Rejuvenation: Are You From Former Iberian Jews?

[Music] hi everybody chef lots of this is Eve heroin rejuvenation for the land of its own network it is the early days of February 2018 just after 2 p5 5778 and I am sitting with Ashley Perry Paris was the president of reconnect our and the director-general of the Knesset caucus for the reconnection with the descendants of Spanish Portuguese Jewish communities everything in Israel teams sometimes is like an acronym I think we need to work on one for this anyhow Ashley so thank you so much for joining me this morning I saw you in England we were both at Lynwood UK and I was so enthralled by the story what you're telling me what you're up to now that that I said okay forget the politics forget everything else cuz you're up you're involved with so many things I really want to talk to you about this and and your personal background so thank you so much for joining me here on the Land of Israel Network it's good to be here thank you very much okay so director I'm not repeating this whole sentence director-general of and an unusual last name perry paris so tell us a little bit about yourself and and what it is that you're up to okay the paris comes from basically i come from the spanish and portuguese jewish community it's called various things from nacio to the western so far dim to the spanish portuguese to the so pardon whatever you want to call it we are the oldest community most of the West the first Jews in America the ones who created founded the community we know today in North America in Latin America in the UK in Holland in most of the West were Jews fleeing the Inquisition and the expulsion from Spain and Portugal so my name Perez which originally comes from and is written in Hebrew as parrots from the tribe of parrots the Davidic royal tribe according to family tradition is our name perry as just my anglicized version of the name but officially it's still Perez I made aliyah what is it now in 2001 as I said from England I come from the oldest Jewish family in England or one of the oldest 360 years ago we travelled for the Spanish and Portuguese community in Holland and Oliver Cromwell who won the English Civil War decided he needed to reinvigorate the Jewish community and there were some negotiations with a rabbi in Holland who believed that Jews needed to be everywhere for the Messiah to come basically there are six families were invited across and they formed the kernel of the Jewish community it still exists a day it's a dying community unfortunately probably there's only a few in in England New York and everywhere you know sherry Israel I think there's always called in an Hatton there are a few Spanish Portuguese communities around the world but very few Spanish Portuguese Jews probably we number no more than a few thousand in the world today maybe even not that there's one synagogue in the whole of Israel specific to our traditions which is which are different from Ashkenazim oversee but also different from other safari groups and the adult amis rockers they called the eastern Jews we have very interesting traditions that date back thousands of years from Spain and even the Land of Israel we claim and we have very different tunes we keep very very different things so that's a little bit about my background I came to these positions because the Inquisition and the expulsion although they're sort of historical notes for a lot of people and we learn a little bit about the altered affairs thomas Torquemada for us the spanish and portuguese jewish community is very much part of our history I don't want to overemphasize the relationship Ashkenazim I have to the Holocaust because obviously different times different levels but for us the Inquisition is very much still part of our life it's still part of our liturgy we say prayers every single week for those who are still imprisoned by the Inquisition even though it closed officially closed 120 years ago but it's still very much part of us a lot of our traditions were in built in a time where we had to hide our identity and and the anti-semitism that ended Jewish openly Jewish life in Spain okay so just put a little historical context into this most of the Jews are still Land of Israel until about the end of the first millennia more or less when for a variety of reasons which are too expensive to get into right now we start drifting up to a great degree towards what we now consider Europe and we have what we all learn is 500 gold in the Golden Age of Spain and 500 years in Spain from around 900,000 until the Inquisition so but I think that some of my listeners might not understand what the Inquisition is so if you can give a little bit of a background again what's going on you have the Jews living in Spain or the Iberian Peninsula and openly practicing Judaism and with a lot of the traditions that they brought with them from the Land of Israel and then what happens well first of all if I can correct you there are traditions that say that the Jews came to sepharad after the what became known as Spain and Portugal the Iberian Peninsula from the first temple destruction in fact again according to family tradition it's very difficult to verify these things that they basically spelled the Davidic royal family to the far reaches of the earth which was so far at that time terms like Toledo come from toldot Barcelona Barcelona even the the way you refer to a person dawn comes from a dawn there were a lot of different Jewish sort of affectations and influences on modern Spanish or ancient Spanish whatever you want to call about it but the first community recognized community who definitely was in Roman times and the Jews lived variously it's hard to say they were golden era in fact a lot of historians are now saying there was no real golden age it was one invented by people who wanted to believe that there was this time where Muslims Jews and Christians lived apps with absolute equality with excellent relations harmony etc there's a debate amongst historians exactly how golden that was but the Jewish community there was actually forcibly converted three times I will say one thing there was a time period at the beginning of the last millennia around the 10th century when 90% of all Jews in the world lived