Toni

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An American, landed in Majorca five years ago, soon found work for himself, to revive The Mediterranean island to convert the Jewish Community with The Help of families forced from Judaism to Christianity 500 Years ago.

When Dani Rotstein arrival in Palma in 2014, he was in the planning only a short break from the crowds and chaos of New York City. But to stay when he fell in love with a Catalan woman he decided; the couple married in may 2017. Dani was very happy, But something was missing. If Mallorca was to find His permanent home, he needed a Jewish Community - and Mallorca, The Jews were burned, exiled, or forcibly converted to the way, during the Spanish Inquisition .

"I went literally on Mallorca, I thought I would never says someone Jewish, or All Jewish" Dani.

By the time he married, he already knew that there was Jewish life in Mallorca. There was a Synagogue , yet, though he came to life prayers for the Friday evening, And Then fought to have the required 10 men.

Jewish families on The Island were only Shabbat rarely together for dinners and other Jewish holidays. It was hard for Dani to imagine, by His Family under conditions so different from those of His own New Jersey childhood. So he began the search for solutions.

Around the same time, Toni Pinya the other article was on a trip In contrast to Dani, a life-long Jew new on Mallorca, Toni was a lifelong Majorcan new to Judaism .

Toni is a Chueta, a of about 20,000 descendants of Jews forcibly converted during the Inquisition. Like most of the Chuetas, Toni Christian grew up, But even though His Family had been Catholic for generations, locals treated him differently - to be a Chueta family names him apart. His classmates teased him and made fun of His heritage. "If a girl is a Chueta, your parents would say," he's the man who killed Jesus Christ were so far'," he says.

at The age of 12, Toni the religion was, as a whole. But in middle age he grew interested in exploring His Jewish Roots .

Toni Pinya holding Dani's baby son, Oren, left, As Dani in the living in Mallorca, he began to learn about its hidden Jewish history. He had never heard of the Chuetas, even though His mother taught Jewish education. "I don't take it personally," he says. "I'm like, 'How didThe Island or Spain for that matter?'"/p>The first attack on Palma , the Jewish Quarter in 1391, killed between 100 and 300 Jews. Later, as the Inquisition gained momentum, the majority of the Jewish Majorcan converted under duress, although many continue to Judaism , practicing In Secret .

hundreds have been tortured to convert and killed, during the 1400 and 1500. To flee at 37 Jews who tried to stay with the boat in 1688, they were captured. After three years of torture, the inquisitors three alive, and killed in 1691, burning at the stake. You put a list of the family names, to see the monastery of Santo Domingo for All (which remained until 1820). Their descendants became known as the Chuetas - from the Catalan word for Bacon .

is The port in Palma to be discovered in The Last century, in addition to learning about the Chuetas, Dani, that the existing Jewish Community was broken in Mallorca. Over The Years , the control of the Synagogue , the hands had changed. British expats were Orthodox Jews, And Then to Sephardic Jews, each with their own style of prayer. Under the praying Sephardim and Ashkenazi, Orthodox and Reform, with their different traditions. There was no consensus to count on prayers to solve the participation of women, or The Role of the school in the Organisation of social events - and no rabbi voltages. People attended weekly services, But that was it.

Dani also learned that not long before Palma , you had a half a day Limud - a Jewish learning conference open to All , includes religion, culture and tradition. He thought more of them might be what Majorca needs. He contacted event organizer, Karen cook husband with a proposal: how do you feel the need to bring together on to put on a full, weekend-long event with him in the year 2018, in order All , Chuetas contain? "I said, 'We are also Limud do,'" Dani says. "We have made it easy, somehow, somehow. "

So Mallorca's diverse Jewish Community came together for a weekend. And A Number of Chuetas told their stories, including Toni , who spoke about His own unusual journey to Judaism .

The Church of St. Eulalia in Palma , said to have been of the family of Jewish converts As a professional chef, Toni , the learning, the story enjoys behind the things that he cooks. He can trace the origins of the popular Mallorcan dishes back to the eras of Roman and Moorish rule on The Island Since there is evidence to suggest that The Jews in Mallorca as early as the Fourth century, he knew that Jewish food has to have inventory, also. But as he went in search of these recipes, which he failed for. "It was nothing," he says. "Everything has been deleted. "

to understand His quest, Jewish Cuisine led him to the Torah, and he was surprised to find that some of His grandmother's cooking habits - the distinctive way they killed animals, fat to their avoidance of pig meat or pig, and The Words that you have spoken about some of the food before Eating - All the traditional rules of cooking to be found in the Torah and other religious texts. He believes that His Family had kept to keeping those traditions alive for the generations, with no memory of where they came from.

Toni , left, and Dani, don't make challah, This was the case in All of the Chueta families. Some have not only pig meat is cooked, But cooked it outside, so that everybody to see. It was one of many ways, you have worked hard to converted to prove their devotion to Christianity, even centuries after their families had. Some opened their Windows wide, as it is performed in-house work on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. In Catalan, the sentence "work on Saturday" is an idiomatic way of referring to the house work, which some theorize its origin in this practice. Toni 's own family showed its commitment rarely a service is missing in The Church . "When I was growing up, I was so tired of this," he says, "not in the mood, to prove constantly. "

Spain has developed after the death in 1975 of dictator Francisco Gen Franco, foreign tourists began flocking to Mallorca. In Time , the Roots of German and British Jews, have collected money and established a Synagogue - closely watched by some of the Chuetas. "It aroused their curiosity," says Toni .

He was one of them. Finally, he joined about a dozen other Chuetas in The Return to Judaism , and formally converted in Israel in the year 2013. He went back to it five years later to marry another Chueta convert, Francisca Maria Oliver Valls under a traditional wedding canopy, a chuppah, in the West Bank town of Migdal Oz.

Dani felt strongly that the Chuetas should be accepted as a part of The Island with the wider Jewish family, even if you are not practicing Jews. Others were not so sure.

Palma Mont Zion Church was once a Synagogue Converted Chuetas like Toni have always been supporters of the Palma Synagogue , and some of The Most devout Jews on The Island . But how far the Synagogue those who have not yet converted to welcome an issue to polarize the continue. A respected Israeli Orthodox Rabbi ruled in 2011 that All of the Chuetas were Jews, because of their Family History ; a side-effect of The Years of discrimination, the marriages with non-Chuetas remained rare. But some of the attentive Mallorca Jews feel uncomfortable counting Chuetas, which is not officially converted to their minyan - the minimum number of 10 Jewish men needed to pray.

"It's a big culture-shock, I think," says Karen. "Because in the UK or in Germany or in Israel, you are interested don' T have people who pop out of nowhere, are like, 'Oh yeah, my great-great-grandfather is Jewish, and now, out of The Blue , I am. "

Dani, right, and Toni (in chef's jacket) celebrates Hanukkah with other members of the Jewish Community , But The Return of the Chuetas are Jewish, some friction within the Chueta Community itself.

Like others in His Community , Toni was raised, His background to himself. Always open to a Jew, he moved to direct the attention to His heritage, and some of the thoughts, increases The Risk of the Chueta, to carry prejudices, the main burden of anti-Semitism, anti-Chueta.

It is not so far-fetched idea. In the 1970s, Chuetas, which is in the possession of the jewelry shops along the Carrer de l'Argenteria in Palma , also known as jeweler's row found swastikas painted on their shop Windows, according to a local television station broadcast, a series about The Holocaust . Even today, children "Chueta" as an insult meaning "stingy" (a common anti-Semitic trope). And it is no secret that anti-Semitism is on The Rise in Europe.

judaism, long reads, majorca, anti-semitism, spain

Source of news: bbc.com