University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The road to return: the first Crypto-Jewish synagogue

(USC Thesis Other)

The road to return: the first Crypto-Jewish synagogue

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content THE ROAD TO RETURN: THE FIRST CRYPTO-JEWISH SYNAGOGUE

by
Cidney Jennifer Dutton

______________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(BROADCAST JOURNALISM)

May 2007

Copyright 2007 Cidney Jennifer Dutton
ii
Table of Contents
Abstract iii
Script 1
Bibliography 21

iii
Abstract
With the edict of expulsion issued by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of
Spain in 1492, Jews were either forced to leave Spain or to convert to
Catholicism. Some Jews decided to convert in name only and continued to
practice Judaism in secret. The descendants of these families, known as
Crypto-Jews, still exist and continue to practice Judaism in secret and more
than 500 years later, they are decided to come out as a Jew. A good number
of these people live in the Southwestern United States, such as Rabbi Yosef
Garcia’s congregation of Phoenix, Arizona, which is the first openly Crypto-
Jewish Synagogue in the world.

1
NATSOT
Crypto-Jewish congregants singing
Yerushalayim shel zahav, Jerusalem
of Gold in Spanish
Tape at 0075 at 00:11:00:00

El aire de la montaña, vacía como vino
y el olor de pino, es llevado por la
brisa crepuscular, junto con el sonido
de campanas.
Y en el duerme de árbol y piedra,
capturado en su sueño, es la ciudad
que se sienta solitario, y profundo
dentro de ella, una pared.
Jerusalén de oro de cobre y luz Para
todas sus canciones yo soy un violín...
SOT Ermundo Garcia Perez
Tape 0010 at 00:05:05:00
Subtitle: Shabbat is the holiest day of
the week. My family, my brothers and
I and our wives and children, we look
forward to it, getting together every
week. It's our day of rest. Shabbat is
the Shabbat.
Shabbat es el día más santo de la
semana. Mi familia, mis hermanos y
yo y nuestras esposas y los niños,
nosotros lo esperamos, juntándose
cada semana. Es nuestro día del
descanso. Shabbat es el Shabbat.
VO NARRATOR
CU of Rabbi Garcia Praying
Tape 0075 at 00:15:45:00
Zoom out to entire congregation
listening.
Tape 0075 at 00:17:13:00

UNLIKE THE MAJORITY OF
HISPANICS IN THE WORLD TODAY,
ERMUNDO GARCIA PEREZ ISN’T
CATHOLIC OR EVEN PROTESTANT.
HE IS A MEMBER OF RABBI YOSEF
GARCIA’S SYNAGOGUE, IN
PHOENIX ARIZONA, THE ONLY
KNOWN CRYPTO-JEWISH
SYNAGOGUE IN THE WORLD. BUT
MANY PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW
WHO CRYPTO-JEWS ARE AND
THAT THEY EVEN EXIST, BECAUSE
THEY HAVE REMAINED HIDDEN
FOR OVER FIVE-HUNDRED YEARS.
2
NATSOT
Congregants saying the Shema, the
most important prayer in Judaism.
Tape 0075 at 00:31:42:00
Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu
Adonai echad.

VO Narrator
Zoom in on face of Benveniste
Tape 0071 at 00:13:15:00
Website of the SCJS
Tape at 0011 at 00:02:18:00
ARTHUR BENVENISTE, WHO IS A
SEPHARDIC JEW, OR A JEW OF
SPANISH OR PORTUGUESE
DESCENT, IS THE FORMER
PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY FOR
CRYPTO-JUDAIC STUDIES.
SOT Arthur Benveniste
Tape 0070 at 00:19:10:00

Picture of the King Ferdinand and
Isabella

Map following immigration from Spain
to South America and Mexico, to the
Southwest
In 1492, the king and queen of Spain,
King Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile
and Aragon ordered the Jews to
convert to Catholicism or leave, and
my ancestors left and ended up on the
island of Rhodes near Turkey, but
perhaps about half the Jews remained
and converted. But a lot of them
continued to practice Judaism in
secret and that was carried down until
today. A lot of them immigrated to the
new world in the colonial period and
today we’re actively seeking them out,
finding their stories and learning more
about them.
VO Narrator
Sequence –
Congregants walking into Rabbi
Garcia’s home
Tape 0075 at 00:03:25:00
Rabbi Garcia welcoming his
congregants into his home
Tape 0075 at 00:03:40:00
THESE PEOPLE ARE KNOWN AS
CRYPTO-JEWS.

