Nadene Goldfoot
Columbia is making the news with Columbians being connected to the assassination of the Haitian President. Since we Jews are only 0.02% of the world population and are scattered all over, I set about to see if any were in Haiti. I didn't find any there, but did in Columbia.
Naturally, Marranos (people from 1492 who were forcedly baptized in order to remain in Spain and Portugal), settled there in Barranquilla and Calai early in the 16th Century, but were eliminated by the Spanish Inquisition active by 1492. New Christians", or Marranos, fled the Iberian peninsula to escape persecution and seek religious freedom during the 16th and 17th centuries. It is estimated that some reached northern areas of Colombia, which at the time was known as New Granada. Most if not all of these people assimilated into Colombian society. Some continue to practice Jewish rituals as family traditions.
In 1636, a huge group of Marranos were caught and put to death. There was still a small group of secret Jews after this massacre, but they slowly diminished. There are no practicing Jews left from this time period in Colombia.The first wave of practicing Jews came from Jamaica and .
In the 18th century, practicing Spanish and Portuguese Jews came from Jamaica and Curaçao, where they had flourished under English and Dutch rule. These Jews started practicing their religion openly in Colombia at the end of the 18th century, although it was not officially legal to do so, given the established Catholic Church. After independence, Judaism was recognized as a legal religion. The government granted the Jews land for a cemetery.
Some Jews returned in the middle of the 19th Century, but came in number only after World War I of 1917 when immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe, Palestine and during the Nazi period in the 1930s from Germany. During the early part of the 20th century, numerous Sephardic Jewish immigrants came from Greece, Turkey, North Africa and Syria. Shortly after, Jewish immigrants began to arrive from Eastern Europe. A wave of Ashkenazi immigrants came after the rise of Nazism in 1933 and the imposition of anti-Semitic laws and practices, followed by as many as 17,000 German Jews. From 1939 until the end of World War II, immigration was put to a halt by anti-immigrant feelings in the country and restrictions on immigration from Germany.
Jewish immigration was forbidden in 1939 when a Hitler invaded Poland and WWII really started, so there was a German connection going on in Columbia. Colombia asked Germans who were on the U.S. blacklist to leave and allowed Jewish refugees in the country illegally to stay. After World War II, another 350 Jews entered Colombia.
President Laureano Gómez actively supported and helped the Jewish Community through this troubling time. The Jewish population increased dramatically in the 1950s and 1960s, and institutions such as synagogues, schools and social clubs were established throughout the largest cities in the country. Rabbi Eliezer Roitblatt was the first rabbi to arrive in Colombia in 1946, and served as its first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi. In the 1950s, a Sephardic Jewish community originating in particular from Syria, Turkey and Egypt was created with Rabbi David Sharbani serving as the Sephardic Chief Rabbi.
A wave of kidnappings during the last decade of the 20th century led some members of Colombia's Jewish community to emigrate. Most settled in Miami and other parts of the United States. Successes in the nation's Democratic Security Policy has encouraged citizens to return; it has drastically reduced violence in the rural areas and criminality rates in urban areas, as well as in spurring the economy. The situation in Colombia has improved to the extent that many Venezuelan Jews are now seeking refuge in Colombia.
Most of the Jews live in Bogota, Cali, Barranquilla, and Medelin. In 1990 the Jewish population numbered 7,000. Very few Jews practice religious observance; among those who do, the majority are Orthodox. German Jewish communities in Bogota and Cali also preserve much of their traditions. In the new millennium, after years of study, a group of Colombians with Jewish ancestry formally converted to Judaism in order to be accepted as Jews according to the halakha. There are 4 Chabad Jewish Centers in Columbia.
Hundreds of years ago, on the Iberian Peninsula, Jews converted to Christianity to cloak their real identities. The Inquisition was at the height of its fury. They were known as Marranos, today called the Anusim, and some eventually made their way to Colombia, a country not known for its Jewish culture. The most recent census shows that Around 4,500-5500 Jews live in Colombia, according to a recent census carried out by the CCJC and the JOINT most of them concentrated in the capital, Bogota. Smaller communities exist in Cali, Barranquilla and Medellin. There have been Jews present in the territory of modern-day Colombia since the Spanish period but it took until the end of the 18th century before Jews began to practice their religion openly. It is a primarily secular community but there is little intermarriage. The community is represented by the Confederación de Comunidades Judías de Colombia (CCJC), the Colombian affiliate of the World Jewish Congress.
They were committed evangelicals, devoted to Jesus Christ. But what some In Colombia called a spark, an inescapable pull of their ancestors, led them in a different direction, to Judaism. There were the grandparents who wouldn't eat pork, the fragments of a Jewish tongue from medieval Spain that spiced up the language, and puzzling family rituals such as the lighting of candles on Friday nights.
So, after a spiritual journey that began a decade ago, dozens of families that had once belonged to a fire-and-brimstone church became Jews, converting with the help of rabbis from Miami and Jerusalem. Though unusual in one of the most Catholic of nations, the small community in Bello joined a worldwide movement in which the descendants of Jews forced from Spain more than 500 years ago are discovering and embracing their Jewish heritage.
"These people, the Anusim, would inevitably flee to those locations," says Michael Freund, who directs Shavei Israel, a group in Jerusalem that helps hidden Jewish communities. "They were usually among the first to do so, in an effort to get as far away from the Inquisition as possible."
The history of Colombia includes the settlements and society by indigenous peoples, most notably, the Muisca Confederation, Quimbaya Civilization, and Tairona Chiefdoms.
The Spanish arrived in 1499 and initiated a period of annexation and colonization, most noteworthy being Spanish conquest of the Muisca; ultimately creating the Viceroyalty of New Granada, with its capital at Bogotá. Independence from Spain was won in 1819, but by 1830 the "Gran Colombia."
In 1863 the name of the Republic was changed officially to "United States of Colombia", and in 1886 the country adopted its present name: "Republic of Colombia".
Resource;
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Colombia
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/colombia-virtual-jewish-history-tour
https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/CO
https://www.timesofisrael.com/study-finds-widespread-traces-of-sephardic-genes-in-latin-america/
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