Crypto-Judaism
Crypto-Judaism is the secretive adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith. Practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
The term is especially applied historically to Spanish and Portuguese Jews who outwardly professed Catholicism, also known as Conversos, Marranos, or the Anusim. The phenomenon is especially associated with medieval Spain, following the Massacre of 1391 and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. After 1492 in Spain and 1497 in Portugal, officially they
no longer existed. The Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition were established to monitor converted Jews and Muslims and their descendants for their continued adherence to Christian faith and practice, with severe penalties for those convicted of secretly continuing to practice their original beliefs. This would have involved the Inquisition paying close attention to the households of suspected converted Jews, since most of the families still practicing Judaism would have done so through the food. Information about secretly observant Jews largely survives in Inquisition cases against individuals.
Spain
Officially, Jews who converted in Spain during the 14th and 15th centuries were known as Cristianos Nuevos but were commonly called conversos. Spain and Portugal issued edicts restricting their rights in the mother countries of Spain and Portugal and Spanish and Portuguese overseas territories in the Americas.Although only Cristianos Viejos who could prove limpieza de sangre descended from Christian Iberian European ancestry only, without "tainting" of any Jewish ancestry or Muslim Berber/Arab ancestry, were allowed to officially migrate to the New World Spanish possessions, many Christian conversos with Jewish antecedents went to the Spanish possessions, using forged limpieza de sangre documents, or they entered the Spanish possessions via Portuguese Brazil, particularly 1580–1640 when Spain and Portugal were ruled by the same monarch. The entry requirements to the Portuguese colony of Brazil were more lax and also less rigorously enforced.
Despite the dangers of the Spanish Inquisition in Iberia and the Inquisitions established in Mexico City; Lima, Peru; and Cartagena de Indias in what is now Colombia, many conversos continued to secretly and discreetly practice Jewish rituals in the home.
After the Alhambra decree of March 1492, which mandated conversion to Christianity or exile for Jews, numerous conversos, also called Xueta in the Balearic Islands ruled by Spain, publicly professed Roman Catholicism but privately adhered to Judaism, even throughout the Spanish Inquisition.
Before the Spanish Inquisition
According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, several incidents of forced conversions happened prior to 1492 and outside of Iberia. One of the earliest conversions happened a century after the Fall of Rome and was in Clermont-Ferrand. After a member of the Jewish community in Clermont-Ferrand became a Jewish Christian and was persecuted by other members of the community for doing so, the cavalcade in which he was marching persecuted his persecutors in turn:The participants in the procession then made an attack "which destroyed completely, razing it to the grounds." Subsequently, Bishop *Avitus directed a letter to the Jews in which he disclaimed the use of compulsion to make them adopt Christianity, but announced at the end of the missive: "Therefore if ye be ready to believe as I do, be one flock with us, and I shall be your pastor; but if ye be not ready, depart from this place." The community hesitated for three days before making a decision. Finally the majority, some 500, accepted Christianity. The Christians in Clermont greeted the event with rejoicing: "Candles were lit, the lamps shone, the whole city radiated with the light of the snow-white flock". The Jews who preferred exile left for *Marseilles. The poet Venantius Fortunatus composed a poem to commemorate the occasion. In 582 the Frankish king Chilperic compelled numerous Jews to adopt Christianity. Again the anusim were not wholehearted in their conversion, for "some of them, cleansed in body but not in heart, denied God, and returned to their ancient perfidy, so that they were seen keeping the Sabbath, as well as Sunday".
The Clermont-Ferrand conversions preceded the first forced conversions in Iberia by 40 years. Forced baptisms of Jews took place in Iberia in 616 at the insistence of Visigoth monarch Sisibut:
Persistent attempts to enforce conversion were made in the seventh century by the Visigoths in Spain after they had adopted the Roman Catholic faith. Comparatively mild legal measures were followed by the harsh edict issued by King Sisibut in 616, ordering the compulsory baptism of all Jews. After conversion, however, the anusim evidently maintained their Jewish cohesion and religious life. It was undoubtedly this problem that continued to occupy Spanish sovereigns at the successive Councils of Toledo representing both the ecclesiastical and secular authorities...Thus, steps were taken to secure that the children of converts had a Christian religious education as well as to prevent the older generation from continuing to observe the Jewish rites or from failing to observe the Catholic ones. A system of strict supervision by the clergy over the way of life and movements of the anusim was imposed...
