Announcement: Exploring the Izmir, Turkey Census

Part of two of the pages of the register Waas discovered in the Ottoman Archives. This portion of the reggister was badly damaged and partly illegible.

Co-founder Michael Waas will be speaking on March 7, 2024 at 2 pm EST as part of the JewishGen Talk’s series about a discovery he made last year working in the Ottoman Archives: a surviving register from the first formal census of Ottoman Izmir in 1830s that contained a surprise: surnames of the Jewish community!

Read more about the lecture here and register for it. It is free with a suggested donation. This talk will be the first of many to come in Waas’s new capacity as a volunteer Associate Director of the Sephardic Research Division of JewishGen.

People are People

By Michael Waas

In the world of history and genealogy we are relying on bits and pieces of paper once living memory ends and the shrouded mists of time begin. British author L. P. Hartley (1953) famously wrote in the opening to his novel The Go-Between, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Hartley’s melancholy is a metaphor for how the past feels just beyond reach the further and further we traverse time. For me, genealogy in particular serves to give context and nuance to history, allowing me to follow characters in a story as they navigate the world around them. Sometimes, these characters have left an incredible wealth of materials for us to see how they maneuvered through their world. Oftentimes, though, we are left with but pieces and scraps, a mention here, a signature there, and have to methodically piece the puzzle back together again. 

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The past is never a straight line as living memory fades and documents remain. Photo by Ricardo Frantz on Unsplash.

This is the story of a man, a Portuguese Jew living in Amsterdam who left only a fleeting trace on the world other than his bones buried in the Portuguese Jewish Beth Ahaim (House of Life) at Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, just outside of Amsterdam. There is almost nothing known about this man beyond an epitaph and a few ephemeral documents. Yet the precious few clues that remain tell a rather remarkable story of just how similar our world today is to the one he once inhabited in the 17th century.

People are people.

On March 29, 1662, a 70-year old man named Abraham Vaes testified in Amsterdam in front of notary Hector Friesma. Alongside him also appeared 26-year old Eliau de Liaõ and 23-year old Eliza Israel. All three were testifying about a certain incident they had witnessed in the “op Vloijenburgh” (the Vlooienburg island, where the early Jewish community was centered in Amsterdam. In the 19th century, it was connected to the neighboring island, where the Portuguese Synagogue is today). But who was Abraham Vaes?

(Before I continue with the story, I must give you the disclaimer that the name is spelled multiple different ways, depending on who was recording it, but it’s all the same name. So you will see Vaes, Vas, and Vaz in this and all of them are correct.)

The signature of Abraham Vaes to the left and Eliau de Liaõ to the right.

Searching the deep archives of the Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam, there is almost nothing recorded about this man. Yet, drawing from the financial registers of the community we can begin to draw a picture. On the 9th of Heshvan 5418 (October 16, 1657), the community recorded which people in the community received peat for the coming winter, and the amount that they received.

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Beginning of the sedaca list. You can see to the left the religious leaders of the community at the time, Haham Saul Levi Morteira and Haham Isaac Aboab. This is page 241 of Manual (5413- 5436), a financial register of the community.

At the beginning of this list are religious leaders and teachers of the community, receiving this portion of their salary. After them are the poor members of the community in need of Sedaca (charity). The list is in alphabetical order and can be quite helpful when trying to track individuals and families. At the end of the list, are all of the new people admitted to sedaca, including an “Ab[raham] Vas o velho”. In Portuguese, o velho means “the older”. 

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Two pages later, on page 243, we see Ab Vas o velho for the first time. He is three rows from the bottom.

This is significant because that means that there was another man named Abraham Vas in the community who was younger. The Portuguese community added descriptors such as name of the father, age indicators, and sometimes even a descriptor like o cego "(the blind) to differentiate between people within the community with the same name. And in another story for another day, I will discuss Abraham Vas “the younger”.

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Page 250 of the same manual.

From this point on, we see Abraham Vas o velho on the various sedaca registers in the community until his death. The first time that Abraham Vas o velho received portions of massot from the community was the 11th Veadar (Adar II) 5418 (March 16, 1658). He received 8 portions, indicating he was the only member of his household, with no wife or children.

