Six centuries after their forcible conversion, a leading Israeli rabbi rules that the Chuetas of Mallorca are Jews
Rabi Nissan Ben Abraham
PALMA DE MAJORCA (EJP)—A leading Israeli rabbinical authority has officially recognized as Jewish the small Chueta community on Spain’s island of Majorca, six centuries after their ancestors were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism.
The Chuetas are the descendants of Mallorca’s Jews, who were forcibly baptized in the 14th and 15th centuries and then barred from intermarrying or assimilating with the island’s Catholic population until the modern era.
The clear and unequivocal recognition was issued by Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, the head of the Beit Din Tzedek , a High Rabbinical Court, in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak, who is considered to be one of Israel’s foremost arbiters of Jewish law.
It came after years of campaigning by Shavei Israel, an Israeli organization that seeks to strengthen ties with the descendants of Jews around the world..
In his written opinion, Rabbi Karelitz stated that, “Since it has become clear that it is accepted among them (the Chuetas) that throughout the generations most of them married among themselves, then all those who are related to the former generations are Jews, from our brethren the children of Israel, the nation of G-d.”
Read the article in the European Jewish Press