3
SOT Arthur Benveniste
CG: Arthur Benveniste, former
president for the Society of Crypto-
Judaic Studies
Tape 0070 at 00:20:50:00

Copies of Inquisition records

Crypto-Jews have actually been
known about for a very long time. But
there wasn’t a great deal of evidence
until about nineteen-eighty or so when
Doctor Stanley Hordes discovered that
the first Spanish settlers in New
Mexico were Jews. He went into the
archives and discovered that most of
the heads of the families that had left
Mexico to New Mexico were under
indictment by the Inquisition.
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia of
Congregation Avdey Torah
Tape 0072 at 00:15:20:00
A lot of people are not aware of this
term Crypto-Jew. They’re more
familiar with the Spanish term
conversos, which means those who
have converted. This was a more
political term that the Catholic Church
has been using now for the past ten,
fifteen years before that, and prior to
that, this group of people were known
as marranos, the Spanish word for pig
or swine. Marranos simply is a
derogatory term indicating that this
person was a person who ate pork so
this was an exclusive derogatory name
for individuals who the Catholic
Church had designated new Catholics
or new Christians.
NATSOT
Rabbi Garcia saying the prayer over
the wine.
Tape 0074 at 00:35:00:00
Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu
Me-lech Ha-o-lam,
bo-rei p'ri ha-ga-fen.
VO Narrator
Continuation of prayer
RABBI GARCIA IS A CRYPTO-JEW.
NATSOT
Congregation responds
Tape 0074 at 00:45:00:00
Amen.

4
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0072 at 00:01:34:00

Pictures of Rabbi Garcia and his Uncle
at the wedding.
I grew up as an altar boy in the town
that I was living in in Panama, and it
wasn’t until I was actually in my mid-
thirties where I actually found out that I
was Jewish.
I had talked to my great uncle, it was
during my brother’s wedding. He had
informed me that we were Jewish. It
was a big surprise to me because I
had grown up Catholic, I suspected
that there was something different and
what I mean by something different is
that my grandmother was doing rituals
that later on I found out were Jewish
rituals, but I had no idea at the time, I
just simply made a mental note of that.
And then later on as an adult as I was
researching Judaism, I realized that
my grandmother was doing things that
were basically Jewish and not
Catholic.
SOT Arthur Benveniste
CG: Arthur Benveniste, former
president of the Society of Crypto-
Judaic Studies
Tape 0070 at 00:20:05:00
A number of them knew they were
Jewish. They were told by their
parents or grandparents. A number of
them figured it out, their parents, their
families were doing certain things,
lighting candles on Friday night or not
eating pork, not mixing milk or meat or
certain funeral practices etcetera.
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0072 at 00:05:20:00
I remember when my aunt died and
my grandmother went around inside
her house and covered up all the
mirrors in her house. Well this was a
very Jewish tradition, this was not a
Catholic or Christian tradition to do,
and when I asked my grandmother
why she was covering the mirrors, she
just said that it was a tradition that her
mother had taught her.

5
SOT Arthur Benveniste
CG: Arthur Benveniste, former
president of the Society of Crypto-
Judaic Studies
Tape 0070 at 00:22:42:00

Congregants sitting at long table
eating matzah during Passover
For one thing, they’re raised Catholic
but within the family there’s a feeling
that they don’t have to be good
Catholics. They don’t follow all the
rules, they would eat meat on Friday
when they weren’t supposed to, they
wouldn’t keep icons in the house,
idols, etcetera. Many of them wouldn’t
eat pork. For a lot of them they just
felt different. One woman I spoke to,
she was just told by her mother and
grandmother, “nosotros somos los
limpios, ellos son los sucios,” we’re the
clean ones, they’re the dirty ones.
And they would wash every Friday, put
on clean clothes every Friday. This
one family every year a week before
Easter they’d have, as she described
it, a big dinner where they’d eat a big
flat cracker, like Matzah at Passover,
and so from things like that they
worked it out.
VO Narrator
Zoom in book
Tape at 0010 at 00:15:12:00
AUTHOR TRUDI ALEXY NAMED
HER FIRST BOOK, THE MEZUZAH
IN THE MADONNA’S FOOT, AFTER
ANOTHER CRYPTO-JEWISH
TRADITION.
SOT Trudi Alexy
Tape 0069 at 00:21:26:00

