Secrecy and deceit the religion of the crypto jews

Some New Christians persisted in attending family affairs with Jewish relatives that celebrated bar mitzvahs or holidays. The end result of living in such an environment was an idiosyncratic religion that attempted to accommodate both a secret tradition of Judaism with a powerful Christian faith that dominated society with its churches, saints, and political control.

Gitlitz takes us into this strange world by drawing on numerous descriptions of crypto-Jewish life, taken from testimonies given by crypto-Jews under interrogation by the Inquisition. Records of confessions were carefully kept. Testimony was obtained either freely or through torture.

Faced with punishments ranging in severity from fines to being burned alive, some crypto-Jews told what they knew, and possibly what they did not know. One may conclude that in the end Catholic Spain, and to a lesser degree Portugal, succeeded in eradicating Judaism from their borders.

Success, however, came with a great price: a repressive society that did not tolerate dissent or diversity, and the loss of a talented body of people who fled to other countries such as Holland that welcomed their business and intellectual skills.

And despite the effort at ethnic cleansing, elements of Judaism persisted, though often in degraded and incomplete form, for several centuries. Readers of this book will admire the efforts of Sephardic Jews to keep their faith under the shadow of harsh persecution. Membership benefits, Monthly meetings with lectures and films. Assisted research days. Free translator services.

Gitlitz has performed a valuable scholarly service by bringing together six centuries of research in Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, French and English, organizing it into manageable and meaningful categories. He begins with a useful review of the historical circumstances that created the phenomenon of crypto-Judaism on the Iberian peninsula.

A section outlines the principal controversies that arose from the mass conversions and expulsions of the Jews from Spain and Portugal. The bulk of the book consists of 18 chapters each of which is devoted to a specific theme, e. Most of the data consists of the testimony of defendants and witnesses extracted from Inquisition records, as well as the statements of contemporary observers.

The chapter on attitudes toward Christian beliefs exposes a variety of views that express every possible psychological variant. Much of this testimony has appeared in print before, as attested by the reference notes that Gitlitz inserts religiously, one might say after each quotation. The cumulative effect is to emphasize the universality of the Church's effort to force conversos into its ideological Procrustean bed; the dilemma faced by conversos worldwide in deciding whether to hold onto their ancestral beliefs or to assimilate to the victorious old-Christians; and the devices that crypto-Jews developed to hide their proscribed customs.

Gitlitz stresses that, prior to the Expulsion, Jews and conversos formed a single extended family, bound by communal and marital ties that extended back for centuries. These ties were formally disrupted by conversion, but people did not easily give up the songs, the foods, the relationships, which had given meaning to their lives as Jews. The result, writes Gitlitz, was that "paranoid fear of the Inquisition was joined [to] a pervasive schizophrenia, as each new-Christian consciously had to don a public persona behind which to safeguard private spiritual or social practices" p.

Perhaps no canard has survived longer in history than that Judaism mandates secrecy in religious practice: secrecy was of course forced on believing Jews by an implacable Church-state apparatus. Each has imposed his own sweeping vision of marranism on the revealed historical record and its covert, implicit substratum of meaning.

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Part One 93 pp. This section is not original, but Gitlitz performs a valuable service in synthesizing the research of dozens of scholars and highlights their different views and controversies, even on such basic issues as the nature and number of crypto-Jews and different interpretations based on the same data. This epic clash between state policy and religious freedom is also riddled with irony, as it was the Inquisition, not the Marranos, that really determined the strategies of secrecy and created the very culture it was dedicated to eradicate.

Also, the Inquisition's treatment of new Christians surely discouraged further conversions, the very objective of the Church's efforts. Finally, inquisitorial practices were scandalously opposed to acknowledged Catholic doctrine that all Christians, former Jews or not, were equal in the eyes of God Part Two pp. Gitlitz explains the motives for Marrano adaptations of rituals, the need for secrecy, the lack of books and experts, and isolation from the Jewish community outside Spain and Portugal.

Even more interesting is his discussion of how basic Jewish beliefs were reshaped by Christian theology; notions of salvation, redemption, the afterlife, intervention, prayers for suffering souls, etc. The final Chapter 21, "The Social Contexts of Crypto-Judaism," parallels the third chapter, "The Major Points of Controversy," in describing the anguish and aspirations of this unfortunate population caught between the needs of the state and the impossibility of truly private lives in the pre-modern era.

The tens of thousands of reports reaching the various inquisitions were made by friends and neighbors, spouses, and children of crypto-Jews, a truly stunning example of the compelling force of social pressure against the bonds of affection, blood, and weighty oaths to maintain secrecy and deceit. A few crypto-Jews always hoped for a time in the future, when "they ought to let everyone live in the Law they preferred" p.

