Anusim

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Anusim (Hebrew: אנוסים), plural for anús, means "forced ones" in Hebrew. Regarded as a legal term by some, it is applied to a person who had once been a Jew and was forced to abandon Judaism against his or her will, but does whatever is in his or her power to continue practicing Judaism under the forced condition. It derives from the Talmudic term aberá be' ones [Talmud, Abodá Zará 54a], meaning "a forced transgression."

They are a controversial group, with some rabbis opposing their re-entry into Judaism because records of their ancestry have been lost or cannot be verified in a convincing manner, and other rabbis are more accepting of them. She‘adyá ben Maimón ibn Danan of the 18th century stated:

Indeed, when it comes to lineage, all the people of Israel are brethren. We are all the sons of one father, the rebels (reshaim) and criminals, the heretics (meshumadim) and forced ones (anusim), and the proselytes (gerim) who are attached to the house of Jacob. All these are Israelites. Even if they left God or denied Him, or violated His Law, the yoke of that Law is still upon their shoulders and will never be removed from them.[1]

The Hebrew verb concerned originally referred to any case where a person has been forced into any act against his or her will. In modern Hebrew as spoken in contemporary Israel, this verb is reserved for sexual rape.

The term is essentially a question of status based on observance of Jewish Law, and not all scholars are in agreement.

Jewish Law categorizes the status of a Jew according to his commitment to rabbinic tradition. The two most commonplace ones are: Min (apostate), for a Jew who basically denies the existence of God; and meshumad (heretic), for a Jew who does not adhere to the observance of Jewish Law.

The main difference about a min, a meshumad and an anús, is that the act of abandonment is voluntary for the first two, while for the third it is not.

The term "anusim" was first used after the forced conversion to Christianity of German Jews at the end of the 11th century CE. Rashi, a French rabbi who lived during this period, wrote about the issue in his legal opinions.

Because of the mass forced conversion of Jews in Spain and Portugal during the 14th and 15th centuries, the term became widely used by Spanish rabbis and their successors for the following 400 years.

In non-rabbinic literature, Anusim are referred to as:

The Catholic Church coined the first two, the third is more of a modern invention by historians, and the fourth is the insulting term Spanish antisemites gave to the Anusim.

The subject of Anusim has a special place in rabbinic literature. Since the act of their original abandonment was done against the Jew’s will, the Jew under force may remain a "kasher" Jew for all intents and purposes. In this sense, "kasher" being the rabbinic legal term applied to a Jew who adheres to rabbinic tradition. However, because hundreds of years have elapsed when some people claim to be descendants of "anusim" after having practiced full Christianity for all intents and purposes, it is almost impossible to determine, let alone accept the claims to full Jewish status of many of these people and Orthodox Halachic authorities would require them to undergo completely new conversions to Judaism.

All descendants of Anusim via the maternal line are literally Jews if they can prove it satisfactorily, because Jewish Law explains that the child of an Israelite woman is still an Israelite, no matter what belief system the child may hold.

From the Jewish point of view, Jews who had been forced to undergo Baptism against their will and wanted to go on being Jews continued indeed to be Jews in some sense, and so were their descendants for however many generations they continued to want to be Jews and keep Jewish rites in secret. Conversely, under Catholic doctrine as it existed at the time, Baptism was a binding and irreversible sacrament, regardless of whether it was voluntary or not; all Baptised persons were Christians, and if they kept Jewish rites in secret they were deemed heretics to Christianity. Therefore, Jews considered the inquisition, particularly the Spanish Inquisition, as a body involved in anti-Jewish persecution while the inquisitors themselves did not regard themselves at all as involved in persecution of Jews, but only of "Christian Heretics."


Contents

[edit] Further reading

  • The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades (translator: Shlomo Eidelberg}.
  • Epistles of Maimonides: Crisis and Leadership (translator: Abraham Halkin).
  • Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision.
  • José Faur, In the Shadow of History.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ R. She‘adyá ben Maimón ibn Danan (16th c.), Khemdah Genuzáh, 15b

[edit] External links