Bnei Anousim

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  “I could have said I’m a Christian,” says Miriam Sangiorgio of Catania , Italy. “I could have had a very easy life.” Instead, the 42-year-old vivacious Italian chose to explore a tenuous Jewish connection that her father only revealed to her in his dying days. Today,...

Miquel Segura Bnei AnousimI cannot say how old I was when I noticed that I was different from all the other children about me. In my home, as in all the Xueta homes, it was forbidden to speak about it, hushed not to mention it. Anyway, I recall a quaver of mystery, something shameful and hidden that popped up here and there during conversations:  Silences, movements, cut-off words, a tension unknown in our otherwise apparently happy lives. My father, a merchant, curious and optimistic, dragged along his entire life some indefinite fear. Of course, I could not discern it until in his old age he uncovered weaknesses that I hadn’t known of before. Today I am sure that his identity as a Xueta and his mother’s absence (she died when he was a child), were the two singular causes that cast a pall upon his life.
Nissan Ben Avraham is the name of a Rabbi who was born in Palma, where he was baptized as is the custom in every good “Apostolic and Roman Catholic” home, and given the name Nicolas Aguilo. He came on Aliya 26 years ago because “if after 600 years I could not overcome the stigma of my being a Jew, why shouldn’t I be a Jew?” Yesterday, after an absence of 12 years , Nissan Ben Avraham came face to face with his city of birth to relate his personal story:  From Palma to Israel, at a one-day seminar organized by Shavei Israel on the components of the Chueta’s identity and their historical link with the Jewish people. “I was about ten years old when the children at school cursed me for being a Xueta. I then discovered that to be a Xueta was something awful even though I did not succeed in understanding why. I did not know if the meaning of that word was being a Jew or not. I did not understand the meaning of the Anous nor did I absorb the reaction of others to this phenomenon,” he explained.
Earlier  this  year,  a  momentous  event  took  place  in  the history of Iberian Jewry.  For the first time since the Spanish Inquisition, a descendant of forcibly  converted  Jews  returned  to  Spain  to  conduct  outreach work among his  fellow  B’nai  Anousim (Crypto-Jews*). Rabbi  Nissan  Ben-Avraham,  who  grew  up  on  the  island of Palma de Majorca, was dispatched to the  area by Shavei Israel, the organization that I chair, with the express  aim  of  strengthening  the  bonds  between  the Jewish  people  and  our  brethren  the  B’nai  Anousim. Since  his  arrival  in  the  region,  Rabbi  Ben-Avraham has been paying regular  visits to Barcelona,  Alicante, Seville  and  Palma, where  he  has  organized  a  variety of  Jewish  educational,  social  and  cultural  activities, which have drawn many B’nai Anousim closer to their  roots. It  might  sound  fanciful,  or  even  far-fetched,  but  it  is a  fact  that  more  than  five hundred years after  Spain's King  Ferdinand  and  Queen  Isabella  sought  to  erase all  vestiges  of  Jewish  life  on  the  Iberian  Peninsula,  a growing number of their victims’ descendants are now emerging  from  the  shadows,  seeking  to  reclaim  their eritage. The  B’nai  Anousim, Hebrew  for  those who were coerced, do not merely inhabit the pages of dusty old history books. They are a living, breathing phenom-enon…men and women from all  economic,  social  and cultural walks of life who are eager to forge anew their links with the Jewish people. And I believe we owe it to them as well as to their ancestors to extend a hand and to welcome them home.
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