RabbiBarry
10th December 2006, 02:52 PM
Some New Mexicans claim Jewish roots
One theory says their ancestors fled the Inquisition for the Spanish Southwest.
By MATT CRENSON
The Associated Press
RANDY SINER | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Roman Catholic priest Bill Sanchez keeps a menorah in his office in Albuquerque N.M. Sanchez’s DNA has a set of markers that is found in about 30 percent of Jewish men.
RUIDOSO, N.M. | Within weeks of becoming New Mexico state historian, Stanley Hordes started receiving odd visitors. They would enter his Santa Fe office, close the door — and gossip about their neighbors.
“So-and-so lights candles on Friday nights,” they would whisper.
“So-and-so doesn’t eat pork,” they would say.
The young historian was intrigued. Though the people Hordes spoke with were clearly Catholic, they reported following an array of Jewish customs. They talked about leaving pebbles on headstones, lighting candles on Friday nights, abstaining from pork and circumcising male infants.
When Hordes asked why they did such things, some said they were following family tradition. Others gave a more straightforward explanation.
“Somos judios,” they said. We are Jews.
A quarter century later, Hordes has a stirring explanation of how Judaism got to New Mexico. Like so many Jewish stories it is an ancient and epic tale of triumph against overwhelming adversity.
And like so many of those stories, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief.
In the spring of 1492, Jews in Spain were given two choices: convert to Catholicism or leave. Many left. Many others abandoned their religion for Catholicism.
But a few of those who converted did so only publicly, continuing to practice Judaism in secret.
Modern scholars have found a few communities of “crypto-Jews” that survived in both Iberia and the New World for centuries, hiding their religion.
In his 2005 book To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico, Hordes suggests that many crypto-Jews found their way to the northern frontier of the Spanish colonial empire.
There they continued to observe their religion behind locked doors. “They were invisible,” Hordes said.
But the very same secrecy that protected Judaism in the Spanish Southwest eventually doomed it. The people had no synagogue, no Torah. By the 20th century, Hordes concludes, all that was left were a few suggestive customs.
For Sonya Loya, there’s nothing vague about it. Growing up Catholic in Ruidoso, N.M., Loya was intensely spiritual. But she never identified with Jesus or Christianity.
Loya began observing the Jewish sabbath, Shabbat, six years ago, about the same time that she learned about the secret Jewish past being uncovered by Hordes and other scholars. She was thrilled at the possibility that she might actually have Jewish heritage.
“I believe that what drew me back home to who I am is my Jewish soul,” Loya said.
Not only did her father give his blessing, Loya said, but he revealed that he had known since childhood that he had Jewish ancestry. An uncle, returning from World War II, had seen the family name among a list of concentration camp inmates.
Bill Sanchez always felt Jewish too. But not that Jewish; he’s a Catholic priest.
Sanchez discovered his Jewish roots after having his genes tested by a Houston-based company called Family Tree DNA. The company determined that he has a set of genetic markers on his Y-chromosome that is also found in about 30 percent of Jewish men. The tests even indicated that Sanchez has a genetic signature that has been associated with the Cohanim, a priesthood that is said to go back to Moses’ brother Aaron.
Since then Sanchez has embraced his Jewish heritage.
Like Hordes, folklorist Judith Neulander was fascinated by the stories. But hearing for herself, she grew increasingly uneasy.
People talked about playing as children with a four-sided top that resembled a dreidel. But dreidels first appeared among Central and Eastern European Jews well after 1492. How would the descendants of Spanish Jews who fled Europe during the Inquisition have known anything about them?
“All of it just doesn’t really hold up when you examine it carefully,” said Neulander, who is now co-director of the Jewish Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
She concluded that the notion of a Jewish heritage must have been brought to the Southwest by evangelical Protestant missionaries from one of several small sects who considered themselves descendants of a lost tribe of Israel.
Sanchez hopes to make the case with DNA.
Alec Knight, who was working in an genetics lab a Stanford University, recruited a handful of colleagues for a simple study. They took DNA samples from 139 men.
There were a few individuals who did have typically “Jewish” profiles, but no more than you would find in Spain, due to the presence of Jews there before 1492.
When confronted with the genetic evidence, Hordes quickly points out that genes are not culture. Besides, he adds, he never said that the early European settlers of the Southwest were overwhelmingly Jewish.
Neulander: “The notion that you’re somehow indomitable, that there can be such a thing as a miraculous survival, is so comfortable, so buoyant to the spirit, that it’s very hard to let go.”
