Spain and Portugal put an end to their Jewish community in the late 1400s, outlawing the religion and expelling all Jews, despite the fact that Jews had lived in the Iberian Peninsula long before Christianity arrived in the region. Clandestinely, though, the flame of Judaism persisted, at risk of torture and death by the inquisition. A large segment of the Jewish population, having lived for many centuries in the Iberian Peninsula, thought it wise to hunker down and wait out what they thought would be a temporary expulsion. They kept their Judaism in private and outwardly behaved as Christians. These “New Christians” often tried to escape to safer countries to enable them to practice Judaism openly. The Spanish and Portuguese governments tried to prevent this in any way possible, prohibiting New Christians from emigrating or leaving the peninsula, even on business. These New Christians, or marranos as they came to be known, would nonetheless attempt to leave clandestinely, settling in Latin America, Amsterdam, and later on in English, Germany, France and other European countries as well as North Africa.
These marranos who returned to Judaism openly were often adults, with little or no real Jewish education or knowledge. The need to integrate them in to the new communities resulted in a new phenomenon, siddurim that were completely in the vernacular, in this case the Spanish or Portuguese, of these new immigrants. A recent acquisition I had made is a scarce example of one of these prayerbooks, printed in Amsterdam in 1717 and containing the prayers for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Titled Orden de las oraciones de Ros-Asanah y Kipur, it was printed by the famed Proophs publisher of Amsterdam and features a stunning title page with detailed copper-plate engravings by a Dutch artist, Joost Van Sasse (1684-1755). The engravings feature vignettes featuring women of the Bible, including Eve, Hannah, Miriam, and Devorah.
In the same era, communities elsewhere of Spanish and Portuguese Jews were publishing prayerbooks in the vernacular as well. Several such editions were printed in London and another, printed in New York, the Pinto Siddur, entirely in the English language, was published in 1766.
