Re: Jewish LEALs
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In reply to:
Jewish LEALs
Oscar Leal 12/19/05
This is a copy of a message that I have left on the LEAL genealogy page.
Arturo / Tulio,
The question what constitutes a Jew is always a tricky one. I understand that Jews themselves tend to accept the religious definition that a Jew is someone who is born from a Jewish mother or someone who is not, but who converted to the Judaism with rabbinical approval. There are, however, also liberal Jewish congregations that accept that Judaism is transferred from a Jewish father to his child even if the mother is not Jewish in a religious sense. I have no problem using the strict religious definition since it is at least a more or less clear definition.
Regardless of the issue of the definition, I expect that being Jewish in medieval Iberia meant more than just being Jewish in a religious sense. Even if Jews did convert, they were - for example - still considered New Christians or, putting it differently, descendants of Jews in a religious sense, and thus seen upon as different from Old Christians (and discriminated, they were for example not allowed to migrate from Spain to its oversea territories). In this sense, all descendants of Jews - whether or not they were Jewish in a religious sense - were Jewish in what I refer to as "Jews in an ethnic sense".
It is interesting to know - Arturo - that there are LEALs who have maintained what are basically old Jewish customs. Is it your impression that these customs are / were widely spread among the LEALs of Mexico and the Southern USA?
I haven't found any of those customs in my LEAL branch which is from Colombia and probably Spain. If I indeed have Sephardic ancestors it seems that my branch at least converted to Roman Catholicism completely and forgot about its Jewish ancestry.
I have also found out through the Jewish museum of Thessalonika that there were two synagogues in Thessalonika which had LEALs as members. There are, however, no LEALs living in Thessalonika today. Thessalonika has been a very well known place of refuge for Jews from all over Europe for centuries. Its Jewish population suffered very, very severely from the nazi occupation.
Synagogues in Thessalonika were predominantly organized through "places of origin". One of the two "LEAL synagogues" was relatively small and its members had their roots in Sicily, Italy. The other LEAL synagogue seems to have been frequented by Jews from Lisbon, Portugal, but many of its members are believed to have come from Spain having fled from Spain after the expulsion of 1492. I will share more detailed information in a later message.
Oscar