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Issue: # 1

 

Spring 2013

In This Issue
Call For Papers 2013 Colorado Springs
The Sephardic and Jewish Studies Program
Meet Our Involved Members
Book Review by Kathleen Alcala
Quick Links

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Registration information for the Annual Conference in Colorado Springs, CO will be available soon.   Hold the dates!

July 28-30, 2013

 

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Dear Reader,

 

Welcome to the inaugural issue of La Granada, the newsletter of the Society for Crypto-Judaic StudiesYou are receiving this as a member, past or present of SCJS, a subscriber to one or more of our publications, an attendee at one or more of our conferences or meetings, or you have posted on our website or Facebook page.

  

La Granada will be an informal component of SCJS's communications with its members and extended community. Its purpose is to provide a congenial forum for exchange of ideas and information related to the general activities of those interested in the crypto-Judaic experience as it has evolved since the time of the Inquisition and Expulsion through the current day.   

 

Articles in La Granada will be brief and encapsulated, and the newsletter will be available online at no cost to members and the public.  Lengthy academic and cultural submissions will continue to be the purview of SCJS's two scholarly print journals HaLapid and The Journal of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Crypto Jews which are available by paid subscription or included wih SCJS membership.

 

Readers of La Granada may expect content to include original expressions of personal stories, travel-logs, poetry, art, photographs, music, book reviews. Links to online resources and other organizations will be included to enhance the diverse nature of contributions. When SCJS has announcements of consequence to share (for instance click here for the latest information available about the UCCS-SCJS scholarly affiliation!) or reports of timely developments locally or around the world, readers may anticipate that La Granada will spread the news!

 

Please share your interests, comments, and questions with us at [email protected] and please share La Granada with your colleagues, family, and friends.

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The Pomegranate
 

When selecting the logo for SCJS's new online newsletter, the process was one of pure imagery.  Artistry reflected imagination.  As art, it can portray whatever the viewer may find in it.  Designers of the pomegranate logo selected this royally luscious fruit at first because of its historical connection between Mesopotamia and the Iberian Peninsula, and its later introduction to the Americas by Spanish settlers in the early 1500's.  It is mentioned by Homer in Greek mythology and included in the Hebrew Bible within poems written by Solomon.  It was cherished by Muhammad and included in Moorish architecture.  It appears in Christian artworks and was invoked as a symbol by Queen Isabella of Spain. 

 

The pomegranate is considered by many cultures and traditions to be a fertile symbol of life and renewal.  How fitting it is, then, to celebrate the pomegranate as a symbol of this society dedicated to researching, gathering, and disseminating a broad spectrum of information about the lives of crypto Jews throughout the past five centuries and today. 

 

Like the many-seeded pomegranate, Jews of the Iberian Peninsula were scattered across the world.  Hidden beneath a protective shell of secrecy, seeds of the banished and escaped multitudes took root, becoming early establishers of communities in the New World and in enclaves around the Old World, in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire.  Like the pomegranate tree, crypto Jews have survived harsh conditions, emerging from branches that appear lifeless during the deciduous winter season of diaspora. 

 

Thank you Marilyn Rose for painting the original pomegranates and creating the La Granada logo.

 

tiny pom singlePlease visit the SCJS website www.cryptojews.com  

 
2013 SCJS Conference
Colorado Springs, July 28-30, 2013
  
Click here to download or view the
SCJS Call For Papers
CFP  
 
Proposals and inquiries may be sent directly to Matthew Warshawsky, International Languages and Cultures, University of Portland [email protected]
  
Registration information will be available soon for the 2013 SCJS Annual Meeting and Conference in Colorado Springs, CO.  Specifics regarding hotel accomodations and program schedule will be circulated via La Granada, HaLapid, and Facebook.
  
  
UCCS-SCJS Affiliation is Announced! 
 

The Board of Directors of SCJS is pleased to announce the establishment of The Sephardic and Crypto-Jewish Studies Program, a scholarly affiliation between the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs (UCCS) and the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies (SCJS). The affiliation began on January 1, 2013 and is being directed by UCCS Assistant Professor of History Dr. Roger L. Martinez who also serves as the First Vice-President of SCJS. Under his guidance, this endeavor will foster collaborative scholarly research about Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spanish and Latino descent) and crypto-Jews (Sephardic Jews who retained their faith in secret) in the Southwest United States and in the world.

 

The affiliation between UCCS and SCJS is the first university-based program in the United States developed specifically to foster the integration of university scholars, students, community members and an international society for the purpose of examining and disseminating research and information regarding this cultural and religious phenomenon.

 

Several university departments and SCJS will engage faculty, students, members of Latino and Southern Colorado communities, and international scholars in vigorous discussions of related issues of culture, religion, and identity. The departments of the Humanities, Languages and Culture, History, Philosophy, Visual and Performing Arts will develop interdisciplinary graduate and under-graduate courses to be team taught. Grants and other funding will be pursued to support student and faculty research and scholarly presentations. The SCJS Annual Conference will be held on the UCCS campus this summer 2013 and every-other summer thereafter.

 

Congratulations   and  thanks  to  all  t hose  who  worked  diligently
to  make  this  exciting  affiliation  a  reality! Click  here  for  additional  information

UCCS-SCJS Affiliation

 Dr. Martinez may be contacted at

 

 
 
tiny pom single Meet Our Involved Members
Members of our Board of Directors or chairpersons of committees will be featured in this section.  From time to time, we will highlight trips taken by members to interesting parts of the world in search of primary source materials for research and to visit communities where Crypto-Jews live today. 
 
