by Seth Ward, University of Wyoming

Originally posted sometime before 2001. Recovered from archive.org October 2012.

  The Jews of Spain, some of whom trace their settlement in the Iberian peninsula back to the sixth pre-Christian century, eventually came to call their new home "Sepharad," a place-name mentioned only once in the Hebrew Bible, in the book of Obadiah (v. 20). Perhaps this was because of a perceived similarity of the term to "Espaniah," or, perhaps, to "sephar," which in the Aramaic vernacular would denote furthermost limit or seacoast. It is also possible, as has been suggested by David Neiman, that it reflects an ancient connection with the colonization of Spain by people from Sardis, in what is now Western Asiatic Turkey. (D. Neiman, "Sefarad, the Name of Spain," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 22 (1963) 128-132.) Indeed, a bi-lingual inscription found in Sardis in Hebrew and Greek characters, and occurrences in other Greek, Mesopotamian and Egyptian writings, support the conjecture that the Old Testament usage actually refers to the city or area of Sardis, surely perceived as a far-distant location in Obadiah's time.  In any case, Jews immigrating to Spain brought along this serviceable term to express both the remoteness of the peninsula and their spiritual identification with Scriptures and Holy Land.  By early mediaeval times, Spanish Jews were referring to themselves as Sephardim. 

  Obadiah the prophet refers to the exile of Jerusalem in Sepharad.  Although the term has come to refer to Spain, there is no consensus about what the term originally meant in the Book of Obadiah. 

  Sepharad is clearly not one of the ancient Biblical "nations of the world," entities mentioned in the "Table of Nations" in Genesis 11, many of which have clear references to ancient peoples. It is not even clear  whether "Sepharad" in Obadiah represents a concrete reference to a real  location, or a veiled, poetic or prophetic reference to what may be  merely a symbolic toponym. Traditional interpreters of this verse have not even agreed about whether it refers to exiles which occured after the destruction of the first or second Temples. Obadiah, who was close in time to the destruction of the First Temple, may have been referring to the dispersion of Judaeans at that time. We know about Judaeans in Babylonia and Egypt, although perhaps they were in other locations as well. Many Jewish commentators, however, aware of the association of Sepharad with Spain, assume the passage is talking prophetically about  the exile from Jerusalem under Titus, an event far in the future in  Obadiah's time. 

  Some of the discussion of this matter depends on a sense of group pride.  Regardless of the dating of the Jerusalemite dispersion in Sepharad, the association of Obadiah's Sepharad with Spain confers upon this group the sense of an ancient heritage, and a centuries-old presence in the Iberian  peninsula. There is no reason to dismiss the possibility of Roman-period Jewish settlement in Spain, and Judaean settlement there may possibly  even predate Roman times. But the later application of the term Sepharad to Spain is irrelevant to the discussion of when Jews first arrived there.   

  Centuries after Obadiah, the Jews of Sardis in Asia Minor apparently  assumed Sepharad in the Bible referred to their community in Roman and  Byzantine times; many scholars assume that Obadiah's reference, or the  Talmudic period understanding of the term, may have been this or some  other location in Asia Minor. Presumably this is because of the  similarity in sound between Sardis and Sepharad.  

  The Targum or Aramaic translation of Obadiah, ascribed to Jonathan ben Uzziel, provides what may be the earliest example of making Obadiah's Sepharad refer to Spain: Targum Jonathan translates Sepharad in Obad. 20 as "Espamia." According to the Talmud, Jonathan was a student of Hillel, which would date him to the end of the last pre-Christian century or beginning of the first Christian century. But scholars assume that the Targum Jonathan is much later than that, and certainly "Espamia" could well be a gloss by an even later hand. 

  The Pshitta, a Christian Aramaic translation of the Bible, also glosses Sepharad to refer to Spain. Here too, the date of the Peshitta is hard to determine; any dating based on this occurrence would involve careful examination of variants in manuscript texts.

  Presumably the association of Sepharad with Spain is based on the similarity of sounds. Note, however, that the assonance is not as clearly evident or lacking in ascription of biblical terms like Tsarefat and Ashkenaz to France and Germany. 

  The editors of the Encyclopedia Judaica assert that Sepharad became the most common way of referring to Spain already in Jewish texts of the  eighth century. Yet this ascription was not so standard as to obviate comment by such twelfth century scholars as Ibn Ezra, Rashi and David  Kimchi. Nor had Sepharad had not totally replaced Espaniah or Espamiah  (or al-Andalus in Judaeo-Arabic) in other texts from this period. These references show that the term Sepharad was widely understood to refer to  Spain, but it was not so standard as to pass without comment.  

  One of the more fanciful suggestions about the derivation of Sepharad was offered by a seventeenth century churchman. Dwelling on a superficial similarity in English transcription, he associated Sepharad with the term "span," which he said meant, inter alia "hidden." In Hebrew the term tsafun "hidden" shares only one letter with Sepharad. While the "S" of Sepharad and "Tz" of tzafun might be rendered the same in English, they are distinct in Hebrew.  Perhaps the "n" was suggested by the final letter in the English name of the country. 

  To summarize: Sepharad is found only once in the Bible, in the book of Obadiah. There is no consensus about what location Obadiah had in mind when using this term. Several centuries after Obadiah, the term was appplied to Sardis, at least by the Jewish residents of Sardis, and may have been applied to other areas in Asia Minor or perhaps elsewhere.   Still later, it came to be the term generally used to refer to Spain.  While the use of Sepharad to refer to Spain may go back to the reputed  time of Jonathan ben Uzziel, the end of the last pre-Christian century,  it is really not possible to fix with certainty when this usage is first  encountered, or when it became common. Probably it was already in common use by the eighth century, but even in mediaeval times it was still necessary to provide a presumably more familiar term, Espamia, to describe the location. 

  The original meaning of Sepharad as used by Obadiah cannot be known with certainty if at all; nor can the date by which it was commonly adopted to refer to Spain. Thus from the historian's viewpoint, it has no historical relevance for determining the beginnings of the community. The true significance lies elsewhere. The term "Sepharad" symbolizes the high aspirations of the Jewish community of Spain, and their deep sense of heritage. It is no doubt the source of the uniform ascription by Sephardim of their ancestry to exiles from Judaea, more specifically, from Jerusalem, (to give only one example, Ibn Verga's title Shevet Yehuda "The Tribe of Judah" for his history of Spanish Jewry) and supports the antiquity of their arrival in Spain. (Apparently this is also the source of the assumption sometimes encountered that the exile of Ashkenaz comprises non-Judaeans; since the Ten Tribes went off into captivity these must be descendants of the erev-rav "mixed multitude." The earliest reference of which I am currently aware is from Israel Zangwill's King of the Schnorrers). Ancestry from Judah connects the community with Scriptures and prophecy, and with a promised return to the Holy Land. Thus, underlying the application of Sepharad to Spain (or to Sardis before it) is a statement of great cultural and even ideological meaning. Although it tells us little if anything about the actual history of the community, it provides a clear symbol of values Jews see within history. 

  Seth Ward  

I discovered recently that some of my articles and essays archived on my computer are either unreadable in the current computer environment or were completely compromised. Here are links from the Wayback Machine on archive.org. Please remember that these items were filed in the 1990s and that the du.edu email address listed on them is no longer in service: use sward@uwyo.edu 

Papers, Publications and Essays

By: Dr. Seth Ward

Sepharadim, Converso Descendants, Crypto-Jews

·  Review of a cookbook based on recipes developed from ingredients mentioned in Inquisition records

·  Crypto-Judaism in the U.S. Southwest

·  Profiles of Converso Descendants in the U.S. Southwest

·  Profiles of Converso Descendants in the U.S. Southwest: Lecture in Los Angeles, August 1999

·  Sephardim and Crypto-Jews: A Definition of Terms

·  Sepharad: A brief history of the term.

Lively opinion on Jewish Topics

·  Quranic sources on The Chosen People and Holy Land

·  The Jewish Street

·  Hebrew Literacy

Papers and addresses on other Jewish issues

·  Luther and the Jews

·  Does Judaism have a Catechism?

·  Are Hamantaschen like communion wafers or Christmas Cookies? Inpraxation and a Jewish Typology for food

·  The Jewish Year: The zero-date of the Era

·  Tisha Beav: In what year was the Temple Destroyed (Or: What does the year 5761 mean?)

·  Passover

National Narratives and History

·  On the Holocaust in North Africa, Sephardim and the Islamic World

·  The Battles of Kosovo as National Narrative

New Testament and Jewish Sources

·  The Presentation of Jesus: Jewish Perspectives on Luke 2:22f.

