[Gocamino] Matajudios????

[deb berman]

Sorry Rosina, but Howard is right.
Reading historical documents preserved by the political forces that wrote history to suit themselves has served to produce a set of historical "facts" that really add up to little more than another inaccurate interpretation. Numbers, however, do not lie---It is well documented that over half of Spain's 200,000-300,000 Jews gave up their homes and businesses to flee the country rather than submit to baptism. 
In 13th century Sevilla alone, there were twenty-four synagogues. The cathedral in Sevilla was not only built on the site of a mosque, the minaret was repurposed during the Inquisition, long before the addition of the bell tower, to facilitate a bird's-eye observation of the populace on Friday nights, the Jewish sabbath--those families whose chimneys did not emit smoke were apprehended, accused of the "crime of Judaism," and handed over to Torquemada's henchmen. There is no doubt torture and murder were Church-approved, both before and after 1492. Representatives of the Church also brought the Inquisition to the New World, where Inquisition practices continued into the 19th century and where ridiculous medieval notions about Jews and Judaism persist even today.
For those in Spain whose ancestors were conversos, the 1492 Expulsion Decree brought even more problems, as the forces of the Inquisition continued to seek out anyone suspected of the clandestine practice of the "crime of Judaism," seizing their property (more often than not the true reason for the accusation) and putting them to death. The ideal of "one people, one kingdom, one faith" was carried out by those whose goal was to rid the country of anyone and everyone deemed a threat to Christianity and a Christian Spain. 
No matter how one interprets the queen's so-called intentions, her actions amounted to an ethnic cleansing. 
Five hundred years after these events, there exists in modern Spain an air of collective guilt as regards this epoch in history. Just as it is now a source of pride for Latin Americans to reclaim indigenous ancestry, with the new religious freedom in Spain, many Spaniards have begun to recognize and take pride in their long-hidden Jewish ancestry.
Anyone with an interest in the history of Spanish Jewry and its ties to modern Spain will want add two more books to their reading list:
The Woman Who Defied Kings, the Life and Times of Doña Gracia Nasi by Andrée Aelion Brooks    ISBN 1-55778-829-4
 and especially, 
The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot, Marranos and Other Secret Jewsby Trudi Alexy   ISBN 0-06-060340-2
Buen Camino to all, Deborah 

> From: HMe347 at aol.com
> Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 19:15:40 -0400
> To: Blaroli at aol.com; guha2005 at hotmail.com; GOCAMINO at oakapple.net; saintjames at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [Gocamino] Matajudios????
> 
> Not a surprise, Rosina is an apologist for the Inquisition and the role of 
> Isabel.   Her physician may have been Jewish, some Jewish people may have 
> had "financial" dealings with Moors (in a letter he allegedly wrote to the 
> Queen).   But does all this justify the torture, murder and expulsion of the 
> Jews from Spain?   If Isabel was not responsible for the "ethnic cleansing" of 
> the Jews from Spain, who was?   The Catholic Church?
> 
> She says that the alleged financial dealings of the Jews with the Moors 
> caused Spanish suffering for decades.   She trivializes the Jewish plight and 
> villifies the Jews as the sponsors of Moorish actions against the Spaniards. 
> Her historical viewpoint is totally baseless and biased.
> 
> Howard Mendes, NYC
> 
> 
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