Life Outside of Israel and Judea in Diaspora: Expulsions in an Intolerant World Society

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                         

                     The Life, Culture and Religion of the Byzantine Empire

 Jews faced expulsion from Rome in 139 BCE by the praetor, Hispanus.  Jews had migrated to Rome from Alexandria, Egypt.  They then made up a significant part of the population there.   This was during the Ptolemaic era.   They had then gone to Rome.  Josephus, the Jewish general who had been the historian for the Romans said that he himself had led 120,000 Jewish captives, probably from the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE  to Egypt from Jerusalem and other parts of Judea, Samaria and Mt. Gerizim.  Soon after they were freed of their bondage  by Philadelphus.

The Roman Empire made Constantinople its capital by the 4th Century and this was called the Byzantine Empire.  This empire extended throughout the world and included "Palestine" even by the year 637.  The eastern emperors  had specific religious attitudes towards Jews.  Justinian (527-65) created anti-Jewish laws in his Code, and also issued a decree in 553 which affected the conduct of the synagogue services.  Heraclius around 614 to have issued an edict ordering the conversion of the Jews.  Judaism was continually forbidden by successive emperors; by Leo in 223, Basil I in 873-4, Romanus Lucapenus in 932-6, and so it went.  Each time Jewish life picked up and continued.  It was not about to be stomped out.

Benjamin of Tudela around 1170 found Jewish communities throughout the Byzantine Empire.  He discovered that Jews were treated with contempt in Constantinople.  The last remaining Jews there were conquered by the Turks in 1453.

The results of religious intolerance grew in the early Middle Ages.  Forced conversions to the dominant faith of Christianity without the alternative of exile was frequent during the days of the Byzantine Empire.  Jews faced expulsions when they refused to be converted to Christianity.  Today, the city of Constantinople is renamed as Istanbul.  The Eastern orthodox church grew out of it and separated from the Western Church with its headquarters in Rome in 1054.  Later it again divided into the Greek Orthodox and the Russian Orthodox with each group being independent.

  This is why the Pilgrims braved a journey in the Mayflower and sailed from Holland to the unknown land of America in 1620.  Though they were Christians, their outlook was a little different than the English viewpoint.  Thus, the USA became a country of religious tolerance; not quickly, but eventually.

We're still wondering if Christopher Columbus was Jewish by birth.  He wrote letters to his son in Hebrew.  His interpreter, Luis de Torres, a converted Jew, was the first European to set foot on American soil. His name was Yosef ben HaLevi Halvi.   Jews who were hiding the fact and pretending to be Catholics that had been converted were called Marranos.  Marranos had settled in both the Spanish and the Portuguese colonies because of the Inquisition of 1492.  The term, Marranos is not used today. Jews do not eat any meat from pigs.   It means "swine" in Spanish and was applied in Spain and Portugal to the descendants of baptized Jews who were suspected of secret adherence to Judaism.  Another word used today to replace the pejorative term of Marranos is Anussim, a Hebrew word.   Inquisitors would have people report on suspects who were thought to have evidence of them refusing to eat any pork products.  It is said that the Inquisition still exists in Portugal today!

 After the massacres in 1391 in Spain, more Jews in this position grew to appreciate their Jewish heritage.  All the Jews of Portugal for forcibly converted in 1497.  With the Inquisition in Portugal by 1540, the Marranos/Anussim were persecuted in Spain to the close of the 18th century and into Mexico into the 1800's.  Many escaped to Italy, North Africa and Turkey.  Anussim in Italy lived in Ancona, Ferrara, Venice and Leghorn.  Antwerp was another popular center in the 16th century.  Amerstadam, Holland was another as well as the Hague and Rotterdam.   When Brazil was under Dutch rule (1630-54) the first openly Jewish communities were founded by native Anussim and immigrants from Holland.

By 1880, the Jewish population in the USA had grown to 250,000 mostly from German Jews.  A small group settled in Canada then.   The pogroms of 1881 in Russia brought Russian Jews and immigration continuing into 1914, when it was lessened.  Jews went into Latin America such as Baron de Hirsch's agricultural colonies in Argentina.  1924's legislation in the USA  caused more Jews to immigrate to Canada and South America.  By 1933 those Jews in Germany were trying to immigrate to these places.  Spanish-speaking Sephardi immigrants were attracted to South America.  By 1989, Jews of the USA numbered 5,825,000.  47,000 lived in Central America and 390,000 lived in South America.

Religious intolerance continues in the USA but has taken on a new form.  By being intolerant to Israel, people  are venting their intolerance again towards Jews.  I notice many Protestant groups that are boycotting Israel's products as a religious body in trying to force them to think their way, not towards religion, necessarily but towards their attitude towards the Palestinians whom they know very little.  They side with a people trying to destroy Israel.  This is plain enough for me to see that they are not much different than the Byzantine Empire's attitude towards Jews.  On the other side of the coin are the Evangelical Christians who support Jews in order to carry forth their own religious concepts and that they support our right to live there as Jews.

