Secret Jews

Explain why so many American Jews are deeply uncomfortable with this outpouring of Christian support.

Examines types of Iberian Conversos from the late 14th to the 17th centuries and surveys Christian and Jewish attitudes towards them. Argues that the Jewish identity of Conversos was complicated and existed along a broad spectrum ranging from complete abandonment to ardent Judaizing.

Comprehensive history of crypto-Jewish beliefs and social customs.

After discussing antisemitism in the Iberian peninsula in the medieval period, focusing on the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion, presents information about Converso communities and individuals in the Old and New Worlds. Praises the efforts of Joseph Nasi to protect or avenge persecuted Jews. Deals with complex problems of identity, including those of Uriel Acosta and Spinoza, who did not fit into new Jewish communities. As a rabbi who had been among the first to speak out against the Nazis when living in Berlin and had advocated an immediate mass emigration of Jews, Prinz laments the repeated failure of Jews in history to see the writing on the wall.

Herz offers a photographic tribute to the descendents of New Mexico's secret Jews.

"For many in the United States, Crypto-Judaism has been shrouded in memory and for others it has become an imagined land that might have been, often with little information about the actual history and heritage of the group. Today, in the American southwest and in parts of Latin America there is a movement to reclaim Jewish identity, and people are describing the memories of Jewish identity with the family and the remnants of Jewish practice. That has sparked interest in learning more about Sepharad, the Spain of the Jews, and the diaspora of Spanish Jews and their cousins, the Crypto-Jews. Myths have grown around the concept of Sepharad sometimes obscuring the realities of what it was. There was a "golden age" for Jews in Spain during the early Muslim period, but as the reconquest heated up and Christian rule replaced that of Muslims, the Jewish experience turned dark until the light of the Jews was put out in Spain. In my experience in New Mexico, I have found that local oral traditions about Jewish family identity or reclaimed Jewish identity can be rich, but in some cases not coinciding with historical information. So, there can be multiple tracks of inherited or imagined information in addition to historical documentation. The belief about the association between Judaism and Spain that is expressed among some is that anyone of Spanish descent must have sangre Judia "Jewish blood". That contradicts what we know of the demographics of Spain, which suggest that at the time of the Expulsion, Jews were a minuscule part of the population, probably close to two percent. Crypto-Judaism is an attempt to draw a historical baseline of established information of what we know about those times and the Crypto-Jewish experience"--

In 1981, while working as New Mexico State Historian, Stanley M. Hordes began to hear stories of Hispanos who lit candles on Friday night and abstained from eating pork. Puzzling over the matter, Hordes realized that these practices might very well have been passed down through the centuries from early crypto-Jewish settlers in New Spain. After extensive research and hundreds of interviews, Hordes concluded that there was, in New Mexico and the Southwest, a Sephardic legacy derived from the converso community of Spanish Jews. In To the End of the Earth, Hordes explores the remarkable story of crypto-Jews and the tenuous preservation of Jewish rituals and traditions in Mexico and New Mexico over the past five hundred years. He follows the crypto-Jews from their Jewish origins in medieval Spain and Portugal to their efforts to escape persecution by migrating to the New World and settling in the far reaches of the northern Mexican frontier. Drawing on individual biographies (including those of colonial officials accused of secretly practicing Judaism), family histories, Inquisition records, letters, and other primary sources, Hordes provides a richly detailed account of the economic, social and religious lives of crypto-Jews during the colonial period and after the annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1846. While the American government offered more religious freedom than had the Spanish colonial rulers, cultural assimilation into Anglo-American society weakened many elements of the crypto-Jewish tradition. Hordes concludes with a discussion of the reemergence of crypto-Jewish culture and the reclamation of Jewish ancestry within the Hispano community in the late twentieth century. He examines the publicity surrounding the rediscovery of the crypto-Jewish community and explores the challenges inherent in a study that attempts to reconstruct the history of a people who tried to leave no documentary record.