Mezuzah on her door
Tape 0070 at 00:25:06:00
It was the custom at that time for
Catholics to put the statue of a
Madonna by the front door and to kiss
the foot of the Madonna coming and
going. And the secret Jews buried a
mezuzah in the foot of the Madonna
so when they kissed the foot of the
Madonna coming and going, they were
really kissing the mezuzah and nobody
knew anything about it.

6
VO Narrator
Zoom in book
Tape 0010 at 00:20:00:00
IN HER SECOND BOOK, THE
MARRANO LEGACY, ALEXY
REVEALS ANOTHER CRYPTO-
JEWISH TRADITION.
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0069 at 00:25:16:00
During the Inquisition it was deemed
prudent for one male member of each
generation to be sent into a seminary
to become a priest to become a spy on
the church, to have inside information
and to make sure that the Crypto-
Jewish, the marrano community,
would be informed beforehand of any
danger, so they could save
themselves.
VO Narrator
Alexi playing with dog
Tape 0069 at 00:35:05:00

ALEXY ACCIDENTALLY CAME
ACROSS THIS INFORMATION
WHEN SHE WAS LOOKING FOR
HER OWN SPIRITUAL HERITAGE.
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0069 at 00:02:30:00
I was born in Romania but I grew up in
Prague, but I never knew that I was
Jewish. My parents were totally
assimilated and kept all that from us,
my brother and me. And when I was
ten years old my father decided that
we were leaving, and I could tell by the
way he said that we had to pack
everything and leave that this was not
going to be a vacation trip. We tried to
get my grandmother to come with us
and she said, “Why? What’s the big
deal?” And my father said, “Hitler just
moved into Vienna and Prague is
nextO”
7
VO Narrator
Zoom in to pic of Alexy and family
Tape at 0010 at 00:25:07:00
LIKE THE CRYPTO-JEWS, ALEXY’S
FATHER DECIDED THE FAMILY
WOULD CONVERT TO
CHRISTIANITY IN ORDER TO
SURVIVE.
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0069 at 00:04:18:00

First we were going to become
Protestant and then we were going to
become Catholic, and then we were
going to hide in Spain, and I asked,
“why are we doing this crazy thing?”
And my father said, “Because it’s not
safe to be Jews,” and I said, “are we
Jews?” That’s how I found out we
were Jews.
VO Narrator
Pictures of Alexy as a young woman
Tape at 0010 at 00:34:56:00

ALEXY SAYS SHE ALWAYS FELT
GUILTY FOR CONVERTING
BECAUSE SHE SURVIVED THE
HOLOCAUST BY FRAUD. BUT
YEARS LATER, AS A YOUNG
COLLEGE STUDENT IN AMERICA,
ALEXY LEARNED SOMETHING
THAT WOULD CHANGE HOW SHE
VIEWED HER OWN LIFE.

8
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0069 at 00:09:42:00

While I was at Manhattanville College,
I was working on a research project
and I found out about the marranos,
the secret Jews who had converted
during the Inquisition and maintained
their connection with G-d and were
able to practice their religion in secret.
It was very dangerous, but I felt as
soon as I found out about them I felt
these were really my spiritual kin and I
decided that someday I was going to
go back to Spain and find out who
these people are so they could teach
me how to become a Jew.
VO Narrator
Picture of Alexy with the King and
Queen of Spain
Tape at 0010 at 00:41:25:00
FINALLY IN HER SIXTIES, ALEXY
RETURNED TO SPAIN TO FIND
THESE CRYPTO-JEWS, BUT SHE
DIDN’T FIND THEM. IT WAS NOT
UNTIL SHE RETURNED TO THE
UNITED STATES THAT SHE FOUND
HER FIRST CRYPTO-JEW.