One theory says their ancestors fled the Inquisition for the Spanish Southwest.
By MATT CRENSON
The Associated Press
RANDY SINER | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Roman Catholic priest Bill Sanchez keeps a menorah in his office in Albuquerque N.M. Sanchez’s DNA has a set of markers that is found in about 30 percent of Jewish men.
RUIDOSO, N.M. | Within weeks of becoming New Mexico state historian, Stanley Hordes started receiving odd visitors. They would enter his Santa Fe office, close the door — and gossip about their neighbors.
“So-and-so lights candles on Friday nights,” they would whisper.
“So-and-so doesn’t eat pork,” they would say.
The young historian was intrigued. Though the people Hordes spoke with were clearly Catholic, they reported following an array of Jewish customs. They talked about leaving pebbles on headstones, lighting candles on Friday nights, abstaining from pork and circumcising male infants.
When Hordes asked why they did such things, some said they were following family tradition. Others gave a more straightforward explanation.
“Somos judios,” they said. We are Jews.
A quarter century later, Hordes has a stirring explanation of how Judaism got to New Mexico. Like so many Jewish stories it is an ancient and epic tale of triumph against overwhelming adversity.
And like so many of those stories, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief.
In the spring of 1492, Jews in Spain were given two choices: convert to Catholicism or leave. Many left. Many others abandoned their religion for Catholicism.
But a few of those who converted did so only publicly, continuing to practice Judaism in secret.
Modern scholars have found a few communities of “crypto-Jews” that survived in both Iberia and the New World for centuries, hiding their religion.
In his 2005 book To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico, Hordes suggests that many crypto-Jews found their way to the northern frontier of the Spanish colonial empire.
There they continued to observe their religion behind locked doors. “They were invisible,” Hordes said.
But the very same secrecy that protected Judaism in the Spanish Southwest eventually doomed it. The people had no synagogue, no Torah. By the 20th century, Hordes concludes, all that was left were a few suggestive customs.
For Sonya Loya, there’s nothing vague about it. Growing up Catholic in Ruidoso, N.M., Loya was intensely spiritual. But she never identified with Jesus or Christianity.
Loya began observing the Jewish sabbath, Shabbat, six years ago, about the same time that she learned about the secret Jewish past being uncovered by Hordes and other scholars. She was thrilled at the possibility that she might actually have Jewish heritage.
“I believe that what drew me back home to who I am is my Jewish soul,” Loya said.
Not only did her father give his blessing, Loya said, but he revealed that he had known since childhood that he had Jewish ancestry. An uncle, returning from World War II, had seen the family name among a list of concentration camp inmates.
Bill Sanchez always felt Jewish too. But not that Jewish; he’s a Catholic priest.
Sanchez discovered his Jewish roots after having his genes tested by a Houston-based company called Family Tree DNA. The company determined that he has a set of genetic markers on his Y-chromosome that is also found in about 30 percent of Jewish men. The tests even indicated that Sanchez has a genetic signature that has been associated with the Cohanim, a priesthood that is said to go back to Moses’ brother Aaron.
Since then Sanchez has embraced his Jewish heritage.
Like Hordes, folklorist Judith Neulander was fascinated by the stories. But hearing for herself, she grew increasingly uneasy.
People talked about playing as children with a four-sided top that resembled a dreidel. But dreidels first appeared among Central and Eastern European Jews well after 1492. How would the descendants of Spanish Jews who fled Europe during the Inquisition have known anything about them?
“All of it just doesn’t really hold up when you examine it carefully,” said Neulander, who is now co-director of the Jewish Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
She concluded that the notion of a Jewish heritage must have been brought to the Southwest by evangelical Protestant missionaries from one of several small sects who considered themselves descendants of a lost tribe of Israel.
Sanchez hopes to make the case with DNA.
Alec Knight, who was working in an genetics lab a Stanford University, recruited a handful of colleagues for a simple study. They took DNA samples from 139 men.
There were a few individuals who did have typically “Jewish” profiles, but no more than you would find in Spain, due to the presence of Jews there before 1492.
When confronted with the genetic evidence, Hordes quickly points out that genes are not culture. Besides, he adds, he never said that the early European settlers of the Southwest were overwhelmingly Jewish.
Neulander: “The notion that you’re somehow indomitable, that there can be such a thing as a miraculous survival, is so comfortable, so buoyant to the spirit, that it’s very hard to let go.”