Saturday, October 18, 1997

'Crypto-Jews': Their faith survived in secret

By Richard C. Dujardin

Providence Journal-Bulletin

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - For most Americans today, it's a hypothetical question: If your religion was being persecuted, would you continue practicing it? If so, how?

But it's not so hypothetical for millions around the world where religious freedom is sharply curtailed. Nor was it for the many thousands of Jews during the time of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions who found if they were to hold on to their religion at all they needed to do so secretly.

University of Rhode Island Professor David Gitlitz has spent much of the last 20 years researching and studying the traditions and fates of these "crypto-Jews" of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and in an award-winning book published late last year he details many of the clandestine practices they employed to carry on their traditions even though they were living outward lives as Catholics.

In September, his "Secrecy and Deceit: The Lives of the Crypto-Jews" was awarded the Lucy Dawidowicz Prize in History from the Forward Foundation of New York, and the author says he plans to use the $10,000 prize to expand his research to the practices of crypto-Jews in Latin America during the colonial period.

Gitlitz points out clandestine Jews have always found it much easier to hide non-actions, such as fasting, than to hide family feasts that could be observed by neighbors. For that reason, perhaps, he says, the celebration of the Jewish New Year - Rosh Hashanah - disappeared from the calendar of crypto-Jews in Portugal and Spain while Yom Kippur - a Day of Atonement when Jews fast from sundown to sundown - stayed on as an enduring holy day for nearly 200 years.

For some of their families, the story began in the late 1300s and early 1400s, when their ancestors in Spain agreed to be baptized. Partly influenced by the preaching by such personages as Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican priest and miracle worker, many undoubtedly embraced their newfound religion of Christianity with all sincerity. But there were also a number whose conversions came from reasons less than spiritual. In one three-month period in 1391, some 50,000 Jews lost their lives in a wave of anti-Jewish violence that engulfed Spain. Simply put, baptism to many of them seemed the safer course.

But many decades later, under the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, it became apparent even being able to show a baptismal certificate was not enough. Fueled by a vision of Spain united under one Christian faith, authorities began taking a closer look at those converts from Judaism who had not completely shed their old Jewish customs. Having been baptized, these converts were not seen simply as Jews who adhered to another religion but as Christians falling into heresy.

To track these "heretics" down, Gitlitz says citizens were given lists of 200 to 300 practices which might give clues as to whether a friend or neighbor was really practicing Judaism.

Did your neighbor have the curious habit of cleaning house and put out new linens every Friday? Did he or she show up for work Fridays in a clean shirt and always seem to have a reason for not working on Saturday? If so, citizens were warned, it may mean your neighbor was celebrating the Jewish Sabbath.

But the crypto-Jews had their own means of throwing people off track, says Gitlitz. For example, he says, women would routinely gather at each other's homes on Saturdays with sewing needles and half-finished piles of yarn. If a knock came at the door, the women would pick up the yarn and pretend they had been sewing all day.

For such important holy days as Yom Kippur, going out to pray in a public place would have been out of the question. Instead, says Gitlitz, many crypto-Jews would go to each other's homes late at night, often in bare feet so as not to awaken neighbors, and spend the night in prayer before asking forgiveness of one another.

And so as not to tip people about their fasting, families would try various ruses. Gitlitz tells the story of one crypto-Jew in Mexico who told her son to spend the day walking around town and to refuse all invitations of food by saying that he had just eaten.

For the holiday of Sukkot, in which Jews traditionally build a temporary shed, Gitlitz says many men went out into the fields. If a non-Jew came across one of their huts or shelters, they would explain they put it up because they heard bad weather was coming.

And if they were found out and hauled in before the authorities?

It all depends, says Gitlitz. By the professor's estimate, about only about one in six families was ever brought in for questioning by the Inquisition. The bulk of those were for relatively minor offenses and were able to convince their inquisitors their actions came out of habit or ignorance and they could be reintegrated back into society.

"Some of them would say, 'we've never eaten pork because our parents never ate pork,' and they didn't know it was a Jewish custom. As years went on, new generations could say that with more honesty since the memories of those traditions became more and more dim."

But it was a different story for those few who would insist on keeping up with their Jewish practices, and worse still for those who told inquisitors they were giving them up, but who were found to have lied.

When it came to dealing with people such as these, says Gitlitz, the inquisitors "didn't have a sense of humor."

"Perjury was a great offense. It could take you to the stake. Not only did you risk your soul by taking an oath that you did not really mean, but they would physically roast you."

So effective was the campaign in Spain or Portugal by the early 1700s there was hardly a family in either country celebrating even the major Jewish holidays. By then, most of the families who remained attached to their ancestral faith had fled - to such places as Amsterdam and to Rhode Island, where Sephardic (Spanish) Jews built the Touro synagogue as a symbol of their newfound religious freedom.

"Knowing what they went through before they arrived, you see why principles of religious liberty were so important to them," says Gitlitz. "They had become extremely sensitive to what happens when religion and state are the same thing and wanted to make certain that a majority could not impose its will on the minority when it comes to matters of religion." Gitlitz first came to the University of Rhode Island as a professor for Hispanic Studies and as provost in 1988 after previously working as academic vice president at the University at Binghamton. This year, in addition to his other work, he's teaching a course on Spain, Jews and the Inquisition and working with his wife, University of Rhode Island Professor, Linda Davidson, on a book of Inquisition recipes.

He says his more recent research into Latin American and Portuguese families who claim to be descended from these original crypto-Jews opens up many other interesting questions.

If it can be shown these families are connected with these earlier ones, does that fact alone, he asks, make them Jewish even if they may have been outwardly practicing Catholicism all these years?

"What does it mean for the Catholic community which they are coming out from?" he asks. "And what does it mean for the Jewish community? When such people come out of closet, as it were, should the Jewish community accept them without requiring them to undergo conversion? What if someone says he's Jewish, but doesn't even know what it means to keep kosher?"

All of this, says Gitlitz, brings you back to the question of how do you define a Jew.

While Christians have tended to associate religion with having a specific set of beliefs, Judaism traditionally has tended to be a practice-centered religion that stresses the importance of certain customs and traditions.

Today, though, says Gitlitz, people insist what's really important is "feeling" Jewish, even if one doesn't follow any of the customs or adhere to the traditional beliefs.

It's the sort of "pick and choose" form of Judaism Gitlitz says may have found its nurturing in 16th-century Spain, where Jews, out of necessity, chose the customs they only dared observe.

He says as he researches the stories of the alleged crypto-Jews who are now coming forward in such places as Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Chile he will try to determine if they in fact belonged to families that held onto some of the old Sephardic practices or whether they may be suffering from a case of remembering things that they had imagined or read about in books.

And if it turns out their claims are real, what then? What do you do with people who say they are Jewish even though their families have been practicing Catholicism all these years?

"That's a question," says Gitlitz, that has "provoked a crisis of definition within Judaism that has not been resolved."

(c) 1997, The Providence Journal-Bulletin.

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