in the Iberian Peninsula so most Jews I would argue today whether today they self-identify as Safari Ashkenazi adult Amira or other probably have Sephardi roots Prime Minister Netanyahu actually was his brother who did a DNA test and they found out they have Safari roots I've met people who are believed that they are Russian Eastern Europe they do a DNA test and they find Safari roots so in my own family my father's family which is serious German family but they went back without even the DNA testing and they know that we also source that of spod out of Spain and you mentioned Netanyahu his late father was actually one of the or not maybe even the expert in the world right on the Inquisition or on Spanish Portuguese story he's one of them he's considered very controversial I can go into that but that's a whole nother story so basically the Jews lived as I said in Spain in safar ARDS there were first forcibly converted by the Visigoths and then the Muslim invaders there were times where the Jews were treated almost equally never completely equally but almost equally and they did thrive but there were other times where they were great massacres and again forcible conversions this time to Islam but always after these first two commercials after a couple of generations they were allowed to convert back as well or just returned to Jewish life the most famous period that most people refer to when they talk about forceful forceful commercials but the most famous one started in 3091 there were riots instigated by the Catholic clergy you know that they would happen every so often and riots spread throughout the kingdom and many people were murdered but many other people were forcibly converted what do I mean by that they were dragged sometimes by their hair sometimes their children were kidnapped until they came to the baptismal font and they were literally had holy water thrown on them and according to Catholic doctrine at the time that's it that you are now a Catholic so the community at that point was cut into two between those who had been forcibly converts and those who hadn't but they retained they maintained good relations these new Christians as the Christians called them and crypto-jews or anno Cimarron nose or conversos but basically Jews still kept Jewish life cycle they still Mao intermarried amongst each other they kept kashrut they had their children circumcised etc etc but all in secret or not necessarily at this point not so much it was fairly open but the Christian clergy were obviously not happy because these Christians were keeping Jewish traditions which was against Christianity so they would incite against them again there were a few riots or whatever but it got to a point where they basically decided to create what was then became known as the Spanish Inquisition which would root out what they referred to as heresies in other words Judaizing practices that started in 1480 where basically anyone who was caught doing anything Jewish anything minor practices were dragged before the inquisitorial court depending on the severity of the practice they were either Binyam fines they would be locked in a monastery for less their life they'd be imprisoned or they'll be burnt at the stake or garroted and this happened in 1480 but it really didn't have such an effect on these forcibly converted Jews how do we know that because 1492 with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain we're taught about this date it was a way to mark to us event in Jewish history and we believe it was just purely anti-semitic hatred of Jews while it was Ferdinand Isabella who wrote the decree was called the Alhambra decree the king and queen wrote the Alhambra decree cos was written the Alhambra Palace after they conquered the whole Eyebeam of the Spanish Kingdom for the from the Moors it basically said that we are expelling the Jews because they were bad influence on the converted Jews it says this in the document it doesn't necessarily go into anti-semitic reasons we hate the Jews they should leave it's these and this is the case that the Inquisition made that these forcibly converted Jews would never become full Christians while they were still a Jewish community around that allowed them to live a Jewish life that interacted with them that gave them kosher food that had synagogues that they could visit or whatever it would be all more so they had to throw out the Jews who were still retaining their Judaism so that they wouldn't drag the new Christians or the Jews who had now adopted Christianity you know under duress so they had to get rid of this still open Jews so they wouldn't do that okay exactly I call this as well as being the expulsion to Jerusalem Spain the great disconnection and that's why we call the Knesset caucus the reconnection why we call our organization reconnect our which means reconnection is Spanish and Portuguese because five hundred years ago more now five hundred and whatever it is years ago our people were disconnected the greatest Jewish community in the world was disconnected hundreds of thousands of our people were disconnected from the Jewish body so to speak and in 1492 there was no professing Jews left in Spain the majority they were given obviously many options and they could leave however they liked many took the fairly arduous route of the sea going to the Ottoman Empire the northern Mediterranean North Africa but we know that pirates or ship captains were basically take a whole boat of Jews could sail off one or two miles from the coast throw them all over and come back for more because they would get money for each one so it was obviously not the preferred route so the most preferred route was to go to Portugal which was the only land route so there's the Portuguese King welcomed them as long as they could pay for their entry but they were largely unmolested they were allowed to return they were allowed to maintain their Jewish identity etc etc King mono mana Juan Manuel so a few years later King Manuel I wanted to marry the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella also called princess Isabella and Ferdinand Isabella the King Queen said on one condition you expose your Jews as well he saw that they were doing well for their kingdom they saw that some of