spanish inquisition

When The Philippines’ First Synagogue Burned to the Ground

The Philippines’ first synagogue had bad timing. Jews had arrived in the Philippines after the Spanish Inquisition, but after World War I a new influx of Russian Jews arrived, and decided it was high time for a proper synagogue. By 1922, an entrepreneurial immigrant named Emil Bachrach secured so much support for a grand new building […]

By Leah Falk

from Jewniverse

The Forgotten Yemenite Jewish Exile of 1679

There were about 55,000 Jews living in Yemen in 1948. Today, there are 50. Though the most notorious calamity in Yemenite Jewish history were the riots following the declaration of the state of Israel, nearly 200 years before that, the country’s Jewish community suffered something that most of the world has never heard of: the Mawza […]

from Jewniverse

The Jewish Astronomer Behind Vasco da Gama’s Maiden Voyage

Want a moon crater named after you? Easy: just follow Abraham ben Samuel Zacuto’s lead. Zacuto, born in Salamanca, Spain in 1452, was a Sephardic astronomer, mathematician, rabbi, and historian who dominated every field he entered. After the Spanish expulsion of the Jews in 1492, Zacuto relocated to Lisbon where he was offered a gig […]

from Jewniverse