Posts by Aron Sterk
224 posts
Trying to understand how contemporary conversos experienced the Inquisition means getting through the histories that have grown up about it. There is no doubt that conversos were persecuted and for victims it was a dreadful experience, but was the persecution of conversos worse than the persecution of religious minorities elsewhere? England is generally thought of as a place of tolerance, unlike '...
This genealogical table of the 17/18th century English Mendes da Costas attempts to show the numerous intra-familial relationships (uncle-niece and cousin marriages) and the close relationship between the Mendes da Costa, Salvador and Lopes Suasso families. with so much intra-marriage it becomes very complicated identifying individual's with the same Hebrew or common name but the naming convention...
OK the great Jew Christopher Columbus spawned a whole tribe of Sephardi Ladino-speaking pirates on the lost Jewish tribes of the Americas who cruised the Caribbean flying the sign of the Jolly Magen David and Crossbones taking their revenge on the evil Inquisition in every port of the Spanish Main. The truth is hidden in the works of the crypto-Jews J M Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson and in the...
Clapton House c. 1830. Former home of Jacob Franco from 1744 who built a private synagogue on the end of the north wing - far right - that seems to be modelled on the Esnoga in Amsterdam.
https://www.facebook.com/NationalLibraryofIsrael/posts/1422178401130713:0
http://eurojewishstudies.org/homepage-announcements/call-for-papers-the-thirteenth-international-conference-on-jewish-names-jerusalem-6-10-august-2017/
https://www.facebook.com/NationalLibraryofIsrael/posts/1419376294744257:0
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157454495490026&id=603440025
Richard Cumberland (1732-1811) was a philosemitic English dramatist and writer whose plays 'The Jew' (1794) and 'The Jew of Mogadore' (A light opera, 1808) unusally for the time has sympathetic Jewish heros. Cumberland spent some time in Spain and Portugal, then rarely visited by the English, and his tale of 'Nicolas Pedrosa' may have been inspired by stories he heard there of crypto-Jews. It was...
http://www.galiciapress.es/texto-diario/mostrar/474163/cementerio-portugues-hamburgo
'The Harlot's Progress' was a series of six engravings (based on 6 paintings that are now lost) of 1732 that tell the fall of Moll Hackabout. Plate 1 shows her arriving in London and being led astray, plate 2 (below) shows her being kept by a rich Jew. The Jew has come early to breakfast and disturbed Moll with another lover who is sneaking out while Moll causes a distraction by kicking the tea th...
Jut got notification today that I have been awarded a small grant by the JHSE to edit the diary of Elias Haim Lindo's journey to Spain in 1845. If anyone has any links to his family history or life in St Thomas or London I would be very grateful for the help ...
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-hidden-messages-of-colonial-handwriting?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page
Interesting blog from the Bodleian on S&P Spanish Prayer Books
Portuguese Jewish naming conventionsThis is adapted from Edgar Samuel's "Naming Children after the living or after the Dead" JHSE XXII based on his own research on Sephardic family history in London. He notes that although it died out in the nineteenth century it continued in Amsterdam until the war.USUAL CUSTOMS(1) Children are named after their forebears.(2) The first child of each sex is normal...
I was looking over the guidance from Porto synagogue on the granting of certificates of Jewish connection and was quite horrified to see the justification they are using there to exclude Brazilian descendants of Portuguese Jews. They justify this on the basis of Saraiva's biased and discredited work. It is apalling to see a Portuguese Jewish community referring to the victims of the Inquisition a...
Those who are interested or involved in research on the Sephardim in Poland might be interested in this call for proposals for research workshops on Polish Jewish History at the Polin Museum Warsaw. A workshop on Sephardim in Poland I think would be very welcome.http://www.polin.pl/en/research-collections-research-global-education-outreach-program/call-for-applications-research-workshops
Inscription from the synagogue of Gouveia, Portugal - 1497 the final year.
The Montefiore Censuses of Eretz Israel and including Alexandria Sidon and Beirut were compiled by Sir Moses Montefiore between 1835 and 1879. They have been digitalised and are on-line here:
As we are in Passovertide it would be good to look at this picture a little closer in the light of the discussion below ...Bernard Picart's oil painting of the Passover Seder, most likely made as a gift for the Curiel family (vide Hunt, Jacon and Mijnhardt, 'The Book That Changed Europe', 2010). After four years of seeking permission to sketch Jewish rituals firsthand, he produced the engravings t...
Crypto-Jewish customs (pt 2):In the records of the process against the chuetas of Palma de Mallorca is this 'prayer' in Catalan transcribed in Angela Selke's "The Conversos of Majorca" p. 240:Qui sebes y entengues qui es lo un:Aquel grand Deu sel SelAlabat sia el seu Sanct nom amen ...los dos Moyses y Aron ...los tres son Habraham, Isach y Jacob ...los quatre Mares de Israel, Sara, Lia, Rabeca, ...
With Passover looming this Friday here is something about Passover in the Colonies (h/t Laura Arnold Leibman)
Catherine da Costa (née Mendes) 1679-1756 was the first British-born jewish painter. Daughter of Fernando Mendes physician to Catherine of Braganza she was named after the queen. She married Anthony da Costa. She was a pupil of the royal miniaturist Bernard Lens the younger.I believe there is a full-length portrait of her father in Lauderdale Road but I don't have a scan of it ...