But in 1497, King Manuel I ordered Portuguese Jews to convert to Catholicism or flee. Many Jews opted to maintain their religion in secret, leading to such rituals as submerging Sabbath candles in clay jars, according TO local historian David Canelo.Even after the Inquisition officially ended in 1821, local Jews kept their rites secret.”It was a matter of tradition,” said University of California, Los Angeles?s Eduardo Mayone Dias, professor emeritus, who has written about Belmonte. “That had been their only method of survival. The fear of Inquisition and of outside influence was very real.”This finally began to change in 1994, when a representative from the converso community invited a rabbi from Israel to officially convert a group in Belmonte. They emerged from secrecy partly because of increased openness across Portugal after the 1974 bloodless transition to democracy from António Salazar?s dictatorship, and partly because they desired contact with other Jewish communities. In addition, footage of conversos in Belmonte in a French documentary called ?The Last Marranos,” released in 1990, heralded the first wave of tourists.The broader success that the tourists have brought is evident: Where other towns in rural Portugal are plagued with empty lots, Belmonte is ringed with a crop of new houses, and construction is still under way. The streets are clean, and the town park, lined with miniature orange trees, is well groomed.”People want to come because this is the only really Jewish part of Portugal,” said Cristina Brito, director of Lisbon-based Mourisca Tours. Brito?s company is one of a number that have sprung up to meet the demand for organized trips to visit Belmonte. One brochure urges visitors to try ?Inquisition-defeating sausage,” a local recipe in which chicken is substituted for pork.This is a stark change from 500 years of secrecy, and not all local Jews enjoy being the object of scrutiny. Visitors trying to enter the synagogue during services are often redirected to the museum. Indeed, a number of Jewish families steer clear of both the synagogue and the tourist industry, practicing the way their ancestors did, with women leading ceremonies at home. Belmonte has seen a cycle of rabbis from Israel and Brazil, none of whom stays for more than a few years. Some attribute this to the difficulty of reconciling modern Jewish practices with those of Belmonte, developed in isolation for centuries.”I am one of the only Jews who invites strangers into my home,” said Marão, whose family was among the first to convert. “They are still afraid. I don?t know what of.” Source credited below http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=941411
Hispanics Uncovering Roots as Inquisition’s ’Hidden’ Jews
Hispanics Uncovering Roots as Inquisition’s ’Hidden’ Jews
HOUSTON, Oct. 28 - When she was growing up in a small town in southern Colorado, an area where her ancestors settled centuries ago when it was on the fringes of the northern frontier of New Spain, Bernadette Gonzalez always thought some of the stories about her family were unusual, if not bizarre. Her grandmother, for instance, refused to travel on Saturday and would use a specific porcelain basin to drain blood out of meat before she cooked it. In one tale that particularly puzzled Ms. Gonzalez, 52, her grandfather called for a Jewish doctor to circumcise him while he was on his death bed in a hospital in Trinidad, Colo. Only after Ms. Gonzalez moved to Houston to work as a lawyer and began discussing these tales with a Jewish colleague, she said, did “the pieces of the puzzle” start falling into place. Ms. Gonzalez started researching her family history and concluded that her ancestors were Marranos, or Sephardic Jews, who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and in Mexico more than four centuries ago. Though raised in the Roman Catholic faith, Ms. Gonzalez felt a need to reconnect to her Jewish roots, so she converted to Judaism three years ago. “I feel like I came home,” said Ms. Gonzalez, who now often uses the first name Batya. “The fingerprints of my past were all around me, but I didn’t know what they meant.” It is difficult to know precisely how many Hispanics are converting or adopting Jewish religious practices, but accounts of such embraces of Judaism are growing more common in parts of the Southwest. In Clear Lake, a suburb south of Houston, Rabbi Stuart Federow has overseen half a dozen conversions of Hispanics in recent years. In El Paso, Rabbi Stephen Leon said he had converted almost 40 Hispanic families since moving to Texas from New Jersey 19 years ago. These conversions are the latest chapter in the story of the crypto-Jews, or hidden Jews, of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, who