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?

Character Matters

Why character matters even in politics:

* Even if people are corrupted by power, why start with someone who is already fully corrupted? Can it really get better from there? No, it will only get worse.

* It's much easier to "use" someone with low character and poor reputation as a tool for various hostile agendas - through smear campaigns, through dwelling on personal flaws etc. WHy give free ammunition to your opposition?

* For those still making excuses for Putin or Erdogan, if you keep justifying alliances of convenience with no evidence that those alliances actually help in any way, with murderous thugs who seek to destabilize and corrupt everything around them, you yourself will end up becoming part of the problem. If you still think Putin or Erdogan are allies in ANY sense of the world, you are standing with bloodthirsty murderers who are enemies to freedom and who are seeking to destroy the United States.

One of the These Things is Not like the Others

Serious question:

Why were the breakups of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia legit, but when Catalonia wants to secede, suddenly everyone cares about Spain's territorial integrity?

The Catalonian Crisis

Events are taking a nasty turn in Catalonia, as the attempt at referendum are quickly going South.

Spanish forces are out firing rubber bullets and striking at peaceful voters, and it's all over the Internet, easily losing the PR battle for the Spanish government.

Whether or not this unrest will end in more serious clashes remains to be seen, but so far it's not looking good.

Concerns of both sides are understandable: Catalonians perhaps should have done more to create an appearance of a serious legitimate process, whereas the Spanish government has jumped the shark with its violent reaction to an event they a priori declared unconstitutional.

Unlike London, which brought forth a well organized campaign to keep Scotland from seceding, Spain has not even attempted a peaceful countercampaign explaining why it's advantageous for Catalonia to stay in place. And balkanization of Spain may set a dangerous precedent for other countries, experiencing similar waves of populism. While Europeans are eating each other alive, terrorists and insurgent forces can easily take advantage of the chaos to claim power and literally take over territories in the future, effectively creating new Syria in Spain and other countries. On the other hand, populist governments of European mini-states are not taking into account the long and problematic path to EU membership, which they all crave. Could this be the beginning of the end for the EU? That remains to be seen, but it's clear that after Spain used physical force to try to shut down the Catalonian referendum, the latter will not be easily pacified.

Spain is a bit farther from Israel than Iraqi Kurdistan, and the government chose to remain mum on the issue, but sent in observers to the referendum, in the eyes of some legitimizing this process, perhaps unduly so.

Other European states are likewise silent thus far, though undoubtedly there will be the usual reasonable talking heads trying to bring all parties to the table for negotiations.

Brussels has a number of headaches in its hands at the moment: Scottish secessionism,  Spanish clashes with Catalonians, the rise of the far right in Germany, and of course, the Russian interference in elections all over Europe, and particularly,  excessive involvement in Balkan states. So far, however, I see no signs that the Belgian bureaucrats and others of their ilk have learned the lessons of Brexit and are ready to address the issues of national sovereignty with individual states. Instead, they seem to be doubling down on punitive attitudes towards the United Kingdom, and are trying to force their will with regards to refugees and other issues on less interested countries such as Poland.

What was once supposed to be a promising free economic zone, became a nightmarish network of clashing interests and ambitions, with old school authoritarianism hiding under the polite masks of diplospeak at the helm of it all. The stronger countries are looking to throw their weight around to impose their will on the rest of the members, while the weaker countries appear to be content to float along, taking advantage of the more economically powerful neighbors, but getting angry whenever their own interests appear to be breached. Overall, no matter how you feel about the idea of the EU and pan-European values, this is an unsustainable situation, and Brexit, and now, the Catalonian referendum shows you that multiculturalism will only get you so far, before the value of freedom becomes self-evident.

The Rain in Spain is a Conflict With Catalonia No One Can Explain

The Spain/Catalonia referendum controversy is becoming a bit of an uncomfortable issue, isn't it?
The way I look at it, on many levels, it's a bit different from the situation with Kurdistan, because:

- allegedly, over 60% of Catalonians actually don't want independence; it's their government that pushed for referendum.
- Catalonia is the wealthiest part of Spain, and some argue that the referendum is just posturing to get more autonomy and additional tax benefits from Spain.
- the degree of autonomy Catalonia currently has is much less than what Kurdistan enjoys, and it's unclear how it will sustain itself as an independent force.
- Catalonia does not seem politically prepared for such a step and does not have independent semi-formal diplomatic relations with other countries, the way KRG does.
- Catalonia would have to restart the entire process of application to the EU as a member state from scratch, just as EU warned Scotland it would in the event of its secession.
- I get the sense that outside EU, most people have no idea who Catalonians are or why they even want independence.

That said, Catalonians do have a legitimate long history of conflict with other parts of the country and wanting to break free. And unlike Basques, their independence movement has been peaceful, without the disturbing history of terrorism. Spain seems intent on denying Catalonians any opportunity to leave (probably out of financial considerations, and also fearing that it would encourage other parts of the country to fall away), and has cracked down on the referendum long before it actually happened by siccing police on the buildings where the ballots are being printed and arresting government officials. Spain also declined to increase the degree of autonomy that the Catalonian government has demanded.

In response, Catalonians have been marching in unbelievably numerous mass gatherings (all peaceful), some of which have met with a push back from the police.
Frankly, it's not looking like it's going anywhere good, and Spain is mishandling the situation just about as badly as one can mishandle something that may not have been all that serious when at the outset, but is NOW indeed growing into a national movement, likely all because of Spain's over-the-top response, which appears to be disproportionate and undemocratic. This little known conflict that no one even cared about even a week ago is now generating international attention, sympathy from the national determination types, and is making the Spanish government look outdated, colonialist, tyrannical, and terrible, whatever the merits of their arguments against the Catalonian secession may be.

We are living in interesting times. I don't know that Spain actually WANTS or is ready for a civil war, which would require massive resources, bloodletting, bearing with international condemnation, and worse yet, possibly losing. But I also don't see how it can afford to lose face at this point by simply giving in to Catolonian secession. The wiser step for everyone would have been a negotiation over terms for increased autonomy for X number of years, at which point, it could have been reviewed and MAYBE at that point the referendum could have been reconsidered. Instead, Spain is falling victim to its own greed.

Not being particularly close to either party, I am rather dispassionate about the ultimate outcome, outside, of course, wishing for a peaceful conclusion to the crisis. Just as interestingly, I find that this recent propensity for breaking away of colonial barriers, is causing nation states to fall apart into increasingly small and potential weak entities, while simultaneously, many of the European countries facing these identity questions, are struggling to absorb millions of mostly Muslim refugees from countries with very different histories and cultures, while also contending with their own failing demographics, and angry populist movements of every imaginable political background. In other words, this crisis is just yet another episode in the increasingly volatile situation in Europe, and a great illustration of what happens when you fail to deal with identity issues in a healthy, thoughtful way early and often.