only 50 years ago, Purim was the holiest day of the year — comparable to Yom Kippur — for this island’s unique Jewish community. Persecuted for centuries during the Spanish Inquisition, the forcibly converted Jews of Mallorca had exploited their persecutors’ relative ignorance of Purim to mourn their situation and sustain their faith and culture.

“Purim wasn’t celebrated in Mallorca, it was sorrowfully observed in secret,” said Rabbi Nissan Ben-Avraham, a Mallorca native from a family of chuetas — the local name for anusim, or those who were forcibly converted to Christianity during the Inquisition.

Celebrating any of the major Jewish holidays — including Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot — would have been too risky for chuetas, a minority that for centuries had been treated with suspicion and occasionally violence. Those holidays were too well-known and featured too many distinctive customs to be practiced safely.

But Purim was obscure enough to be observed undetected, according to Ben-Avraham, who had served until two years ago as the emissary to Mallorca for Shavei Israel, a group that helps those with Jewish ancestry reconnect to Judaism.

https://www.jta.org/2019/03/12/globa...61-9575-151159