Posts by Aron Sterk
224 posts
Does anyone have any information on a Joseph Messias from Morocco in London and possibly Holland? I am particularly interested in his wife's name.
http://www.dn.pt/inicio/globo/interior.aspx?content_id=4673503
R. Raphael Carrigal (1733-77) indicates the mobility of Jews in the early modern period. Born in Hebron, he visited London and Curaçao, preached in the Touro, and died in Barbados - having befriended Ezra Stiles later president of Yale College ...
Aexander Altmann: 'The eternality of punishment; a theological controversy within the Amsterdam rabbinate' with the Hebrew text of the Hatza'a (essay) from Venice and Aboab's 'Nishmat Hayim':
Wilmer Peres don't forget the chocolate in Bayonne!
There was for a few years a Sephardic community in Dublin. This broadsheet, now in Trinity University Library recounts an event that caused a stir in 1723. An English servant of Solomon de Castro returned to Dublin to find his wife pregnant by the Jewish servant David Cohen Henriks (Henriques?). The couple obviously tried to plead that she had been raped, but the court were not convinced despite t...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QnA9B8emKA#t=90
A good resource for those dealing with old Portuguese texts - the first complete Portuguese dictionary from 1789. The orthography is before any of the subsequent reforms:http://www.brasiliana.usp.br/bbd/search?filtertype=*&filter=Diccionario+da+lingua+portugueza+composto+pelo+padre+D.+Rafael+Bluteau&submit_search-filter-controls_add=Buscar
The idea that there are hidden Jews in the Americas has a long history. In 1649 an English missionary Thomas Thorowgood published his theory that the native Americans were the lost ten tribes - in confirmation he appended R. Manasseh Ben Israel's account of Antonio (Aaron Levi) de Montesinos' encounter with hidden Jews in Peru. This is the first appearance in print of the account Ben Israel used f...
"They [the Jews] hold that the Jews of Italy, Germany and the Levant are of Benjamin's tribe ... But the tribe of Judah whence they expected their Messias ... they say is settled in Portugal; where they give out to have thousands of their race, whom they dispense withal to make a semblance of Christianity even to Church-decrees.This makes them breed up their children in the Lusitanian language; w...
A useful tool of those working on Dutch financial documents who want to know how monetary amounts compare with current values;
Many people are being misled by commercial DNA tests. These tests cannot tell you much at all, if anything, about recent ancestry (i.e. the last few hundred years - except in genetic comparison to individuals whose ancestry is known and verified, and this is not what these companies provide). Genealogical research should NEVER begin with DNA tests - do not try to 'prove' the story that a DNA compa...
I was doing some research into the origins of the Liverpool Jewish community and came across the following interesting genealogical connection that I thought I would share with you all.There was a small Jewish community in Liverpool in the mid-18th century, probably closely connected to that of Dublin founded at the beginning of the the century. The 'Liverpool Memorandum Book' (1753) notes a "Jews...
The perils of people thinking they know what they are talking about, and really haven't a clue when it comes to genealogy, DNA and Jewish ancestry:
One of the stranger members of the far-flung Portuguese diaspora. Anton de Vieira, sailor and chief of police to Peter the Great of Russia:
On the anniversary of the May 10th 1682 Auto da Fé on the Terreiro do Paço, Lisbon, here is the account of Michael Geddes, an Anglican priest living in LIsbon 1678-88:
Jose Navarro this article of Schulamit Halevy is interesting. Not because she dismisses the charges as wrong, but because it shows the difficulty of deciding whether a certain behaviour is or is not 'Jewish.' Here she takes a much more critical view of the charges because she sees the trial as 'political.' Glitlitz on the other hand sees them as evidence of judaising.It is hard to see why this is ...
Some people use an unfortunate elision of language between the terms 'Sephardim', '(benei) anusim', '(descendants of) conversos', and 'crypto-Jews' in order to imply that there is a continuity of faith, rather than simple genetic descent, between the Jews of Iberia and supposed modern descendants in various places in the world. However there is little credible evidence for the persistence of Jewis...
Auckland Castle, palace of the Bishops of Durham has 12 paintings by Zurburán (+1 copy) with an interesting connection to the Portuguese Jews. The pictures represent Jacob and his 12 sons and were painted by Zurburán in the 1630s for export to South America (the subject matter may be connected to the legend that the native Americans were descendants of the lost tribes, a legend accepted by Manasse...
Eduardo Herrera the Lettres Patentes of Henri IV of 1550 concerned "les marchands et autres portugais appelés Nouveaux Chrétiens." i.e. allowed the conversos to settle as 'New Christians.' They were not recognised as Jews until the Lettres Patentes of 1723: " les Juifs desdites généralités [Bordeaux] connus et établis en notre royaume sous les titres de Portugais, autrement Nouveaux Chrétiens" - '...
Anniversary of the Massacre of Lisbon 19-21st April 1506.
Oil painting of the Curiel family Passover Haggadah by Bernard Picart, painted some time before the famous etchings in Picart and Bernard's 'Religious Ceremonies of the World'. Pesach Sameach!
http://genealogiafb.blogspot.pt/2015/03/em-busca-das-raizes-cristas-novas-ii.html
this may be of interest to some members of the group:
The following article may give some clarity to the question of 'Ladino.' I disagree that the written language 'Ladino' developed only in the 18th century as that ignores the Ferrara Bible and Latin-character 'Ladino' in the West. Attig is also misinformed about the Portuguese events of 1497, but his linguistic distinction is valid and correct and should be taken up by the RAE.