Shavei Israel launches new Spanish-language website for Bnei Anousim
The Beit Ha'anusim web page
Shavei Israel has launched a new Spanish-language website specifically for the Bnei Anousim. The site, which is filled with resources, classes, and discussion groups, is the latest prong of a concentrated multimedia outreach by Shavei Israel to the Bnei Anousim, people whose Jewish ancestors in Spain and Portugal were compelled to convert to Catholicism more than five centuries ago. The initiative also includes a Spanish-language newsletter, Facebook and Twitter presence, and its own YouTube channel.
The new website was the brainchild of Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund. He asked Tzivia Kusminsky, Shavei Israel’s Coordinator for the Bnei Anousim, and Aviel Pérez, a Bnei Anousim who grew up in the Canary Islands and now studies in a Jerusalem yeshiva, to build the site. The multi-talented Pérez, who has multiple degrees in language and education, also builds websites; it was a perfect combination and the result is a powerful new portal for Bnei Anousim around the world.
And that’s exactly how the site, which was six months in the making, has been received so far. Shavei Israel already had an email list of thousands of Bnei Anousim and in the first three days after the site launched at the end of March, nearly all had visited the site.
Initial statistics show that the top ten countries visiting the site are Spain, with double the number of the second place country Israel, followed by Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Chile, Peru and Ecuador. There have even been visitors (albeit very small numbers) from South Korea, Poland and Indonesia.
Aviel Perez
Pérez began thinking about such a site while living in Barcelona after he started learning with Rabbi Nissan Ben-Avraham, Shavei Israel’s emissary to Spain. Pérez set up a Facebook group, which published what he calls “halacha capsules (halacha is the Hebrew for “Jewish Law”) on a daily basis. Subscribers to the Barcelona Facebook group soon began to meet regularly for a “Torah Picnic,” where participants would prepare talks on the portion of the week.
Rabbi Ben-Avraham, however, is only able to come to Barcelona once a month for a few days to give classes. It’s the same in other parts of the country. Pérez knew the time had come to take Jewish learning in Spain online.
Shavei Israel has already been posting videotaped lectures in Spanish on YouTube. But Kusminsky and Pérez’s plans for the website are much grander. Using a software package called WizIQ, “We have the ability to do the classes live,” explains Pérez. “The rabbi will lead the class and participants can pose questions in real time via text messages which appear on the screen.” These live videos will be recorded for repeat viewing or for people who couldn’t attend the first time.
The online classes will cover both topics in Judaism and Hebrew and will be given by Rabbi Ben-Nissan as well as Rabbi Elisha Salas, Shavei Israel’s emissary to Portugal, and Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum, Shavei Israel’s Educational Director, who lives in Israel but was born in Uruguay.
The site will also include discussion boards and forums. “Some of the topics will be raised by participants, and we will start others,” Pérez says. “We’re also inviting people to write articles and tell their personal stories. And, of course, to leave their comments. We want it to be highly interactive.”
The new website’s resources section already contains information on local activities; articles about the history of the Bnei Anousim and Judaism in general; topics to explore for further study; relevant pictures, audio and video clips; and detailed information on how to formally return to Judaism. There will be links to recommended books and to libraries where visitors can check out those books before buying. And there will be contact information for each community.
“All of this is very important for people who are just starting out and have no idea where to go,” adds Kusminsk
While the site’s content will be mainly in Spanish, a few articles in the Catalan language will be mixed in; approximately 10 percent of the Bnei Anousim on Shavei Israel’s email list are native speakers of that language, primarily in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, and Valencia.
Indeed, it’s for Bnei Anousim in those smaller villages that Pérez is perhaps most excited. “The website is particularly valuable for people who have no community, no rabbi; they’re alone,” he says.
And that’s the bottom line: if Shavei Israel can’t be there physically, now through the Internet, those people in remote areas will finally be able to rediscover and re-engage with their roots.
Please take a moment to come and explore the new site – even if you don’t speak Spanish! The web address is https://beitanusim.org/
If you’d like to help support our efforts creating content for the Bnei Anousim and maintaining the new website, please consider making a donation. You can do so from our Support page here.