crypto-Jew

[ krip-toh-joo ]

noun

1. a member of a Jewish community who secretly practices Judaism while officially converting, under duress, to either Christianity or Islam.

Example Sentences

In 2007, one of Turkey’s best-selling books was nonsense titled “Moses’ Children,” which declared Erdogan to be a “crypto-Jew” colluding with the Elders of Zion.

From US News

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon, who co-wrote the 2004 film Spider-Man 2, voiced a similar sentiment, calling the web-slinger a “crypto-Jew” in a 2004 interview with Newsweek.

From Slate

Wiesenthal brings a detective's breathless prose to his various hypotheses, but his message�that Columbus was a crypto-Jew or, more likely, a descendant of converted Jews�is anything but new.

From Time Magazine Archive