The last time that Abraham Vas o velho appears in the sedaca registers is in another volume, known as the Livro Longo. His name has been crossed out and he is no longer receiving sedaca from the community.

Page 246 of the Livro Longo for ~1663-1670

It appears that our Abraham must have died a short time later. The last mention of him is his epitaph in the Portuguese Jewish cemetery. David Henriques de Castro, an absolutely fascinating character in his own right, took it upon himself to uncover the sunken tombs of the cemetery, record and map their locations, and document their epitaphs for posterity.

Found on page 151 of his Henriques de Castro’s first register (Kartons 1-20).

The epitaph reads:

Sᵃ

do honrado velho

Abraham Vaes

que faleceo em

2 de Tamus de

5428

Grave

of the honored elder

Abraham Vaes

who died on

2 of Tamus of

5428

So now we understand that our Abraham Vaes was born around 1592 according to his testimony and that he died on June 11, 1668. He may or may not have had a family, but by the time we meet him, he is an old man and living on communal support. Like many Portuguese Jews at the time, it is rather likely that he was born in Portugal or Spain before escaping northward and returning to Judaism. He may have even been related to one of the other Vaz families in Amsterdam at that time. Whatever his precise origins were, we may never know.

People are people.

On March 29, 1662, Vaes and the two other witnesses testified about a fight they witnessed on the street between two Portuguese Jews. One was a certain Abraham da Souza Mendes. Vaes and the other two witnesses all testify that they did not see him draw a knife during the fight with Isaac Baruch.

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Folio 62 and 63 of Friesma’s inventory 3072.

Did I mention that people are people?

---

Translation provided by our friend and colleague of Sephardic Genealogy, Ton Tielen.

Folio 62

Today, 29th of the month of March of the year 1662 appeared before me Hector Friesma, public notary appointed by the Court of Holland residing in Amsterdam and the witnesses to be named hereafter, Abraham Vaz, circa 70 years old, Eliau de Liaõ circa 26 years old and Eliza Israel, circa 23 years old, all living in this said city, attested, witnessed and declared at the request of Abraham da Sousa Mendes with true Christian words and according to their conscience instead of a solemn oath – which they promise to follow up with a sworn oath to be the sincere truth when invited first the said Vaz and Liaõ, that the said witnesses on the twenty first February of this running year, were present at and saw that on Vloyenburgh the appellant was in a fight with Isaac Baruch, which the witnesses saw until the end, but did not notice nor heard that the appellant drew a knife or had one on him the reason they know this is that the said Vaz arrived with the said appellant and the said Eliau had been sick and – from his window – had seen it all happen. Signed by Abraham Vaz, Eliau de Liaõ. 

Folio 63

And the said Eliza Israel declares that the witness saw the said appellant and the said Baruch came out of the said house on Vloyenburgh and that as long as the fight took place, the witness was present, the appellant drew no knife and the witness noticed no action of the appellant that (betrayed that) the appellant had a knife on him, with which he, witness, finally sustained that this is the truth. Done in this City of Amsterdam in the presence of the witnesses Barent Hermans and Hendrick Everts this is the mark put by Eliza Israels declaring that he could not write.  Signed by B. H. Appeldoorne and H. Everts

New Christians, the Inquisition, and Genealogy

by Michael Waas

1492.

It was the eve of the onset of modernity. The old elementary school ditty,

“In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”

belies the enormity of this date not only for the native peoples of the Americas as the beginning of their genocide at the hands of European Colonial powers, but also the end of open Jewish and Muslim life in Iberia as they knew.

For the parents and grandparents of surgeon Gregório Lopes, this date would also be one of life-changing consequences. This article tells the story of Gregório, his wife Catarina, and their two daughters Helena and Beatriz. Gregório, who was born around 1521 in the first or second generation after 1492, would be tried just over a century later in the Inquisition Court of Lisboa, along with both Helena and Beatriz. Catarina would be tried in the Inquisition Court of Evora (a photo of which is right below). But context and background are needed to fully understand their story.

So, I invite you to come along and join me for this journey into the past.

