Ilana Halupovich wrote:
>
>> AFAIK, the Jews did *not* survive the Spanish Inquisition and
>> the previous retaking of Iberia by the Christians.
>> I�ve read somewhere that 25% to 50% of the Portuguese
>> original population was made of "Cristaos Novos", meaning
>> jews that were forced to convert to catholicism.
>
>It's tricky - Jewish religion does not believe that converting to any other
>religion making Jew not-Jew. And there are stories of ANUSIM - "forced ones"
>those who continued to practice Jewish religion in secrecy.
>
Yes, but how long can those Anusim still be considered Jews? After
one or two generations of secret practice of the Jewish religion, most
- if not all - of them were fully incorporated into the Catholic population.
BTW, there is a "tribe" in Portugal that had many practices of the
Torah, but they didn't have any knowledge that they were jews. They
were "found" recently -- I may get the details later.
Alberto Monteiro
