Jack Cohen: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Anusim (Hebrew: אֲנוּסִים, pronounced [anuˈsim]; singular male, Anús, Hebrew: אָנוּס pronounced [aˈnus]; singular female, Anusáh, Hebrew: אָנוּסָה pronounced [anuˈsa], meaning “Coerced”) is a legal category of Jews in halakha (Jewish law) who were forced to abandon Judaism against their will, typically while forcibly converted to another religion. The term “anusim” is most properly translated as the “coerced [ones]” or the “forced [ones]”.
Jack Cohen
The religious legal terms anús/anusáh/anusim were applied to those Jews who were forced to abandon Judaism against their will, and yet had children who continued to do whatever was in their power to continue practicing Judaism under the forced conditions. The terminology derives from the Talmudic phrase “`averah b’ones (Hebrew: עבירה באונס).“,[1] meaning “a forced transgression.” The Hebrew term “ones” originally referred to any case where a Jew has been forced into any act against his or her will. The term anús is used in contradistinction to meshumad (מְשֻׁמָּד), which means a person who has voluntarily abandoned the practice of Jewish Law in whole or part. The forced converts were also known as cristianos nuevos (Spanish) or cristãos-novos (Portuguese); or Marrano, which had and still has today a pejorative connotation in Spanish.
In more recent times, the term Anusim or Reverse Marranos has been used to describe Ultra-Orthodox Jews who are religious on the outside, but are not necessarily practicing in private.[2]
Mapping the Anousim Diaspora
For the past two days I have been attending the Conference “Mapping the Anousim Diaspora: Six centuries of pushing borders,” held at Netanya Academic College (NAC) by the Institute for Sefardi and Anousim Studies. For those who are not aware, Sefardi refers to the Jews who derive from Spain (Sefarad in Hebrew) and Portugal, and Anousim (meaning “forced” in Hebrew) refers to the Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism and were then subjected to the repression of the Inquisition, causing them to scatter to the periphery of the Spanish-Portuguese world.
The Conference was organized by Prof. Avraham Gross, Chair of the Institute at NAC and Ben Gurion University, Salomon Buzaglo, Manager of the Institute, and Esti Feinreich, Administrator of NAC. The Conference was sponsored by the NAC, the Sabah Foundation and the Embassy of Spain in Israel. The opening speakers were Prof. Zvi Arad, President of NAC, Miriam Fierberg-Ikar, Mayor of Netanya, Colette Avital, former Israeli Amb. to Portugal, and HE Fernando Carderera Soler, Spanish Ambassador to Israel. They each spoke briefly about their relationship to the current topic. Some points from their presentations, Prof. Arad delivered a moving eulogy for Elie Schalit, distinguished Israeli philanthropist, who died recently at the age of 94, who supported this program at NAC; the Spanish Amb. discussed the law coming before the Spanish Parliament regarding the return of Spanish citizenship to those who can prove their Sefardic/Anousim roots, that will be similar to a law already passed by the Portuguese Parliament.
The vast volume and scope of the presentations are too much for me to summarize here, so I will point out highlights that impressed me. There were Sessions devoted to the Anusim of Spain, Portugal, Italy (including Sicily), Latin America (including Cuba) and the Spanish Islands (the Balearic and Canary Islands) and N. America. There were also individual lectures on Anusim in Africa and Turkey (the Donme). Prof. Jose Sol from Complutense University of Madrid described his research in systematically collecting and classifying Crypto-Jewish engravings from villages along the Spanish-Portuguese border, and he showed many examples.
Although many of the lectures were historical surveys, nevertheless there are many examples of Bnei Anusim continuing to this day, after 500 years of being Secret Jews and living double lives. There is only one recorded case of people actually continuing to practise Judaism in Iberia throughout the centuries, although nominally in secret, and that was in Belmonte, Northern Portugal, that was beyond the reach of the Inquisition. Rabbi David Touitou spoke about this topic, and pointed out that he had converted (or returned) 70-80 people back to Judaism there in the 1980s. Now, of course they have an Orthodox Synagogue. Another location was in the mountainous interior of El Salvador, where Anousim communities practised Judaism from the 1850s.
The Session on Personal Trajectories was the most emotionally charged part of the Conference. The most compelling personal story described at the conference was that of a young woman, now named Chana Eyal, who came from Porto, Portugal, and who was given a golden magen David by her grandmother. This led her on a search to Casa Shalom and then to Genie Milgrom, who helped her establish her Jewish identity, and she is now recently married and lives in Israel.
Doreen Carvajal, NY Times reporter based in Paris, described her family trajectory from Spain to Costa Rica and then to California, and the finding of a menorah in an aunt’s cupboard that led her to research her roots. Genie Milgrom’s family went from Fermoselle, Spain, on the north-east Portuguese border, to Braganza, Portugal, to Havana to Miami. She has described her genealogy in her book “22 Grandmothers,” and she was able to find all of them, 1-15 in Fermoselle and 16-22 in Braganza. David del Coso Westerman’s family used to light candles on Fri night, and he realized the significance. He is descended from saddle-makers in Toledo, Spain, and a Dutch family of Anousim named Westerman. He now lives in Jerusalem.