The building where the Court of the Inquisition sat in Evora, Portugal. Photo taken by the author in June 2018.

1492 is an easy date to assign as the beginning of the Inquisition and the terror of the auto-da-fé (burning at the stake for heresy) because it ties in nicely with Columbus departing on his journey to the New World and with the Expulsion from Spain, and leaves our tale nice and neat with a bow on top. Like most easy dates in history, this is not the case.

1492 marks the Alhambra Decree and the formal expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from the newly unified and created Spain. The Inquisition in Spain began 14 years before in 1478 to ensure doctrinal uniformity of a new Catholic Spanish national identity. 101 years prior to 1492, persecution of the Jews in Iberia began in earnest with increasing numbers of converso families, many of whom were forcibly converted under threat of death. These conversos were treated with suspicion by many as not true Catholics and hounded as heretics.

Plaza Mayor in Madrid, where many auto-da-fés were held. Photo taken by the author in August 2019.

Most of the Jewish population of Spain fled with the Expulsion in 1492. Some went to North Africa, some went to the Levant, some went to the rising Ottoman Empire, and some went to the city-states of the Italian Peninsula. However, many went across the border into Portugal. Gregório’s parents and grandparents likely may have been amongst these refugees, crossing the border from Spain into Portugal. 

The sea journey was dangerous and replete with rumors and news of pirates kidnapping Jewish refugees and holding them for a king’s ransom, or even selling them into slavery. Many of the Jews in newly unified Spain, instead, went to Portugal, believing that while times were difficult, the Alhambra Decree would soon be rescinded. Maria José Pimenta Ferro Tavares in their authoritative work, Os Judeus em Portugal No Seculo XV (The Jews in Portugal in the 15th Century), estimates the number of Jews in Portugal in 1496 at a maximum of 30,000 people based on the sisão poll tax collected that year. This is where our story truly begins.

In 1496, in order to marry the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, King Manuel I of Portugal had to extend the Alhambra Decree to his domain as part of the dowry agreement. King Manuel, of course, was not interested in expelling a large part of his population. Instead, he enacted the decree but forcibly baptized all of his Jewish subjects in 1496 and 1497 to Catholicism and thus, as new converts to the faith, they were not allowed to leave Portugal. In Spain, the Inquisition had already been active for almost 20 years, but a grace period had been instituted – no Inquisition was established for these new converts, now called the Cristãos Novos (the New Christians). This only formally ended with the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, 40 years later.

Because there wasn’t a formal Inquisition, there was no formal mechanism for prosecuting heretics and ensuring adherence to Catholicism. As a result, a distinct and enduring Crypto-Judaism developed among the New Christians. Furthermore, even though the forced baptism was meant to assimilate the New Christians by making them indistinguishable from the Old Christians in name, discrimination by Old Christians and preferences among New Christians to stay within trusted networks led to lasting divisions between the two communities.

In Spain and Portugal, in order to enter into society for powerful positions, usually one had to prove that one was of “Pure, undirtied Iberian blood” (Christian). The so-called limpieza de sangre (in Spanish)/limpeza de sangue (in Portuguese), required the person to testify as to their genealogy through their grandparents and show that they were neither of Muslim nor Jewish blood. These genealogies, while often true, could just as easily be falsified. In many cases, these genealogical examinations could go even deeper.

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Letter testifying about Gonçalo Mouro from Tangier.

Here are two examples of these documents, one from Portugal and one from Spain. 

The first one, from 1653, involves a Gonçalo Mouro from Tangier, testifying about his clean blood in order to join the military order, the Order of Christ. The Order of Christ was the surviving order of this little known group, you may have heard of, the Knights Templar (see Mesa da Consciência e Ordens, Habilitações para a Ordem de Cristo, Letra G, mç. 6, n.º 152 from Torre do Tombo, Portugal).

The second is a register of powers to members of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de Alcalá de Henares to carry out the Limpieza de Sangre examination and also notes on the examinees from 1601-1608 (see Archivo Histórico Nacional, Universidades, L.706). This page includes two such examinations and their listed genealogies. The genealogies have “Father….Mother…Paternal Grandparents…Maternal Grandparents...” and the applicant testifying to their “untainted” blood.

