Marranos from Portugal and Spain

Introduction

The terror of the Catholic Inquisition still reverberates throughout once-thriving Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula. By threat of death, hundreds of thousands of Jewish souls fled to other regions, or else reluctantly donned a cloak of Catholicism. All the while, thousands of their kin were deprived of their rights as civilians and were sold into slavery, or they endured torture, fire, and martyrdom under the suspicion of living a Jewish life incognito. These people from the 15th Century were the Marranos (or in Hebrew, Anusim).

The Preserved Identity

While most of the descendants of these Marranos were born into Catholicism, or at least superficial Catholicism, they still recite various Jewish prayers and practice numerous Jewish traditions which their parents preserved in strict secrecy. Until World War II, the Marranos and their descendants remained chiefly secluded from and ostracized by their Catholic neighbors.

Today these descendants dust the globe in exile, and their interest in their Jewish ancestry is spiking. They are embracing their Jewish heritage in increasing numbers; however the Israeli government forbids them immigration to their ancient home without undergoing orthodox Jewish conversion. Don’t miss the irony: their parents suffered persecution and death lest they convert to Catholicism, and now these Jewish descendants are deprived of entry into their ancestral homeland except by an ultimatum of orthodox conversion.

The Suffering of the Marranos

The Marranos suffered every bit as much as Jews in the holocaust. In Spain and Portugal, a simple suspicion started the legal proceedings. Maybe a mother changed the bedsheets on a Friday, or a family member abstained from eating pork. Maybe a chimney did not flicker with flames throughout a winter Sabbath, or even suspicion of lighting too many candles on Friday was cause enough to initiate an investigation.

Such a soul was summoned before judges, and was afforded three opportunities to admit guilt in consecutive hearings, but after that was left in isolated seclusion for up to a solid year. If the defendant still refused to admit guilt after the solitude, then he or she was submitted to hideous torture; even pregnant women were not exempt. Throughout the proceeding, defendants were of course assigned an attorney, albeit one paid by and loyal to the state-run Inquisition. By all standards, it was a kangaroo court.

The records of incidents of torture and riots throughout the Inquisition that ended in stretching, breaking, ravishing, and burning suspected insincere “conversos” are numerous, various, meticulous, and nauseating. The hearings were all but certain death sentences; in Portugal three-quarters of all hearings ended in convictions, and in Spain only about two per year ended in acquittal.

One new convert in Portugal offered a rational explanation as to why a crucifix appeared miraculously brighter than usual, and his peers reacted in outrage by dragging him outside and mercilessly butchering him for blasphemy. Another woman changed her linens on Friday and abstained from eating pork because of how it made her sick, and the poor lady ended up on a stretching machine wound so tightly despite her cries for mercy that the ropes finally snapped, leaving her body in a helpless and dislocated condition before being subjected to the subsequent bout of torture. There is no more perfect phrase that describes the anguish that these myriads of Marranos underwent other than a living hell.

Yeshua, The Stumbling Block

Those that could, fled the Iberian Peninsula, and they were driven into the uttermost parts of the earth, such as Africa and South America, at the hand of their persecutors. Their synagogues have remained abandoned and vandalized for centuries, or else converted to cathedrals, and nevertheless the right of return to Israel is not available to them because they were born into force-converted Catholic homes.

A sizable portion of these descendants have embraced Protestantism, and the irony is stupefying that their allegiance to a First Century Jewish rabbi that preached unconditional love (and in whose name the Inquisition’s pogroms were egregiously executed) is precisely the stigma that prevents their return to Israel. Only with great difficulty could one refrain from suggesting that perhaps a modern Inquisition continues to plague these sons of Jacob; coming from within the Jewish homeland, a vendetta against a suffering and selfless Jewish rabbi whom malevolent sadists have redefined.

The fact of the matter is simple: Jesus is not a Gentile that abolished Moses or invented a new religion. He is Yeshua, sent by God as the living Word of God. He was a faithful Jewish rabbi that taught atypical love for others and faithful obedience to God’s instructions, but then died mercilessly at the hands of corrupt Second-Temple leadership whom he repeatedly admonished.

After his incontrovertible resurrection, Yeshua and his message rapidly spread beyond Israel’s borders until it ultimately intermingled with pagan ideologies and lost its purely Jewish momentum. But the time is approaching when the true Jewish Yeshua will reveal himself as did Joseph to his brothers, and faith in Him will be the quintessence of Jewish piety, instead of its antithesis.

The Prophecy of Return

A prophecy in Obadiah 1:20 assures the ultimate return of this group to Israel. The exegete Rashi and the Targum of Yonathan agree from this passage that the exiles that lived in France and Spain would return and inherit the southern lands of Israel, the Negev desert and the mountains of Esau. However, there is a temporary block that is keeping this group from fulfilling this part of God’s word, and we should unite and redouble our efforts in prayer and in campaigns to pave the way for their return.

Please pray with Netivyah, and implore the Father for the eventual and soon acceptance of this ostracized group and for their unity. Pray that the Lord would rekindle in them a seeking spirit into their Jewish heritage, and that He would open a door for them to return finally to the Holy Land that God promised their forefathers. May they rejoin the nation which God chose to lead the world into His blessings, instruction, and righteousness.

Footnote

Information drawn principally from Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947).