Selected additional documents for teaching, introductory lectures; course syllabi

·  Follow links from Home Page

Papers, Publications and Essays by Seth Ward

From the Internet Archive Wayback Machine

I discovered recently that some of my articles and essays archived on my computer are either unreadable in the current computer environment or were completely compromised. Here are links from the Wayback Machine on archive.org

By: Dr. Seth Ward

·  The Battles of Kosovo as National Narrative

·  Does Judaism have a Catechism?

·  Are Hamantaschen like communion wafers or Christmas Cookies? Inpraxation and a Jewish Typology for food

·  Crypto-Judaism in the U.S. Southwest

·  Sephardim and Crypto-Jews: A Definition of Terms

·  On the origin of the term "Sepharad"

·  The Presentation of Jesus: Jewish Perspectives on Luke 2:22f.

Converso Descendants in the American Southwest: A Report on Research, Resources, and the Changing Search for Identity

by

Seth Ward University of Denver (Colorado, USA)

Reprinted from Proceedings of the 1998 Conference of the European Association for Jewish Studies, ed. Angel Saenz-Badillos. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999, pp. 677-86.

 

(I have been at the University of Wyoming since January 2003. This article was on my University of Denver website over a decade ago. I know it has been reprinted elsewhere. I am trying to recover some of the articles and essays that I posted at that time. In some cases the ravages of computer failures and advancing technology have made them inaccessible in the electronic formats I have saved myself, so I am trying to find them in some cases via archive.org, reposting them here and/or at http://uwyo.edu/sward.) I have not edited this at all, except such procedures as removing superfluous spaces and fixing some errors introduced by migrating the file. I was not able to fix all such errors correctly.)  

Over the past fifteen years or so, journalistic and academic publications have carried articles about the survival of "Crypto-Jewish" family practices and traditions in New Mexico, U.S.A. and adjacent areas, and about individuals with roots in these areas who have become increasingly open about their "Jewish" or "Crypto-Jewish" identity. For members of the Jewish community, this reawakened awareness and openness is a kibbutz galuyot, a "coming together of exiles," allowing distant relatives to rekindle links, and giving the topic of the "Secret Jews of the American Southwest" tremendous power and popularity. It combines interest in North American Jewish history with the U.S. Jewish community's continuing focus on anti-Semitism-in this case reflected back as interest in the Inquisition and its horrors-and the romance of Jewish survival against all odds.

 

Curiously, a somewhat essentialist approach to descent and genealogy is frequently highly valued among both researchers and crypto-Jews: "Jewish ancestry makes someone a Jew." This attitude is common enough in some contexts within the American Jewish community but stands in stark contrast to its well-known worry about whether their grandchildren will be Jews; many who claim crypto-Jewish descent are far more worried about whether their distant ancestors were Jews.

 

To my mind, the issue of identity has been inadequately or improperly addressed in the research. But before looking at the research and at these issues, we need to briefly review -to the extent space permits-the size and names given to the phenomenon, its "foundation narrative," and some of the elements cited in support of the "Crypto-Jewish" identification.

 

Name and size for the phenomenon

 

It is not clear that there is a standard name to describe the contemporary phenomenon and its provenance, although "Crypto-Jews of the contemporary American Southwest" or "... of contemporary New Mexico" appears to be most common. Other terms are known: "Sephardic Jewish legacy" (Hordes 1993) or even "Southwestern Jews" (Neulander 1994:26); the term judios "Jews" is also encountered within the tradition, and some individuals refer to themselves as Sephardim or Sefarditas, sometimes in contradistinction not only to Ashkenazim but to Jews in general. Tomas Atencio uses the local term "Manito," a "shortened diminutive of Hermano," to refer "to New Mexico's Indohispanos and Indohispanas whose historical threads are anchored in the Colonial period." But he refers to "Crypto-Jews" among the Manitos (Atencio 1996). Others prefer "anusim," (sometimes without differentiation of singular and plural, e.g., "She is an anusim" (e.g. Sandoval 1996). Anusim is of course the typical Hebrew name for Marranos and has been favored in other communities and by some scholars. "Marrano" is also used by some to refer to their community as a mark of honor, not of shame. "Crypto-Jews" or "Secret Jews," however, seems to be the most well-known term.

 

One of the first publications about the New Mexico phenomenon used the term Converso descendants (Nidel 1984:257), a term which is academically attractive as neutral, uncontroversial and descriptive. But few if any inside the community refer to themselves as Conversos or New Christians, and some appear to find this nomenclature offensive or problematic. It is rarely encountered in the literature.

 

Provenance: While the core population seems to have links to villages from central New Mexico to southern Colorado, many discussions of the phenomenon include areas along both banks of the Rio Grande south into Texas, especially around El Paso, and in what is today northern Mexico. "New Mexico," "American Southwest" and several other terms are used more or less interchangeably. Many, however, find it difficult not to include individuals from northern Mexico, Cuba or indeed the entire Spanish speaking world, although presumably speaking only of the New Mexican population.

 

Size: The New Christian community probably reached its heyday in the seventeenth century. The late J.R. Marcus suggested that there were 20,000 Europeans in 17th century Mexico, including parts which are now within the United States about a tenth of them New Christians. (Fierman, 1987:7). Of course, it seems likely that the overwhelming majority of Conversos were not "Crypto-Jews" and were not able to or not desirous of passing along meaningful components of an explicitly Jewish way of life (Fierman, 1987:16, citing Greenleaf).

 

Tobias relates that in the late 1980's, Reverend Carmona estimated there were some 1500 families in New Mexico who were part of this tradition (Tobias, 1990:19). Few others have ventured any reliable guesses about contemporary numbers.

 

One 1996 study, based on a small sample of 28 came up with astounding statistics about Jewish identification. Over a quarter of her sample has formally converted and 60% of those who have not converted nevertheless report attending Jewish services and celebrating holidays (Jacobs 1996). The sample is tiny and based on unscientific affinity group and "snowball sampling" (i.e. various organizations recommend subjects who in turn recommend others). Moreover, just over 40% report descent from Spanish colonial settlers in New Mexico; the rest were themselves born in Mexico and have moved to the area. Jacobs does not comment on whether the converts were Mexican or New Mexican, or on the difficulty of focusing on a single geographical provenance. Nevertheless, these numbers clearly reflect sampling idiosyncrasies, and boldly underscore the identity issue.

 

Foundation Narrative

 

The "foundation narrative" of this phenomenon-the story participants and some researchers tell about the history of New Mexico Crypto-Judaism-starts in the 16th and 17th centuries, when many New Christians or their immediate descendants came to the northernmost parts of New Spain to seek their fortune along the frontier. They settled along the Rio Grande, its tributary creeks and upland villages, from El Paso northward to what is today New Mexico and southern Colorado. Some chose this remote area because they worried they might become targets for the Inquisition, either because they were Judaizers or simply because they were "New Christians." Others came because opportunity knocked-in the form of a colonial settlement expedition which had obtained a release from the usual requirement of limiting participation to those with pure Old-Christian bloodlines (Hordes 1996:82ff). Among those who came to this region were members of families known to have Judaized, such as sons of Luis de Carvajal. According to this foundation narrative, these families married primarily among themselves, maintaining their identity to the present day.

 

Traditional Practices Associated with the New-Mexican Crypto-Judaism

 

According to the foundation narrative, some families lost all knowledge of any Jewish heritage, traditions, or practices. Nevertheless, some of their descendants today are aware of the history of Judaism in Spain, and the presence of many converso descendants in the early Spanish settlement in the region. Many contemporary New Mexico Hispanos believe and in some cases have demonstrated that their ancestors include individuals who were prosecuted by the Inquisition for loyalty to the "Law of Moses." Other families appear to have kept alive traditions describing their families as "Jewish," and still others maintained practices or traditions which have come to be associated with the phenomenon, although without glossing them as Jewish in any way. Space permits only a limited review of the practices and traditions associated with this phenomenon.

 

Names: Many reports indicate that both given names and family names are a source of identification as Crypto-Jews. Florence Hernández has counted about 143 surnames believed to be part of this phenomenon. (1993:419-20). She notes, however, that most of these names were "taken from Christian sponsors," i.e., they were Old Christians names as well. Given names may be a more reliable support for a Crypto-Jewish background. Hernandez lists such names as Sara, Raquel, Rosa, and Betsab , for women and Aron, Abrán, Adán, Efren, Eliséo, Jacobo, and others for men. "Adonay" is sometimes used as a given name, paralleling the use of "Jesus" as a popular given name among Hispanos. This would be anathema to traditional Jews, of course. Although most of these personal and family names are well attested outside the New Mexico group, the presence of "Adonay" and of Old Testament names to the exclusion of Gospel would be striking in any Hispano context. It is also easier to trace than many of the practices, possibly allowing some historical perspective, but conversely is also easily open to alternative explanations (e.g. Neulander 1996).