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Folios 72v, 73r of this register from the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de Alcalá de Henares of Limpieza de Sangre examinations.

However, this article is not about Old Christians and Blood Purity – it’s about the fact that genealogy was not only used as a tool of entrance into high society and opportunities, but as a tool to persecute “to the ends of the Earth”. While everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition, did you know that it was, in fact, the Portuguese Inquisition that was the most brutal and targeted the Jews/New Christians the most? 

As part of an Inquisitorial prosecution, most defendants had to testify to their genealogy to the best of their knowledge. And so we return to the surgeon Gregório Lopes, his wife Catarina Lopes and their two daughters, Helena Lopes and Beatriz Lopes da Silveira. All four were imprisoned by the Inquisition, Catarina (in 1587 in the court of Evora, where she died in prison), Gregório (1594-1597 in the court of Lisboa), Helena (1593-1597 in court of Lisboa), and Beatriz (1594-1597 in court of Lisboa). Each of the files except for Catarina’s are available for full reading. 

Folio 41r, Processo de Gregório Lopes. See the end of this article for an example transcription of this page.

Gregório was born in the first or second generation after the forced conversion in Portugal. According to his processo, he was born in Beja around 1521 to Manuel Afonso “o Grande” and Helena Lopes, both New Christians. At the age of 10, with a brother Henrique Lopes, he began to study to become a surgeon. At 15, together with Henrique and a Martim Rebello, they went to Lisboa to continue their studies. By the age of 19 he obtained the office of surgeon and moved to Evora and at 25, he left Evora for Beja. This is a family of surgeons; his daughters Helena and Beatriz both married surgeons. The processos of all three mentioned relatives who also are surgeons, but were unclear how they fit on the basis of reading just the genealogy section of the processo. In addition, in the typical naming pattern of Portuguese and Sephardic Jews, the daughters of Gregório and Catarina are named first for each of their mothers.

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Tree created by the author on the basis of Gregório’s, Beatriz’s, and Helena’s processos. The notation “xn/xv” (New Christian/Old Christian) was added to the spouses of known. In the processos, the wife of Diogo Manuel, Catarina Goncalves, was unclear whether she was Old or New Christian. Beatriz and Helena disagreed about which maternal aunt was married to Luis Mendes and which was unmarried. Duarte Dias em Beja and Manuel Lopes, sirgueiro, were mentioned as relatives but currently unable to tie them to the tree.

When researching Sephardic history and genealogy in the Inquisition Courts, these genealogical interrogations can be enlightening, helping to build out a fuller picture of the ways these families networked and, in some cases, can show varying levels of integration with Old Christian families. My own ancestry has examples of this, a da Veiga family from Montemor-o-Velho near Coimbra, that was either wholly or mostly of Old Christian ancestry, that married with New Christians in the city of Viseu. In part 2 of this article, I will explore tracing one such family from various sources, using Inquisition, parish, notary, and Jewish communal archives to showcase what is possible with careful research.

Transcription of F. 41r, Processo de Gregório Lopes

1: de a dizer. Perguntado he cuidou em

2: suas culpas como nesta mesa lhe foi mandado

3: e se as quer acabar de confessar pera com-

4: isso ser tratado com misericordia. Disse 

5: q[ue] si cuidou e q[ue] naõ he de mais lembrado 

6: e logue lhe forão feitas as perguntas

7: seguintes de sua genealogia perguntado

8: como a nome de q[ue] idade e nação he donde

9: natural e ao presente m[orad]or e as mais pergun-

10: tas gerais. Disse que elle se chama Grego-

11: rio Lopes de idade de setenta e quatro anos

12: naceo em Beja na rua davis freguesia

13: de Sancta Naria, e q[ue] morava agora na

14: granja termo desta cidade en casa de

15: Josea chanoca e ahi o prenderão e que 

16: não tem avos né avoos e q[ue] seu pai

17: se chamava Manoel Afonso o grande xrão

18: novo q[ue] fazia mantas e sua mai se

19: chamava Helena Lopes xrã nova q[ue]

