Even though Spain at various times ruled Portugal, Portuguese is not really Hispanic ....so I’m told ....
You have to make a pretty big stretch for the modern meaning of “Hispanic” to mean someone born in New York of Portuguese descent.
Freepers, please dont use this awful intel in public. Newsbusters seem to want their readers to get laughed at half the time.
He was a pasty white euro-jew from N.Y with a spanish-colonial last name. The dark-skinned natives of spanish-colonial countries had european-spanish last names forced on them, dont forget.
The first Hispanic U. S. Supreme Court Justice was Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, U. S. Supreme Court Justice from 1932 - 1938, a Sephard Jew of Spanish ancestry.
His father, Judge Albert Cardozo, was Vice President and Trustee of the famous Spanish-Portuguese synagogue in New York City, Congregation Shearith Israel.
Young Benjamin was Bar Mitzvah in that synagogue, and as an adult was proud of both his Jewish and Hispanic heritage.
It is the oldest congregation in the Western Hemisphere, having been founded in Recife, Brazil ca. 1630 and moved to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1654. Its present location is at 70th St. and Central Park West. I spent some of my religious and social activity time there as a teenager in the 1950s, when the Rav was the famous Dr. David de Sola Pool.
Most American Jews, who are of Ashkenaz origins, neither know of nor understand this important component of the Jewish people.
Jews were a major component of the populations of Spain and Portugal for 800 years (~ 700 - 1500 CE). Ladino, the “Sephardic Yiddish” based on pre-1500 Spanish, is still spoken by 200,000 Jewish descendants around the world, mainly in Mediterranean regions.
45 of the 50 most common Hispanic family names are of Jewish origin. All Hispanic given names ending in “el” are Hebrew phrases with reference to G-d. Like Gabriel, Emanuel, Rafael, etc.
Many Spanish words and names of places are of Hebrew origin.
If you represented all Jews who were murdered in the Holcoaust by a crowded Dodger Stadium, those Jews whose family names were Gamboa and Graciano would fill a section of box seats.
Gamboas and Gracianos are in Jewish cemeteries all over the world .... even in Poland, Canada, South Africa and Israel.
A recent analysis of the DNA of a 20 statistical sample of men of Spain found that 20% have the Jewish genetic haplogroup, viz. they descend from Jews.
It is estimated that a significant fraction of the Hispanics of the Southwestern USA and Northern Mexico are of Jewish ancestry and don’t know it.
But the media would not think of, nor recognize, Benjamin Cardozo as a “Hispanic”.
They want a “genuine” Hispanic, certainly not one who was also a Jew.
Hispanic generally refers to people of Spanish ancestry or heritage. Cardozo was of Portuguese extraction.