Three strange things happened to Rabbi Stephen Leon the first week he moved to EL PASO, Texas in 1986 to lead Congregation B’nai Zion, the Conservative synagogue in this border city. Twenty-two years later that something is still going on: A steady trickle of Hispanics in the Southwest, from Juarez to Texas to New Mexico, are discovering Jewish roots. As Jews around the world celebrate the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai and read the Book of Ruth — the story of the world’s most famous convert to Judaism — some of these Crypto-Jewish returnees will celebrate their bar and bat mitzvah with Leon at Congregation B’nai Zion, a synagogue with 400 families.
On a hot Saturday morning in the imposing angular white B’nai Zion building about 30 of the 50 people sitting in the circular sanctuary topped by a Jewish star skylight are Crypto-Jews. (The larger sanctuary is used on the High Holidays to accommodate the 1,500 members.)
The rabbi, meanwhile, has big plans. In addition to welcoming Crypto-Jews, he helped start an anusim/Sephardic learning center and yeshiva in El Paso with Juan Pable Mejia, a graduate of the rabbinical program at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Sonya Loya, the director of Bat-Tzyion Hebrew Learning Center in Ruidoso, N.M. The goal would be to bring awareness to the Jewish and general public about the Inquisition and Crypto-Jews on par with Holocaust remembrance.
Crypto-Jews. Marranos. Anusim. Judios. Conversos. They are all terms with different nuances referring to Jews and/or their descendants who were forced to convert after Spain and Portugal expelled all non-Catholics, but continued to practice Judaism or maintained some Jewish customs even as they and their children migrated to Latin America, Europe and finally the United States.
Some Crypto-Jews are interested in the genealogical knowledge but are not planning on leaving Catholicism; others practice a dual Messianic faith with both Judaism and Jesus. 500 years ago in the Inquisition hundreds of thousands of Jewish boys and girls disappeared from the Jewish community. Jews always disappeared from the Jewish community — most of it by force. Many people have Jewish ancestors going back 500 years, estimating that after half of Spain’s several hundred thousand Jews left the country, half were forced to convert to Catholicism, assimilating and eventually blending into Catholic society.
Some are set on their search because of a mysterious tradition practiced by an older relative, such as not eating pork or working on Saturday. For others the clue is an artifact like a trompito spinning top that resembles a dreidel, or a set of tefillin that a Catholic grandmother on a road trip once insisted on depositing with the rabbi.
But for the majority of people it’s something more tenuous: a word here (bubbe, tzedakah), a Jewish name there (Rael, from Israel). Very often it’s just a feeling about Catholicism, Jesus, their past or what they say is their soul that leads people to wonder if their family was once Jewish. There were certain families that held onto ancestral Jewish faith and continued to practice. Today, the although many are content in their Protestantism and Catholicism there are cases of people who are exploring a relationship with mainstream Judaism.
A Catholic man calling from Jaurez, Mexico, recalled every Friday night from the time he was little, his grandmother took him into a room, lit candles and said prayers in a private language he didn’t understand. His grandmother had just died, and he asked his mother if she would continue the tradition. She told him to go find a rabbi.
A Catholic woman from El Paso came to the rabbi after visiting a relative in mourning, where she noticed that all the mirrors were covered. Her relatives said it was a Jewish custom.
Blanca Carrasco’s return to Judaism started as a curious Catholic child in Mexico, where she was infatuated with everything in the Bible. By the time she was 20 she converted to Evangelical Christianity, but the doctrine was still lacking for her and her husband, Cezar, who considered himself more of an atheist. Then, about 14 years ago, her mother invited her to a Passover seder at a Messianic congregation in El Paso. Like a number of Crypto-Jews who now attend B’nai Zion, the Carrascos began their religious transformation by praying at the Messianic Center in El Paso, where they learned about Judaism, important rabbis, the Jewish festivals and history, and Crypto-Jews. She found some family names; Espinoza, Israel, Salinas and a great-aunt who said her grandmother spoke Ladino.
As the rabbi takes the Torah around the sanctuary to be kissed, the congregation sings “Etz chayim chai, l’amachazikim bah” (“A tree of life to all those who hold fast to it …”) and Carrasco tears up at the last verse: “Hashiveinu hashem elecha v’nashuva” — “Return us to you, God, and we shall return.”
Margarita Luna remembered that her grandmother always lit candles on Friday night before saying the Rosary. But her mother didn’t want to talk about it perhaps that was because during the Mexican wars in the 1920s they had to hide in a well for a few days. “Always in my heart I feel that I love the Jewish traditions,” she says, fingering her mezuzah necklace. “And always I say I am Jewish and I need to go back to my roots.” She and her husband, Victor, converted five years ago, and after their b’nai mitzvah on Shavuot, they plan to have a Jewish wedding ceremony and, hopefully one day, move to Israel with their teenage daughter.
Such an approach would be fine with Elay Romero, a retired pipe fitter, who has been retracing his family’s lineage through state records and was considering some DNA testing. He discovered Hordes’ book about Crypto-Jews and came to Taos, N.M., to hear the historian speak on the topic at the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society. Leon states the Jewish community should welcome those Hispanics who want to explore their Jewish ancestry.
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