 

Rejection of Christian or Catholic Practices: Some individuals report a parent advised them that they were not really Christians, or that they never went to church, or were not baptized or waited as long as possible to be baptized, or never took communion or were not confirmed. Some report they were advised not to pray to Jesus and "not to worship Saints," or trinity but to concentrate only on God" (Hernandez 1993:423, Halevy 1996:69). As in the case of the personal names, some note an emphasis on Hebrew Bible stories to the exclusion of New Testament stories. A sense that they were "different" from the mass of Catholic Hispanos may be included within this theme.

 

Sabbath Observances: The most common and striking observance reported is lighting candles Friday night, although often without considering it a "Jewish" practice. Typical reports note women lit candles in bowls in an interior part of the house, or that draperies were drawn (Hernandez 1993:423). Other Saturday-Sabbath reports note that the men did not go to church on Sunday but gathered in a building or in the fields on Saturday, or that the men worked on Sunday but not on Saturday.

 

Food Practices: The avoidance of pork is frequently mentioned; so is slaughter in which the neck was slit by a knife checked for sharpness, and the carcass allowed to hang upside down until all the blood drained out. In a case attested by Neulander, the wife of the informant family nevertheless collected the blood to make morcellina (1996:27). This is a familiar archetype in many contemporary Jewish families: despite a desire on the part of one parent to observe "as much as possible" of kashrut, the other one prepares or brings home clearly non-kosher treats. Some recall avoiding meat with milk, not eating eggs with blood-spots, soaking, salting and soaking the meat, and covering the blood of slaughtered animals with dirt (Halevy 1996:69-71). Use of Kosher wine is also reported: Marie Quintana Snowden wrote me that her family's only Christmas custom was to share a glass of Mogen David Wine (Personal communication, 1998). Isabel Sandoval recalls her family used kosher wine, with a picture on the label of a family sitting around a table wearing funny little hats. Her mother also prepared her own chokecherry wine although she was a member of churches which prohibited wine drinking. (1996:77-8).

 

Holiday Observances: Playing a gambling game with a top, sometimes called pon y saca "Put in and take out" (Hordes 93:137) often cited as a Hanukkah-like practice, as is lighting one more candle or luminaria bonfire each night, starting over a week before Christmas, so that there are 9 flames at Christmas. The observance of a feast or fast in honor of "Esther" is often cited. Baking of pan de semita "semitic bread" is reported at Easter, a heavy bread that did not rise. Some of the reports-e.g. Mrs. Snowden's wine-sharing-may indicate that practices, if they are to be explained as "Crypto-Jewish" were transferred to a different season or occasion, others seem at best to have been corrupted by or understood in the light of normative (i.e. "non-crypto-) Jewish practice.

 

Language: One of the first individuals to come to my attention in Denver, a Spanish teacher, noted that the Spanish in Erensia Sefardi resembled her village Spanish more than Castillian, Mexican or any of the Latin American dialects. Indeed, some refer to the distinctive dialect of the New Mexico villages as "Ladino," but any assessment of this issue is beyond our scope here.

 

Other traditions include gathering nail clippings, sweeping to the center of a room, next day burial, mourning for a year, bathing after contact with the dead, covering the mirrors in a house of mourning, leaving pebbles on graves, and circumcision. Much is sometimes made of the presence of "Star of David" motifs on gravestones and in churches. Neulander notes (1996:29-31) that the hexagram was a Christian symbol as well as a Jewish one and that Scholem has shown that it did not become a universal marker of Judaism until modern times. (Although Neulander correctly read Scholem, she nevertheless did not cite Scholem's references to medieval Jewish hexagrams (1971:269)

 

Genetic: In testing of 18 patients in El Paso and New Mexico associated with a rare genetic disease, it was found that 12 of 13 hispano patients had "genome and protein sequencing associated with Jewish patients" (Hordes 1996:89). Hordes does not say here whether this relates the hispanos to Ashkenazim or to Sephardic Jews, and the extent to which this relates to observed cultural practices, or any other genetic testing; presumably these issues will be addressed in a medically-oriented report which is being published.

 

Many or indeed most of the elements cited in the literature as identifying "Crypto-Jewish" practices are problematic. Merely identifying Jewish parallels, or for that matter Protestant or Ashkenazi sources, is only part of the story.

 

Research Literature and Resources

 

Looking at the research literature as a whole, one notes that prior to the early 1980's, there may have been some hints of awareness of aspects of Jewish identity among families of colonial Spanish heritage in New Mexico, but essentially the phenomenon was unknown and unreported. Hordes did not begin to note these contemporary survivals until after he had completed his 1980 Ph.D. dissertation on Crypto-Jews on seventeenth century New Spain (Hordes 1996), and the New Mexico phenomenon goes unmentioned by Patai (1996 rpt), or in popular works such as Ross's Acts of Faith. (1982).

 

There were some earlier indications of awareness of these traditions, to be sure. Some Rabbis reported inquiries. Tobias recounts items from the 1880's and just prior to 1920 in which there seems to have been awareness of Jewish heritage (Tobias 1990:20). Fray Angelico Chßvez was certainly aware of the New Christian heritage of many families descended from Spanish-period colonials, and perhaps reflected on the continuing meaningfulness of this heritage in comments on the similarity of his New Mexico homeland to ancient Palestine. (1954, 1974). Given that assertions have been made that Jewish heritage and the survival of customs associated with it was unknown even within the New Mexico community itself, it will probably be useful to gather and analyze as many pre-1980's references as possible.

 

Although preceded by research on southern Texas "Chicano Jews" (Larralde 1978, Santos 1983), the first articles specifically relating to New Mexico Crypto-Judaism began to appear in the 1980's. Nidel (1984) published on the New Mexican phenomenon, and Blake wrote a manuscript on "Secret Signs of Judaism in New Mexico," which has never been published (Tobias 1990:195). 

 

After 1985, there seems to have been growing awareness in research and journalism. Halevy has a lengthy list of journalistic articles on the subject stretching back to 1985 (1996:75, fn 1). Hordes has published several articles, most recently an illustrated overview in the Journal of the West. Tomas Atencio and Stanley Hordes published a 35-page prospectus for a research project on "The Sephardic legacy of New Mexico" (1987). Roger Parks studied lingustic traits (1988). In 1987, Floyd Fierman's Roots and Boots discussed many aspects of Crypto-Judaism in New Mexico in the sixteenth century, but has only a little to say about it in the twentieth. He calls Angelico Chßvez's assertion that his ancestors were Crypto-Jews "charming" (1987:16) but does not dismiss such claims (143). In 1990, Tobias' History of the Jews of New Mexico, gave a fair but brief description-although to be sure, within the context of a discussion of New Mexico's primarily Ashkenazic Jewish community. The importance and visibility of this motif took a giant leap when Cohen and Peck's Sephardim in the Americas included a full, descriptive chapter on "The Secret Jews of the Southwest" by Florence Hernßndez (1993). Janet Liebman Jacobs, cited above, is most interested finding evidence of women's transmission of the tradition, a point made by others (e.g. Halevy, 1996), and is currently working on expanding her research, a series of field-work interviews. (Jacobs, 1996). Renee Levine Melammed is preparing a report on this phenomenon for the Israeli publication Peamim (personal communication).

 

Perhaps the most important set of articles on the subject is a series published in the Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review (henceforth JFER). In 1993, Hordes published a brief note about his ongoing research in contemporary phenomena in JFER; the same volume also included an account of an Iglesia di Dios church in El Paso Texas, with many Jewish-like practices. In 1994, JFER published Judith S. Neulander's "Crypto Jews of the American Southwest: An Imagined Community," in which she described her attempt to do a professional ethnographic field study of this phenomenon, as a dissertation at the University of Indiana. Not surprisingly, she found that several elements prominently cited as part of a tradition of Crypto-Judaism were unsupportable as proof of its survival from Colonial times. G. Haskell, the editor of the JFER, reports that in response to this article he received "impassioned letters" from both sides: "The emotions on both sides were strong, and the Review, its editor, and the authors were vilified and demonized with vigor." (JFER 1996:1) JFER decided to do a special issue dedicated to this phenomenon. The issue was dedicated to the memory of Raphael Patai, who had just died, and included reprints Patai's two articles on Venta Prieta, a community near Mexico City which considered themselves to be Jewish. In addition to a second, much longer article by Neulander, there were pieces by Tomás Atencio, Schulamith C. Halevy, and Isabelle Medina Sandoval, a brief article by David M Gradwohl, a letter from Stanley Hordes, and two letters from individuals within the New Mexico Hispano community.

