The Inquisitions’ Medieval Antisemitism Survives in 21st Century Headlines!

Why is the Inquisition of five centuries ago making headlines today?

The tentacles of Jew-hatred are long and die hard. Difficult to comprehend but true is that more than 500 years after the Spanish Inquisition, Spain’s official dictionary here in the 21st century, describes a “Jew” as a “shrewd or greedy person” and Judaism as “a loathsome trick that harms someone.” The current entry for the word “Judiada” makes notation that the term “originated with anti-Semitic intent” and provides two initial definitions: First, “a dirty trick or an action that is detrimental to someone.” Second, “a crowd or group of Jews.” Glance down to the fifth entry and it notes: “A greedy or usurious person.”

Words have universal and lasting impact, as can be witnessed by the current outcry of more than 20 major Jewish organizations from the US and Spanish speaking nations, calling on Spain’s linguistic authority to drop anti-Semitic definitions from its current dictionary. The 300 year-old Real Academia Espanola (RAE) oversees the evolution of the Spanish language through the official Dictionary of the Spanish language, which is modified each year to reflect changes in language defined by culture.

A September 2023 letter endorsed by America’s Simon Wiesenthal Center and supported by a coalition of top global Jewish organizations, including Spain’s Federation of Jewish Communities, has called on the RAE to revise their content, stating: “The descriptions are the product of medieval and renaissance terminology of rejection, envy, and hatred directed at the Jews, who, because of their work, had the highest incomes—one factor that led to their expulsion from Spain by the Catholic monarchs.” The letter goes on to note: “As far as the international Jewish community is concerned, this definition serves only to confirm that we are dealing with an untruth that feeds antisemitism, harming the image of the Jews by condemning them as a group of greedy people or moneylenders.”

The Wiesenthal Center’s Director for Latin America, Ariel Gelblung, noted in a communication to the Jewish Telegraphic News Agency: “We can presume that the terms crystallized in the Dictionary are a sign of an anti-Semitic prejudice still prior to the Edict of Expulsion of 1492 that has been maintained throughout the centuries.”

We who love and support Jews and Israel — why should we be concerned?

The Ministry of Education in Madrid reports in 2023 that Spain currently has an enrollment of nearly 8 million students – 4.6 million in primary grades and 2.8 million in secondary grades. Schools are State funded and mandatory for children aged 3 to 16. This is a country with a population of 47.5 million people.

By the numbers, that is an immeasurable new source of purveyors of antisemitism, namely primary and secondary school children, indoctrinated in age-old medieval Jew-hatred sown by the “disinformation” and hatred provided and sanctioned annually, in Spain’s “modern” culture, by the Real Academia Espanola, which controls and determines the development of Spanish through its official Dictionary of the Spanish Language.

PJTN is personally signing on to the complaint of the global Jewish organizations. I will personally be contacting the Office of the Minister of Education in Madrid as well as the offices of the Real Academia Espanola to express our concern over the situation at hand. I will offer a special distribution copy of our upcoming documentary “The Lost Jews of the Inquisition” to be housed in the library of every school in Spain, including the Jewish ones,—and used in instruction of the children!

To many of you, this may seem more idealistic than practical. However, if we look at the ethnic and linguistic make-up of our K-12 school system, we will recognize why this concern about the anti-Semitism in the State-sanctioned Spanish Dictionary must be a priority for PJTN.

The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics predicts that by the year 2030, nearly 30% of all public school students will be Hispanic or Latino. That means that [from] 6 million in 1995, there will be an estimated 14 million Hispanic or Latino students in the education system by the year 2030. (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), “State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education,” 1995-96 through 2019-20 and 2020-21 Preliminary; and National Elementary and Secondary Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity Projection Model, through 2030. (This table was prepared September 2021.)

We must ensure that the anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism in our English-language textbooks are not compounded and intensified by the rife anti-Semitism incorporated into the State-approved Spanish Dictionary, with its definitions and language of Medieval Jew-Hatred transposed into the 21st century. PJTN must ascertain whether there is an increase of anti-Semitism in the American Latino community, an increase which is being instigated by the Spanish language used in the textbooks.

PJTN Watchmen, our beginning production on a documentary on the Inquisition is, I have no doubt, a “for such a time as this” mandate on God’s time clock! No coincidence that incidents buried in the dust from 500 years ago are making headline news today! This will continue to happen as we face end times judgements for the enemies of God’s Chosen People! The Spanish Inquisition, The Holocaust –those ignorant of the history of these darkest hours—are now directing the world on a crash course to repeat history! We must push back with one voice and say: “Never Again!”

Your support makes all we do at PJTN possible! Learn today how you can play an important part in bringing “The Lost Jews of the Inquisition” to global audiences!

I appreciate your prayers,

President/Proclaiming Justice to The Nations