139 BCE:  Jews expulsed from Rome

 19 CE        "        "                       "

 49/50        "        "                       "

115 CE     Jews expulsed from Cyprus

1182      Royal dominions of France-expulsed Jews who wouldn't convert

1290     All Jews expulsed from England

1306      Jews expulsed from France
1322       "                                "
1394      "                                "
1348/49  Jews expulsed from Germany  after Black Death Massacres
1349-60 Jews expulsed from Hungary
1421     Jews expulsed from Austria
1484     Jews  kept out of Andalusia, an autonomous community in Spain with Seville as capital
1492    Jews expulsed  from Spain and Spanish dominions including Sicily and Sardinia of 180,000
1495    Jews expulsed from Lithuania
1497    Jews expulsed from Portugal or fate was forced conversions, also Sicily and Sardinia
1498    Jews expulsed from  Navarre, now part of Spain and France
1502    All Jews expulsed from Rhodes, or forcibly converted or taken as slaves
1512   Jews expulsed from  Provence, a province of SE France
1541   Jews expulsed from kingdom of Naples, Italy
1569   Jews expulsed from smaller centers of papal dominions in Italy and France.
1727   Jews expulsed from Little Russia
1739    "                              "
1742   "                              "
1747  Jews expulsed from Russia again.
1891  Jews expulsed from Moscow and St. Petersburg
19th Century Jews expulsed periodically from areas outside of PALE OF SETTLEMENT (Russian land where Jews were allowed to live-Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belorussia, Ukraine)
1930's during Nazi power people with Jewish ancestry, regardless of present religious affiliations, compelled their emigration by means of ferocious persecution before they even started to deport and exterminate Jews.

For the Jewish people today, the remnant of a people who brought to the world the 10 Commandments and laws of which acts are acceptable and which aren't,  as well as a vast history of the beginnings of man in the Middle East and even brought into the world Jesus according to their own history,  there has been nothing but intolerance and unacceptedness.  Because Jews refused to convert and let go of their beliefs, they have suffered mightily.  Here they are today in their own land once again.  They know what has happened to their people when they were forced to leave.  They hold on with all their might to land legally theirs once again.

One of the miracles of today are a few Christians who are actually studying the Torah and are finding it awesome.This is not through any Jewish proselyting but they are discovering this on their own.   I believe this has brought on new found respect for the Jewish people who have always found it awesome and worth saving.  Perhaps if such an attitude existed long ago, the world would be a much different society.  At least we can say that many Jewish lives wouldn't have been uprooted or wouldn't have suffered such horrible deaths.  .

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10721a.htm on Navarre
http://sefarad.org/sefarad/sefarad.php/id/29/  "I am a Marrano"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrano
http://www.jackwhite.net/iberia/portugal.html   excellent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_de_Torres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_II_Philadelphus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnaeus_Cornelius_Scipio_Hispanus
Facts About Israel , divisionof Information, Ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem 

Spanish Inquisition of 1492 and Jews of Spain and Portugal

                                                                           

 Nadene Goldfoot                                  Synagogue in Lisbon, Portugal 

Today is the sad anniversary of the edict for Jews to leave Spain on March 31, 1492 known as the Alhambra Decree to the Jews living there. If  they converted to Catholicism, they could stay.  They were given 3 months.   Jews had inhabited Spain ever since  the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem  in 586 BCE.  More came in the 1st century CE.  Jews were treated well by the Visigoths after the fall of the Roman Empire as long as the Visigoths followed the Arian form of Christianity.  In 589 they switched over to Catholicism and changed their attitude.  From 612 on there was persecution of Jews under the councils of Toledo and they prohibited the practice of Judaism over a great part of the period.

In 711 the Muslims invaded Spain and did not leave until 1250.  

Living under Muslim rule and thought of as "people of the book" allowed Jews to thrive considering they were also dhimmis or 2nd class citizens.   The Ottoman Empire actually started on February 31, 1299 with Osman I. We know it lasted 400+ years, ending in 1917 at the end of WWI.    Medival Inquistions started in 1184 and lasted until the 16th century.  The first was called the Episcopal Inquisition of 1184 that lasted until 1230.  Then the Papal Inquisition followed from 1230 following Christian Inquisitions.  

In the 13th century, the Dominican order initiated constant anti-Jewish propaganda which was involved in the Disputation of Barcelona, including conversionist sermons and the implementation of the persecutory code of the 4th Lateran Council.  In 1391 there were waves of massacres, actual pogroms, beginning at Seville which were very bloody, that swept through the whole Peninsula causing hundreds of Jews to be killed and the rest to become baptised in order to live.  The synagogue was completely destroyed   These Jews were then called the"New Christians" and later referred to as "the Marranos," a derogatory term, or Conversos.  The Spaniards became jealous of them as they progressed in social and economic circles. and those jealous of them caused problems, thus the outbreaks against them.

