By Any Other Name...
The Anusim/ Anousim (Hebrew: אֲנוּסִים, pronounced [anuˈsim], pluralֲ) is the Hebrew word most commonly used in Israel and among Hebrew speaking scholars to describe this unique set of Jews in ethnographic terms.
Outside of Israel the Anusim are mostly referred to as Crypto-Jews, (Latin: Crypto = hidden) in academic circles. There is no consensus among academics about which term universally applies, thus Anusim and Crypto-Jew have become synonymous.
However, when speaking about a specific regional group of Anusim, academics may use a variety of different colloquial and idiomatic terms to express historical context or to define one group of Anusim from another. For example, Anusim in 15th century Spain received the official name Conversos, while in the neighboring kingdom of Portugal they were officially called New Christians (Cristãos-novos). In both kingdoms, the diminutive slang word Marranos (a reference to "pigs") became part of the common vernacular. Today, some descendants of these Spanish and Portuguese Jews refer to themselves as Marranos, adopting the pejorative as a badge of honor, or because they are ignorant of the meaning of the term.
Many laypeople in the West use the terms Marranos, Conversos, or New Christians interchangeably without knowledge of the important distinctions, historical circumstances, or prevailing attitudes towards Jews at the time these terms were used. A rich variety of different regional terms were applied to Anusim around the world. Not all of the terms were literal pejoratives, but they all were used to identify Jews forcibly converted to a different religion and usually targets of systematic discrimination, abuses, and massacres.
Below you will find a list of the most common terms used and their regional origins. This is by no means a comprehensive list of names because around the world Crypto-Jewish communities are still being discovered, as others are disappearing.
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Allahdad
A violent riot in 1839 forced conversion against the Jews of Mashhad, Khorasan, Qajar Persia. After the forced conversion of the Mashhadi Jews to Islam, many practiced Crypto-Judaism. The incident was important in the aspect that an entire community was forced to convert, and it was one of the first times European Jewry intervened on behalf of Iranian Jews.
Ba-Saa
According to Rabbi Yisrael Oriel, formerly Bodol Ngimbus-Ngimbus, the Ba-Saa tribe of Cameroon, Africa were historically Jews in the area, and that the word "Ba-Saa" is from the Hebrew for "on a journey" and means "blessing". Rabbi Oriel claims to be a Levite descended from Moses and reportedly made aliya in 1988, and he was then apparently ordained as a rabbi by the Sephardic Chief Rabbi and appointed Rabbi to Nigerian Jews.
Bnai Ephraim
The name translates as "Children of Ephraim", which is used in Nigeria for a small subsect of the Yoruba people. The Yourba are one of the three largest ethnic groups of Nigeria, concentrated in the southwestern part of that country. Much smaller, scattered groups live in Benin and northern Togo. The Yoruba numbered more than 20 million at the turn of the 21st century. What percentage of them are from Jewish ancestry has not yet been determined by genealogists.
Beta Abraham
This community is concentrated mainly in the Northern Shewa Zone in the Amhara Region in Ethiopia. Beta Abraham means "House of Abraham" is just one or many terms by which the community has been known. Less frequent is Tebiban ("possessor of secret knowledge"), Balla Ejj (Ge'ez: "Craftsmens"), Buda (Ge'ez: "evil eye"), and Kayla (the Agaw language spoken by them) is a community regarded by some as a crypto-Jewish offshoot of the Beta Israel community. The size of the community is estimated to be somewhere upwards of 150,000 in number. The earliest reference to the Jewish community in the historical region of Shewa comes from the 14th-century missionary Zena Marqos, More Jews arrived in the region of Shewa from the regions of Fogera and Dembiya during the rule of Negasi Krestos and as a result, the first wave of Jewish immigration began in the years 1692-1702.
Blue-Hat Hui Hui
(藍帽回 in Hui Chinese) The Hui are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam distributed throughout China, mainly in the northwestern provinces of the country and the Zhongyuan region. They were often referred to by the term White Caps for Arabs, Black Caps for Persians, and Blue Caps for Jews. These names do not signify the colors of the hats actually worn, and the significance of how these names applied is not fully understood. Jews were referred to in China as Blue-Hat Hui Hui until the middle of the 19th century. Islamic mosques and Jewish synagogues at the time were denoted by the same word, Qīngzhēnsì (清真寺: Chinese for "Temple of Purity and Truth"). Also, see Tiao Jin Jiao).
Chala
An Uzbek term meaning "neither this nor that," referring to Bukharan Jews who were allegedly forcibly converted to Islam beginning in the late eighteenth century. In response, the Chala Jews outwardly practiced Islam, but secretly retained their Jewish traditions. These Crypto-Jews married among themselves and lived in their own neighborhoods that bordered on existing Jewish neighborhoods. The Chala Jews carry a very similar story to the Dönmeh and to the Conversos of Spain.
Conversos
This was the official term sanctioned by the church in Castile and Aragon, (Spain) to discern between old Christians and the newly converted Jews in 1492. Conversions would be genuine converts to Christianity or those who despite their public acceptance of Christianity, maintained some levels of secret Jewish practice at home.
Crypto-Jews
Today, this is the accepted, politically correct, ethnographic term to describe the Anusim outside of Israel. Amongst learned academics, the terms below like Conversos, Marranos, and New Christians are not used unless it is in historical context. Israel is the exception where the Hebrew "Anusim" is still the preferred expression. In contrast, some decedents of Anusim will use the diminutive "Marranos" as a badge of honor, with a strong cultural self-identity associated. This would be similar to the "N-Word" in the US that is used among decedents of African Americans in cultural terms.
