Sephardic Bnei Anusim | Wikipedia audio article
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Date: 2018-11-13

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Sephardic Bnei Anusim

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SUMMARY
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Sephardic Bnei Anusim (Hebrew: בני אנוסים ספרדיים‬, pronounced ['bnei anu'sim sfara'dim], lit. "Children [of the] coerced [converted] Spanish [Jews]) is a modern term used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jewish which were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th century in Spain. The vast majority of Conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, their descendants in both these countries numbering in the millions. The small minority of Conversos who did emigrate normally chose destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but also more tolerant cities in Europe, immediately reverting to Judaism. Although a few did their travel to Spanish America, doing so was particularly difficult since only those Spaniards who could certify no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were allowed to travel to the New World. Nevertheless, the constant flow of Spanish emigration to Latin America up until well into the 20th century has resulted to many Latin Americans having Converso ancestry, in the same way as modern Spaniards do.
The Bnei Anusim concept has gained some popularity among the Hispanic Community in the American South West and in countries in Latin America, whereby hundreds of Hispanics have expressed a belief that they are descendants of such Conversos and a desire to return to the fold of Judaism. Such desire may perhaps be understood within the complex identity politics of both Latin and Anglo-America and their interplay with social mobility. Belief in Converso identity is normally based on memories of family practices which may resemble their perceptions of Jewish customs and religion and internet genealogical research and public availability of population genetics and atDNA analysis.In the last 5 to 10 years a growing number "of [Sephardic] Benei Anusim have been established in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and in Sefarad [Iberia] itself" as "organized groups." Some members of these communities have formally reverted to Judaism, operating as functional communities of public Judaizers. For more information on these groups, please see Neo-Western Sephardim.
Although, reversion to Judaism among these communities is largely a question of individual belief and interest and any knowledge of Jewish ancestry has been long lost over the past four centuries, two specific exceptions exist: The Xueta community of the island of Majorca in Spain and the Marrano community of Belmonte in Portugal. Both communities have practiced endogamy over generations, thus maintaining awareness of their Jewish heritage. In the case of the Xuetas, they also suffered social stigma and discrimination well into the 20th century for their converso origin.
The Jewish Agency for Israel estimates the Sephardic Bnei Anusim population to number in the millions. Although they are the least prominent of Sephardic descendants, Sephardic Bnei Anusim are nonetheless numerically superior to their Jewish-integrated Sephardic Jewish counterparts, which consist of Eastern Sephardim, North African Sephardim, and the ex-converso Western Sephardim. With up to 20% of Spain and Portugal's population and at least 10% of Latin America's Iberian-descended population estimated to have at least some Sephardic Jewish ancestry (90% of Latin America's modern population being persons of at least partial Iberian ancestry, in the form of criollos, mestizos, and mulattos), the total population size of Sephardic Bnei Anusim (67.78 million) is not only several times larger than the combined population of Jewish-integrated Sephardic sub-groups, but also more than four times the size of the total world Jewish population as a whole, which itself also encompasses Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews and various other smaller groups.