This was a dream of religious freedom and toleration, the true prerequisite for ecumenism. Richard B. Descendants of crypto-Jews, even to the present-day, despite ostensible belief in the Catholic faith, practice bits of Jewish observance such as lighting candles on Friday evening. Some New Christians persisted in attending family affairs with Jewish relatives that celebrated bar mitzvahs or holidays.

The end result of living in such an environment was an idiosyncratic religion that attempted to accommodate both a secret tradition of Judaism with a powerful Christian faith that dominated society with its churches, saints, and political control. Gitlitz takes us into this strange world by drawing on numerous descriptions of crypto-Jewish life, taken from testimonies given by crypto-Jews under interrogation by the Inquisition.

Records of confessions were carefully kept. Testimony was obtained either freely or through torture. Faced with punishments ranging in severity from fines to being burned alive, some crypto-Jews told what they knew, and possibly what they did not know. One may conclude that in the end Catholic Spain, and to a lesser degree Portugal, succeeded in eradicating Judaism from their borders.

Success, however, came with a great price: a repressive society that did not tolerate dissent or diversity, and the loss of a talented body of people who fled to other countries such as Holland that welcomed their business and intellectual skills. And despite the effort at ethnic cleansing, elements of Judaism persisted, though often in degraded and incomplete form, for several centuries. Readers of this book will admire the efforts of Sephardic Jews to keep their faith under the shadow of harsh persecution.

Membership benefits, Monthly meetings with lectures and films. Assisted research days.

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This section is not original, but Gitlitz performs a valuable service in synthesizing the research of dozens of scholars and highlights their different views and controversies, even on such basic issues as the nature and number of crypto-Jews and different interpretations based on the same data. This epic clash between state policy and religious freedom is also riddled with irony, as it was the Inquisition, not the Marranos, that really determined the strategies of secrecy and created the very culture it was dedicated to eradicate.

Also, the Inquisition's treatment of new Christians surely discouraged further conversions, the very objective of the Church's efforts. Finally, inquisitorial practices were scandalously opposed to acknowledged Catholic doctrine that all Christians, former Jews or not, were equal in the eyes of God Part Two pp.

Gitlitz explains the motives for Marrano adaptations of rituals, the need for secrecy, the lack of books and experts, and isolation from the Jewish community outside Spain and Portugal. Even more interesting is his discussion of how basic Jewish beliefs were reshaped by Christian theology; notions of salvation, redemption, the afterlife, intervention, prayers for suffering souls, etc. The final Chapter 21, "The Social Contexts of Crypto-Judaism," parallels the third chapter, "The Major Points of Controversy," in describing the anguish and aspirations of this unfortunate population caught between the needs of the state and the impossibility of truly private lives in the pre-modern era.

The tens of thousands of reports reaching the various inquisitions were made by friends and neighbors, spouses, and children of crypto-Jews, a truly stunning example of the compelling force of social pressure against the bonds of affection, blood, and weighty oaths to maintain secrecy and deceit. A few crypto-Jews always hoped for a time in the future, when "they ought to let everyone live in the Law they preferred" p.

This was a dream of religious freedom and toleration, the true prerequisite for ecumenism. Richard B. Copyright Gale, Cengage Learning. This was partly due to the fact that marriage and child rearing under a dominant Christian culture meant that within families a sister might not be aware that a brother, or an uncle, or some other relative, was a crypto-Jew.

Many Jews who converted to Christianity did so because conversion opened avenues to political or economic advancement in Spanish society. Even so, the Inquisition regarded New Christians as untrustworthy as some continued to practice the Jewish faith in secret. Syncretism and family ties also complicated matters. Descendants of crypto-Jews, even to the present-day, despite ostensible belief in the Catholic faith, practice bits of Jewish observance such as lighting candles on Friday evening.

Some New Christians persisted in attending family affairs with Jewish relatives that celebrated bar mitzvahs or holidays. The end result of living in such an environment was an idiosyncratic religion that attempted to accommodate both a secret tradition of Judaism with a powerful Christian faith that dominated society with its churches, saints, and political control.

Gitlitz takes us into this strange world by drawing on numerous descriptions of crypto-Jewish life, taken from testimonies given by crypto-Jews under interrogation by the Inquisition. Records of confessions were carefully kept. Testimony was obtained either freely or through torture.

Faced with punishments ranging in severity from fines to being burned alive, some crypto-Jews told what they knew, and possibly what they did not know. One may conclude that in the end Catholic Spain, and to a lesser degree Portugal, succeeded in eradicating Judaism from their borders. Success, however, came with a great price: a repressive society that did not tolerate dissent or diversity, and the loss of a talented body of people who fled to other countries such as Holland that welcomed their business and intellectual skills.