Secret Jews of Spain and Portugal

* I read with interest “Renewing Jewish Heritage” (Sept. 20). We have just returned from a trip to Portugal and Spain with a study group on Jewish heritage and were fortunate to have been invited to a Sabbath service in Belmonte, Portugal, of Jews who now practice their Judaism openly after surviving nearly 500 years as secret Jews.

We also visited Girona, Spain, where the local government is discovering archives about the Jewish population before what they refer to as “the expulsion.” They are subsidizing studies and discovering all sorts of information. Local people are coming to them suggesting they have converso Jewish ancestors. The whole world is Jewish!

LILLIAN BELINFANTE

HERZBERG

San Diego

* The article quotes folklorist Judith Neulander of Indiana University as stating that Latinos claiming crypto-Jewish origins do it as a “prestige claim.” That may well be a reason for some Latinos doing so, but Neulander’s “one size fits all” theory flies in the face of history and numerous genealogical investigations. I know several Latinos with Jewish genealogies, and none of these individuals fit the mold Neulander describes. For that reason, I find her unfounded theory very offensive.

EDUARDO MORGA

Huntington Beach

* Scholars come and scholars go, but you have chosen to repeat old slanders. “Tens of thousands of Jews” were not killed by the Spanish Inquisition. According to the best book in English, “The Spanish Inquisition” by Henry Kamen, “During the 16th and 17th centuries fewer than three people a year were executed by the Inquisition in the whole of the Spanish monarchy . . .; certainly a lower rate than in any provincial court of justice in Spain or anywhere else in Europe.”

NORMAN RAVITCH

Professor of History

UC Riverside