History Of The Jews In Mexico
Judaism in Mexico began in 1519 with the arrival of “Conversos” or “Crypto-Jews,” those forcibly converted to Catholicism due to the Spanish Inquisition. Over the colonial period, a number came to Mexico despite Mexican Inquisition persecutions in the late 16th and mid 17th centuries. However, most Conversos eventually assimilated into Mexican society with no immigration of practicing Jews allowed into the country until the 19th century. Religious freedom was established in the second half of that century and around that time, Jews began immigrating to Mexico from Europe and later from the crumbling Ottoman Empire and what is now Syria continuing into the first half of the 20th century.
Today, most Jews in Mexico are descendants of this immigration and still divided by ethnic origin, principally Yiddish speaking Ashkenazim and Ladino speaking Sephardim. It is an insular community with its own religious, social and cultural institutions, mostly in Mexico City. However, since the 1880s, there have been efforts to identify descendants of colonial era Conversos both in Mexico and the Southwestern United States, generally to return them to Judaism. However, this effort is controversial.
Read more about History Of The Jews In Mexico: Jewish Immigrant Communities in Mexico, Crypto-Jewish Resurgence
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history, jews and/or mexico:
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“No doubt Jews are most obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed. But I, as an Irishman, can, with patriotic relish, demonstrate the same of the English. Also of the Irish.... We all live in glass houses. Is it wise to throw stones at the Jews? Is it wise to throw stones at all?”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)