Poll: Majority of Israelis Favor Outreach to Marranos.

By IsraelNationalNews.com

A new poll has found that a majority of Israelis believe the government should actively assist descendants of Spanish Marranos seeking to return to Judaism.

The survey, commissioned by the Jerusalem-based Amishav organization, which reaches out to

"lost Jews," revealed that 59 percent of Israelis are in favor of helping Marrano descendants who wish to return to the Jewish people. Just 24 percent said they were opposed, while 17 percent expressed no opinion. Smith Research & Consulting conducted the poll on February 24-25 among a representative sample of 501 Israelis. The margin of error was 4.5 percent.

Michael Freund, director of Amishav and an Arutz-7 radio and television host, said he was pleased by the findings. "We wanted to gauge what the Israeli public thinks about reaching out to the descendants of Spanish Jewry who were forcibly converted over 500 years ago. The results show that Israelis, by more than a 2 to 1 margin, want to see greater efforts made to restore them to the Jewish people."

As part of its outreach work, Amishav runs a Spanish-language conversion and return institute in Jerusalem, where some 50 students, many of them descendants of Marranos, study annually. Upon completion of the course, graduates undergo formal conversion by Israel's Chief Rabbinate.