the the Jews who had gone over the border to Portugal was creeping back in to help some of the forcibly converted Jews so he basically put that as a I don't know how or would you call it when you go yeah pre whatever it's called prenuptial condition which he accepted but he he wanted his Jews he knew that they were doing well for their kingdom so what he did is he came up with a very clever plan he basically said if all the Jews the kingdom have to be expelled from one place in one day the port of Lisbon so all the Jews of the King tens of thousands if not 150,000 Jews all came to the port of Lisbon expecting to go on two boats to to travel elsewhere but there were no boats and the army surrounded them when they got to a massive square in Lisbon called the rocío Square and there they remained until they agreed to convert and very few agree to convert so they tried many things they wouldn't bring the water they wouldn't bring the food still very few converted then they took the children away and they took the Mizpah in Ireland where basically they were never seen from again still not all of them converted in the end what happened was as the clergy just walked around throwing water one by one so overnight there were no Jews there were no Jews expelled in the Portuguese expulsion but King Manuel basically told the Jews that with a wink and a nod you can carry on your Jewish life as long as you don't make it too public but we're not bringing the Inquisition a generation or two later the Inquisition came when his predecessor or maybe even two after that came and basically that's when some managed to flee but others weren't because Jews will not allow you allowed to even leave their towns and their cities without permission so we're talking about a gestapo-like existence for hundreds of years you know people say well there's so many years it was so easy to get out for example if your neighbor told on you to the Inquisition you were like lighting Shabbat candles or something whatever it is you would get half of their property so it was obviously yeah the neighbor would get half the property and there all the assets and then the other half would go to to the church or whatever it is so it was a very lucrative thing to just basically tell on your neighbors you didn't have chimney smoke coming out of your chimney on the Sabbath on the Saturday you refused to eat pork at one point you maybe missed a communion you know I can tell you the Inquisition had a list of dozens and dozens of traditions that's by the way one of the reasons how we know today what the various traditions were because the Inquisition kept excellent records but so I just want to ask you something we talked you through in Ferdinand and Isabella so they are the king and queen but you have the church which is it's almost to some degree like a monarchy in in and of itself I mean a hierarchical body so are they working together is there a power play going on here how does the Catholic Church get strong enough or dude for Dan Isabella are the monarchs thrilled with this and they just go along with it because they get a lot of money in their coffers as well when the Jews are thrown out how is this relationship working huh I mean many people have written about this I'm not going to go into the great details because they're great arguments exactly with Ferdinand Isabella were anti-semites where they were played by the church where they were in thrall of the church where there was a power a lot of politics going on what we do know is like for example the Queen how two closest advisors Don Isaac Abravanel and I would I'm senior or were Jews and in fact interestingly enough people don't realize this the people who funded the voyage of Columbus which left the day of the Spanish expulsion was funded by Jews were funded by these two individuals I just mentioned and some other wealthy Jews why which is why they're persistent rumors that he himself was perhaps a Jew who's escaping I always say there's a lot of evidence to demonstrate that Columbus was a Jew there's other evidence to say that suggests he wasn't I don't know what I do know is a large part of his crew were Jewish including his senior crew and one of the reasons that Jews gave the money for this voyage is because they believed that if you circumnavigate the globe going west you will come across the Lost Tribes and interestingly as a side note this is a legend we don't know if it's true but his first mate when they landed at what we now know as Cuba his first mate was sent into the interior of the island to try and speak to the natives and they believed that they were Jews so when they came across the villages they shouted out in Hebrew so the first language spoken in the New World was Hebrew there's a lot of very interesting examples about that but what we do know is all the first voyages across the ocean to the new world many of them were forcibly converted Jews because they wanted to run away from the center of oppression and we have many many documents from priests form mayors or whatever it is that said that they're probably more Jews here in the new world than they are Christians so we know that a large number of people latinum and in North America from a Latino Hispanic background have Jewish ancestry we know the news Parrish Lopez Cardozo Garcia Fernando Pereira these names we have a database of 21,000 names have are indicative let's say of Jewish ancestry so when my husband was at UCLA I remember he was wearing keep ha he told me that somebody came up to him and said I think I'm from a Jewish family I'm from Mexico I never saw Jews I now came to Los Angeles and suddenly I'm realizing some of the things my family did our Jewish customs whether it's lighting candles Friday night not everyone's allergic to pork the way they sweep their kitchen all kinds of things cleaning the house from top to bottom before Passover so what is going on with that around the world well I can tell you that for hundreds of years these people kept tradition some of them knew what they were doing some of them kept a very strong Jewish identity others kept just strange what they thought was strange Jewish traditions but today in the beginning of the 21st century these people are finding out in massive numbers that