9
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0069 at 00:23:39:00

I asked to speak to him and he said he
would be willing to speak to me as
long as I kept his name and his
location secret and I was surprised at
that. We met several times and on the
fifth visit I finally asked him, “Well
when did your family finally come out
as Jews?” And he said, “What makes
you think we have?” Now mind you
this is, we’re two-thousand-seven and
this was is nineteen-ninety-one or two,
so it was a long time ago, and I said,
“What do you mean?” He said there
are fifteen-hundred Crypto-Jewish
families in New Mexico alone. And I
couldn’t believe this, I mean these are
the people I’ve been looking for and
here they were in the United States, I
couldn’t find them in Spain!
VO Narrator
Scan of landscape in Arizona
Tape 0074 at 00:37:06:00
WHAT WAS EVEN MORE AMAZING
SAYS ALEXY WAS THAT THIS MAN
WAS ALSO A CRYPTO-JEWISH
PRIEST.

10
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0069 at 00:26:00:00

He had been an assistant to a bishop
in a large city for eleven years. He
performed mass and listened to
confessions, performed weddings and
funerals. And I said, “Well how could
you do that? You had to lie to these
people, you’re a Jew, how could you
tell these people you were a Catholic
priest?” And he said, “Look it was a
mitzvah, I don’t care how I bring
people to G-d, these people wanted to
go to G-d, the manner doesn’t matter
as long as I bring them to G-d.”
And then he said, “But when I have to
listen to confessions and when I have
to bless metals en masse, or sell
indulgences,” which is what the
Catholic Church does, if you give
enough money you can buy your way
out of purgatory or lessen your time in
purgatory, and he said, “when I have
to do that, I go home, I throw up and I
go to bed for two days.”
VO Narrator
Congregant looking scared, CU
Tape 0075 at 00:15:35:00
ANOTHER CRYPTO-JEWISH
PRIEST EXPLAINED TO ALEXY
JUST WHY CRYPTO-JEWS ARE
STILL AFRAID TO COME OUT.

11
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0069 at 00:36:00:00

Pictures of concentration camps
He said, “When so many people
decided to leave Spain, many of us
went to Holland, which was a Christian
country and we remained hidden there
for four hundred years, and in
nineteen-twenty, we decided it was
safe to come out and twenty years
later, the Holocaust exterminated
almost all of them. Don’t ever tell any
of us that it’s safe to come out!” And
so they used the Holocaust now to say
see we told you, it was going to
happen again and you better hide.
VO Narrator
Congregants at Rabbi Garcia’s home
Tape 0076 at 00:34:07:00
HOWEVER, SOME CRYPTO JEWS
ARE DECIDING THAT IT IS FINALLY
SAFE TO PRACTICE JUDAISM IN
THE OPEN.
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0070 at 00:06:14:00
I recently went to an installation at this
little synagogue in Phoenix where
twenty former Crypto-Jews, all
Mexican people, were finally able to
come out.
VO Narrator
Exterior of house, a few people
arriving
Tape at 0075 at 00:03:25:00
THIS LITTLE SYNAGOGUE
HAPPENS TO BE THE HOUSE OF
RABBI GARCIA. ALEXY MET HIM AT
A CONFERENCE FOR THE
SOCIETY OF CRYPTO-JUDAIC
STUDIES.

12
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexy, Author
Tape 0070 at 00:05:40:00
This man was brought up as a
Catholic and then became a
Protestant and he was going to
become a Protestant minister when he
found out in his thirties that he really
was a Jew, and so he switched and
learned about Judaism and became a
Jewish Orthodox rabbi.
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0073 at 00:02:20:00
One of the things that propelled me to
become a rabbi was that I realized that
nobody was working with the Crypto-
Jew, for the Hispanic Latino Jew who
was coming out of Catholicism into
Judaism.
VO Narrator
Rabbi Garcia driving
Tape at 0074 at 00:42:00:00
RABBI GARCIA HAD ALREADY
ESTABLISHED SIMILAR
CONGREGATION IN PORTLAND,
OREGON BEFORE MOVING TO
PHOENIX MORE THAN A YEAR
AGO.