 

Neulander (1996) analyzed the theology and activities of millenaristic Protestant sects such as the Seventh Day Adventists and Church of God (Spanish: Iglesia di Dios) in great detail, which she believes provide explanations for several crypto-Jewish practices and traditions, and thus for the phenomenon as a whole. In this she follows Patai, who found just such a background for Venta Prieta, as shown in the reprinted articles. Neulander suggests the Iglesia di Dios model can even explain non-Biblical and highly "Hebraized" customs as lighting candles on Fridays.

 

In the other JFER pieces, Halevy also focuses on the practices, but concentrates on documenting Jewish sources for them in Mishna and Talmud, Shulhan Aruch, responsa of Moshe Hagiz, Ibn Habib and others. Tomás Atencio-one of the individuals described by Neulander as the "primary academic promoters" of the Crypto-Judaic idea-does not come across as a "true believer" in his JFER article. He notes that a "goal of the study, which is to uncover more information to make the hypothesis more plausible, has been partially accomplished [but] ... has not gotten any closer to empirically verifying crypto-Jewish presence in New Mexico."  Dr. Sandoval's contribution to this issue is essentially her own story; Gradwohl's describes his initial skepticism but argues for "meaningful scholarly inquiry and civilized debate" (JFER 1996:84).

 

Some of those who read JFER may feel the editor himself was not totally above the fray, e.g., by the comparison implicit in his comment about those who accept claims about crypto-Judaism uncritically-"That Germans earlier in this century called themselves Aryans did not make it so"(JFER 1996:86)-or, more importantly, by titles allowed for Neulander's articles and by reprinting Patai's findings about similar claims made in a very different type of community. Nevertheless, JFER's articles on the New Mexican phenomenon are well balanced. Haskell correctly noted that "Neulander does not presume to tell people who they are or are not." But (as JFER found out) Neulander's calling it "an imagined community" had a far stronger impact than had she merely said that a pure crypto-Jewish lineage for the canon elements cannot be supported. Like Patai's work in Venta Prieta, her work carries a deep meaning for this population, even or perhaps especially if it is correct. Patai's views seem to have been able to become accepted even within the Venta Prieta community, and may have helped them determine what relationship they want today with Judaism. Although he came to offer a radically different interpretation than they of the genesis of their practices, he did not imply their sense of community was imaginary. Neulander, on the other hand, has not yet and may never overcome the negativity and is perceived with some justice as having called scholars and informants prevaricators, i.e., liars (JFER 1996: 85, 86f.). Informants' glosses of practices, even if "ethnographically unsupported" are not "lies" but a central key to their own systems of understanding; this is no less true if, as is almost always the case, "remembered" practices include some that were never quite as reported.

 

Some general comments Crypto-Jewish "foundation narrative" tends to exclude post-colonial influence and heritage elements, to project all elements back to the colonial period or to Spain, and to be articulated in unlikely terms of coherence and purity of culture and heritage, for example, among individuals with only partial Colonial-Jewish heritage (e.g. "My mother was French") (In this it is similar to a general phenomenon observed in Santa Fe by Wilson, 1997:312-13). Some elements may indeed go back to secretly-Jewish New Christians, but even if one rejects Neulander's Protestant explanations, some elements cited cannot be explained as uniquely Sephardic survivals or reflect mixing in of outside sources, at least in the way they are presented. Frequently one encounters Ashkenazic glosses-Purim cakes referred to as Hamentashen, top as dreidle, etc. Ashkenazim have been in New Mexico and northern Mexico for some 150 years, and it seems likely that there may have been some influence and modeling on what openly-Jewish individuals were doing, or from reading-those within the tradition always characterize it as intellectual. This process accelerated (or may even have only started) with the changes of the twentieth century, for several reasons: soldiers' World War international experiences, the move from villages to towns and cities, the move from extended kinship/village groups to more nuclear families within much more heterogeneous communities, and greater access to a standardized "American" education. Neulander's work also reminds us that especially in the past fifteen years, many terms and glosses adopted by contemporary informants may have been influenced in part by discussions with researchers and journalists, or by reading their reports.

 

The "canon of New Mexican Crypto-Judaism" is only a part of the story. It may be impossible-and ultimately irrelevant-to explain every last item as either Jewish, converso, Protestant or happenstance in origin. Such concentration on "are they Jews,"or "are their traditions Jewish" detracts from an important theme, an openness and interest in Judaism and in the Jewish part of the Spanish heritage. It is difficult to understate the degree to which this appears to be diametrically opposed to long-held attitudes, and it is a change which has taken place primarily in the last fifteen years. No doubt many claims of heritage, of survival of tradition, or of genealogical purity, are too grandiose, but the primacy given Judaic heritage and identity is striking. It may be misplaced to some outside observers, yet still must be understood and appreciated.

 

Many of the leading representatives of this group meet together at various formal and informal venues around the country. For many of them, joining the Jewish community represents four problems. One: Most Jewish communities would require them to undergo formal conversion. This rubs some as the wrong approach: "We have struggled hard to retain our Judaism-and we have to convert? Why can't we be recognized for what we "are"?" The second problem is that for many Judaism-even merely a recognition of Jewish ancestry-represents a very strong break with family Catholicism or with New Mexican Hispano sensibilities. A third problem is theological: many cannot reject some sort of faith in Jesus; some have explored so-called "Messianic" Judaism as an alternative. Fourth, and related to the previous ones: for many the identification with Jews is genealogical and heritage oriented more than religious or cultural. 

 

Research needs to focus also on the emerging community of individuals who are making these claims, seeking out the meaning to them of being Jewish, and ways in which they will-or will not-continue the tradition. We may never be able to paint a full picture of "traditional New Mexican Crypto-Judaism," to determine the extent to which it reflects survival of the practices of earl;y colonial Judaizers, or even to prove it existed. It is perhaps impossibly complicated by the variety of practices and by issues of how practices are remembered. Yet let us not forget that the glossing of these practices as "Jewish" by a significant body of hispanos-in the New Mexico community and elsewhere-is truly an amazing story. Even if many of the reported elements of the canon are slippery and can be interpreted in various ways by scholars, the way they are being interpreted by those who hold them dear, and are alternately pained and exhilarated by them, drives our interest in them. This interpretation, as it is developing and unfolding, requires not romanticization and emotionalism, but further research and understanding.

 

Atencio, T., and S. Hordes 1987: The Sephardic legacy in New Mexico: A Prospectus, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico, Southwest Hispanic Research Institute.

 

Chßvez, 1954, F., Origins of New Mexico Families in the Spanish Colonial Period, Santa Fe Historical Society of NM, (originally published 1954; rpt.)

 

___, 1974, My Penitente Land: Reflections on Spanish New Mexico Albuquerque UNM press.

 

Fierman, F., 1987: Roots and Boots: From Crypto Jew in New Spain  Hoboken, Ktav.

 

Halevy, S.C. 1996: "Manifestations of Crypto-Judaism in the American Southwest" JFER

 

JFER: Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review, G. Haskell, ed.

 

Hernßndez, F. 1993: "Crypto-Jews of the American Southwest," in Cohen and Peck, Sephardim in the Americas, Tuscaloosa, American Jewish Archives.

 

Hordes, 1993: "'The Sephardic Legacy in the Southwest Crypto-Jews of New Mexico' Historical Research Project Sponsored by the Latin American Institute, University of New Mexico," JFER 15:2 137-38.

 

---, 1996 in: , Journal of the West 35 (1996), 82ff.

 

Jacobs, J.L., 1996, " Women, Ritual and Secrecy: The creation of Crypto-Jewish Culture"  Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 35, 97-109.

 

Larralde, C.M. 1978 "Chicano Jews in South Texas" Ph.D. Dissertation, UCLA

 

Neulander, J.S. 1994: "Crypto Jews of the Southwest: An Imagined Community" JFER 16:1, 64-68.

 

____ 1996:, "The Crypto-Jewish Canon: Choosing to be Chosen in the Millenial Tradition" JFER 18:1-2 (1996) 19-58.

 

Nidel, D. 1984: "Modern descendants of Conversos in New Mexico," WSJHQ 16:3 (1984) 194-262.