they have Jewish ancestry first of all because of DNA advances genealogy today you can trace your ancestry by the way the ink was inquisitorial records are now being are now being put online so it's becoming easier and easier there in Spain there in Portugal so in New Mexico in Mexico and in various other places they were coming digitized so a lot of people are finding their heritage and also just simply Google searches they're searching why did my family around Easter eat only flatbread why did we never eat pork why did we never point to the stars at night because that was something that Jews did on a Saturday night to learn when the Sabbath is out I can tell you almost every single tradition that we Jews hold today they're replicated amongst these communities just very very strange in the north of Brazil there's many people who just don't even know why but they keep a seven-day morning where they sit on low on the floor on low couches after death and various I'll I mean I've heard just pretty much everything one of the there is there are certain themes throughout one of them is a reverence for what they call they call Saint Esther Esther from the Purim story and they keep a feast of Saint Esther why Queen Esther arguably was the first person who needed to keep their true Jewish identity a secretive for the greater good so they found a lot of power and strength in that story so a lot of these people around the world capes kept some sort of feast of Saint aster I can just tell you some some just strange or wonderful stories of people who learnt about their Jewish ancestry but the overall picture is there is a movement there was a movement of tens of millions of people who either always knew they had Jewish ancestry or starting to understand they have Jewish ancestry and they want to do something with it now we call it recollect our reconnection because we are not advising or tenían on what to do for me someone who decides to return to Judaism and I can talk about that in a little bit and even wants to live in the Land of Israel that's one form of reconnection maybe the other extreme is they're happy where they are who they are they just want to know more about the ancestry for me that's also a level of reconnection so that's why we we adopted these terms because there are so many thousands of ways people are reconnecting today but no one on our side of the ledger the formative Jewish world Israel is really doing enough to reach out to tens of millions there are many many good people good organizations who are doing with individuals who are doing with communities but there's no one trying to tackle this on a massive basis and what we have learnt we've been studying this issue and really you know doing our research and understanding for about eight or nine years and we understand the only place this reconnection is going to take place or the first steps the reconnection is on line because if you're dealing with tens of millions of people there's no way you can build an organization that can deal with that number so what we're doing is we're building a social media system like Facebook or LinkedIn or whatsapp where basically this reconnection can take place according to the needs of the individual if someone wants to learn about Judaism they will see information about if someone just wants to learn about genealogy in their family history that's all they'll receive we are not pushing for any particular agenda our only agenda is helping those who wish it but what we are doing we've already started to do on a smaller level is basically invite people come in from both sides of the Jewish world the descendants of those who were forcibly converted and the formative Jewish world and reconnecting something that was forcibly disconnected over five hundred years ago and you can imagine what this can do for the Jewish people this is a game-changing moment for the Jewish people quite simply as one Jewish leader put it to us and there's just such a necessity for our people to wake up now I've been running around the last few years trying to meet with any Jewish leader Israeli leader political leader diplomatic leader Jewish organizationally rabbinic leaders to try and explain to them to create awareness amongst the Jewish world that this phenomena is happening and we have to have our arms outstretched when these people seek their reconnection and we've found great sympathy and great support for everyone from Prime Minister Netanyahu president moven Riblet from rabbis to Jewish organizational leaders pretty much everyone that I've met without being very surprised in a time Sharansky is another one who's fully supportive I've been very warmly surprised by the amount of support that we've received we are a private venture I want to stress that the Knesset caucus obviously is a Knesset sort of structure but reconnect our is a privately funded organization but this is basically where we're going this is a generational Tallis this isn't going to happen tomorrow and we need as many Jews and descender so forcibly converted Jews to come in together in our social media system that we're creating should be launched in the next six months to help each other because that's how social media happens the more people come into a system the more effective it is and it will learn about what people want from questionnaires and also from algorithms and it will help people find the answers they're looking for because today I receive dozens every single day I received dozens of peep asking how do I find out if I'm Jewish ancestry how do I return to the Jewish people formally how do I find out my local synagogues how do I find a local kosher butcher anything and everything people are wanting that so you know we have a database and we have a way of helping certain people at the moment but we're looking to do this on a massive scale on the tens of millions because we've done our research the descendants number between one hundred one hundred and fifty million there's a debate about that some people say sixty million some people I've heard even up to two hundred and fifty million i I've they on the conservative side and say they're about a hundred two hundred fifty million and we know about fourteen percent today self-identifies Jewish