13
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0073 at 00:21:08:00

Church in Portland, Oregon where
they used to have services
When we first came to the United
States, I went looking at different
synagogues. I didn’t identify myself as
a rabbi at first, but once different
people found out they said,
“We would love to come over to your
house if you’re interested in starting a
Shabbat service.” I though maybe
we’d have five or ten people, that
would be nice, or maybe fifty or sixty.
Eventually the group got so large that
we went to a basement in a church,
there was no sign or anything. We
had to actually walk to the back of the
church and knock on door. A lot of
people thought that that was very
cryptic. (laughs) And after several
years the congregation had grown to
three-hundred and fifty people.
VO Narrator
Picture of both rabbis in Oregon
Tape 0010 at 00:34:55:00
ACJA Website
Tape 0010 at 00:38:07:00
ALONG WITH ANOTHER RABBI IN
OREGON, RABBI JOSHUA
STAMPFER, WHO WAS ALSO ONE
OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE
SOCIETY FOR CRYPTO-JUDAIC
STUDIES, RABBI GARCIA FOUNDED
THE ASSOCIATION OF CRYPTO-
JEWS IN THE AMERICAS.
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0072 at 00:35:05:00
It wasn’t until three or four years ago
that Rabbi Stampfer and myself
decided we needed to do more than
just study this phenomenon, but that
there needed to be someone that
could work with the Crypto-Jews,
somebody that could work with these
individuals coming back.

14
VO Narrator
Shabbat Services, view from front –
men in the front, women and children
in the back
Tape 0076 at 00:14:05:00
AND THAT IS WHAT RABBI GARCIA
HAS BEEN DOING SINCE HE
MOVED TO PHOENIX.
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape at 00:10:28:39
What I have envisioned here in
Phoenix, Arizona is to build a
permanent synagogue as well
permanent place of learning, so not
only to have a synagogue, which the
Crypto-Jewish individuals can call their
own. This doesn’t exist anywhere.
There are no other Crypto-Jewish
synagogues in the world. We’re the
only ones.
VO Narrator
Garcia showing his empty living room
Tape 0072 at 00:34:25:00
Shabbat Services, living room full
Tape 0076 at 00:25:05:00

BUT FOR NOW, EVERY SATURDAY
MORNING, BETWEEN TWENTY TO
FIFTY PEOPLE SHOW UP TO HIS
HOUSE FOR SHABBAT SERVICES
IN HIS LIVING ROOM.
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0072 at 00:18:25:00
On Shabbat what we do is I teach the
Jews that are coming into the group
how we do certain things and then
throughout the week we have certain
classes where we teach them why we
do certain things. So on Shabbat it is
more of how we do things and during
the week it is why we do things, so
with a mix of how and why then an
individual has a working knowledge as
to what it is they are doing.

15
NATSOT
Rabbi Garcia writing on a white board
“Parashat Torah” while talking.
Tape 0076 at 00:39:45:00
Members of congregation taking
notes.
Tape 0076 at 00:40:15:00
CU of note-taking
Tape 0076 at 00:41:55:00

VO Narrator
Reading from the Torah
Tape 0077 at 00:08:58:00
RABBI GARCIA HAS EVEN TAUGHT
THEM HOW TO READ HEBREW
FROM THE TORAH.
NATSOT
Ermundo Garcia Perez reading from
the Torah
Tape 0077 at 00:10:35:00

SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0072 at 00:25:30:00
You need to understand that these are
Jews who were practicing Judaism
without a rabbi, without a learned
individual who is familiar with Hebrew
or any Hebrew literature, without a
Sefer Torah, without any other item
that might identify them as Jew, but
with whatever they could remember
that their parent or grandparent had
taught them, which is how the
individuals of the groups decided to
continue their Judaism.
NATSOT
Congregation singing a Spanish psalm
Tape 0075 at 00:30:10:00