 

Parks, P., 1988: Survival of Judeo Spanish Cultural and Linguistic traits among descendants of Crypto-Jews in New Mexico, M.A. Thesis, University of New Mexico, 1988.

 

Patai, R. 1996: "The Jewish Indians of Mexico" [originally published 1950] JFER 18 1-2, 2-12, and "Venta Prieta Revisited [Originally published 1965] JFER 18:1-2, 13-18.

 

Ross, Dan, 1982: Acts of Faith: A Journey to the fringes of Jewish Identity, New York, St. Martin's Press.

 

Sandoval, I.M. 1996: "Abraham's children of the Southwest" JFER 77-82.

 

Santos, R. 1983: "Chicanos of Jewish Descent in Texas." WSJHQ 15: 327-333.

 

Scholem, G.S. 1971: The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, New York, Schocken

 

Tobias, H. J., 1990: A History of the Jews in New Mexico, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press.

 

Wilson, C. 1997: Myth of Santa Fe: Creation of a Modern Regional Tradition, Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press

 

This paper was retrieved from archive.org. I have made no changes in the paper from the form it was in 1999 other than correcting some spacing problems, and minor editing. It was based on several oral testimonies videotaped at the Hispano Crypto-Jewish Resource Center in Denver. All the participants signed releases, including the use of the tapes for scholarly analysis. One later clarified that she did not want her name used on web postings.

Persons of crypto-Jewish heritage, like everyone else, modify their opinions as they develop and grow. Acceptance and understanding of the Crypto-Judaic heritage today has advanced beyond what it was in the 1990s and the profiles here should not be considered to reflect the current views of these individuals—only the views they expressed in the video testimonies and my analysis.

Seth Ward

Reposted October 16, 2012

Profiles of Converso Descendants in the Southwest U.S.: Manito, Marrano, Sephardic and Jewish Identities among the Crypto-Jews of contemporary New Mexico and Southern Colorado.

Seth Ward

University of Denver

This paper is a revised version of a paper presented August 8, 1999, to the Society for Crypto-Jewish Studies, meeting in Los Angeles, CA, which is in turn a fuller presentation of a paper presented to the 11^th British Conference on Judeo-Spanish Studies in June, 1999. For other papers and essays by the author: http://www.du.edu/~sward/essays.html. The process of reformatting this to Html format precluded inclusion of notes, and transcriptions of the videotapes shown at the Conference have not yet been included.

© Seth Ward, 1999

 

Introduction

Potchin bikhvod

Potchin bikhvod akhsania. Many thanks to Gloria Trujillo for her work in organizing the conference but for her enthusiasm about accepting my paper. Also to Stan Hordes for never-ending encouragement, and Isabelle Sandoval for the inspiration of her poetry.

Introduction

As members of this society are well aware, since the 1980s, many individuals of Hispanic heritage in the Southwestern part of the United States have come forward with claims of being "Crypto-Jews"—to be sure, using various terms such as Marranos, Anusim, Sepharadim, etc. Generally, they note (1) that they have Jewish ancestors; (2) that their families preserved some aspect of Jewish identity–often unknowingly; and (3) that therefore, as they might put it, somos judios "we are Jews." Indeed, much of the discussion and controversy about "Crypto-Judaism" in the contemporary southwestern U.S. refers to precisely these three issues: (1). Genealogy, (2) The Canon of Evidence, and (3). Identity.

I would like to add my comments about the current gathering and the wonderful spread in the Los Angeles Jewish paper. The report underscores the great changes that have obtained in only the past few years regarding the degree of communi ty identification. For many people here, the openness and the direct way in which issues of heritage can be discussed is a great and important change. Although this observation is necessarily subjective, only a few years ago, there seems to have been a fa r greater degree of reticence and indeed a disease about some of the directions in which people might proceed. Some members of the community have made peace with where they have chosen to stand; a large and committed crowd present at this conference is fu rther indication of healthy progress. Yet the changing nature and degree of identity in the late 20^th century and into the early 21^st century are areas which needs to be even more deeply researched.

I will try in the following to avoid some of the extremes: finding examples of Crypto-Judaism under every stone, and conversely, rejecting an attitude which couches a negative approach in scientific terms. Moreover, we must balance sens itivity to research needs and and respect for individuals; some of the poetry produced my members of the Crypto-Jewish community has compared the prodding of researchers to the Inquisition—unfavorably, I might add.

This evening I will show excerpts from taped interviews conducted by the Hispano Crypto-Jewish Resource Center in 1996. The interviewer was Yitzhak Kerem. All the interviewees were happy to sign releases clearly allowing use for researc h purposes and inclusion in educational presentations.

The original aim of the project was to interview individuals who participated in what is sometimes called "Manito" culture. The word is based on the Spanish hermanito, and is used to refer to descendants of sixteenth an d seventeenth-century Spanish colonials who reached the northernmost parts of New Spain along the frontier in what is now northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, especially in small villages near Santa Fe. Their ancestors, according to what I have cal led the foundation narrative of this phenomenon, , strove to avoid the inquisition, prior to the seventeenth century, by migrating to remote villages along the Rio Grande. There, in what is today New Mexico, southern Colorado, Texas and northern Mexico, t hey retained various practices, married primarily among similar families, and secretly maintained some sort of identity until the twentieth century. In practice, however, our formal interviews and our informal records encompass primarily individuals who h ave found their way into Colorado. The U.S. phenomenon includes individuals originally from California, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. It seems to me that studies need to take into account the very real differences in the histories of converso descenda nts from various areas—whether Mexico, South America, Belmonte, or Ibiza. But it also seems that narratives about identity by American adults—wherever their provenance—are clearly shaped in much the same ways as their neighbors. Perhaps, therefore, the in formants should be characterized as persons currently living in the cities of Colorado’s Front Range. Research perhaps needs to devote more attention to the degree to which the statements of our informants share points of contact with persons whose spirit ual quests fall outside the framework of the Crypto-Jewish narrative.

Genealogy, Evidence, and Identity

Time permits only brief introductions to the general themes.

 

(1) Genealogy.

Are they really descended from New Christians? Jacob Rader Marcus estimated that 10% of the Spanish colonials were New Christians; more recent research, such as that of Stan Hordes, has been unable to confirm his guess or to provide a m ore accurate quantification of the percentage. But whether or not this number is correct, inquisition and other records provide ample testimony for new Christian settlement in this region. In his important encyclopedia of eighteenth century residents of N ew Mexico, Fray Angelico Chavez traced multiple genealogical links from his own family back to Luis de Carvajal and other well-known New Christians of the first century of Iberian colonization of Mexico. Even if few others demonstrated their genealogy so convincingly and completely, it seems unlikely that they would reach other conclusions. It hardly seems open to doubt that many Manitos have at least some New Christian ancestors, although it would seem that some individuals also find Jewish ancestors fro m more recent times.

 

(2) Evidence

The question of evidence has perhaps been the most explosive. Many of the individual elements of the canon are problematic, to say the least. For example, some individuals recall playing pon y saca, a put-and-take game with t ops in December. Clearly, many who proudly point to this as evidence of a crypto-Jewish dreidle game are projecting Ashkenazic customs. Similarly, finding the six-pointed magen david, is hardly unambiguous. Although it is found in Hebrew-character Genizah texts from 12^th -century Cairo, it is also clearly in evidence in Medieval Iberia and for that matter, in nineteenth century Protestant religious movements. Taken individually, many if not most of the phenomena taken as evidence are pro blematic, and polemics and counter-polemics about names, tops, pork, blood, and even candles are familiar from the literature and from personal experience. Much of these assume that the converso descendants adapted ancient traditions to their environment, and did so in a vacuum, totally lacking exterior contacts. For the most part this is patently false, even if perhaps contacts were few.

I would maintain that what is important is not only the elements of the canon of evidence, but the way they are understood by those who practice them. Some clearly include mixed references, e.g., referring to a meeting place for secret Jews of Sephardic heritage by the Ashkenazic term "shul;" referring to dreidels and potato pancakes and the like. Seth Kunin has described the process by which some Crypto-Jews attach Jewish understandings to items from their culture whi ch seem to be similar to Jewish practices—even if those are Ashkenazic and not precisely Sephardic, employing the term "bricolage" as used by social anthropologists. Far from indicating its falseness, this process, which has sometimes been calle d "imagining culture," underscores the healthfulness of a culture which continues to enrich itself by attaching new meanings to old practices, and to adopt and adapt customs that speak to the culture’s sense of vitality and meaning.

(3) Identity

Let me restate my point: deliberations about genealogy and evidence tend to obscure what may be the most important question, that of identity, even if such issues quickly are reduced to questions of genealogy and evidence. In the p opular mind, the identity question is indeed often the one which looms largest: "are they really Jewish?" seems to underlie much of the debate; it was this question, for example, which motivated the piece in the LA Jewish newspaper.

Contemporary Crypto-Jews, whatever they call themselves, see themselves as heirs to a Jewish heritage, in some sense as being Jews or Sephardim. This impacts how they see the evidence and the genealogy. Thus one sometimes encounters a c urious use of unambiguous Jewish ancestry to support what I have called "evidence" – and not genealogy. Several informants, for example, cite their father’s marriage to a woman from an unambiguous Jewish background from the Middle East. Unfortun ately, I do not have these individuals on tape, although, as we shall see, I do have a similar example in which paternal ancestors who are unambiguously Jewish and Ashkenazi are downplayed. In any case, what is interesting is that the fact of Jewish ances try is not presented to establish their own unambiguous Jewish identity –although typically they do not deny this—but read it as evidence that Father was a crypto-Jew—otherwise why would his family have accepted his marriage to a Jewish woman? In such cas es, the informant might well be aware that the maternal heritage is important for halachic reasons—for example, it would make formal conversion unecessary if the informant were interested in association with a synagogue or normative Jewish community—but i s sometimes presented as irrelevant or less relevant to the informant’s description of the desire for Jewish identity, which is based on a Crypto-Jewish background.

 

The Oral History project

The tapes I am showing are from a pilot project if the HCRC. We received a small grant and several sessions were conducted. The subjects were individuals who had filled out a form indicating their interest in sharing their personal stor ies "with a facilitator." Those who participated in the project were all willing to sign releases for their oral history, and none indicated any restrictions on the use of their videotapes. While one can hardly call this system scientific sampli ng, we contacted everyone who had filled out a form for the HCRC and checked the appropriate box, and interviewed everyone who was able to meet with us during the scheduled time.

In reviewing the tapes at this time, the difficulty of concentrating on the identity issue is manifest. Try as I might, I often selected passages which made better video, even if they were less relevant to my central theme. I have not g one back to follow up with these individuals, although in most cases it would not be difficult. One further word: the tapes were made with professional quality equipment. The copy I made for today’s presentation was necessarily made on home equipment, and has a number of technical problems.

The narratives

Lita Rodgers

Born in 1945, as Lita Sandoval, in Wagon Mound, in northern New Mexico. She lived in a ranch not far from there. Her husband is from Ohio; she ran away to get married, as it were, although late came back with her husband and lived for a while near her family before coming to Denver.

Her narrative about crypto-Jewish roots starts in the cemetery she played in as a young girl. (Video clip). She claims that the weird practices, as she called them in the interview, were on her father’s side, although she pointed out th at her maternal grandfather made the design for the tombstone, not anyone from her father’s side, Also, it turns out that the stars were not the six-pointed ones associated by many with Judaism.

Food practices also have given her cause for reflection. Her grandmother always made "Papitas" but it is not clear to me that they were traditional for December only. (video clip).

Here we see an example of one of the great problematics of the oral interview tradition. The interviewer is very suggestive, although the suggestion was already made by others well before the interviewer came around. Rogers also referre d to not eating pork, and to panocha made at Easter time, a flat bread.

Rogers had no idea why they spent September in town, although the interviewer assumed that it was to observe the High Holy Days.

(Video)

[At the Los Angeles conference, a researcher presented parallel evidence that in some crypto-Jewish communities, playing cards was practiced to avoid suspicion of the Inquisition, maintaining that this was documented in Inquisition reco rds and practiced in other locations. Specifically, he recounted awareness of contemporary individuals in Barcelona, Spain who play cards on days which turn out to be Rosh Hashana. I have been unable to follow up on this as of yet].

Rogers is aware of family members who said "non son Catolicos" did not go to church; her father, for example, could only be dragged once a year by her mother. But she is searching for "signs" that, as she would put i t, "we might be Jewish."(two last clips).

Michael Atlas Acuña

Acuña was born in 1950, in Douglas, AZ, a border town. He moved to San Bernardino in southern CA at a young age. His parents came from Sonora in Mexico; his father was born in Pachuca, in Mexico, a town described by Raphael Pata i when he studied a nearby community of Venta Prieta. Here is how he begins his personal narrative: (video)

According to his personal narrative, Acuña began his interest in Judaism independently of family, when he met the woman who became his wife. But he also recalled family practices of his Mother’s mother’s mother, Guadalupe Mendoza , and his mother’s own interest in Judaism. Even so, he reports that he began his interest in crypto-Jewish heritage only after reading an article in the regional Jewish newspaper. (video, video)

Acuña reports that his great-grandmother lit candles on Friday nights, never went to church on Sunday, refused to recognize Jesus and called worship of saints "idolatry." Of his grandmother, however, he says that she li t candles "all the time."

He reports having Abondegas, a soup made of meatballs and rice at Eastertime, and asserts that it is a Sephardic dish for the Seder. He also recalls Christmas tamales made with beef and finding it strange that Hispanos in Pueblo used po rk—although he reports that pork was eaten in his home. He does report that their Spanish dialect was somewhat different than those around him, headstones with no symbols.

His mother was an important link in this chain, but her knowledge and attitudes towards Judaism came from other sources. Acuña reports that she worked for a family that was Jewish and later for a company owned by Jews. She began to read about the Jews in Spain, and had begun to study with a Rabbi in northern California. He believed that her "last wish was to die as a Jew." So Acuña and his brothers arranged for the conversion to be completed and and they were abl e to give her a Jewish burial. He concluded: "She started to see all these things, dropped all this on us and then was gone."

Amalia Romero

Amalia Romero is somewhat older than Acuña and Rogers. She was born not far away from Rogers in a small town in Mora County, New Mexico.

Like Acuña’s mother, Romero could trace part of her interest in Judaism from working for Jews. (video).

She began to work cleaning the home of Dr. Grezias, a Jewish physician, about 1986, after her kids finished school. According to her account, she began to realize "this and this were done the same in my family." Although she m entioned ways in which the house was cleaned, when pressed for more examples she said "I can’t put my finger on it."

Nevertheless, she requested a mezuza from her employer, and reported having it on her door. Her father, also, had come into contact with Jews. He worked on occasion for a Jewish storekeeper in town, bringing in freight from the train st ation in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Interestingly, she offered the account of her father’s Jewish employer in response to a question from the interviewer regarding working on the Sabbath; her response about working for the Jewish employer did not address his question about the Sabbath at all.

Father did not like hunting, and did not to consume blood. She reports that while blood was a delicacy for the Indians, he did not like it and believed that the blood should be drained from an animal before eating. Romero reports that s he has traced her grandfather back to 16^th century Spain, although in context it (although it seems to me that she may have traced only the name, not the specific genealogy). She also believes that her family has been living in northern New Me xico for 400 years. They did not feel different from Catholics, her father was not a member of the Penitentes, went to Church only once a year. Some people lit candles, and were called brujas "witches." Her godmother lit candles once a we ek; in the interview, she sometimes said it was Saturday and sometimes Friday night.

Romero reported few other elements of the "canon"—no special language, no feeling of difference, no oral tradition about endogamy or names. Nevertheless, she did report in her own family, some married close relatives of their siblings’ spouses, and the males’ names (but not the females) were Biblical; the oldest boy was "Adonais." She did, however, mention a feeling of persecution, more specifically, of prejudice against Hispanos which made it hard to get jobs in the mines or as migrant workers.

Romero noted that people from her area in northern New Mexico had unusual practices, but do not know why, and she reports being unaware of anyone from these circles who has converted. Still, she would like to know more, to be able to un derstand her family’s background.

G.A.

According to G.A.’s report, her original family name was Augusta de la Silviera, and her father’s ancestors came from Floris in the Azore islands. Thus, she is more like the Portuguese in fall River studied by David Gitlitz. Her great grandfather married an Ashkenazi woman, and she reports that her research turned up a German or French Jewish traveler to the Azores who married one Maria de Armas in the 1840s. Nevertheless, she sees her Jewish identity entirely from the Sephardi c side: Note that she does not deny the truth of the "crypto-Jewish" label—indeed, she stresses that her father tried to hide his ancestral religion from her. But note which label she prefers, and how she views that identity (Video).