and another thirty percent are becoming aware of their ancestry and they want to know more so we're talking about tens of millions of people okay so right now according to Orthodox Jewish tradition the only way that you are considered Jewish is one of two ways you're going to a Jewish woman or you convert to Judaism so I would imagine that very few of the people who are getting contact with you can find it directs a maternal line all the way through which would say that they don't have to convert even you know they're already Jews so most of them have some Jewish blood somewhere in there but are not either considered Jewish or maybe they're Pratt they're practicing or not practicing some other religion yours well you're saying here these are people who are feeling that they want to be part of the Jewish world I can see why the State of Israel is having a bit of an issue with this but I mean for a couple of reasons one is obviously the rabbinate in the religious issue and I'm still coming off of the interview into two weeks ago with Rabbi not on Lopez cordosa who also has the background from Amsterdam but it one of the big issues that he has in terms of rabbinic Judaism is that conversions are not they're much too difficult which also plays into something that you're doing so there's one aspect of people writing to and saying look I have Jewish ancestry but more than just having Jewish ancestry I want to be a part of the Jewish people today how do I go about doing that and another one if the numbers that you're talking about if even it's a small percentage of the numbers that you're talking about when you say game-changing this is a demo graphic game-changer for Israel was one of the things that we struggle with here Israel now is we've got about a little over 6 million Jews living here in Israel about I don't know I have close to 1/2 of now the world's population of Jews and we have we have Muslims living here etc and one of the issues that we have and now I'm going to throw in just a little bit of duty in Samaria things right we keep being told we can't apply sovereignty over Judea Samaria because we demographic issue we've got so many Arabs and what to do but well you're saying here is not just people coming back to Judaism but but making Israel securely a majority of Jews if they also come back here so there's a lot of layers into what you're doing but first of all like to approach what you said about conversion and Halla ha the first thing I always say is up until the 18th century any analyst or a nossa analyst is a forced one in Hebrew these are the times and of sin and also no sir who wanted to rejoin the Jewish community were able to do so without any conversion ceremony whatsoever because that's what the rabbi's declared because they understood I told you before and the reason I bring up how many times the Jewish people converted because it it speaks to a very interesting challenge throughout the years all these dozens of forcible conversions whether in Spain or elsewhere meant that there was a challenge for the rabbi's at the time to say how do we treat someone who's forcibly converted do we trust the kashrut can we drink their wine divorce all these all these different issues exactly so halaqah had to deal with this rabbis had to deal with this by the way even in the times of the Kamara they had to do this to show how Noah had to deal with this the Rambam had to deal with this the Rambam their brother now although out to overvalue yourself had to deal with this question and i can tell you that 90% and i've looked into this and i have reams and reams of cycle harsh legal decisions and 90% of all rabbis in history said these people have Jews when RAV ovadia yosef was asked by Menachem Bagan in the in the late 70s when they came across Ethiopian jury they were asked what do we do with these people some of them were forcibly converted he looked at Halawa cassation stretching back thousands of years and the vast majority that were to do with an of sim from Spain and Portugal and he used these to rule that these people are Jews and don't forget some of the Ethiopian Jews had also been forcibly convert so sometimes even centuries ago so we have a precedent here there are many rabbis who don't even believe these people should be converted they give them return certificates the iconic yeah that they have to prove something not just someone who wakes up one day and says oh I think I've got your ancestry they have to demonstrate something do they have to have an absolute unbroken maternal line no if you can show a good reason why there is a belief that you are Jewish because oh don't forget there's a principle in Judaism someone says that they dude at Jewish you have to believe them unless otherwise for example I'll give you a few examples on the island of Majorca Palma de Majorca half of the island are called shweta switch is an old New York and word for Jew and that were basically they were forcibly converted and the two communities never intermarried the the sweaters and the launched waiters and a rabbi an ultra Orthodox rabbi from Bnei Brak went there a number of years ago looked at the marriage records stretching back generations and said I see no intermarriage here as far as I'm concerned you're all Jews so there's a rabbit who lives in Shiloh whom I interviewed last year who's from Palma de Majorca he's got a brother who's living there he's got a family tree that stretches back hundreds of years his brother doesn't consider himself a Jew even though he is Jewish blood but this man who moved to Israel did convert to Judaism he's an Orthodox rabbi with many children and he lives in Shiloh in the shimmer on so his in Palma de Majorca and I met his brother and we went toured around with him and it was absolutely fascinating the story just of this of this one family but just to throw something in here the fact that somebody who's Jewish ancestry does that qualify them then for coming to Israel for being considered to Jew like what if they believed that Jesus was Messiah so technically you could say they're even too Jew for Jesus at this point right and that's that's another issue that perhaps someone's gonna say well Israel's a great country I want to come live there and here I've got my way in