Despite five hundred years of strict enforcement of the laws excluding Jews from Spain, until recently there remained in the southern provinces of Spain thousands of descendants of the Jews who stayed in Spain after the Royal Edict of 1492, expelling all Jews from Spanish lands, according to the results of a survey published in the “Cahiers Juifs” of Paris.
These Spanish Jews, who are the direct descendants of that section of Jewish population of Spain who were allowed to remain in Spain because they openly accepted Christianity, have been conforming to Christian faith only externally, but in the intimacy of their homes continued to adhere to Judaism.
To the population at large they are known as Christians, as they attend Church and have their children baptized and comply with all the outward requirements of the Catholic Church of Spain. At the same time they still continue to celebrate the Jewish holidays and identify themselves as Jews among others of their own race.
HAVE TWO GROUPS
They classify themselves into two groups: the Black Jews and the White Jews. The Black Jews is the name applied to those who strictly adhere to all Jewish observances, and confess Christianity only as an outward form, while the White Jews observe only parts of the Jewish ritual, which consists of a mixture of Catholic and Jewish observances, although they, too, acknowledge themselves as Jews among their own.
Centuries of secretiveness in order to avoid detection by the Catholic Church have left their imprints on these Jews in their aloofness from the rest of the population. Some of them occupy high places in government and church, and only rarely does one of them openly confess Jewish descent. The “Cahiers” mentions the case of the Spanish ambassador to the Court of the Czar of Russia. Senor Mendizabal, who when a discussion came up as to titles of nobility, said he could trace his nobility further back than any of the dukes and counts present, for he traced his descent to the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He was a member of one of the Jewish Spanish families which secretly retained their Judaism for centuries.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
