522 Years Too Late - Spain is Considering Inviting the Jews Back

[edu]

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Spain-grants-right-of-dual-nationality-to-Sephardic-Jews-340839

The draft bill, which has been under discussion for several years, is significant in that it will scrap several current restrictions on Sephardic Jews seeking Spanish citizenship. Today, an applicant must fulfill a residency requirement and give up any existing citizenship. However, under the draft bill, dual citizenship will be permitted and residency will no longer be a factor. As such, Jews around the world will be able to obtain citizenship by applying at a local Spanish consulate.

“It hasn’t been passed and they are still working on the text,” Fernando Vara de Rey, the director of Institutional Relations at the Centro Sefarad-Israel in Madrid, a government body, told the Post.

Vara de Rey said the Centro Sefarad-Israel welcomed the draft bill because it was another bridge between Spain and the Jews. The granting of citizenship would be civil in nature and not based on definitions contained in Jewish law. The paperwork necessary under the new rules will range from a ketuba, a Jewish marriage contract, to family documents showing a connection to Sephardic Jewry.

According to a draft copy seen by the Post, those who can prove that they are either Sephardic or have a “special connection” to Spain regardless of religion, ideology or belief, will be eligible.

This seemingly indicates that Spain will be willing to accept the descendants of so-called Marranos, Jews who hid their identity and ostensibly accepted Christianity. Not all such crypto-Jews, as they are known, are considered Jewish by Halacha, professor Michael Corinaldi of the Center for the Study of Hidden Jews at Netanya Academic College said in a statement.

Although accurate numbers are not known, it is estimated that around 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before the “Reyes Catolicos,” the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. The law potentially allows an estimated 3.5 million residents of countries where many Sephardic Jews eventually settled, such as Israel, France, the US, Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, to apply for Spanish nationality.

In any case, halachic Jews are obligated to move to the land of Israel. However, this proposed law might make it easier to perform certain mitzvot that I won't spell out here.

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Spain-grants-right-of-dual-nationality-to-Sephardic-Jews-340839In any case, halachic Jews are obligated to move to the land of Israel. However, this proposed law might make it easier to perform certain mitzvot that I won't spell out here.

Huh?

[Rafoe]

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[Binyamin Yisrael]

What about Sfardic Jews that are not descended from actual Spanish Jews? My family is Iraqi and Iraqis are also Sfardic. Would they give me Spanish citizenship? If you have Spanish citizenship then you could have unlimited entry to Europe because of the EU. I have no interest in European citizenship. My family is from Eastern Europe from my mother's side and I have no connection to Spain or Western Europe.

Technically I could have voted in the Iraqi elections after Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein. Iraq considers Iraqi citizenship to pass from father to son. My grandparents fled Iraq in 1951. Iraqi Jews in Israel could have gone to Amman to vote by absentee ballot and Iraqi Jews in the US could have voted in the US. Obviously I don't care about Iraq. I don't speak Arabic (I don't know what language the ballots were in.). If I could vote and wanted to, I would probably vote for the Kurds. Chaim has stated that they are different from the Muslim Arabs even though are also Muslim. Maybe there are Christian Kurds also. Kurds have been denied a homeland. Bush should have made Northern Iraq into Kurdistan. Some Jews lived in Kurdistan but my family lived in Baghdad.

[White Israelite]

Thanks but no thanks, not interested.

[muman613]

This is ridiculous. The injustice which Jews experienced in Spain cannot be forgotten.

I hope no Jew is fooled by this.

[Binyamin Yisrael]

Germany lets in Jews who have no connection to Germany or even the Holocaust. That's why there are Sfardic Jews from the former USSR in Germany. There are no outreach groups in Germany to save these Jews from assimilating. Rabbis go there because they don't want Jews to suffer another Holocaust, this one spiritual, from Germany again.

Jews today have no ties to Spain from 500 years ago. There are Jews in Spain but they are recent immigrants just like Jews in England have no ties to the Jews that were expelled in 1290. They're just like Jews in the United States are immigrants. Jews can always move to Israel if they are in trouble where they are.

What would be the point of accepting Spanish citizenship if you're not going to live there anyway? Americans and Israelis can visit Europe with no visas required so what's the big benefit of having European citizenship if you don't want to live there?

[White Israelite]

It's my belief that European countries are attempting to give jews citizenship to cover something much more sinister and that is the end of Israel as a Jewish state, they know that Israel cannot fall apart physically from the outside but if they target young liberal jews with the idea they can have citizenship and live in Europe, go to school and assimilate, that Israel will not need to exist anymore.

We know that much of Europe is not friendly towards Israel.

[kahaneloyalist]

After the expulsion the Rabbis placed a 500 year ban on Jews living or in any way supporting Spain. Even though the ban has officially lapsed I dont think any Jews will be so foolish as to move back to Spain which is still a very anti-Semitic country.