because 10 generations ago my families were Jews but then we've got some other issues here that there but perhaps make it sticky well the law of return at the moment doesn't really deal with this issue and it also didn't deal with the flush EMU or the Ethiopian example that I care before the law of return is a law on an Israeli law that anybody who even has one is a jewish grandparent it can move to Israel that's the opposite of what the Nazis did one Jewish grandparents knew were sent to the camps or to the ovens so Israel did the flip of that which means though that some of the people coming here or not again halakhah Klee Jewish because it's who the father and not through the mother so what happened when they wanted to bring the flusher Mura they basically didn't the Ethiopians were forcibly converted they didn't make aliyah they didn't come under the law overturn they immigrated and then they went through what's called gila homra pro forma conversion and they became recognized Jews so we have a precedent there but today it is difficult for some of these people I do know some people who have presented an unbroken maternal line and some of them depending who they went to but I know some of them went before Beth Din and the bit didn't said I'm not going to wake up a Jewish legal court for conversion and they said I'm not wasting a blessing on you you're as Jewish as I am welcome back so there are people especially because the inquisitorial records are becoming easier not to say they're easy becoming easier to understand so there are people who have made aliyah on return certificates there are people have made aliyah because they found unbroken maternal lines it's it's a bit it's definitely a challenge but i do believe at some point we're going to have to deal with this situation because as opposed to some of the other groups which are just a few thousand people this could potentially be larger so so you said you spoken to the rabbi's are the rabbis today of the of the same mind as they were say 150 years ago that if someone can show Jewish ancestry they're considered under semen they don't have to converter that's where the sticking point is here I can tell you what's interesting I've gone into the office of the most ultra Orthodox rabbis and talked to them about this and they never heard of it or maybe they had some inkling of some idea and I take books off their shelves and show them where the Shahana walk in the Rambam in the would in all these different books on their shelves nor my shelf where it says that I said well I never even learned this I never even understood this I never realized that this was relevant because in the last hundred years there were no mass forced conversion so it's something that rabbis didn't have to learn about something they didn't have to deal with so they're learning about it from the first time as but as I said I've met with rabbis from across the religious spectrum and they are very welcoming I have a letter it's actually a pamphlet that was printed by the agua da which is one of the most ultra-orthodox strict Orthodox Jewish organizations and it's specifically written that we are obligated to welcome these people back with outstretched hands now this was written the beginning of 20th century but when I present this opinion when I present a opinion bhairav avada yourself when I present an opinion and I can show you this letter Bhairav sort of a chick which says they should be treated as Jews to the point where they should be given Aliyah they can be caught up to the Torah and they can be counted in a quorum in a minyan of Jews where you need 10 Jews to say certain prayers rather olive a sheik said and of sym can be treated as Jews for the purposes of going up to the read the Torah and to make a quorum for prayer but only again if they identified themselves as Jews like that they want to practice Judaism what says I no sim I no sim the reason why you read out that long term for you know the descendants of Spanish Portuguese Jewish communities because that's a very neutral term and no sim is a holic term and Orsi means the forced ones to be an analyst because there were some who voluntarily converted and there are some who today want to be Christian and they have no interest in being Jewish or keeping any Jewish tradition an analyst then is specifically someone who is supposed to be converted or their descendants who then still want to keep their Judaism so when we're talking about Anderson we're specifically talking about those who want in some way to return to some sort of Jewish practice so yes we're referring to to these people and Rafa soloveitchik used the term and assumed so how about the other point which is in terms of the demographic Sonique in israel absorb all these people well we've done our research on how many would be interested in making alia and we are talking about hundreds of thousands if not million we've done consistent research but what we've also understood is these are very in by and large well-to-do people forty percent have a master's degree and higher doctors you know Supreme Court justices we had two ministers from Latin American countries who wanted to come to the opening of our Knesset caucus it seems like this is this is research we've done obviously there's every type of person from every social level from every background but we found in orderly or it's proportionately well-to-do well-educated people why do you think that is because I imagine like some people are saying oh so these are like the slums of Mexico City and someone's gonna look up and say oh I have Jewish blood I'm adding here and I'm gonna go live in Israel which happens to be a marvelous place to live let me tell you a little secret if some of these people wanted a better place to live the Spanish and Portuguese governments that they are allowing people who can demonstrate that they had Jewish ancestry from the Albion Peninsula to get European passports so they have another option so I say to people who bring up this point in Israel all we're going to get flooded by all these people who want a better life I said they have another option they could go and live in Europe and however much I love living in Israel I don't live here necessarily for the financial aspects I