(JTA) — Portugal has approved about a third of approximately 33,000 applications for citizenship under its 2015 law for descendants of Sephardic Jews, according to official data. Applications based on the 2015 law, primarily from Israel, Turkey, Brazil and Venezuela, are behind a 10-percent increase in applications in 2018, which saw 41,324 such requests in…
(JTA) — A Portugal government committee has approved the creation of a Memorial Day for the Victims of the Inquisition. The inquisition was formally established in Portugal in 1536. The date of the memorial day will be held on or around March 31, the official end of the Inquisition in 1821. Reconectar, the movement to…
We don’t know how exactly many Jews were forced out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella’s cruel Edict of Expulsion in 1492, but conservative estimates put the number of refugees somewhere between 100,000 and 160,000. We climbed the northern mountains to escape into Navarre, and from there we took to the sea, hoping to find…
(JTA) — Nearly 1,800 descendants of Sephardic Jews acquired the Portuguese nationality in 2017 under a law enacted two years earlier, with another 12,000 still in the application process, officials in Lisbon said. The tally for last year is six times higher than the total for 2016, during which the application of the law hit…
About 8,800 persons have applied for Portuguese citizenship since the start of a program that enables Sephardim from other countries who can prove their Jewish-Portuguese heritage to obtain nationality, and 713 have been successful in their effort. Only 1 candidate has so far been turned down. The program began in December of 2014, and applications…
Today is National Rum Day. Little-known fact: Rum has some very Jewish origins. Sure, it’s not the syrupy, cloyingly sweet atrocity known as Manischewitz. But rum, which is derived from the molasses of sugarcane, was perfected by Jews escaping another atrocity: the Inquisition. In the year 1500, Brazil was claimed by the Portuguese and many…
(JTA) — Spanish authorities dispensed with language and culture tests for elderly applicants for citizenship under the country’s law of return for Sephardi Jews. The Spanish justice ministry decided to offer the dispensation from tests on the Spanish language and heritage, which used to be necessary for all applicants for citizenship under the 2013 law,…
— One of Portugal’s Jewish communities said it was observing an increase in requests for naturalization by British Jews following the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union. About 300 British Jews who are descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews requested Portuguese nationality from the Porto Jewish Community, compared to five before the June 23…
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