The Sephardic chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Shlomo Amar, is among the latest group of recipients of Spanish nationality under that country’s law of return for descendants of Sephardic Jews.
The Spanish nationality is conferred on Amar Friday, according to the EFE news agency, along with 219 others. They are made Spanish nationals by a decree as per legislation that passed last year, under which descendants of Sephardic Jews with proven ties to Spain may naturalize as Spanish citizens. Over 4,300 have been awarded Spanish nationality under the law.
Rabbi Shlomo Amar, January 2013. (Uri Lenz/Flash90)
Hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Spain after 1492, when the Catholic Church and the country’s royal house instituted a campaign of persecution, forced conversion to Christianity and dispossession against Jews known as the Spanish Inquisition.
Spanish officials say they enacted a Sephardic law of return to correct that historical wrong. The legislation in Spain followed the 2013 passing of a Sephardic law of return in Portugal, where the inquisition began in 1536.
— JTA
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