The Gathering at the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies Leads To An Unexpected Discovery

https://jewishwebsite.com/community/the-gathering-at-the-society-for-crypto-judaic-studies-leads-to-an-unexpected-discovery/22138/

This year's meeting of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies took place at the National American Jewish museum in Philadelphia, and featured a diverse gathering of traditional and independent scholars, researchers, and testimonials related to the study of Crypto-Jewish history, genealogy, culture, and life. A number of speakers and participants came from Crypto-Jewish Sephardic backgrounds from Portugal, Spain, and Italy via Brazil, Mexico, Central America, and the Southwest. Their voices featured prominently as they explored the fascinating stories of self-discovery with the help of modern DNA testing, extensive documentation, and oral traditions of their families. But frequently what started out as an individual journey led into a broader fascination with the field, as these voices branched out to study the patterns in their community and to help others in their quest.

During the three day series of panels, keynote speakers, and other events, participants also had an opportunity to introduce themselves to traditional Sephardic and Crypto-Jewish songs, melodies, and piyut, learned about the traditions of Crypto-Jewish cuisine, as Spanish families took to various "tricks" to hide their culinary exemptions from the Inquisition and neighbors, hear beautiful Sephardic poetry from such surprising figures as Emma Lazarus, and watch films about the exploration of Jewish identity, such as the wonderful "Challah Rises in the Desert" about the five strands of Jewish identity in New Mexico, upcoming at film festivals in the near future.  The participants were also treated to traditional food of the Crypto-Jewish communities in Spain, such as the beef mint stew,  mentioned in one of his books by one of the keynote speakers, David Gitlitz.

One pervasive theme of the conference was the erasure of the Jewish identity with the passage of time under the cover of the Converso veneer and with the fear of sharing truthful information about one's background with the future generations for fear of persecution by the Church. Indeed, generations of Crypto-Jews, aside from those who readily converted of their own accord, seemed to have disappeared altogether, assimilating both genetically and culturally to the point that there are no concrete signs of the numbers of the Jewish descendants from Sephardic roots that should have been readily apparent in Mexico and the territories of New Spain, which later became the American Southwestern states. Up until now, the conventional wisdom was that the people who came here to the Americas with or right after Christopher Columbus and with the most famed converso Luis de Carvajal assimilated out of existence or died out and no trace of most of them can ever be found. The author of this instant article came to question that assumptions after a series of meetings with people of Crypto-Jewish descent forced her to look in a different direction.

The first meeting which served as a clue in solving this 500+-year-old mystery was a discussion with a Texas friend with roots in Mexico, who described her family's involvement in the Assemblies of God, an international Pentecostal association of chapters, run independently, but sharing in basic concepts and agendas. That side of her family had converso roots, and furthermore, she disclosed, some of the Assemblies of God groups were organized by Conversos.  The second experience was an unusual meeting in Miami after a conference devoted to the building of the Jewish-Latin relations and the Anousim, which featured a great deal of support from Texas's Pastor Hagee. On the way to a Cuban restaurant, the author was picked up by a Cuban-American Uber driver, who, in the process of a conversation related to human rights in Cuba, gradually revealed evidence of Crypto-Judaic descent. He was initially Catholic, but spent about a year with Pastor Hagee's congregations, before finding it a poor fit, moving on to messianic congregations, and eventually, to a direct study of Judaism.

Finally, the author was put in touch with a Texan by the name of George Sprague, who is a descendant of a noted doctor George I. Chavez, a civil rights activists for Mexican-Americans, and the catalyst of President Kennedy's Civil Rights Act, who even in the 60s was afraid of revealing his Jewish descent. Mr. Sprague had spent many years researching his genealogy and found evidence of Crypto-Jewish descent going back to the 1300s. He eventually made a full return to Judaism, and is now a member of the congregation in Austin.  He recommended watching "Assassin's Creed", a seemingly unrelated film based on a video game. The film had its roots in 1492, the year Jews were expelled from Spain under the penalty of death. It starts in Castillian, and features a protagonist named "Aguilar" ("eagle"), a name common among conversos. The story tells the tale of two groups - the Assassins, which have Star of David featured as insignia, and which harbor a secret of free will, and the Knights of Templar, who are the agents of the Inquisition and are determined to destroy the Assassins. The Assassin's Creed is the willingness to sacrifice one's own life to keep the Secret safe. The Secret is passed on through the generations even as the Assassins lose their lives. At one point, the Secret is handed off to Christopher Columbus, just as he is about to sail for the New World, the day after the expulsion decree.  The descendants of the Assassins find themselves in California and Texas, and eventually, gradually, and painfully uncover their past and their destiny. All of that sounds quite similar to the story of the Crypto-Jews who were hounded by the Church through the centuries and were forced to embrace Christianity even in Texas, because the Inquisition went after them even there.

However, as the rabbi at the SPanish-Portuguese Mikveh Israel congregation, which hosted the meals for the conference, noted during the Shabbat morning services in the dvar Torah related to that week's Parsha, just as Abraham had to be ready in spirit to sacrifice his own son in service of God, of what he found truthful, Crypto-Jews would burn at the stake rather than give up their identity. That begs the immediate question: could it be that the people who have guarded their faith so staunchly, so cleverly, and at such great odds through the centuries, would all of a sudden just give up, stop sharing their "creed" with their descendants, and disappear forever? I had trouble believing that, and the reflection on my earlier conversations brought me some clarity. Indeed, what seemed much more likely was that rather than completely assimilating, these descendants may have chosen a different hiding place - such as Protestant/Evangelical and messianic congregations, where anyone can start his own church, and which, particularly in recent times, has been far more tolerant of diversity, open to the emphasis on the Old Testament, willing to provide anyone with a Bible, and closer to Judaism than the Catholic Church with its focus on icons and saints, strictly prohibited by the Jewish law.

Yet my research on this subject yielded no results, no references to Jews and any type of Christianity except Catholicism. After the presentation, however, I was approached by a number of people at the event, who revealed supporting evidence that made my hypothesis that much more worthy of exploration. Some told me about the formerly evangelical communities in Central America, who, in reality were Crypto-Jews, embracing an alternative to the initially dominant Catholic church, and who eventually became Orthodox. Others told me how Crypto-Jews in Mexico would convert to a variety of Protestant denominations to get access to the Bible. And still others discussed how their family members would leave the Church to start their own evangelical churches, which ended up spreading as chains across Texas and other Southwestern states, and which included the incorporation of Jewish practices, as a transitional step away from Catholicism.  Clearly, it's entirely possible that the gap in our understanding of the puzzle of  the disappearance of the Crypto-Jews may yet be fulfilled. Is it possible that after all this time, the people who have disappeared, the Crypto-Jews who had been holding on to remnants of their identities under the most dire of challenges, in fact, what could easily be considered a genocide against Sephardic Jews,  have not vanished at all but have been right there under our nose this whole time?