are thought to be descended from the Sephardic Jews who began fleeing Spain more than 500 years ago. The story is being bolstered by recent historical research and advances in DNA testing that are said to reveal a prominent role played by crypto-Jews and their descendants in Spain’s colonization of the Southwest. For more than two decades, anecdotal evidence collected by researchers in New Mexico, Colorado and Texas suggested that some nominally Catholic families of Iberian descent had stealthily maintained Jewish customs throughout the centuries, including lighting candles on Friday evening, avoiding pork and having the Star of David inscribed on gravestones. The whispers of hidden rituals coming from thoroughly Catholic communities were at times met with skepticism. One explanation for these seemingly Jewish customs was that evangelical Protestant sects active in the Southwest about a century ago had used Jewish imagery and Hebrew writing in their proselytizing, and that these symbols had become ingrained in isolated Hispanic communities. Skepticism aside, some rabbis view assistance to or conversions of crypto-Jews as a responsibility. “The American Jewish community provided support in bringing Soviet, Albanian or Syrian Jews to the United States, and helping them in their transition,” said Rabbi Leon of Congregation B’nai Zion, a Conservative congregation in El Paso. “I don’t see how the crypto-Jews are any different.” Modern science may now be shedding new light on the history of the crypto-Jews after molecular anthropologists recently developed a DNA test of the male or Y chromosome that can indicate an ancestral connection to the Cohanim, a priestly class of Jews that traces its origin back more than 3,000 years to Aaron, the older brother of Moses. Family Tree DNA, a Houston company that offers a Cohanim test to its male clients, gets about one inquiry a day from Hispanics interested in exploring the possibility of Jewish ancestry, said Bennett Greenspan, its founder and chief executive. Mr. Greenspan said about one in 10 of the Hispanic men tested by his company showed Semitic ancestry strongly suggesting a Jewish background. (Another divergent possibility is that the test might suggest North African Muslim ancestry.) “The results have just blown me over, reminding me of something out of Kaifeng,” Mr. Greenspan said, referring to the Chinese city of Kaifeng, where a small Jewish community persisted for about 1,000 years until the mid-19th century when it was almost completely assimilated. “Lots of Hispanic people tell me they’re interested in something Jewish and they can’t explain it. Well, this helps explain it.” Not everyone who discovers Jewish ancestry, either through genealogical research or DNA testing, has decided to convert to Judaism, but some Hispanics who have found links still feel drawn to incorporate Jewish customs into their life. For instance, the Rev. William Sanchez, 52, a Catholic priest in Albuquerque, spent years researching his family’s past in New Mexico before a DNA test three years ago showed that he almost certainly had the Jewish Cohanim marker. Since then, Father Sanchez has sought to educate his parishioners on the connections between Catholicism and Judaism, and has helped oversee the Nuevo Mexico Project, which tries to identify Sephardic ancestry among Hispanics from New Mexico. He has encouraged more than 100 of his parishioners to take DNA tests. Father Sanchez has also introduced some Jewish customs at St. Edwins Church in Albuquerque, where he serves; he blew the shofar, or ram’s horn, this month during the Yom Kippur holiday. At another parish where he used to work in rural northeastern New Mexico, in the village of Villanueva, he would hold an annual Passover supper. “I have a pluralistic, not an antagonistic, view of our religions,” Father Sanchez said. Still, others feel they have to make a clean break upon exploring their Jewish roots. John García, a lawyer in El Paso whose family moved to the United States two generations ago from northern Mexico, said he had heard stories since he was a boy that his family had a Sephardic Jewish past. He formally converted to Judaism in 2001 and last year had a bar mitzvah in El Paso, at the age of 53, together with five other crypto-Jews. These days Mr. García, a lawyer in the public defender’s office in El Paso, never works on the Sabbath and is an active member of Temple Mount Sinai, a Reform congregation in El Paso. “I’ve had to go beyond my comfort level in something I would call a reversion rather than a conversion,” Mr. García said. “There were an intervening 400 years when my family had become Catholic, but something about Judaism, I don’t know exactly what it was, was kept alive.”
