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      Fundamentally Freund
      by Michael Freund
      An alternative approach to Israeli political commentary.
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      Michael Freund is Founder and Chairman of Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), which reaches out and assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people. He writes a syndicated column and feature stories for the Jerusalem Post. Previously, he served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning in the Israeli Prime Minister´s Office under former premier Benjamin Netanyahu. A native of New York, he holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He has lived in Israel for the past decade.

      Iyar 26, 5765, 6/4/2005

      Road Trip


      I am off to Portugal, where Shavei Israel (the organization I head) is convening a special seminar for Bnai Anousim (people whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism during the time of the Inquisition). To read more about it, check out the story below.

      I will try to continue posting while I am away, so keep on checking back for more. But in case I don't, or can't, I will make sure to resume late next week.

      http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=news&id=79705

      Arutz-7 Israel National News
      Crypto-Jews to Convene, Recall Forgotten Jewish Hero Wednesday, April 6, 2005 / 26 Adar 5765

      Close to 100 descendants of Spanish and Portuguese crypto-Jews will gather this weekend in northern Portugal for a seminar being organized by the Jerusalem-based Shavei Israel organization.

      Shavei Israel reaches out and assists “lost Jews” seeking to return to the Jewish people. Some of those helped by the organization, such as the B’nei Menashe, trace their roots back to the lost tribes of Israel, whereas others, such as those attending this weekend’s conference, are the descendents of Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism but retained certain Jewish traditions in secret and passed them on to their children.

      The three-day seminar, entitled “The Challenges of Jewish Belief in a Post-Modern World”, will be held in the coastal city of Oporto, and will include rabbis, professors and authors from Israel, Spain and Portugal.

      Bbasto2 The gathering will be dedicated to the memory of Portuguese Captain Arthur Barros Basto, a decorated World War I hero from a crypto-Jewish family who returned to Judaism and then launched an outreach movement to encourage other “hidden Jews” to do the same.

      In addition to starting a Jewish newspaper and a yeshiva (Torah study center), Capt. Barros Basto opened Oporto’s only synagogue, which is where the Shavei Israel seminar in his memory is being held. Eventually, however, his activities ran afoul of Portuguese government and church authorities, and he was driven out of the military on trumped-up charges in the early 1940s.

      Historians have dubbed him the “Portuguese Dreyfus”, after French General Staff officer Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew who was wrongly accused and convicted of treason in 1894 due to anti-Semitism.

      “Captain Barros Basto was a Jewish hero whose only transgression was that he sought to restore the Bnei Anousim [Hebrew for people whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism during the time of the Inquisition] to Judaism,” said Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund. “He was a man of action and vision, and it is only fitting that we pay homage to his memory by convening a seminar for Bnei Anousim in the very same synagogue that he was responsible for having built.”

      Freund noted that for the past two years, Shavei Israel has been waging a public campaign to get the government of Portugal to posthumously clear Capt. Barros Basto’s name as well as issue a formal apology for what was done to him. As a result of these efforts, letters have been sent by US Congressmen and various Jewish organizations to Portuguese officials, but they have thus far refused to reopen his case.