could probably live just as well if not better in London or many other European places so I I don't necessarily buy that and as I said many of the people that we research and many of the people that I meet or reach out to us are not looking for a better life they're looking for to reconnect to something that was disconnected that was lost and not to say that every single person is genuine of obviously when you're dealing with a large group but we've done we've really dug down deep we've done many many surveys many many polls a lot of research we employed some really top academic people some real top researchers really to understand this phenomena because there are challenges there were definitely elements of this which will be challenging but I believe that everything good in life comes with challenges and think the good file ways the bad and this is something I believe that is mandated to us religiously ethically morally and rabbis who speak to us from four or five hundred years ago say there will come a time and this is written in the prophets and this is the Abravanel talks about it after he fled the RVM Panisse that he said the Messiah will come when these people start waking up and returning to Zion we talked about the in gathering of the exiles we talked about the ten tribes coming back home and some degree we're seeing it happening right now well I I said at the opening of the Knesset caucus that this is the next stage of Zionism what was IANA Sam Zionism was the ingathering of the Jewish people from the four corners of the earth the two thousand years we lived in a diaspora we lived dispossessed we lived oppressed largely around the world and many people have come back and we're getting close to becoming the majority of the Jewish people again now we have to go back into history and reach out to those that were disconnected from us you know many events like the Holocaust people were killed and that's it there's nothing you can do but there were many occasions in Jewish history where people were just simply disconnected and they never went anywhere they still remained on this earth and their descendants kept the spark of Judaism the flame of Judaism still alive and I believe that next stage of Zionism is to reach out to those that were disconnected from us to bring them into this story to bring them home to their indigenous ancestral homeland if they wish it I'm again I'm not pushing this but I've come across a lot of people who do I'll give you another interesting side note a lot of people that I speak to from these communities they was talk to me about living in the Negev and I never only understood that who wants to live and then hiccup you know the majority of Israelis live in a small little Central Rings Irish southern desert and suddenly people kept on mentioning of Aria the prophet of Aria or various says that the Safari will inherit the Negev and this speak to them and they're always asking me about their Scheffer about Daman of some of the cities in towns and they give and they really want to live out this prophecy for them their Safari ancestry the Prophet prophetic vision all these things are very important again not for all but for some but it's just it was very interesting to me and I at one point I was in discussions with the wzo the World Zionist Organization while doing a pilot trip and we were talking about maybe going to Haifa to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and they kept on saying no we want to go to the the Negev we want to we want to meet people in bearshare but want to see what the conditions are like there because that's where we want to go and I'm thinking that even for the ones who don't want to necessarily move to Israel don't necessarily want to break take on a Jewish life they're cousins I mean they're descendants of Jews and in that sense and in terms of feeling warmth towards Israel not feeling an enmity towards Israel towards understanding this country that's also a type of a game changer first well I describe them as a brothers and sisters many of us are them except for timing and luck I would say my family managed to escape but if they didn't exactly but yes it's as I said the majority people don't want to necessarily at this point come to Israel but they it's interesting they do become very attached to Israel and I've asked them many people about it obviously not if someone doesn't want to reconnect they obviously don't reach out to me but I'm talking about the ones who do seem to and they seem to sometimes do a 180 on Israel some of them come from a place of great hostility towards Israel because of the narrative out there or where they stand on the political spectrum and then they do a 180 in some of these people the most designers people I know today and they're desperate to come to live in Israel and and ask them ask them why because there's many Jews out there who were born Jewish you know they're Jewish who don't necessarily have any great affection to Israel and the stories sort of come in a few different ways that they learn about their family history once they found out or they've rediscovered their Jewish ancestry they learned about their family history and through that they learned about Jewish history and through Jewish history they understood a we were here before this is our ancestral an indigenous homeland and also that why there's a need to re-establish that in the 20th century well well we did it in her 20th we're now in the 21st and also a lot of Latinos and Hispanics are very patriotic people they're very proud of their roots wherever that they come from and whether they thought they originally came from Columbia Puerto Rico Spain Portugal wherever it is something they realize no before that they come from the land of Israel so their patriotism is then superimposed on their real homeland their original homeland so there's various levels of that that I hear again and again but what I just do find is such a fascination and attraction to Israel and many Hispanics and Latinos in the u.s. some say between 1 & 4 1 & 6 have Jewish ancestry and it's becoming a big movement in the u.s. there are disease is that just your regular Hispanic Latinos in the US have they go to a doctor and sometimes they do testing and the doctor says