Free Republic

More than 500 years after the Spanish Inquisition, the Spanish government has voted to facilitate the naturalization of Jewish families of Spanish descent, without demanding they give up their other citizenship. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain must be rolling in their graves: The government in Madrid on Friday approved legislation that would allow descendents of Jews who were exiled from Spain to be naturalized in the country without having to give up their former citizenship, which had been the law until now. Spanish Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon said that Spain "is indebted to Spanish Jews for spreading the...

Spain digs for its once-hidden Jewish heritage By Renwick McLean / The New York TimesPublished: November 5, 2006 TOLEDO, Spain: Spain has sometimes been slow to recognize its own treasures. Miguel de Cervantes was slipping into obscurity after his death until he was rescued by foreign literary experts. El Greco's paintings were pulled from oblivion by the French. The Muslim palace of Alhambra had fallen into neglect before the American author Washington Irving and others wrote about it in the 1800s. Now, more than 500 years after expelling its Jews and moving to hide if not eradicate all traces of...

For the first time since expelling its Jews in the 15th century, Portugal has once again begun producing kosher olive oil under strict rabbinical supervision. The product, which is being marketed under the name Ribeiro Sanches Kosher, is manufactured by Penazeites, one of the country’s most important manufacturers of olive oil, in the central Portuguese town of Penamacor. The oil bears a “triangle-K” kosher symbol and is under the supervision of Rabbi Elisha Salas, an emissary of the Jerusalem-based Shavei Israel organization (www.shavei.org),who serves as rabbi of the Jewish community of Oporto, Portugal’s second-largest city. The olive oil is also...

WHITTIER -- Seventy-two-year-old Carlos Salas owns one newspaper in Los Angeles, another paper in Baja California and a jewelry store in Pasadena. He has a home in Spyglass Estates near Whittier and another in Tijuana. Also in Tijuana, he founded a Jewish university and is the teacher at a Jewish congregation. Now, the spry, dark-haired native of Zacatecas, Mexico, is taking on a new challenge.In an effort that experts say is either rare or unprecedented, Salas is trying to attract Southern California Latinos with Jewish roots back to the faith.He has officially joined Beth Shalom of Whittier, a conservative congregation...

In a way, catching a ride is how it all began. Fleeing the threat of Portuguese violence, 23 Jewish refugees boarded the Sainte Catherine, a ship that was setting sail for New Amsterdam. They arrived in the Dutch colony almost exactly 350 years ago on Sept. 12, 1654. They were hardly welcomed with open arms, at least not by the governor, Peter Stuyvesant, who tried to expel these "blasphemers of the name of Christ." But enough of his superiors in the Dutch West India Company thought otherwise: the Jews were allowed to stay, becoming the founding members of what would...