20: morava na dita rua e freguesia ambos

21: defunctos e q[ue] não tem tios nem tias da 

22: parte de seu pai nem de sua mai e que

23: tem alguns parentes em Beja como he

24: Duarte Dias q[ue] tem irmaõs e alguns filhos

25: e Manoel Lopes cirgueiro, e q[ue] tem

On Sephardic Surnames

By Michael Waas

When Spain and Portugal approved their “Right of Return Citizenship” laws in 2015 for descendants of the Jews expelled in 1492 from Spain, who converted to Catholicism in the preceding century beginning with the persecutions in 1391, or who were forcibly baptized in 1496 and 1497 by rule of the Portuguese King Manuel I, interest in Sephardic genealogy grew. Many people, interested in the possibility of an EU passport, started to ask questions about if they were eligible or not by looking into their genealogies. Along came a list that purported to be an authoritative register of all Sephardic surnames, claiming that anyone who had a name on this list would be automatically eligible for Spanish citizenship through this pathway. 

Photo of the old town of Vinhais, Portugal, a place where many Sephardic Jews lived after being forcibly baptized. One of the famous Amsterdam, Livorno, and London families that came from there was the Lousada family and all of their branches. Photo taken by the author in June 2019.

Problem solved, right? “Was my ancestor Sephardic?” could be answered by this expert list, stating conclusively that your family’s surname had belonged to known Sephardic communities.

However, there was one slight issue: that list was fraudulent and a poor copy of indexing work done by the late Harry Stein, who didn’t claim that all of the surnames he indexed were belonging to Sephardic families; just that the books he consulted on Sephardic genealogy and history, had some kind of reference to the surname. Furthermore, not all of the surnames he indexed even belonged to Jews or were in exclusive use by Jews.

In genealogy, history, anthropology, and archaeology, it is always critical to ask questions of the sources you are reading, even if it is a primary source.

Unfortunately, because of lists like that, myths perpetuated by heritage tourism (“Jews forced to convert took the names of fruit trees, Catholic themes, and plants in order to ‘hide’” being one such popular legend routinely sold by tour guides and books in Spain and Portugal), and, quite frankly, inadequate teaching about the history of Sephardic Jewry, a lot of confusion exists today about Sephardic genealogy and history. With this series on Sephardic genealogy and history, I hope to shed some light and encourage people to ask questions about the past in order to better understand the present and future.

A Pear tree, which in Portuguese is “Pereira”. According to the legends, a sure sign of hidden Sephardic Jewish ancestry. In reality? Just a pear tree with hopefully delicious fruit. Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

So, what is a ‘Sephardic surname’? To put it simply, it is any surname used by someone in the Sephardic community. For the purposes of this series, I will be using the term Sephardic, exclusively meaning those with a genealogical tie to expulsees and conversos/New Christians, as well as those who joined later on. This does not necessarily include other Jewish populations who follow Sephardic traditions and approaches to Jewish law and identify as Sephardim/pan-Sephardim as well, who do not have a genealogical connection.

Unlike most other Jewish communities, surnames have a longstanding usage and tradition amongst Sephardic Jews. In the Iberian peninsula, surnames began being used in the 10th century CE, reaching popular usage by the 15th century. Jews in the Peninsula, like Catholics and Muslims, took to this new tradition readily and thus, the tradition of familial surnames predated the end of Iberian Jewry. Famous surnames like Abarbanel, Benveniste, Zacuto, ibn Yahya, and Palache could be found amongst Iberian Jews in the centuries preceding the persecutions, Expulsion, and forced conversion.

So, to return to the original question, “What is a Sephardic Surname?”

There are two main categories of surnames:

Pre-Expulsion Surnames

These surnames could be toponyms (names related to the place), Arabic names, occupations, Hebrew names, and more. Some pre-expulsion surnames include:

Abarbanel, Abensur, Aboab, Almosnino, Alsheikh, Altaras, Amarillo, Barzilay, Benaroya, Benatar, Benbassat, Bendalec, Ben Ghiat, Bensousan, Benveniste, Faraggi, Franco, Haleva, Herrera, Marcos, Nahmias, Palache, Pardo, Pesso, Policar, Saporta, Saltiel, Senior, Sion, Toledano, Valensi, Zacuto

A tax receipt from 1388 of Samuel Amarillo of Tudela from the archives of the Kingdom of Navarre (thanks to Maria Jose Surribas for sharing it). The Amarillo family after the Expulsion and forced conversion, mainly settled in Salonika, where they produced important rabbis and leaders of the community. The author is a descendant of a branch of this family, including the Hahamim Shelomo Amarillo, Moshe Hayim Amarillo, and Shem Tov Amarillo, all of whom were Chief Rabbis (Shelomo and his son Moshe Hayim in Salonika, Shem Tov in Korfu and Larissa, all today in Greece).

New Christian Surnames

These surnames were given to Jews who were forcibly baptized to become New Christians in Portugal, otherwise known as Conversos in Spain. The acquisition of surnames was simple: They were the baptismal surname of the Old Christian godparents of the Jews in 1496 and 1497. This was done in order to assimilate the New Christians and make them indistinguishable from the Old Christians. In practice, this was not really done at all, and through stigma and discrimination New Christians remained a community apart. Some examples of surnames include:

da Costa, da Fonseca, da Veiga, Delgado, Fernandes, Gomes, Henriques, Nunes, Lopes, Marques, Mendes, Pinto, Pereira, Rodrigues, Vaz…

From the Inquisition of Lisboa processo for Judaizing of Gaspar Fernandes o Gallego. In Portuguese it states “Disse que elle se chama Gaspar Frz gallego, mercador, e que christão novo de idade de sesenta e dois annos…” which means “[the Defendant"] stated that his name is Gaspar Fernandes Gallego, merchant and that he is a New Christian, aged 62 years old”. You can see the rest of his processo, here: https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=2312336

What’s important is that New Christian surnames are indistinguishable from non-Jewish, Old Christian surnames because they are the same. Furthermore, you can have innumerable combinations of names, including siblings with different surnames entirely, as long as the family names existed within the recent genealogy of the family. In my own research, I have a set of siblings born in Viseu, Portugal, and Bayonne and Bordeaux, France who moved to Amsterdam, London, Barbados, and possibly Newport, Rhode Island that have the surnames Mendes, Mendes Sereno/Serrano, and Nunes Mantensa. All the same generation!

Some examples of double surnames found among Portuguese Jews include:

Aboab da Fonseca, Franco da Costa, Franco Mendes, Gomes da Costa, Henriques Nunes, Lopes Pereira, Mendes da Costa, Mendes Seixas, Nunes Vaz, Rodrigues Pereira, Pardo Roques, Sarfaty Pina, Vaz Dias, Vaz Lopes, Vaz Nunes, Vaz Villareal

To sum it up, Sephardic surnames have a long and storied history. Many family names are ancient and have deep roots in Sephardic genealogy and history. Yet, the appearance of a surname in your genealogy that was used by a Sephardic family in the past and today is not an indication of an actual Sephardic genealogy and connection. Each case must be studied critically, understanding all of the data points including communities, oral histories, archives, and genetics. In my own family, we discovered that our surname’s origin lies not in a creation of Dutch Ashkenazim for the Napoleonic surname registration in 1811, but is actually a Dutchification of a Portuguese surname, Vaz, uncovering a previously forgotten and unknown history of a family that became Ashkenazi in the mid-18th century in Amsterdam. This story was only uncovered due to a deep study of YDNA and the archives of Amsterdam. 

If you think you have Sephardic heritage, please feel free to reach out to us and we will be happy to provide a consult and develop a plan for researching your ancestral past. For an amazing further resource on Sephardic surnames, please see the excellent Dicionário sefaradi de sobrenomes by Guilherme Faiguenboim, Paulo Valadares, and Anna Rosa Campagnano, which gives an extensive list of documented surnames of Sephardic Jews and the communities they came from across the world, including archival sources. In the next blog in this series, I will discuss more on who the New Christians were, their genealogies, and their impact on Sephardic history.