16
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0072 at 00:26:05:00

Continuation of congregation singing
the Spanish Psalm.
I will incorporate certain psalms that
are sung in Spanish. To the Crypto-
Jew of Mexico that particular individual
group if they were even caught
speaking Hebrew they would be killed,
their entire family would be wiped out,
their cousins, their uncles and aunts,
their parents. If their parents were
dead, they would be dug out of the
ground and burnt.
So what the Mexican Jew did is that
they decided to sing certain psalms
with Jewish tunes, but they would sing
it in Spanish. So there are individuals
at our synagogue who have brought
this tradition to the group and I have
incorporated those songs into the
service, so before we do the Shema,
we sing certain psalms in Spanish and
those psalms are the psalms that were
sung throughout Mexico during the
entire time of the Inquisition.
VO Narrator
Scan of children at services
Tape 0076 at 00:23:45:00
CRYPTO-JEWS ARE NOW FACING
AN ENTIRELY NEW DILEMMA
WITHIN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY.
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0072 at 00:35:29:00
Why don’t you just simply convert they
ask? Because that always comes up,
gosh what’s the big deal, just convert
it’s no big deal. To us it doesn’t seem
right to convert to Judaism, even if it
makes other individuals more
comfortable because that’s what it
really comes down to, it’s not
necessarily something that is needed,
it just allows other individuals to feel
comfortable about them accepting you
as a Jew.

17
SOT Arthur Benveniste
CG: Arthur Benveniste, former
president for the Society of Crypto-
Judaic Studies
Tape 0070 at 00:37:50:00
My personal feeling is that they should
be allowed to return, but I’m not an
expert in Halacha. It’s like, I used to
teach government, you may be in
favor of a certain a law, but is it
allowed in the constitution? The one I
used to use is the abortion ruling. You
may be in favor of abortion but is it a
constitutional right or not and that’s
debatable. With Halacha, yes I’m in
favor of them coming back with a right
of return, the tchuvah, but there are
the Talmudic scholars who have their
own way of thinking and I can’t
challenge them.
VO Narrator
Alexy speaking with some friends
Tape 0069 at 00:35:05:00
ALEXY ALSO SAYS THE CRYPTO-
JEWISH PRIEST DOES NOT
UNDERSTAND WHY HE SHOULD
CONVERT.
SOT Trudi Alexy
CG: Trudi Alexi, Author
Tape 0070 at 00:08:01:00
When he finally had enough of being a
Catholic priest, he came to a Jewish
community and he asked if he could
join the community and they said fine,
but you realize you have to convert
and he said, “Convert? From what to
what? I’ve always been a Jew!” He
was terribly disappointed and
disillusioned by this, what he
considered, traitorous act by these
people.

18
SOT Rabbi Garcia
CG: Rabbi Yosef Garcia
Tape 0074 at 00:23:07:00
Being Jewish to a Crypto-Jew is a tie
of a blood line and not a conversion.
We didn’t convert to Judaism, we
never converted to Judaism, we have
been Jews all of our lives and now we
are discovering that being a Jew
meant something to us and what it
means is that we have a relationship
with G-d that G-d would like us to
pursue. And it’s my opinion that’s
exactly why the Hispanic-Latino Jew,
the b’nai anousim, which is what we’re
called, children of those who were
forced to bend a knee, are coming
back, are coming and embracing
Judaism, the reason is simple. They
want to embrace the relationship with
G-d and not a religion.
VO Narrator
CU of the certificate
Tape 0074 at 00:36:08:00
SO TWO YEARS AGO, RABBI
GARCIA AND RABBI STAMPFUR
CREATED AN ALTERNATIVE, A
CERTIFICATE OF RETURN.
SOT Rabbi Garcia
Tape 0074 at 00:38:05:00
It’s the only one in the world that
states in Hebrew, English and Spanish
that the individual who has this
certificate has been identified as a Jew
and has full rights as a Jew to live and
die in Israel, without conversion.

19
VO Narrator
Congregants eating lunch after
services, zoom in Perez laughing
Tape 0077 at 00:32:34:00
RABBI GARCIA SAYS THIS
CERTIFICATE HAS BEEN
APPROVED BY ISRAEL AND SO
FAR NEARLY TWENTY PEOPLE
HAVE GONE THROUGH THE
RETURN CEREMONY, INCLUDING
ERMUNDO GARCIA PEREZ.
SOT Ermundo Garcia Perez
Tape 0010 at 0010:37:00
Subtitle: Me and my brothers, we all
went through the ceremony last year.
It was the most happy day of my life.
Now our children are training to go
through the ceremony too. It is a
beautiful thing.
Mí y mis hermanos, todos nosotros
atravesamos la ceremonia el año
pasado. Fue el día más feliz de mi
vida. Ahora nuestros niños entrenan
para atravesar la ceremonia también.
Es una cosa hermosa.

