Week 3: The Spanish Inquisition

Today we learned about the Spanish Inquisition. It happened from around 1480 all the way until the 1840s. It started when many Jews fled Rome, to go to North Africa, and then to Spain. Of course, Spain didn't want them any more than Greece, Rome, or North Africa. They forced them to convert to Christianity. These new converts were called conversos. The Christians did not like the conversos because they felt they were 'fake' Christians. The felt as if the only reason they had become Christian is because they were told to by gunpoint (not literally, of course). They believed that all of the new Christians still practiced Judaism. Some Jews did still practice Judaism, but not all of them. The Spaniards went to the Pope and asked him for permission to an inquisition. An inquisition is a huge questioning, in this case, on the subject matter of Religion. They killed anyone who had the slightest trace of Judaism on them. They paid neighbors, household services, and even family to spy on these conversos to find evidence of them still being a secret Jew. If all your evidence was that your brother had heard from his friend's aunt, who heard from a baker, that someone ate meat during lent, they would be arrested.

Week 2: Family roots

This week we started our family roots projects. I asked my grandmas both on my dad's side and my mom's side about when our families came to America and why. I found what both of them said was very similar. They said that although they came to America with almost nothing, they worked hard, and soon were in a better life. Both sides came around the same time period (the late 1800s). I think this is because they all were from the same area, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and that was a hard economic time for that area. The United States was just beginning to become known as a melting pot with better opportunities. They all came to the same conclusion that they needed to come here to survive the next few generations.