Dönmeh
A group of Sabbatean Crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire converted publicly to Islam but retained their beliefs in secret. The movement was centered in Thessaloniki. The group originated during and soon after the era of Sabbatai Zevi, a 17th-century Jewish rabbi and kabbalist who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah and eventually converted to Islam under the threat of the death penalty by the Sultan Mehmed IV. After Zevi's conversion, several Jews also falsely converted to Islam and became the Dönmeh. Since the 20th century, assimilated Dönmeh have intermarried with other groups and most have assimilated into Turkish society.
Haussa
Nigerian and Mauritanian tribes in Africa called the Haussa, descended from the tribe of Issachar, who were forced to convert to Islam in the eighth and ninth centuries, and the Bamileke tribe who are largely Christian today.
Lemba
According to Lemba tradition, their male ancestors were Jews who left Judea about 2500 years ago and settled in a place called Senna which was located on the Arabian Peninsula (present-day Yemen). Much later, according to Rudo Mathivha, their oral history relates that they migrated into Northeast Africa (Ethiopia) and eventually to Zimbabwe, Malawi, and South Africa. The community numbers close to 70,000. The Lemba's religious practices are closely tied to Judaism. Their culture of religious pluralism makes it easy for many who claim an ethnic Jewish identity to openly attend a Christian Church services. A subsequent study in 2000 found that a substantial number of Lemba men carry a particular haplotype of the Y-chromosome known as the Cohen modal haplotype (CMH), as well as a haplogroup of Y-DNA Haplogroup J found among some Jews, but also in other populations across the Middle East and Arabia.The genetic studies have found no Semitic female contribution to the Lemba gene which agrees with their origin story.
Marranos
A colloquial expression for Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity in Spain and Portugal. The term has a variety of derivations. One possible is Arabic "muḥarram; meaning "forbidden, anathematized". Marrano in this context means "swine" or "pig", from the ritual prohibition against eating pork, practiced by both Jews and Muslims. However, as applied to crypto-Jews, the term Marrano may also derive from the Spanish verb "marrar" (of Germanic rather than Arabic origin) meaning "to deviate" or "to err", in the sense that they deviated from their newly adopted faith by secretly continuing to practice Judaism. A third origin has been cited from Galician-Portuguese, where marrar means "to force" and Marrano means "forced one", indicating the compulsory nature of the religious conversions.
Menashe
Also referred to as the Bnei Menashe. Their name translates as the "sons of Manasseh" and they claim descent from one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, exiled after the Assyrian Empire captured the Israelite capital of Samaria 7in 21 BCE. They believe their ancestors migrated for centuries through Central Asia and the Far East and eventually settled in India, between Burma and Bangladesh. Along the way they managed to keep many practices such as observing the Sabbath, keeping kosher, festivals celebrations and following the laws of Taharat HaMishpacha (family purity).
Mesumad
A diminutive term used by Jews for an apostate. Equivalent expressions in Hebrew that are used by rabbinical scholars include Mumar ("one who is changed"). Meshumad is a related term ("destroyed one"), and min (מין), relating to G-d and Judaism, implying atheism.
Moriscos
The name that was used for former Muslims and their descendants whom the Roman Catholic church and the Spanish Crown obliged, under threat of death, to convert to Christianity. This community was also referred to as Mudéjar, (The Changed Ones) by the 16th century. Unfortunately, xenophobic attitudes of fervent Christians, ignorant of the differences between Jews and Muslims, would erroneously lump Jews into this same category.
Neofiti
The neofiti were descendants of Jews in Southern Italy forced to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1493. They continued to secretly practice certain elements of Judaism, as did many of their descendants still residing in Italy today. In the 1490s the Spanish Inquisition ruthlessly hunted the neofiti and many were tortured and executed, especially in Sicily. Today, some descendants of neofiti in Calabria and Apulia have converted back to Judaism and revived their former Jewish congregations.
New Christians, (Cristãos-novos in Portuguese)
This was used in Portugal after 1498 when Judaism became illegal under pain of death for a quarter of a million Jews living in the kingdom. Estimates suggest that 50 to 100 thousand of them were Jewish refugees from Spain who walked into Portugal in 1492. The Inquisition did not arrive in Portugal until 1531, but for the 33 years between 1498 and 1531, Portugal's kings employed deceptive charades and managed to forcibly convert the vast majority of their Jewish population.
Pathans, (or Pashtuns)
The only people in the world whose probable descent from the lost tribes of Israel finds mention in a number of texts from the 10th century to the present day, written by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars alike, both religious as well as secularists. Neighboring peoples include the Yusufzai, which means sons of Joseph; and Afridi, thought by some to come from Ephraim.
Tiao Jin Jiao (挑筋教 in Chinese)
The historical term applied to Jews loosely throughout most of China. The term roughly translates as "the religion which removes the sinew," which is a reference to the Jewish dietary prohibition against eating the sciatic nerve (from Genesis 32:32). Other Jewish dietary law (kashruth), which forbids the eating of, among other foods, non-ruminant mammals, shellfish, and reptiles, would have most likely caused Jewish communities to stand out from the surrounding mainstream Chinese population because Chinese culture is typically very liberal of items it deems suitable for food. (Also see: Blue-Hat Hui).
Yusufzai (also see Pashtuns)
One of the largest tribes of Pashtuns. They are mostly based in northern and eastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, and parts of eastern Afghanistan, but they are also settled in large numbers in Rohilkhand, northern India Their name translates as the "The Sons of Joseph". Some customs and practices are said to be similar to Jewish traditions: lighting candles on the sabbath, refraining from eating certain foods, using a canopy during a wedding ceremony, and some similarities in garments.
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