Portugal
In 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal decreed the expulsion of Jews from the kingdom, though many were forced to convert to Christianity rather than leave. In 1536, the Portuguese Inquisition was established with the explicit purpose of persecuting those suspected of secretly adhering to Jewish customs. Some Jews continued practicing their faith secretly for centuries. For example, converted Jews ate a sausage made of poultry or game, known as Alheira, to attempt to hide the practice of not eating pork.The "Belmonte Jews" of Portugal, dating from the 12th century, maintained strong secret traditions for centuries. A whole community survived in secrecy by maintaining a tradition of endogamous marriage and hiding all external signs of their faith. They and their practices were discovered only in the 20th century. Their rich Sephardic tradition of crypto-Judaism is unique. Some now profess Orthodox Judaism, although many still retain their centuries-old traditions.
In 2006, a Torah scroll, thought to have been used in secret during the Portuguese Inquisition, was discovered by a builder while demolishing a house in Covilhã, a town in central Portugal, near a 16th-century church that had been frequented by New Christians.
Rest of Europe
Neofiti
The Neofiti were a group of crypto-Jews living in the Kingdom of Sicily, which included all of Southern Italy from the 13th to the 16th centuries.Susiti
The ancestral line Süß, Süßkind and Lindauer was a crypto-Jewish susitic ancestral line that settled in the Holy Roman Empire and lived as Catholic or Protestant crypto-Jews. Secondary lineages of the Lindauer are: Lindauere, Lindouer, Lindaer, Linduaer, Lindeaur, Lindeauer, Lindhauer, Linndauer, Lindayer as well as Lindaurr. There are some modern Susiti living in the United States, with two verified families: one in Mariah Hill, Indiana and another in Mid-Coast Maine. Susiti rituals from the Protestant tradition, as practiced by the Susiti in Maine, are similar to those of the Karaites and mainly consist of readings from the Psalms and Hebrew Scriptures. The prayers typically involve stepping three steps backward and then forward while reciting Psalm 84:5, followed by Psalm 3 in the morning and Psalm 4 in the evening then the Shema This is then followed by a full repetition of Psalm 145 and the which is called the “Holy Prayer” from the prayers conclude with a repetition of “Who is like You?”, the Song of Anna, Psalm 60, and Psalm 137, every prayer concludes with "Selah" due to the literal reading of the end of each Psalm and the false pretense that it was an equivalent to Amen.Middle East and North Africa
There have been several communities of crypto-Jews in Muslim lands. The ancestors of the Daggatuns in Morocco are thought to have kept up their Jewish practices a long time after their nominal adoption of Islam. In Iran, a large community of crypto-Jews lived in Mashhad, near Khorassan, where they were known as "Jedid al-Islam"; they were mass-converted to Islam around 1839 after the Allahdad events. Most of this community left for Israel in 1946. Some converted to Islam and remained in Iran.India
In 1494, after the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas, authorized by Pope Alexander VI, Portugal was given the right to found colonies in the Eastern Hemisphere. In his lecture at the Library of Congress, Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Chair in Social Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles, explains that crypto-Jews were especially attracted to India because not only was it a center of trade, but India had established ancient Jewish settlements along its Western coast. The presence of these communities meant that crypto-Jews, who had been forced to accept Catholicism but did not want to emigrate to tolerant countries, could operate within the Portuguese Empire with the full freedom of Catholic subjects but away from the Inquisition while collaborating with existing Jewish communities to hide their true beliefs.The presence of crypto-Jews in Goa angered the Archbishop of Goa, Dom Gaspar Jorge de Leão Pereira, and other Europeans like Francis Xavier who wrote polemics and letters to Lisbon urging that the Inquisition be brought to Goa. Crypto-Jews presented a security threat to the Kingdom of Portugal, because Sephardic Jews had an established reputation in Iberia for joining forces with Moors to overthrow Christian rulers. The Goan Inquisition commenced in 1560 and ended in 1812. It targeted crypto-Jews, crypto-Muslims, and crypto-Hindus. Of the 1,582 persons convicted between 1560 and 1623, 45.2% were convicted for offenses related to Judaism and Islam. A compilation of the auto-da-fé statistics of the Goa Inquisition reveal that a total of 57 persons were burnt in the flesh and 64 in effigy. All the burnt were convicted as relapsed heretics or for sodomy.