What had happened long ago after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE was that the great centers of Jewish life became areas under Christian rule.  The expanding Christian kingdoms had a  more tolerant policy towards Jews and had found them useful as diplomats, financiers and agricultural colonists.  Samuel Abulafia in the 14th century and Isaac  Abravanel in the 15th century were court financiers and held in important place in the Spanish public life.

The Spanish Inquisition started in 1478.  Then  an edict came out written by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella due to the Spanish Inquisition's main leader, Torquemada,  expelling the Jews from Spain in 1492.  "Ferdinand and Isabella took seriously the reports that some crypto-Jews were not only privately practicing their former faith, but were secretly trying to draw other conversos back into the Jewish fold."  About 150,000 Jews were expelled who found refuge mainly in North Africa and the Turkish Empire where their descendants (Sephardim) have continued to keep the Spanish traditions and language.  Others who could not leave remained hidden in their religion.

Many died in ships while trying to sail to another land.  The captains would charge them huge amounts of money and then throw them overboard in the middle of the waters to drown..  Before Jews left a rumor went about that they had swallowed large sums of money so that people had attacked many with knives to get the money out of their bodies.

It is questioned  if Christopher Columbus was Jewish.  He was an Italian who sailed with the help of the royalty of Spain in 1492 in the ships Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria..  He wrote letters to his son in Hebrew.  Obviously he must have had some sailors on board who were escaping the Inquisition, and he had to know about it.  He spent his time sailing on the seas.  By 1542 the Roman Inquisition would commence in Italy and last until 1860.

Those who remained kept their Jewish practices a secret.  They even went through baptism  of Catholicism in order to cover their identity, but in their hearts they were very Jewish.  In 1497 due to the stresses of the Inquisition,  many of those who had remained moved to Portugal, the neighboring country.  Some went to Navarre in 1498.  The Jews who settled in Portugal were probably there while it was still under Arab rule.  When it became a Christian state there were Jewish communities in Lisbon, Beja and Santarem.  Little is known about them until the 13th century.  Things were pretty peaceful till riots in Lisbon in 1373.  To enter Portugal the Jews had to pay a poll-tax but many were then held in the country and sold as slaves.

 Among the most unfortunate refugees were those who fled to neighboring Portugal. In 1496, King Manuel of Portugal concluded an agreement to marry Isabella, the daughter of Spain's monarchs. As a condition of the marriage, the Spanish royal family insisted that Portugal expel her Jews. King Manuel agreed, although he was reluctant to lose his affluent and accomplished Jewish community. He had almost the entire community converted by force in 1497 by pain of death if they refused.  .  This means that many Jews were converted unwillingly in Portugal.  Only 8 were found that were expelled.  "The chief rabbi, Simon Maimi, was one of those who refused to convert. He was kept buried in earth up to his neck for seven days until he died." The actual Portuguese Inquisition is said to have officially started in 1536 and lasted until 1821.

The refugees of Portugal who escaped formed the Portuguese synagogues in London, Amsterdam, and New York in the 16th and 17th centuries.  At the end of the 18th century, Jews from Gibraltar and N. Africa moved to Lisbon.  Freedom of worship was permitted only after the Revolution of 1910.  Ashkenazi immigrants from Central and E. Europe arrived there in recent years, probably escaping the Nazis of WWII.    A tiny community at Faro existed.  A movement to rescue Jews was started in 1925 and in 1938,(the beginning of the end for Ashkenazi Jews in Germany)  a synagogue was built as their religious center in Oporto.  A large group was found in Belmonte.  Though most never left Judaism and have practiced secretly for this whole time,  many are starting to study Judaism more as they wouldn't have had the guidance of any rabbis.  In 1990 the Jewish population in Lisbon was only 300.

The Spanish Inquisition even chased Conversos to Mexico between 1571 to 1700's.  They executed  29 Judiazers and prosecuted 324 practicing Judaism there.  .

 A limited Jewish immigration into Spain took place in the 19th century.  The law prohibiting building of any synagogues was finally abolished in 1909.  There are some small congregations in Madrid and Barcelona now.  The expulsion was officially revoked in 1931.  That means they kept Jews out of their country for a good 439 years.  The Jewish population in Spain in 1990 was 12,000. with more than half living in Madrid and Barcelona.  Many had come from North Africa and Latin America, where times were probably bad for Jews there.  The hidden Jews have endured at least 25 generations of keeping their faith a secret.  Now they are just starting to come out.

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/expulsion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
My friend, who sent me knowledge and this picture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Ottoman_Empire
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jews-to-be-expelled-from-spain
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-03-31/news/9201290549_1_house-arrest-six-month-period-clemency-program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree