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From: 	 heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com
Sent: 	 Tuesday, July 15, 1997 2:14 AM
To: 	 Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup
Subject: Sephardic Jews



From:          Kathleen Marion
To:            heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject:       Testimony of Stefan Blad -Reply


From Eddie:
**************

We have members on this newsgroup who have been called to minister to Sephardic Jews. This note by Kathleen Marion may be of interest to you.

From Kathleen:
******************

What a wonderful testimony, I am blessed.  I spent three years in the South of Spain from 1972-76.  I loved the country, but sensed
great sadness there. It was not my time for revelations from God. 

An interesting note, we recently visited the second oldest Synagogue in the Western Word, which is in St. Thomas, US Virgin 
Islands.  I asked them why they had at least 18 inches of sand on the floor and they told me that during the inquisition in Spain many
Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism practiced their new faith in the Church but continued their Jewish faith in the
basements of their homes by putting a layer of sand on the floor to muffle the sound. 

The following is an article from the San Diego Union Tribune, February 28.  

Secrets of the past | Inquisition left legacy of hidden' Jews in Southwest, but clues about conversion remain shrouded in mystery 


SANDI DOLBEE 
28-Feb-1997 Friday 

Charlene Neely 

Charlene Neely remembers how her maternal grandmother, a faithful Hispanic Roman Catholic, would go into her bedroom 
on Friday nights and light candles. 

And as she researched her mother's family tree, with roots going back 350 years in what is now New Mexico, she discovered the
branches were filled with names like Esther, Sarah, Solomon and Abram. Yet among all these Hispanic Catholics, she could not find
one Jesus. 

"All the hints were there," Neely says now. 

But it wasn't until about 10 years ago, when she began reading the research of a historian named Stanley Hordes on secret Jews in the
Southwest, that Neely made the connection. 

The East County resident believes she is living proof of these conversos, Sephardic Jews who were forced to convert to Roman
Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition, which began in the 15th century. 

As "New Christians," many of these conversos immigrated to the New World, only to encounter the Mexican Inquisition,
launched in Mexico City in the 16th century. 

Desperate to keep both their faith and their lives, some practiced their Catholicism on the outside and their Judaism on the inside,
behind closed doors. They became known as "crypto-Jews," or secret Jews. 

Because of the secrecy, following the legacy of these crypto-Jews is tough.  For Neely, the proof is in the pattern -- the Hebrew Bible
names and the rituals that are more Jewish than Christian. 

"It would be illogical to find some other answer for this," she says. 

Hordes would agree. 

He remembers arriving in Santa Fe in 1981 as the newly hired state historian for New Mexico, and how people would come to his
office and furtively close the door behind them. 

They'd lean forward and whisper stories about Hispanic Christians in the area who didn't eat pork or who'd light Sabbath candles
on Friday night. "The more I began to look, the more I began to find," he recalls. 

Somehow, ancient Jewish practices had been passed down from generation to generation of families who are now Catholics or Protestants. 

What was even more intriguing was that many of these families had no idea where these customs came from. Only that their
parents and grandparents had done them. 

Some refused to discuss the issue, as if they were hiding a terrible secret. Others would answer in whispers and riddles. 

It is a mystery that has not been solved. And while Hordes may have ignited the modern-day fascination in New Mexico, it is
now catching fire in San Diego, where the legacy of these secret Jews is being explored in a photo exhibit and the world premiere of
an opera. 

"The Conquistador," which opens tomorrow at the Civic Theatre, brings to the opera stage the true-life story of Don Luis de Carvajal, a
16th-century conquistador of New Spain (colonial Mexico) and founder of Monterrey. 

Though Carvajal was a devoted Catholic, his relatives were secret Jews. It is this struggle between his faith and his heritage, along with
the politics of the time, that seals his fate. His sister and her family are burned at the stake by the Mexican Inquisition and he is left to
languish in prison. 

San Diego composer Myron Fink got the idea for "The Conquistador" several years ago, when he read a book about the Mexican
Inquisition while teaching music at New York's Hunter College. 

Fink, who is Jewish but raised his children as Unitarians, admits he's always been intrigued by "the experience of Jews in societies that at
first welcomed them and then turned against them, which has certainly happened a number of times." 

In conjunction with the San Diego Opera, the San Diego Museum of Man in Balboa Park last week opened a three-month exhibit of
photographs by Cary Herz, an Albuquerque photographer who has spent much of the past decade capturing what she thinks are clues
about crypto-Jews. 

Many of Herz's pictures are from graveyards throughout the Southwest, where she found a curious mixture of Christian and Jewish
symbols on headstones -- not from the 16th century, but from this one. 

She found crosses etched next to Stars of David and menorahs. At one grave, she found two markers side by side. One had a
Star of David. The other had a Christian cross. Both markers were for the same man, who died in the 1930s. 

Herz, who was in San Diego last Tuesday for the exhibit's opening, says she began her search about 10 years ago, as she, too, heard
snatches of the same kind of stories that Hordes was hearing. 

As she discovered these graveyards, many of them in out-of-the-way territories, she was struck by how these people lived as
Christians, but then upon death "wanted some connection with the other part of their soul." 

Secrecy continues 

Perhaps the most curious part of this mystery is why descendants would be so reluctant to come forward. 

Herz, who is Jewish and was raised in New York, says even people who let her into their homes, like the woman who has on her wall a
Jewish mezuzah next to a picture of Christ, grow anxious about revealing too much. 

Herz believes this reluctance is as ingrained as the customs themselves, handed down through the generations. The fear didn't end
with the Inquisition -- the one in Spain or in Mexico City. It was simply "easier to be what everybody else was -- and safer," she
suggests. 

Historian Hordes, who was in San Diego last week for lectures associated with the opening of the opera and the exhibit, says some
residents know about their ancestry. 

He's heard stories of fathers who'll take sons into fields and tell them, "You know, we are Jewish and not Catholic. But you must never
tell anyone because you will put your family at tremendous risk if they find out." 

Why the secrecy? He shrugs. 

"After 500 years of keeping a secret, the secrecy becomes part of your life," says Hordes, who is Jewish and currently an
adjunct research professor at the Latin American Institute at the University of New Mexico.  "That's just what you do. It's not
even a conscious process, you just do it." 

But even Hordes, who is continuing his research into the legacy of the secret Jews, admits that he has more questions than answers. 

The history 

The Spanish Inquisition was part of an attempt by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to unify Spain by tying together
church and state, according to Eric Van Young, a history professor at UCSD who wrote a background essay for "The Conquistador." 

Jews, Muslims and other non-believers were given three choices: They could leave, convert or face being burned at the stake.  
Historians estimate as many as 100,000 Jews converted to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition. Many went to other parts of
Europe or to the New World, hoping for a greater degree of freedom. 

Those that came to New Spain faced yet another Inquisition -- so some tried to distance themselves by moving north into the
frontiers of what is now New Mexico and other parts of the Southwest. 

Van Young, who also is associate director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, notes that not all the conversos were crypto-Jews.
Some genuinely embraced the Catholic faith. 

But it's the crypto-Jews who have captured the fascination of Hordes, Herz, Fink -- and others. 

A lecture room at the Museum of Man last week was nearly full for Herz's opening-day presentation. A series of other related
lectures held over the last two months in San Diego County also have been well-attended. 

"I'm hard put to say why," admits Van Young, who has spoken at some of these presentations to help tout "The Conquistador"
and the Museum of Man exhibit. 

Perhaps, he suggests, families today can identify with the struggles of faith and heritage portrayed in the opera about the
Carvajals. "It really is a modern dilemma that's also ancient," he adds. 

But Hordes believes people are curious about this piece of history, at least partially, because "it throws a bucket of cold water on people's
perceptions." 

Hispanics are not only Catholics. Jews are not only from Eastern Europe.  The fabric of America, he says, is much more interconnected. 

"I think, in the long run, it just shows how tremendously diverse and complex American society is," agrees Neely, the local woman
who believes she is a descendant of Sephardic Jews. 

Catholic bashing? 

But this research has its critics. Some say Hordes has invented much of this legacy for his own gain. Others label the effort as
Catholic bashing and an attempt to proselytize for Jews. 

Hordes rejects these arguments. "History is not a morality play," he says.  "History is not the forces of good vs. the forces of evil. You
cannot impose the standards of 1997 on 1497." 

Fink agrees. 

"It was not our intention to write an anti-Catholic or a pro-Jewish piece," says Fink of himself and Donald Moreland, who
penned the libretto for "The Conquistador." 

Fink points out that one of the heroes in the opera is a Franciscan friar.  "It shows the Catholic church, like all human institutions,
has wonderful sides and not so wonderful sides," he adds. 

Neely converted to Judaism when she was a teen-ager, long before she suspected her Sephardic Jewish connections. She
remembers going into a San Diego synagogue at 15 and just feeling as if she were home. 

Was it her roots calling to her? Maybe. But Neely says she doesn't dwell on that. 

"I'm more obsessed with being Jewish today," says Neely, who teaches adults at Adat Ami synagogue in Mission Valley and is area 
resource center coordinator for Hadassah, a women's Zionist group. 

She also isn't bothered that she has no real proof of her ancestry. 

"No one's going to find the piece of paper that says, `Oh, by the way, you're Jewish.' You have to remember, these people were 
very good at hiding.' " 

Hiding still 

Generations later, they're still good at hiding. 

The story of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made news across the country earlier this month after a Washington Post
reporter discovered three of her grandparents were Jews killed by Nazis. 

Albright's parents never mentioned their Jewish background. She was raised Catholic and is now Episcopalian. 

In an interview recently in Newsweek, Albright said she did not question her parents' version of why they fled Europe nearly 60
years ago. Their accounts seemed so logical. Everything fit. There was never any hesitation in their recollections of past Easters
and Christmases. 

Now that Albright knows the truth, she says she just wants to move on. 

"I know this is a story that interests people, but I want to get down to work and have my personal life be personal," Albright said. "I
have been proud of the heritage that I have known about and I will be equally proud of the heritage that I have just been given." 

Neely can identify with that. She didn't convert to Judaism because of heritage. She converted because of religious conviction.
And she doesn't begrudge those who choose not to change their faith.   "In truth, if they say they are Christians, then they are," she says.  

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