Thread by @JoshuaZeidner

Aside from theories about Puerto Ricans descending from Sephardic Jews why do they always seem to get along? I think that they have similar ideas about racial identity. They obviously believe in heredity but aren't so focused on superficial qualities. They look alike as well.

An interesting fact about Puerto Ricans. A woman does not necessarily give up her last name when she gets married. Often the children will inherit both the mother's name and the father's name. That's somewhat comparable to Judaism in that it's matrilineal.

That's a tradition that actually dates to Andalusia Spain. And that is another name for medieval Jewish Spain at that time 1/3 or more of Spanish people were Jewish. They were not a very small minority like today. The Inquisition had a dramatic effect on Spanish culture.

So how many of the Spanish who came to the new world we're Jewish? Probably much much more than believed because we inherit the history from the church. And according to the church those people were Christians and their Jewish background was entirely erased.

Some say the number is anywhere from half of Latin American mestizo people have Jewish Heritage and I believe it's true. Recently in fact the Spanish government started offering Spanish citizenship to anyone who can prove they were Sephardic Jews.

It just goes to show that times have changed and even Spain is starting to fess up to how much of a gigantic tragedy the Inquisition actually was. It was roughly 500 years ago. It was much worse than the Holocaust of World War II. People were openly tortured.

"Nearly a quarter of the Latin Americans shared 5 percent or more of their ancestry with people living in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, including self-identified Sephardic Jews."

theatlantic.com/science/archiv…