| Nothing Secret About Crypto Jews |
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| Written by Laura Kraus | |||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 22 December 2005 | |||||||||||||||||
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Coming Out of the Judaic Closet in San Antonio In an 18th-century Spanish mission in San Antonio, an odd painting dating back to the 1700s was recently discovered in the church rafters. Hidden in the background of the painting in a delicate, gold-brown hue, were the Hebrew letters yud heh vav heh: the four-letter name of God. What was the secret of the painting? No answers—but perhaps it was painted by a Crypto Jew, a Spanish Jew forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition. Alternatively known as Conversos, Crypto Jews lived their public lives as Christians while secretly passing down Jewish traditions from generation to generation using clever devices. In 1580, a group of Spanish Jews fleeing the Inquisition landed in Mexico and founded what is now the state of Nuevo Leon. An inquisition of sorts also took place in Mexico City at the time, however, and many Conversos escaped persecution by fleeing to the northernmost part of the country, what is now south Texas. My ancestor Marcos Alonso de la Garza y Falcon was one of the founders of Nuevo Leon, and his descendents established their roots in San Antonio as well. Crypto Jews are still in existence today, though many don’t know it. Their ancestors’ customs are mostly dying out, only to be discovered again by people my parents' age. My mother, who grew up strictly Catholic, remembers that her father used to only buy kosher meat "because the rabbi said so.” My great grandmother always marked the death date of her husband by lighting a candle, and on Friday nights she lit two candles. When asked about the candles, she explained that her mother had done so, as had her grandmother. In Downtown San Antonio’s Mercado, or marketplace, pan de Semita is for sale. This “Semitic bread” is basically a Mexican form of matzah usually eaten during Lent. The Mercado is full of men gambling with dreidel-like tops inscribed with instructions on the sides written in Spanish: take all, take half, take nothing, and give one. In the poor parts of town, chickens roam the yards and are butchered by tan grandmothers who hang the headless bodies upside down on a clothesline until the blood is all gone. Before cooking, they rub the meat with salt to cleanse it. Sometimes, the lucky ones of my mother's generation got an answer for these rituals: "Somos Judios,” we are Jews. But the need for secrecy still held, and they were sworn not to tell anyone outside the house. Then in the 1980's, people started coming out of the Judaic closet. Many communities in New Mexico can now prove their genetic heritage, and almost all the males of one such community tested positive for the Cohen gene. Still, many Orthodox Jews still do not believe that they are their spiritual brothers. The Chief Rabbi of Mexico argues that these people were the servants of Jews who did not convert. I know a woman in San Antonio with Crypto Judaic heritage who was denied a conversion: the traditions were there, the local Orthodox rabbi told her, but the proof wasn't. However, my teacher, Rabbi Samuel Lerer, converted over 3,000 Crypto Jews in his lifetime. He is now buried in Mexico City with his beloved congregation that he fought so hard for. His heir to the Crypto Judaic cause, Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn of Kansas City, is eager to surpass the 3,000 mark set by Rabbi Lerer. He has at least two under his belt: he converted my mother and me last year (my father is an Ashkenazi Jew). Of all my studies of Crypto Jews, the one thing that surprises me the most is how Crypto Jews seem to unknowingly gravitate towards Judaism. Many personal accounts talk of how people who grew up "not feeling right" in the faith in which they were brought up are suddenly turned on when they encounter Judaism. Like the painting in Mission Concepcion, it seems as if one’s heritage is always at play beneath the surface. My mother and I are just two of the many Crypto Jews who are unearthing and embracing our roots every day. Our identity is no longer hush-hush.
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