Jay Sanchez, a Lawyer from NY, is descended from an Anusim family named Dorta who were early settlers in Puerto Rico and who were arrested by the Inquisition. He is considering a legal suit against the Inquisition for damages. He cited several important precedents, including those of reparations against the German Government for the Holocaust, as well as cases dating to 1363 in Goa, 1539 (a Papal Bull against torture) and a US law of 1790. I also befriended Joe Maldonado, an MD from up-State NY and the VP of the Medical Society of NY, who is from Puerto Rico and who in researching his family tree came to the inescapable conclusion that his ancestors fled from Spain to the wilds of Puerto Rico in the 16th century to escape the Inquisition. He was brought up as a Protestant that he sees as a way of his family escaping the grip of the Catholic Church, and he is now embracing his Anousim/Jewish origins. There were so many other examples of people from Brazil, Texas, Tennessee, Florida and so on, that the general feeling was that this subject of the Anousim is ripe for a great expansion.
Ending the Conference was a Workshop on genealogical research, run by Yael Cohen, Chief Genealogist of the Inst. for Sefardi and Anousim Studies, who for a fee is available to help people research their family tree. Altogether this Conference was a historic and highly rewarding experience.
Elie Schalit z”l
I met Elie Schalit only comparatively recently, about 5 years ago when he was the Chairman of Casa Shalom. I knew him as a charming and dedicated gentleman who had had an illustrious career and had many interesting stories. He was a philanthropist who had dedicated himself to Jewish/Israeli causes and who particularly was supportive of the work on Sefardi and Anousim projects. He was a founding member of the Institute for Sefardi and Anousim Studies at Netanya Academic College. He sadly died last week at the age of 94.
Elie Schalit was born in Jerusalem in 1921 and graduated from the Herzliya Gymnasium and then the Reali School in Haifa in 1936. He went to Texas A&M in 1938, but returned to then Palestine because of the war. After WWII in 1946 he returned to the USA and took a BS degree in agricultural economics at Louisiana State University. Up to 1948 he was put in charge of clandestine transportation for the Haganah by David Ben Gurion. He travelled widely to England, Europe, USA, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and managed to procure many essential military supplies for the Haganah and subsequently for the IDF.
In 1947 he went to the USA to purchase ships in order to save the remnants of European Jewry by transporting the DPs across the Mediterranean to Israel. He helped found the so-called “Biltmore Group” a group of Jewish philanthropists who met in the Biltmore Hotel in NY City and who provided the funds to purchase the ships used for this purpose. He purchased the President Warfield, a ship that became famous as the “Exodus 1948″ that was filled with Jewish DPs en route to Palestine and that was stopped by the British Royal Navy. He has written about this period and his work is described in the book “The Pledge” by Leonard Slater.
Following this period he continued to locate and transport to Israel military equipment, such as tanks and half-tracks from the Philippines and Panama. He also shipped 50 aircraft in crates mainly form Czechoslovakia to Israel. Because of his experience he was asked by Ben Gurion to help establish the Israeli merchant fleet and navy. He went around the Mediterranean buying dock facilities for repairing ships and later also had ships built in Germany. He co-founded the America-Israel Shipping line. He became one of the largest private shipping owners in France, Italy and Spain. In 1962 he organized a world-wide non-ferrous metal transport system and also built ships to transport frozen tuna. Up to 1986 he built 4 “non-combustible” ships for the Cunard Line, and then obtained the contract to built first 4 48,000 ton Carnival cruise ships and then 7 more larger up to 115,000 ton ships in Finland, Sweden and Italy. If you have ever been on a Carnival cruise the ships were most likely built by Elie Schalit’s company named the Colbert Group.
Apart from his own commercial interests in ship-building, he maintained a home in Spain with his wife Anna and became immersed in the history of Jewish Sefarad. At his own expense he collected memorabilia of Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon) and in 1992 he mounted an exhibition that toured 5 cities in Spain that was intended to show the evidence that Colon was in fact of Anousim (Jewish converso) origin. This was opened in Madrid by the King and Queen of Spain, with whom Elie was friendly, and received wide spread international publicity. The exhibition was then also shown at the Maritime Museum in Haifa and is now owned by Netanya Academic College that intends to mount a permanent exhibition on this subject.
Before his death Eli Schalit was involved with a group of businessmen in planning a “floating” international airport to be built off the coast of Israel near Rishon Lezion. Elie Schalit had an amazing and fruitful life and dedicated himself absolutely to the State of Israel and the future survival of the Jewish people, his vision and dynamism will be missed.
Jack Cohen
Jack Cohen: Born in London, UK, lived in suburban Washington DC area for 30 years, moved to Israel in 1996. He has a web site: Jack’s Blog