SOT Arthur Benveniste
CG: Arthur Benveniste, former
president for the Society of Crypto-
Judaic Studies
Tape 0070 at 00:37:50:00
There’s one thing that I do like to see,
those Crypto-Jews that have returned
to Judaism will join a synagogue, well
there are very few Sephardic
synagogues so they’ll generally join an
Ashkenazi synagogue, so they’ll learn
to eat latkes instead of bimuelos and
gifilte fish etcetera. And it’s a very
different culture so they have an
identify crisis and even the few that
join Sephardic synagogues, our
culture is colored by the Turk and the
Greeks that we lived among, its got a
middle eastern flavor or a Moroccan
flavor, and they of course grew up in
the Southwestern culture and it would
be nice to have a community of
Crypto-Jews that preserved their own
Southwestern culture, because as they
integrate with us their culture gets
diluted. Rabbi Garcia’s group is one of
them, maybe the only one.

20
NATSOT
Women getting the lunch together
Tape 0077 at 34:56:00
Aquí está el queso, aquí está la
ensalada. ¿Dónde están los tacos?
Aquí, aqui.
¿Querría usted sagria?
SOT Arthur Benveniste
CG: Arthur Benveniste, former
president for the Society of Crypto-
Judaic Studies
Tape 0070 at 00:20:24:00
I’d like to see more efforts to get them
in communication with the general
Jewish society but also within
themselves, have synagogues that
use their style, rather than our style,
which they can identify with a lot
better, so they can teach their children.
NATSOT
Children of the congregants singing a
Shabbat song, Oseh shalom
Tape 0077 at 00:35:55:00
Oseh shalom bimromav
Hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu
V'al kol Yisrael
V'imru, v'imru amen.

Ya'aseh shalom, ya'aseh shalom
Shalom aleinu v'al kol Yisrael
Ya'aseh shalom, ya'aseh shalom
Shalom aleinu v'al kol Yisrael

21
Bibliography

Alexy, Trudi, The Marrano Legacy, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2003.

Alexy, Trudi, The Mezuzah in the Madonna’s Foot, San Francisco: Harper
Collins Publishers, 1993.

Golden, Gloria, Remnants of Crypto-Jews Among Hispanic Americans,
Mountain View: Floricanto Press, 2005.

Hordes, Stanley, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of
New Mexico, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Jacobs, Janet Liebman, Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract With the edict of expulsion issued by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in 1492, Jews were either forced to leave Spain or to convert to Catholicism. Some Jews decided to convert in name only and continued to practice Judaism in secret. The descendants of these families, known as Crypto-Jews, still exist and continue to practice Judaism in secret and more than 500 years later, they are decided to come out as a Jew. A good number of these people live in the Southwestern United States, such as Rabbi Yosef Garcia's congregation of Phoenix, Arizona, which is the first openly Crypto-Jewish Synagogue in the world.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Speaking for peace: Muslims and Jews in dialogue

PDF

The sounds of change in Downey, California

PDF

Penalty! Blowing the whistle on youth soccer in the United States

PDF

Turning the channel to color late-night TV

Asset Metadata

Creator Dutton, Cidney Dutton (author)

Core Title The road to return: the first Crypto-Jewish synagogue

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Journalism (Broadcast Journalism)

Publication Date 04/12/2007

Defense Date 04/02/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Crypto-Jew,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English, Hebrew, Spanish

Advisor Winston, Diane (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Gutierrez, Felix Frank (committee member)

Creator Email cidneyd@hotmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m383

Unique identifier UC180424

Identifier etd-Dutton-20070412 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-15498 (legacy record id),usctheses-m383 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Dutton-20070412.pdf

Dmrecord 15498

Document Type Thesis

Rights Dutton, Cidney Dutton

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu