YNET
Beginning this week, Rabbi Elisha Salas will be Shavei Israel’s new emissary to the Bnei Anousim, or crypto-Jews of North Portugal
Rabbi Salas, 53, was born in Chile and made aliyah to Israel in 1999. Salas now lives in Jerusalem and is married with four children. After graduating from Santiago University in Chile with two degrees in accounting and religious studies, Salas spent five years at the Beit Midrash Sepharadi in the Old City of Jerusalem. In addition to being an ordained rabbi, Salas is certified to practice as a "shochet" (kosher slaughterer).[...]
Beginning this week, Rabbi Elisha Salas will be Shavei Israel’s new emissary to the Bnei Anousim, or crypto-Jews of North Portugal
Rabbi Salas, 53, was born in Chile and made aliyah to Israel in 1999. Salas now lives in Jerusalem and is married with four children. After graduating from Santiago University in Chile with two degrees in accounting and religious studies, Salas spent five years at the Beit Midrash Sepharadi in the Old City of Jerusalem. In addition to being an ordained rabbi, Salas is certified to practice as a "shochet" (kosher slaughterer).[...]
This article is much ado about nothing.
ReplyDeleteRabbi Salas has been spending a good part of each year in Portugal for some time now. He gives hashgocho there on wines and food and was already Shavei Israel's point man there.
Like the story about Shavei Israel in the secularist left-wing forward, this story is that's just a pres-release is posted in the secular oriented Y-Net, with not much PR in recent months in the weekly Haredi-oriented Mishpacha magazine.
ReplyDelete"New emissary to crypto-Jews of Portugal named"
RaP: So now, people who have been Christians for 10 generations are "crypto-JEWS"? How odd. why stop there, why not count 2 billion Christians everywhere is "crypto-Jews" too, many have strong beliefs and traditions that they are descendants from all sorts of 10 tribes?
"As Shavei Israel's delegate, Rabbi Elisha Salas to teach Torah, Jewish culture and Jewish tradition to Bnei Anousim"
RaP: They are still "anousim" after voluntarily practicing Christianity and marrying Christians for 500 years?
"Beginning this week, Rabbi Elisha Salas will be Shavei Israel’s new emissary to the Bnei Anousim, or crypto-Jews of North Portugal."
RaP: Notice how the readers are being fed and re-educated about terminlogy about Bnei Anousim=crypto Jews. Like saying Jews for Jesus or Hebrew Christians are also crypto-Jews. Why not?
"Rabbi Salas, 53, was born in Chile and made aliyah to Israel in 1999. Salas now lives in Jerusalem and is married with four children."
RaP: Why can't he stay in Jerusalem?
"After graduating from Santiago University in Chile with two degrees in accounting and religious studies, Salas spent five years at the Beit Midrash Sepharadi in the Old City of Jerusalem. In addition to being an ordained rabbi, Salas is certified to practice as a "shochet" (kosher slaughterer)."
RaP: Becoming a rabbi has been a trend for people looking for second careers for a while now among the Reform and Conservatives and it's now catching in among some Orthodox people who want a person with a university-educated "professional" touch.
"As Shavei Israel's emissary in Portugal, Rabbi Salas will teach Torah, Jewish culture and Jewish tradition to Bnei Anousim (whom historians refer to by the derogatory term "Marranos"), conducting a wide range of social and educational activities in the process."
RaP: Now we know they are the good old Marranos too. Soon they will be the ultra-elite of Israel and all Halachic Jews will be required to bow to them, even in this post-Holocaust era. No longer will Holocaust survivors and their families be viewed as heroes but it will be people with scanty connections to Jews or Judaism like Marranos and Falashas who will replace them.
"The rabbi’s work will focus mainly in the Belmonte community, where a number of Bnei Anousim returned to Judaism in recent decades and now live as a traditional, thriving Jewish community."
RaP: They are now also classed as "returnees" to Judaism, like a secular Jewish baal teshuva, and as "traditional" as a Conservative Jew and living in a "thriving" Jewish community as if it was a suburb of Tel Aviv.
"Salas will also work with Bnei Anousim in other areas and towns throughout Portugal, primarily in the north."
RaP: Full-blown missionizing and proselytization.
" 'We are delighted to be sending Rabbi Elisha Salas to reach out to the Bnei Anousim of Portugal,' said Michael Freund, founder and chairman of Shavei Israel."
RaP: Ah yes, as always, a word from the master-mind of Shavei Israel and its chief propagandist who is convinced he is doing the work of Hashem.
" 'There are tens of thousands of Bnei Anousim throughout Portugal who are conscious of their special historical connection to the Jewish people. We owe it to them and to their ancestors to reach out to them, embrace them and welcome them back home.' "
RaP: He says this about any group of people that he targets for his missionizing.
"About Bnei Anousim in Portugal."
ReplyDeleteRaP: Now comes a leap of faith into FIVE centuries ago.
"In 1497, the King of Portugal presented the Jews living in his realm with a dastardly choice: convert or die. Some chose death, but most of Portuguese Jewry was dragged to the baptismal font and compelled to accept Catholicism against their will."
RaP: A tragic time and in the century or or so after this it was possible to maybe rectify things, but by now after a few more centuries of marrying gentiles and living as Catholics, they need to become full converts and follow that path if they so want, but no missionizing as that means half of Portugal could land up being "Jewish" according to Freund, and he would love that because it makes for more candidates for Aliyah to fight Arabs.
"Many of these "New Christians," however, did their utmost to remain loyal to their Jewish roots, passing down the faith and practices of their ancestors across the generations. And while many were made to pay a heavy price by the Inquisition for their continued fidelity to Judaism, many others somehow succeeded in preserving their Jewish identity."
RaP: All this is tragic but it's not to the point. The people coming forth today are doing so for very vague reasons and all this info is being super-imposed from the outside onto them by Freund and his folks at Shavei Israel to RATIONALIZE their controversial missionizing and proselytizing to those who may well be the partial ancestors of APOSTATES and ASSIMILATIONISTS.
"Perhaps the most famous example was the community of Belmonte, in northern Portugal, where some 150 Bnai Anousim were formally restored to the Jewish people two decades ago by a rabbinical court sent from Israel."
RaP: Really? Who were the rabbis and what was this "rabbinical court" doing? And is it therefore a "hechsher" for Freund to fund Shavei Israel missionaries and proselytizers to do his bidding in the face of a wall of controversy?
Since a few of Shavei Israel's newly minted rabbis have themselves been converts, see them at Shavei Israel Emissaries Program, and therefore making their work and involvement with cases of geirus AUTOMATICALLY CONTROVERSIAL IN HALACHAH -- which is what the work of Shavei Israel boils down to at the end of the halachic day, because geirim are not permitted to perform geirus and for them to encourage geirus and go all out to proselytize and missionize is highly problematic and to do so on a mass scale is even Halachically forbidden -- it is necessary to ask if Rabbi Elisha Salas is in fact a halachically born Jew or is he a beneficiary of Shavei Israel's outreach to "bnai anousim" himself?
ReplyDeleteSee Shavei Israel Emissaries Program.
An official clarification from both Shavei Israel and Rabbi Elisha Salas himself would be the right thing to do at this time.