OXNARD : Exhibit Shows Jews’ Latin Migration

In its first major exhibition, the Oxnard Library will host a traveling retrospective examining 500 years of Jewish life in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Scheduled to start today, the exhibition will track the migration of Jews to Latin America and the Caribbean islands 500 years ago, when they were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition.

Multiple copies of the display have been traveling to museums, universities, community centers and synagogues throughout North and South America, said Mary Jo Christina, an Oxnard Library spokeswoman.

The Oxnard exhibit, which continues through Aug. 8, is the display’s only Southern California stop, she said.

Using photographic reproductions of artifacts, documents and pictures on 20 large panels, the display also covers the expansion of the Jewish communities and culture into Latin American life through today.

The retrospective will give the public a chance to learn about a little-known branch of Jewish settlement, said Rabbi Morton M. Rosenthal, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Jarkow Institute for Latin America. The institute is sponsoring the exhibition.

About 200,000 Jews were driven out of Spain and migrated to South America during the Inquisition, Christina said. The Spaniards felt they were purifying their culture and their Catholic faith, she said.

“People were given the options of converting to Catholicism, leaving or being executed,” Christina said.

Other mass migrations of Jews to Latin America occurred in the 1890s and during both World Wars, Christina said. Today, a half-million people of Jewish faith live there, she said.