Coming Soon — JHA Portugal 2026: Sefarad, History, Memory & the Converso Legacy
JHA presents Sefarad: History, Memory & the Converso Legacy—a unique educational event in Portugal combining an international symposium with immersive Sephardic heritage tours.
Part III explores how Sephardic exile, forced conversion, and migration shaped early American ideas of religious liberty. Marking the Revolution’s 250th anniversary, this session connects Sephardic resilience and memory to enduring constitutional principles of freedom and faith.
Part II: Join us as we continue exploring how the Sephardic “Portuguese Nation” in Amsterdam and the Ottoman Empire built thriving commercial and legal cultures. Discover how trade, self-governance, and halakha shaped Jewish communal life and legal thought in the early modern era.
Join us for a three-part series tracing how the Sephardic Jewish journey—from exile and forced conversion to global trade and constitutional ideals—shaped Jewish law and modern legal thought. From the Iberian Peninsula to early America, we explore themes of identity, resilience, and justice with leading scholars and historians.
Explore the intertwined histories of African enslavement and the American Jewish experience. Through the lives of key figures, community stories, and enduring legacies, this program invites reflection on race, identity, and faith in shaping America—past and present.
Explore the remarkable story of the Portuguese converso diaspora in the New World. Discover how descendants of forcibly converted Jews built global networks, preserved their heritage, and navigated the transatlantic slave trade amid complex legal, social, and historical forces.
Journey through medieval Iberia and witness the resilience of Jewish communities. From ancient teachings to slavery, persecution, and forced conversion, uncover stories of survival and strength that shaped Jewish history and identity.
Discover 500 years of Brazil’s Jewish history and how Brazil’s early discovery was closely associated with the Jews who were forced to convert during Medieval times in the Iberian Peninsula (Conversos). Their descendants living in Brazil now number over 50 million people.
This event will explore the challenges faced by Jewish communities throughout history – including persecution and massacres in antiquity to the dramatic surge in global antisemitism following the October 7 attacks on Israel.
Holocaust awareness is usually associated with Ashkenazi Jews. This event will discuss the little-known fact that the Shoah also devastated Sefardic Jewry, descendants of Iberian Jews who survived massacres, forced conversions, expulsion, and Inquisition.
In 1791, the Bill of Rights – the first 10 Amendments – officially became part of the United States Constitution. The First Amendment enshrined liberty of conscience in America’s nascent governing framework.
Holocaust awareness is usually associated with Ashkenazi Jews. This event will discuss the little-known fact that the Shoah also devastated Sefardic Jewry, descendants of Iberian Jews who survived massacres, forced conversions, expulsion, and Inquisition.
In this webinar, we will learn the incredible stories of Porto’s Jewish history, from medieval times to the present, and the extraordinary roles played by two men whose names have largely gone unnoticed in Jewish and world history. Join JHA for what is sure to be a stirring and engaging online program.
Holocaust awareness is usually associated with Ashkenazi Jews. This event will discuss the little-known fact that the Shoah also devastated Sefardic Jewry, descendants of Iberian Jews who survived massacres, forced conversions, expulsion, and Inquisition.
In this webinar, we will learn the incredible stories of Porto’s Jewish history, from medieval times to the present, and the extraordinary roles played by two men whose names have largely gone unnoticed in Jewish and world history. Join JHA for what is sure to be a stirring and engaging online program.
On December 18, 2022, the world ushers in Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. This holiday commemorates the stunning military victory of the Maccabees over Syrian Greek rule in 164 B.C.E; it also celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem, and most notably, the restoration of religious freedom.
“SEFARAD: Jews in Early America; From Inquisition to Freedom” explores the role of Jews in the development of religious liberty in America from the arrival of the earliest community of Jews in 1654 through the end of the 18th century. This period witnessed arrival of Sefardic Jews and their settlement in port cities along the Eastern Seaboard of North America.
Luis de Carvajal the Younger is a symbol of the Mexican and American Southwest Jewish past. His autobiography is perhaps the most significant artifact documenting the arrival of Jews in the New World: a small, tattered 16th-century manuscript written in an almost microscopic hand by Luis de Carvajal the Younger, the man whose life and pain it chronicled.
On March 24, 2022, the Bernard Museum at New York’s Temple Emanu El Streicker Center will debut the “Crossroads of Sefarad, In the Footsteps of the Crypto-Jews” mobile exhibit created by ANU – Museum of the Jewish People in partnership with the Jewish Heritage Alliance.
On March 27, 2022, Jewish Heritage Alliance, their co-sponsor, and co-hosting partners presented “The Golden Age of Sefarad and the Abraham Accords”, a special global online event which celebrates and connects the growing rapprochement between Israel and Arab countries taking place today, with the medieval Golden Age of Spain.
On Feb 20, 2022, Jewish Heritage Alliance and their participating co-hosting partners presented “Sefarad: Hiding in Plain Sight”, a webinar that explores the fascinating story of Italy’s Bnei Anusim (crypto-Jews), from the Middle Ages to present day. Watch guest speaker Rabbi Barbara Aiello present directly her mountain village in Calabria in Southern Italy.
On January 30, 2022, Jewish Heritage Alliance and their participating co-hosting partners presented “Sefarad: Hidden Legacies Uncovered”, a webinar that will explore the unfolding drama endured by the crypto-Jews, those that were forced to convert to Catholicism during years of persecution and massacres.
During this webinar we explore the torturous, painstaking decisions facing the Jews of Sefarad upon the 1492 Edict of Expulsion announcement and the ensuing fate of 150,000 Jews and 25 generations of their descendants, both the openly practicing Sephardic Jews around the Mediterranean, and the conversos/crypto-Jews in the Americas.
On October 31, 2021, Jewish Heritage Alliance and their participating co-hosting partners resume the Women of Sefarad Series presenting “Heroines”, an event celebrating the courage and determination of the Women of Sefarad who played a unique and special role during Medieval and Early Modern times.
This segment will deliver the amazing journey of resilience, survival, and redemption, as we walk in the shadows of Crypto-Jews (Jews that were forcibly converted but tried to hold on to the Jewish tradition in secret) who lived their lives in mortal danger of the Inquisition. This webinar shows how conversos, despite incredible obstacles, strove to remain faithful over centuries to their ancestral legacy.
This webinar will examine the Iberian Inquisition and its relentless pursuit of Crypto-Judaism for three and a half centuries on five continents, reshaping the world of Sefarad. The Inquisition is infamous for its tortures and persecution. In Spain and Portugal, this powerful tribunal sought out to uncover he act of “Judaizing” by the Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity.
Jewish Heritage Alliance and their co-hosting partners invite you to attend a three-part series exploring the saga of Sefarad. The Sefarad experience is more than merely recounting a history; this is a far-reaching segment of Jewish and world history spanning centuries with profound consequences still unfolding in present day.
You are invited to attend a three-part series exploring the converso and Latino connection to Israel. This compelling story of the Sephardic experience begins hundreds of years ago with the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. This was a profound period of persecution, massacred and forced conversions (conversos); but also, a time of hope, survival, and redemption.
On May 23, 2021 Jewish Heritage Alliance joined Jewish National Fund USA to deliver the second in a three-part series exploring the converso and Latino connection to Israel. During this presentation we presented three special guests sharing a similar destiny. They were all born Catholic, but they each embraced their Jewish Heritage differently.
On May 2, 2021 Jewish Heritage Alliance and their co-hosting partners hosted the “Interiority and Hope” webinar, the third event of a multi-part educational webinar series celebrating the courage and determination of the Women of Sefarad who played a unique and special role during Medieval and Early Modern times.
