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

This year’s meeting of the Society for crypto-Judaic Studies took place at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia on November 5-7, and featured a odiverse 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 Sephardi backgrounds from Portugal, Spain, and Italy via Brazil, Mexico, Central America, and the American 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 Sephardi and crypto-Jewish songs, melodies, and liturgical poems; learned about the traditions of crypto-Jewish cuisine as Spanish families took to various “tricks” to hide their observance of the laws of kashrut from the Inquisition and neighbors; hear beautiful Sephardi poetry from such surprising figures as Emma Lazarus; and watch films about the exploration of Jewish identity, such as the wonderful “Challah Rising in the Desert” about the five strands of Jewish identity in New Mexico, which will be screened 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 Jewish identity with the passage of time under the cover of the converso veneer and with the fear of sharing true information about one’s background with future generations, for fear of persecution by the church. Indeed, so many crypto-Jews have disappeared, assimilating both genetically and culturally, that there are no concrete signs of the vast number of Jewish descendants from Sephardi roots who immigrated to the territories of New Spain that later became Mexico and the American Southwestern states. Until now, the conventional wisdom was that many of the people who came to the Americas with or immediately 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, with untold numbers of people following Jewish traditions but unable to prove those roots. Many would-be descendants of the known converso families, however, seemed to have vanished without a trace, written off by historians as having assimilated or died out.. I came to question this assumption after a series of meetings with people of crypto-Jewish descent forced her to look in a different direction.

The first meeting that 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. That side of her family had converso roots, and, she disclosed, some of the Assemblies of God chapters were organized by conversos.

The second experience was an unusual meeting in Miami after a conference devoted to the conversos and the building of Jewish-Latin American relations, which was strongly supported by Pastor John 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-Jewish descent. He was initially Catholic, but spent about a year with 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 George Sprague, a Texan who is a descendant of noted Dr. George I. Sanchez, a civil rights activist for Mexican-Americans, and the catalyst for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, initiated under President Kennedy,  who even in the 1960s was afraid of revealing his Jewish descent. 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 Beth-El 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, whose insignia is a Star of David, and who harbor a mysterious secret of free will, contained inside a box shaped like an apple,  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 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 there.

However, as the rabbi at the Spanish-Portuguese Congregation Mikveh Israel, which hosted the meals for the conference, noted during the Shabbat morning services in a sermon related to that week’s Torah portion, just as Abraham had to be ready to sacrifice his own son in service of God, 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. What seemed much more likely was that, rather than completely assimilating, these descendants may have chosen a different hiding place – such as evangelical Protestant and messianic congregations, where anyone can start one’s own church, and which, particularly in recent times, have 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, which are strictly prohibited by Jewish law.

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 more worthy of exploration. Some told me about the formerly evangelical communities in Central America that, in reality, comprised 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 across Texas and other southwestern states. These churches incorporated Jewish practices as a transitional step away from Catholicism. The puzzle of the disappearance of crypto-Jews may yet be solved. Is it possible that crypto-Jews who had been holding on to remnants of their identities under the direst of challenges – in what could be considered a genocide against Sephardi Jews – have not vanished at all but have been right there under our noses this whole time?

The author is a human rights and national security lawyer based in New York.