Her narrative emphasizes her father’s unwillingness to discuss details with her, noting that he had "no desire to leave the Jewish identity," yet no interest in talking about it. She quotes him as often having said "I’m just the son of a Portuguese Jew," although she had thought merely that her father "came from a black people" and wanted to keep some distance. He had some obvious antagonism to Catholicism, and approached it with sarcasm, making sure, for example, to take thirty pieces of silver with him if he was cajoled into going to church. The animosity and sarcasm she attributed to her father rubbed off on her: she referred to autos da fe as "entertainment for the Spanish and Portuguese" noting "they didn’t have a problem filling the seats, people would come out." She referred to a few practices from the canon: they did not eat pork, and separated milk and meat, but explained that it was for health reasons. She reports they had Matza at Eastertime, and reports eating lamb only once a year, also at this time. Her mother used coarse salt in preparing meat; they ate apple dipped in sugar in the fall, although she associated it with Halloween. Nevertheless, her father made anti-semitic remarks, prevented family members from attending some of the family events of the "Jewish side" of his family, and appears to have resolutely refused to discuss this issue with his daughter.

She recalls discovering her ancestry at age 28 or 29, although she is the only one in her family who is interested. She did not give any particular reason why she started doing this research. Her first husband was not Jewish, her second husband is, but she did not connect this with her spiritual journey. Her comment on her studies about her ancestry was merely: "When I started doing my research I felt like I was coming home."

Leonora Cordova

Leonora Vera Cordova was born in 1947 in Villa Hermosa, Tabasco, Mexico. Although the town was remote, she was born there because her father, an engineer was sent to the rain forest.

When asked, she recalls virtually no knowledge of any of the items usually cited as evidence of crypto-Jewish background. Names are often considered part of the "canon of evidence," and the Biblical names on the male side of her family fit the scenario: her father was Joseph, and in addition to her brother Antonio (not a fit), there were Baltazar, Emanuel, Isaiah, and Elias. Nevertheless, she did not think the names of the male members of her family were unusual in any way. She did, however, recall that friends in college claimed that Perez was a Jewish name, a claim she was uninterested in at that time. (video)

Although she recalled burying the dead as soon as possible and noted that her father did not work on Saturdays, she did not think these practices different. Indeed, she reported that the family had almost no religion, practicing Catholicism only for baptism, marriage and burial. This, however, she attributes to religious persecution—not of Jews but of religion in general, when a provincial governor burned churches.

Cordova’s search for spirituality involved going to Rome to become a nun. She later left the convent, deciding to get married at have a family, but also wondering about some of the things that Rome did not teach her. Regarding the interest in Jewish identity, she did not cite a particular narrative for how this came to be important to her, although she cited things which–at least to my mind—are primarily subjective, such as the resemblance of a man from Jerusalem to her Uncle Isaiah an d her love of Middle Eastern music.

In the interview, she reported studying with a Rabbi in Fort Collins and hopes to be immersed. What does it mean to be Jewish? Cordova’s response is that her study of Judaism helped her understand some of the basics of Christianity.

Identity Issues

Several questions may be addressed:

1. Do the individual narrative match the general foundation narrative for the phenomenon?

Of these five individuals, only two hail from the manito area, although neither used the word. Of these, neither had reported close contact with Jews in their home villages, but neither they nor anyone else—with the possible exception of Cordova—were as isolated from Judaism as usually thought. Even Cordova reported Jewish friends in college. Despite great dissimilarities in details, the stories, are similar in some of the main outlines and values, suggesting that they share a cultural background which plays a role in shaping the narratives.

2. How do they relate to the Jewish identity of their ancestors? To what extent to they see their heritage as Sephardic as opposed to Jewish?"

Acuña began his narrative by stating "I am a Jew," and others wondered whether they might be Jewish. This type of involvement in Jewish identity is far different from a statement along the lines of "we have Jewish ancestry."

This approach is hardly unique to the Sephardic world of the U.S. Southwest. While in England to give an earlier version of this paper I met a genealogist in Manchester who describes inquiries couched in much the same way—individuals who believe that they feel Jewish and must have Jewish ancestors. Her job was quite easier than that of the genealogist working with the manitos, as the Jewish ancestry in this case is usually no more than three to five generations back—and almost always Ashkenazi.

For GA, the Sephardic ancestry is the only one that matters: as noted, she found an Ashkenazi man who married into the family in the Azores in the early nineteenth century, and had an Ashkenazi grandmother, but she consistently downplays their importance to her identity. Yet others did not express any discomfort: Cordova is meeting with an Ashkenazi rabbi and Acuña is president of a largely Ashkenazi synagogue in Pueblo.

3. How are the differing issues of Family vs. Community articulated?

There are numerous aspects of the problematics of identitifcation accross the generations, and identification with the broader community. Janet Libman Jacobs’ research suggests a high degree of positive identification with the Jewish community among those who were available for full interviews: some who had formally converted to Judaism, others studying or attending synagogues and reporting consideration of conversion. My records of informal interviews showed much smaller percentages. Yet those who were available for formal videotaped testimonies were even more likely than Jacobs’ informants to either have achieved or to be actively exploring unambiguous Jewish community identification.

As far as family concerns, it is interesting that only Acuña, the only male in this sample, was primarily concerned with his mother, who had a positive attitude to the phenomenon. The women all recounted the Jewish connection on the father’s side, in some cases aware of possible or undisputed Jewish backgrounds among some of the female ancestors but ignoring it, or devoting more energy the paternal side, at least at first. As for the children: it would appear that for GA and Acuña, the attitude is unambiguous. Both referred to bringing up children as Jewish. For others, it is not so easy. I have written elsewhere about the striking difference between this community and the normative Jewish community, with its emphasis on whether one’s grandchildren will be Jewish. Yet I should also stress that the difference is that members of the Crypto-Jewish community are still wondering about their grandparents’ grandparents. Only once they are able to address their tradition openly and cognizant of its rich heritage will they have the luxury to consider what their children will make of it—and in some cases, we can already see a deep and sensitive approach among the kids.

4. Does the interview process bias the answers?

Our interviewer did not adopt a totally neutral protocol. Some questions were phrased in a totally neutral fashion, but others clearly were leading questions which directly suggested the answers expected, or offered an explanation to the informant for him to confirm. Nevertheless, time and again, the interviewees did not take the bait. They approached this seriously, not being led astray by suggestions. Given the high degree of interest by the informants in discussing their Jewish identity –and evidence for it—the degree to which they did not follow the lead is far more striking. None of the interviewees was untouched by the Jewish community; most could tell of contacts not only in their own but in their parents’ generations. The interviewer’s approach can be faulted, but it cannot be blamed for creating these ideas.

 

In conclusion

These personal narratives represent individuals at different stages of their spiritual search. All have ample reasons to believe they are part of a crypto-Jewish tradition, on the basis of genealogical research or on the basis of what is sometimes called the canon of evidence. Yet among those of us who have come forward for interviews, questions about identity, indeed the quest for identity –especially a religious identity—seems to me to be paramount, and colors the respo nses in the other areas. Moreover, these issues relate to family and individuals; unlike crypto-Jews from other places, the converso descendants who have made their way to the Colorado Front Range have not posited their Jewish identity within the framewor k of an intact, traditional community. The context of their current search should be as much a part of our retelling of our stories as the study of ancestry and evidence. It seems to me, moreover, that the key to the phonomenon, is not so much the ancest ry and evidence as it is the issues of religious and cultural identity which give the ancestry and evidence the significance and power to so many members of the Converso-descendant community.

Seth Ward

The UW Religious Studies club sent me an announcement about a discussion responding to a discussion on The New York Times 'Room for Debate' Op-Ed page on their website to whether Islam is an obstacle to democracy: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/10/04/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy/?ref=opinion.

Tariq Ramadan’s comment is important—and the page of responses are mostly to his article. The way it is set up, some people might miss Ramadan’s piece. I did not read all of them, but most of the short pieces in response were disappointing to me (my personal opinion). Omid Safi was the best of them. His comments about dealing with religious and ethnic minorities are well-put, and something to watch for. I think he overstates the degree to which anti-Muslim sentiment is intrinsic to American and Israeli societies, rather than a result of actual attacks. But his call to fellow Muslims to create societies that live up to their expectations is articulate, passionate and honest.  

Tariq Ramadan does not dismiss the very real considerations that have made Muslims angry at America, although to my mind, one key ingredient goes un-emphasized by him: the role of leadership in channeling anger in this way. What he does say is important: he addresses Arab/Muslim societies, and says it is time to stop blaming others, and time to act as the empowered agents they actually are.  Ramadan also reminds American readers about the deep divisions between different strands within today’s Islamic world.

