About Crypto-Jews.org
Who is behind Crypto-Jews.org, and why.
Crypto-Jews.org exists for one reason: to help the descendants of Spain and Portugal's forced converts take a first, concrete step toward a question their families have carried, often in silence, for five hundred years.
Our mission
In 1391, 1492 and 1497, hundreds of thousands of Iberian Jews were pressured, coerced or forced into baptism. Their descendants — the b'nei anusim — are scattered today across Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula and the United States. Many grew up with a candle lit on Friday evening, a family that would not eat pork, a surname nobody could explain. Very few have any way to find out what it meant.
We try to close that gap in two ways. We publish careful, honest guides to the history, the surnames, the customs and the records — and we mail a free at-home DNA kit to anyone who wants one, as an exploratory first step.
What we are careful about
This is a subject where it is very easy, and very tempting, to overpromise. We don't. A DNA result is a research clue, not a verdict: it cannot prove that you are Jewish, and it does not establish eligibility under Israel's Law of Return or for Spanish or Portuguese citizenship. Those determinations are made by rabbinic, communal and governmental authorities — never by a laboratory, and never by us. Where the historical evidence is genuinely disputed, we say so on the page rather than quietly picking the more flattering version.
Who is behind this
Crypto-Jews.org is run by a single individual rather than an institution, and deliberately keeps a low public profile: the project is meant to be about the families it serves, not about its founder. The person legally responsible for the site and for the data it collects is named in our Privacy Policy, as the law requires, and can be reached at any time through our contact page.
The work grew out of two things: study of Torah, and years of travelling and talking with ordinary people across Central and South America — where the question «were we, once, Jewish?» turns out to be far more common than most people imagine.
How this is funded
The kits are paid for by donations from philanthropists who care about this history. That is the whole model. There is no charge to you, nothing is sold to you, and your data is not sold to anyone. Because funding arrives in batches, kits are sent on a first-come, first-served basis as donations allow — which is why there is a waitlist rather than an instant dispatch. We are also seeking partnerships with DNA testing companies to extend how many families we can reach.
Related projects
This site is part of a small family of independent projects on Jewish heritage and identity. The closest to this one is 1in56million.org.