Crypto-Judaism

Crypto-Judaism is the alleged or actual preservation of Jewish rites by marranos — Sephardic Jews insincerely converted to Catholicism either through coercion or social pressure — and their descendants.

Crypto-Jews are Jews in all but name and Catholics in nothing but form, and were a particular target of the Spanish Inquisition, incited by the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, in Spain and Portugal.

Small communities of crypto-Jews are still said to exist, allegedly still maintaining their hidden traditions, in Portugal, Amazonian Brazil, the once Spanish-held Southwestern United States, and Spain.

In addition to these communities, other now Catholic-professing communities descendants of crypto-Jews are also said to exist in Cuba, the State of Nuevo Leon (Nuevo Le�n de Judea) in northern Mexico, the department of Antioquia in Colombia, and amidst the populations of various other Spanish-speaking countries of South America (Argentina, Venezuela, Chile and Ecuador). From these communities comes the proverb, "Catholic by faith, Jewish by blood".

All the above localities were former territories of either the Spanish or Portuguese Empires, where the Inquisition eventually followed and continued persecuting the Jews who had settled there, and where it endured for longer than it had in Spain herself.

Some of those in north-east Portugal have outed themselves as crypto-Jews and now formally adhere to Orthodox Judaism since having rejoined and being accepted by mainstream Judaism after more than five-hundred years of secrecy.

Crypto-Judaism

See also