This Is Your Life



Marranos: Secret Seder in Spain during the 
Inquisition. Painting by Moshe Maimon.



You are living in Spain in the 15^th century. You are a member of a large and loving Jewish family surrounded by a close-knit community. You are preparing to celebrate Passover. But you are also preparing to celebrate Easter. The Easter services will be on Good Friday and Easter Sunday in bright daylight in the Cathedral; the Passover service will be conducted after dark in a cave.

      Why are you living a double life? Because you are a Marrano, one of a large number of Spanish Jews—over 100,000—forced to convert to Christianity to escape persecution but continuing to practice Judaism in secret.

      Marrano means “swine” in Spanish.

      Who gave you that name?

      Your Christian persecutors?

      To most Jews, the Marranos were not renegades but “forced converts” or “compelled ones” and therefore martyrs. Thousands of your fellow Jews who did not convert were massacred by mobs stirred up by fanatical priests.

      By the middle of the 1400’s the situation had quieted down and many of you held high positions in the state, the royal court, and even the Catholic Church and had intermarried with the noblest families.

      But hatred continued against you, ostensibly because of rumors that you still clung to your religion.

      Was it true?

      Whether true or false made little difference. Beginning in 1473 riots against Jews spread from city to city and in 1480 Spain introduced the Inquisition to institutionalize control over the persecution. In its first year, 300 Marranos were subjected to auto de fe, the sentence by the Inquisition to be burned at the stake, ironically called “the Act of Faith.”

      Tens of thousands died in this cruel and senseless fashion, many of your friends and relatives among them. You wept until you had no more tears. And in every case, the possessions of those who died were confiscated, enriching the crown and solidifying its power.

      As time went on, Queen Isabella elevated her personal spiritual adviser, Torquemada, to head the Inquisition. He devised the ultimate test for the Marranos: If you are genuinely converted, you will tell us about any conversos you know who still observe Judaism.

      Tell us and save your life!¹

      Finally, on March 31, 1492, an edict was issued for the total expulsion of all Jews from Spain,² to take effect in three months. You didn’t need time to prepare. You were not allowed to take anything with you but the clothes on your backs. All your money, jewels, land, household goods, belongings of every kind had to be abandoned.

      Some of your friends saved themselves by being baptized. You searched your conscience and decided to join the thousands who went into exile.

      Discussions went on long into the nights. Where to go? Some of you went to North African countries where you were welcomed by the Muslims, and some to Italy and the Ottoman Empire.

      Some went to Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World but the Inquisition followed.

      It is estimated that 2,000 died at the stake and far more were whipped, jailed, or sent to the galleys. Some were driven to emigrate yet again: the first Jews to settle in North America were religious refugees from Brazil.

      You finally decided to go to Holland and, with the help of a friendly shoemaker, smuggled out diamonds in a hollow heel to start your business again. Most were not so fortunate and arrived penniless at their new homes.

      You had to leave many Marrano friends in Spain, where they eventually died or became assimilated³ though many kept their faith in their hearts and passed on their beliefs to successive generations.

¹Shades of Joe McCarthy 500 years later.

²Portugal, where an Inquisition had been equally horrendous, followed suit in 1497.

³In the Balearic Islands, Marrano descendants known as Cheutas (swine) still persist as an isolated, stigmatized community. Some still linger in Portugal but having been cut off from Jews for so long have developed strange customs and resist traditional tenets of Judaism.

Do all the good you can.