In the second podcast this week,attorney Maya Weiss-Tamir, who is also an
economist and a mediator, speaks about new legislation allowing the
descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain by the Inquisition to claim
Spanish citizenship. What are the benefits of Spanish citizenship, and how
can you claim it? Find out more by listening to this week’s Goldstein on
Gelt Show.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Spanish Muslims urged their government to grant citizenship to descendants of Muslims who were expelled from Spain in addition to Jews.

The demand was made this week in a statement by the Association for Historical Legacy of Al-Andalus, the Spanish news agency EFE reported on Feb. 17.

“The Spanish state should grant the same rights to all those who were expelled, otherwise their decision is selective, if not racist,” Bayi Loubaris, the association’s president, told EFE.

The association named several families currently residing in North Africa as candidates for receiving Spanish citizenship.

Several other prominent Muslims and legal experts accused the Spanish government of pursuing a double standard following the approval on Feb. 10 of a bill proposing to naturalize descendants of Sephardic Jews, which the governments said was to atone for the expulsions 500 years ago.

Submitted by Spain’s Justice Minister, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, the bill is expected to go up to a vote in Spanish congress this year. Portugal already passed a law granting citizenship to descendants last year and its interior ministry is currently drafting regulations ahead of the law’s application, according to Portuguese lawmakers who submitted the bill.

The Jews were persecuted in Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition which the Catholic Church and royal houses of both countries led against non-Christians in the 15th and 16th centuries.

“Recognition of the Sephardic community is symbolic, necessary and just. The same applies to those who have kept their Andalus-Moorish identity in exile,” Manuel Antonio Rodríguez, a professor of law at the University of Cordoba, told the El Confidencial daily on Sunday.

In 2006, the United Left party in the parliament of the autonomous Spanish region of Andalusia submitted a bill which proposed recognizing the rights of descendants of Muslims who were expelled but the bill never made it to a vote.

Portuguese lawmakers who drafted the country’s law on Sephardic Jews rejected calls to naturalize the descendants of Muslims who were expelled, citing the fact that the expulsion of the Muslims was part of a war to end the occupation of Spain by North African invaders.

“Persecution of Jews was just that, while what happened with the Arabs was part of a conflict,” Jose Ribeiro e Castro, a Spanish lawmaker who drafted Portugal’s law of return, said. ”There’s no basis for comparison.”

Spain’s ruling Popular Party (PP) has submitted a draft law that could grant citizenship to descendants of Jews expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. The possibility of the bill was first announced last year by Spanish Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon. If the law is ratified, eligible Jews won’t have to relinquish their current nationalities to become naturalized Spanish citizens.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu presented  Pope Francis Monday with a copy of the book “The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain,” a Tel Aviv scholarly publication of some of the worst things the Catholic Church has done to Jews.

The book was written by the Prime Minister’s late father Benzion, who wrote of the Spanish Inquisition, when the church persecuted, and often executed, masses of Jewish converts to Catholicism who were accused of secretly practicing Judaism.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and the pope met for approximately 30 minutes, and Sarah Netanyahu encouraged him to fulfill his promise to visit Israel.

Dear “Esther”,

At the outset, allow me to say how profoundly sorry I am that (part of) my response to your first letter caused you additional suffering. Your clarification in last week’s column of your earlier correspondence (Chronicles 5-16) sheds somewhat of a different light on the devastation that you’ve been made to endure for all of these long years.

Though we are taught to do teshuvah every day of our life here on earth, we are also admonished to serve Hashem with happiness and to believe that He is a merciful Father eager to forgive our wrongdoings. Having suffered so unbearably, for so long, you must surely believe that G-d has forgiven you for the foolishness of your youth and that your ocean of tears has by now more than wiped your slate clean.

Forgiving (yourself) does not have to mean forgetting. Though you never got to communicate to Aaron in this world how much you care for him, reciting a verse of Tehillim or giving tzedakah l’iluy nishmas is an act of tremendous chesed and of immeasurable benefit for his neshamah.

Getting back to your letter, who of us could possibly begin to fathom your pain? No reader could have been left untouched by your heartbreaking portrayal of how your children were taken from you.

You say your babies were too young to have retained any memory of you. Today, however, they are adults and should have, by now, been apprised of their true parentage for their own physical and spiritual wellness; physical – for genetic accuracy in case of medical urgencies, and spiritual – because a Jew in his/her lifetime is always referred to by mention of his/her mother’s given name, as for example, “Yitzchak ben Sarah” (exceptions: when called up to the Torah; in a kesubah). Moreover, one’s mother’s name is not ever interchangeable.

Such revelation, if not, heretofore, made known, becomes obligatory before the child is escorted to the chuppah. Yes, your sons could have been lied to with any number of fabrications to effectively cancel any motivation to find you.

Yet there is good reason for you to let emptiness and bitterness give way to hope and optimism – hope of being reunited with the children you carried under your heart and of whom you were so cruelly dispossessed. Presumably there were other people involved, if only as onlookers, and someone out there knows the truth – that the children you gave birth to were taken from you against your will under extenuating circumstances.

Even if your ex brainwashed everyone around him to believe that you were truly insane and incapacitated as a mother, there is still hope. For now that you have finally allowed your oppressive pain to seep out, your story is being read by countless people globally. Anyone recalling an incident similar to the one you have described will alert someone else and so on.

It is well documented that adopted children generally grow up with an innate curiosity about their roots. That craving is even more prevalent among our people and many have left no stone unturned in trying to unearth details of their birthmother. G-d has instilled in the human heart of a parent a special bond to his/her child and in the heart of a child a special feeling for his/her parent − a kesher not easily broken.

During the Spanish Inquisition, when Jews were tortured and burnt alive if discovered practicing their religion, there were those who succumbed to coercion and converted in order to avoid heinous persecution. One particular Jewish youngster joined a monastery and grew up to be a most vicious member of the clergy who sent many Jewish souls to the stake to be burnt alive.

An elderly Jew caught observing his religion was once brought before this rasha who, to his consternation, found himself literally unable to convict the old man. The words simply would not come out of his mouth. After repeated attempts to pronounce a death sentence came to naught, he took the Jewish man to a private room and questioned him about whether he had ever lost a child. When the Jew confirmed that he had, a description of a birthmark proved them to be father and son. The son was so shaken by this episode that he escaped shortly thereafter and did teshuvah.

The first step you must take is to stop castigating yourself. If you will succeed in freeing yourself of the guilt that has been eating at you, you will be able to stand a little straighter, believe in yourself a little more and subsequently realize that the torment you’ve undergone has cleansed you of the transgression you so readily confess to. (Even Gehennom, a “purifying” process, is limited to a year’s duration.)

You end your letter by expressing a sense of relief at having released a bit of your onerous load. Why not consider penning a manuscript of your story (a project that can reap benefits beyond expectations)? Besides serving as a catharsis for your overburdened heart, it would be a bestseller and possibly lead to a reunion with your children.

Ask any male or female who tragically never knew his/her mother, due to tragedy, what they wouldn’t give to be acquainted up close with the woman he or she shares an eternal bond with. (Keep in mind that your children’s father was able to maneuver their direction in life for only as long as they were minors under his care.)

Time not only heals . . . it also alters many things. It’s time, Esther, for you to recognize that you, too, have grown. You have become a better and wiser person who is deserving of the finer things that life has to offer.

If only we could abolish the ugliness of hatred in our hearts and learn to replace intolerance with compassion, benevolence and understanding, the sadness of Tisha B’Av would soon be replaced with a day of rejoicing. If only.