Until the Arab street understands that complaining about the US is not the answer to their problems, there will be no democracy, no self-rule by the people. This is no easy street. Ramadan has something important to say, and in my humble opinion, too few of the respondents got this right.

Seth Ward

This piece was written Sept. 14 2012 in response to a posting by Don Ellis: http://peaceandconflictpolitics.com/2012/09/14/procon-one-state-or-two-states/

 

This is itself a copy of a posting at Procon:  http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000632

 

Don invited comments and if you have any comments to this post, you should probably post them here AND copy them on Don’s blog as well.

 

I edited my comments for clarity and also for the present context, in which I am not re-posting the Procon item.

 

 

This is a response to brief arguments, pro and con, responding to the “Two State Solution,” signed by Moshe Ya’alon (con) and Ziad Asali (pro), and unsigned pro and con arguments about the One State Solution.

 

 

One problem with the approach of all these statements is that there appears (to me at least) to be a false binary here. In a very important way, the Pro and Con excerpts can be harmonized by readers wishing to do so, just by saying that many of those involved, if not most, agree about the likely eventual emergence of an independent state called “Palestine” alongside Israel. The author of the “con” argument, Yaalon, would appear to agree as well, as long as this State was prepared to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, and to live in peace and harmony.

 

 

In fact, the “two state solution,” as usually articulated, includes “the peace and harmony” idea, and it might be said that this argument for or against the “two states” boils down not to whether there should be a State of Palestine, but whether the issues raised by the “con” side can be solved at all, and if so whether the “two state solution” can solve them.

 

 

In my humble opinion, the nomenclature may be part of the problem rather than part of the solution of the problem: I think some of those who support the “two state solution” really think in exactly those terms: the creation of a Palestinian State will provide the actual solution to the “Palestine Question.” Many readers familiar with the history of Political Zionism will recognize a kind of parallel with Herzl’s thinking about sovereignty as the simple solution to Antisemitism.  On the other hand, many who accept the emergence of an Arab State—indeed, welcome it as not only inevitable but ideal—actually endorse a “two state result” rather than a “two state solution.”

 

 

I think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the mere creation or existence of a sovereign state, even a democratic one, does not alone solve all the problems it was meant to solve. One must only look at such entities as the Weimar Republic, or post-colonial/post-imperial states in Asia and Africa and for that matter in the Former Soviet Union, or to Southern Sudan—itself a highly significant partition of Sudan, a largely Muslim state. Certainly one can adduce Israel as an example: it did not entirely provide the solution of the Jewish Problem and anti-Semitism, as envisioned by Herzl. The “Two State Result” or some other nomenclature which implies that a “solution” is not automatically implied strikes me as the better approach.

 

 

As for the false binary: it’s false because this debate is between slogans or broad ideas–not really an “up or down” between specific propositions. My colleague Menachem Kellner used to talk about the great distinction between “belief in” and “belief that,” and this debate often seems to me to have the problems attendant to the “belief in” paradigm: people “believe in” a “two state solution” but problems arise when they have to express their belief that this or that specific element will have a specific result. 

 

 

To conclude: I am not sure that the arguments pro and con for “a two state solution” or “a one state solution” are really to the point. They express belief in a concept, or binary choices about one or another very specific plan, with flaws always raised by the other side.

 

Since there have been many years of discussing all sorts of “two-state” solutions and plans, perhaps this suggests that a “two state result” may well be the outcome–rather than the solution–and confusing outcome with solution may indeed be part of the problem.

 

 

Seth Ward

This essay started as a Dvar Torah for October 3, 2012—the night of the first Presidential Debate between Mitt Romney and Barak Obama, and has only been lightly edited.

My talk this evening has little to do with the Torah readings for Sukkot or for that matter, with the Parashat Hashavuah. Those were my first thoughts for a subject to be sure, but I recently received a review copy of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, by Yoram Hazony, a political philosopher whose volume The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul created quite a stir with its analysis and critique of (inter alia) the orientation of the academic world in Israel. Hazony argues that the Tanakh must be part of the discourse of philosophy in the academic world, a “work of reason”—of philosophy--as much as those based on Greek philosophers. Given tonight’s Presidential debates, I turned to Hazony’s chapter with a subtitle “A Political Philosophy.”

Commenting on a verse from I Samuel, Hazony concludes that “the Hebrew Bible can be seen as going farther in the direction of endorsing democratic rule than any of the classic texts of Greek philosophy.” Perhaps American democratic ideals reflect 18^th century European thought more than the ancient Greeks, but that is not particularly important for us: his comments are based on his reasoning from Hebrew Bible and are relevant to our own democratic process.

The verse records words God is said to have spoken to Samuel (I Sam 8:7)
 שְׁמַע בְּקוֹל הָעָם, לְכֹל אֲשֶׁר-יֹאמְרוּ אֵלֶיךָ  “Accept the voice of the people in everything they say to you.”
But this is only part of the story: He sees this as Divine acquiescence in what is practical and indeed necessary—and contrary to the prophet’s judgment—yet still problematic: in this verse, Samuel is told that they are rejecting God himself: Ki Oti maasu—“they have rejected Me.” In a note, Hazony compares this to God telling Abraham to listen to Sarah to do what is practical and necessary, although against his better judgment, and expel Hagar and Ishmael.

Yet Hazony adduces a second source of political legitimacy from Samuel’s speech when the people suggest that maybe they had sinned when they asked for a king. (1 Sam chap. 12), noting that “The legitimacy of the state cannot derive from the consent of the people alone.” (151) as Samuel says he will instruct them

 בְּדֶרֶךְ הַטּוֹבָה וְהַיְשָׁרָה. “in the good and the right path.”

Thus the Hebrew Bible argues for a political system of dual legitimacy: the interests of the people, and the demand for the Good and Right. In Hazony’s words: “the people and their representatives… [make] demands on the king in defense of their own interests,” while the government is also urged towards the good and right by the Prophets. 

Thus, according to Hazony, we have a reasoned argument for a doctrine of limited government, differing from the imperialism of Egypt which enslaved the Israelites and the expansionism of Assyria and Babylonia, but also differing from the anarchy of the period of Judges which caused civil war and disunity. The Laws of Kings from Deuteronomy call for the King to refrain from amassing horses, wives and gold.  These rules are designed to preclude the king from waging constant warfare, from complicated international alliances, (cemented by marriage), and excessive taxation and plunder. The ideal political system is a limited state governed by law, not by arbitrary whimsy of the government and by self- aggrandizement. This is why the King is to write a copy of the Torah and keep it with him.

Solomon shows the difficulty of maintaining this balance. Solomon impresses all with his wisdom achieves peace and builds the Temple. But he exacts heavy taxes, has entangling alliances through his wives, and gathered many chariots and horses. (1 K 10:14-11:4). The law of the King, says Hazony, is not only to keep the King oriented towards God, but loyal to his people and sympathetic to them “so that his thoughts be not lifted above his brothers” (Deut. 17:20). Could Solomon possibly have met this criterion if he only drank from silver vessels, and taxed the people to build himself a palace larger than the Temple itself, and sumptuous palaces for foreign wives? Doesn’t the forced labor imposed on Israel remind us of the forced labor endured in Egypt?

Hazony argues that the Bible wrestles with two types of government options: an imperial state, leading to bondage, and anarchy, leading to dissolution and civil war, and argues that the State must steer a clear course between the two extremes, seeking “the good and the right.” Government must understand that virtue comes from limitations – on borders, on armies, on foreign entanglements, on income, on the raising of the government above the people. The Political mission of man is to steer clear of both extremes, of the twin threats, “thereby assuring the sympathies of both man and God and the political longevity of the kingdom.” (160).

I do not know how exactly Hazony would apply these principles to modern Israel or modern America. For readers of his book who, like him, come from a modern Orthodox or similar background, the content of his reconstruction will not be all that surprising. But the book is more exactly an argument aimed at academic scholars and departments, arguing that the Hebrew Bible is a crucial component in the development of Western thinking and those who ignore it or relegate it to “revelation” rather than reason are misguided. In other words, he is not necessarily arguing that readers should accept the political philosophy as correct, just as a philosopher explaining Plato or Aristotle might emphasize interpreting their ideas and understanding their significance.

I will leave it to you to interpret the ideas about good government Hazony asserts derive from a study of the Bible as a work of reasoned argument and their significance, including their application to large states, such as the USA, or to the contemporary State of Israel, and how these ideas about legitimacy, power, and ”the good and the Right”  relate not only to an actual or ideal Israelite sovereign, but to general goals of government, and the pitfalls that befall politicians.

Seth Ward