Secret Jews

Sunday I drove down to Gan Yavne to visit Casa Shalom for an important Board Meeting. Casa Shalom is the organization established by Gloria Mound to research into and help the descendents of Marranos (called anusim in Hebrew) or New Christians (Conversos), Jews who were forced by the Inquisition to convert to Christianity, but who secretly maintained their Jewish identity. Many of these Jews spread around the world in Spanish and Portugese colonies in order to escape further persecution. Amazingly after 500 years, many groups of people and individuals still retain vestiges of Jewish practices, such as lighting candles secretly on Friday night and avoiding Church services, while often passing as Christians. There are groups of these secret or crypto-Jews in places as far apart as the Balaeric Islands, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, northern Portugal, northern Brazil, and so on. Gloria estimated that there were 68,000 cryto-Jews on the island of Ibiza alone, and the town of Belmonte in northern Portugal is almost entirely inhabited by crypto-Jews, many of whom have now "come out" as fully Jewish and have established their own Synagogue. It is estimated conservatively that there are around 20 million (!) such former Jews around the world.

I was accompanied on the trip by Gail (Nitza) Gutierrez, from Davis California, whose mother's family (Perez y Munoz) was from Mexico. She has traced her descent originally from the Don Luis de Carvajal expedition of 100 New Christian families in the 1570's to New Spain and to then settle the lands of Nuevo Reino de Leon in the North. But they were caught by the Inquisition and many of them were burnt to death in an auto-da-fe (a ritual burning of former Jews carried out by the Church). But, some of them escaped into the wilder parts of northern Mexico and what would later become the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, where they continued to live as Jews for hundreds of years, although isolated from contact with other Jews. Gail's grandfather was converted to Methodism and became a Circuit Minister to small churches in Arizona and Texas, that also had the remnants of Jewish conversos living there. He incorporated much of his Jewish background into his services including fasting on Yom Kippur, Purim, emphasis on the Torah and Shabbat. The Perez y Munoz family moved to the USA in 1918. Gail finally decided that she wanted to be fully Jewish and converted and then made aliyah to Israel, and now lives in Netanya.

Gloria wished to move the Institute for Marrano-Anusim Studies to a suitable academic institution, but the main universities in Israel, although very interested to receive her unique library, were not interested in fostering her continued activities on behalf of individuals wanting to establish their Jewishness and reconnecting with the Jewish people. I suggested Netanya Academic College, an up-and-coming institution that recently opened a Department of Judiac Studies. They were very interested in having the Institute move there and continue its research and activities, and an agreement has been made to do this. The Board meeting was to officially announce this pending move. In order to enable the move, Netanya College has established a fund to collect 1 million dollars and they have already collected one quarter of this amount, but much more is needed. Note that the Spanish Government is very interested in the phenomenon of the Sephardim (Spanish-speaking Jews) and may be prepared to make a donation to this fund. Former Israeli President Yitzhak Navon is President of the Casa Shalom Institute for Marrano-Anusim Studies. If anyone can consider donating towards this unique development of great importance to the future of the Jewish people and of Israel please contact me. All donations are tax-deductible in Israel, the USA and Britain.