Crypto-Judaism

Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews" (origin from Greek kryptos - κρυπτός, 'hidden'). The term crypto-Jew is also used to describe descendants of Jews who maintain some Jewish traditions of their ancestors while publicly adhering to other faiths.

The term is especially applied historically to European Jews who—outwardly or forcedly—professed Catholicism, who were also known as Anusim or Marrano. The phenomenon is especially associated with renaissance Spain, following the June 6, 1391, Anti-Jewish pogroms and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 unless they converted. Later under its Blood Purity Laws, Spain restricted explorers and settlers in the New World to "Old Christians" of three generations or more.

Officially, Jews who converted in Spain in the 14th and 15th centuries were known as Cristianos Nuevos (New Christians), but were commonly called conversos. Spain and Portugal passed legislation restricting their rights in the mother countries and colonies; only Christians were allowed to go to the New World. Despite the dangers of the Inquisition, many conversos continued to secretly and discreetly practice Jewish rituals.

After the Alhambra decree of 1492 numerous conversos, also called Xueta (also Chueta), in the Balearic Islands ruled by Spain, publicly professed Roman Catholicism but privately adhered to Judaism, even through the Spanish Inquisition. They are among the most widely known and documented crypto-Jews.

In Greece, "Romaniote Jews" have been present for a little more than two thousand years. Greek Jews played an important role in the early development of Christianity, and became a source of education and commerce for the Byzantine Empire and throughout the period of Ottoman Greece. During World War II, their community suffered devastation in the Holocaust after Greece was conquered and occupied by the Axis powers, in spite of efforts by Greeks to protect them. In the aftermath of the war, a large percentage of the surviving community emigrated to Israel or the United States. Greek Jews today largely "live side by side in harmony" with Christian Greeks, according to Giorgo Romaio of the Jewish Museum of Greece. They continue to work with other Greeks, and Jews worldwide, to combat the anti-Semitism in Greece.

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