though do you have Jewish ancestry and they say no what are you talking about so well this disease is very specific to Jewish populations so that's another way a lot of people especially in the Izone know American geography so much the new New Mexico by the way people don't know there was actually an Inquisition in New Mexico one of the first governors was was imprison under the Inquisition he was carvajal there's actually traveling exhibition that was in New York and around the country talking about that shows he wrote a diary while he was in prison and talked about how he kept Judaism in prison and this was one of the first governors of New Mexico and it's a faster than the more I learn about this the more I realize how our history is intertwined the Hispanic and Latino people have very strong Jewish roots and Jewish people always have strong Jewish latino/hispanic as I said 90 percent of us lived in now being Peninsula we kept a very Hispanic Latino culture of food today by the way our community especially you know we still sing prayers in Spanish judeo-spanish our tunes are very hispanic/latino in nature our food is very recognizable some say the flour tortilla is supposed to call corn tortilla was bought by Jews because of pests circuses have said though that we can't eat leavened bread you know chocolate they say chocolate was brought to France by the Jews fish and chicken well then I'm totally in fish and chips was brought to England by the Sephardic who loved to batter so that's how so there's a lot of it just many of the great se movements in the world many of the great movements in the Jewish people were created by the safar DIMM so it's a fascinating history and the more I learn about it the more I'm absolutely in awe and I'm especially in all of the stories that I hear I you know I I don't want to go into too many you know we you can read about some of them on our website and on our Facebook page so that was my next question a to give us the website and if you know or if it's on the website some reading material if anybody who's listening as fascinated as I am what would you recommend to be the books at least there's the starter books to find out more way to begin first of all a website is reconnect are re CE o n ec ta are Co not code or al not com Co Co and we have it in Spanish Portuguese and English we also have Facebook pages in the three languages and there's just a lot of information there you can find out all sorts of amazing stories the history also recommended readings music culture a bit of everything can people plug in let's say their own family name and find some genealogy in your site or does it direct them to someplace else to do that so anyone who has a Latino Hispanic name can go to a web site also ours is called name your roots where we have a database of 21,000 names you put in a name like Gonzalez or Paris or Garcia or whatever it is Lopez and it will basically tell you where your name comes from if it is indicative of Jewish ancestry and it will give you sometimes hundreds of books where you can find your name and its connection to the Jewish people and also famous people with your same name from the Jewish world and where that name comes form etc etc so I put in my name obviously Perez and that's just a wealth of information there so that's a great place to look for bibliographies there's also DNA testing there's quite a few different companies of interview Harold Road who's very into the genealogy as well that you can send off and at least get a mapping of your DNA I would recommend I think the only DNA company today that actually tells you have a Sephardic ancestry most of the others can tell if you have Jewish ancestry if you want to know Sephardic or Ashkenazi or where your family comes from his family tree DNA that's the one that he's involved with that's the one that I did my family through as well so any uh I mean we could sit and talk for hours any last things that you want to say to my listeners I have listeners who are Jews and I've listeners who are not Jews but maybe now are thinking oh maybe something here like maybe there's fewer things that divide us than we thought absolutely first of all if you think you have Jewish ancestry please get in touch with us if you want to reconnect in some way please get in touch with us and I also do ask the Jewish world really to create circles of awareness about this and we're gonna need to hold out our hands and reconnect to these people we need as many people as possible to understand this phenomena to welcome these people because they're knocking on doors every single day literal physical doors where this rabbis JCC's federations they're creating their own organizations and a lot of the Jewish world but like I don't understand who are you what's your story I don't understand who you are so we just need what we're doing at the moment is just creating greater awareness and I think that's the most important thing at this point it's just welcome these people if you see them search for them look for them look out for them help them in any way and that's what we're going to be doing with reconnect our I just think you know there's so many Jews now that we know of that are intermarrying that are just leaving their judaism aren't interested it's like getting a treasure and throwing it away and here you have people who are tenaciously trying to reconnect to that and to get back to that so it's such a interesting time that we are living in right now absolutely it really is we had just simply have not had these opportunities for 500 plus is and thankfully today we have these opportunities and we dare not waste them and maybe the internet was created just for this who knows Ashley Perry Paris thank you so much for this fascinating interview and I recommend all of you whether you think you have Jewish ancestry or not to look into this because who knows what's gonna be I mean as he says this could really be a game-changer in so many ways so take care of your Betty Eve hair Oh rejuvenation on the land divisional network you can write to me Eve at the Land of Israel calm and thanks to Ben and Tabitha and everybody at the station for for making this possible for me every single week take care everybody goodbye for now [Music] you