Here are M Miriam Herrera, Sonya Loya, Genie Milgrom, Alia Garcia-Ureste 'Las Hermanikas!' gathering at the 2012 SCJS conference in Albuquerque, NM. 

 

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EL ILLUMINADO -- A Graphic Novel  by Ilan Stavans and Steve Sheinkin
(New York: Basic Books, 2012)
 REVIEWED by Kathleen Alcala'
   
  
Why is a raven like a writing desk? Lewis Carroll posed this riddle, through the March Hare, in "Alice in Wonderland."
  

Ilan Stavans poses a similar question in his new graphic novel, "El Iluminado," illustrated by Steve Sheinkin, from Basic Books/Perseus. The book tackles the mystery of the Crypto-Jews, a population in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico, among other places, who claim Jewish ancestry dating back to the Spanish Inquisition. Who is a Crypto-Jew?

 

Stavans overcomes the first hurdle of tackling this subject: who can write about this group, if it is secret? Stavans appears in the book as, well, himself, a Mexican Jew of Polish ancestry. In the presumably fictional narrative, Stavans is invited to Santa Fe to give a lecture on Crypto-Judaism. While there, he is drawn into a web of intrigue by locals involving the suspicious death of Rolando, who claimed to have definitive proof not only of his own Jewish ancestry, but papers that would blow the lid off the secret Jewish roots of most of the population of New Mexico.

 

In a series of events that involve abandoned ranches, midnight bonfires, loose rafters, frisking a statue of the Virgin Mary, and having his hotel room tossed, Stavans manages to include most viewpoints on this matter: those who believe, those who disbelieve, and those who believe but prefer to keep it a secret. The most threatening group is made up of those who plan to exploit any proof for the sake of their own academic careers. Since this has been a pretty obscure topic until recently, readers "in the know" can speculate on who the real players might be.

 

At the same time, Stavans retells the historically documented story of Luis de Carvajal the Younger, whose insistence on Jewish study and practice during the time of the Inquisition led to his death and that of several members of his family in Mexico. Rolando's modern story eerily mirrors that of Carvajal, who wrote his memoir under the name of Josef Lumbroso, Joseph the Illuminated.  http://swja.arizona.edu/content/400th-yartzheit-luis-carvajal-el-mozo-joseph-lumbroso   

 

Sheinkin, with whom Stavans has collaborated before, provides simple illustrations that mimic the two-dimensional quality of the santos that appear in early New Mexican religious art. Many panels involve no dialogue, just the puzzled looks of people involved in an enigma reaching deep into the past. This is a graphic novel in more than one sense of the word, in that it faithfully portrays Carvajal's self-circumcision and Rolando's attempt at authenticity.

 

According to an article in the New York Times, the Spanish government recently offered citizenship to descendants of those expelled from Spain during the Inquisition  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/sunday-review/a-tepid-welcome-back-for-spanish-jews.html?src=me&ref=general making this topic most timely.

 

In the interest of transparency, I have written on this topic, and Stavans has acquired my work for some of his many publishing projects. My family is of Crypto-Jewish ancestry, but I was unaware of the history behind our own stories until Isaac Maimon, a Sephardic Jew from Turkey, made me aware of the larger culture of Jews who left Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition, but feigned conversion to Catholicism in order to remain in her territories. Most of their descendants have probably forgotten their ancestral roots, thinking they are Old Catholics, but the stories have persisted, and as time passes, more and more are coming out to claim their heritage. Simultaneously, DNA testing and the spread of knowledge through the internet have made it easier to put together the pieces of this puzzle.

 

Like the March Hare, Stavans wisely chooses to leave the question unanswered. For those not familiar with the history of the Crypto-Jews, "El Iluminado" offers a good introduction, especially for a generation growing up in an age of internet transparency, who might be mystified by a time when keeping family secrets could spell the difference between life and death.

 

Kathleen Alcala' is the author of five books and a past member of the SCJS Board.  More about her work at www.kathleenalcala.com

 

  
    

 

La Granada's  readership includes scholars and researchers within various academic disciplines from the American Southwest, all around the country and the world; talented artists, musicians, and writers; descendants of crypto-Jews who "return" and want to share their voyage of discovery with others: descendants of crypto-Jews who are interested in the historical but not necessarily religious implications of their discoveries; genealogists; geneticists; speakers of English, Spanish, Ladino, Yiddish, Turkish, Aramaic, Hebrew and other languages and dialects; and lay people with and without Iberian, Sephardic, or crypto-Jewish ancestors

 

Please share La Granada with others and help us grow our mailing-list like the branches of the pomegranate tree.

 

Sincerely,

 

Debbie Wohl Isard, editor 

La Granada

Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies

 

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www.cryptojews.com

 

 

 

The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies fosters research, netwoking of people and ideas, and the dissemination of information regarding the historical and contemporary developments involving crypto-Jews of Iberian origins.  Membership in this not-for-profit organization is open to anyone who is interested in learning more about this cultural phenomenon.  Annual membership dues include the quarterly scholarly journal Ha Lapid, The Journal of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Crypto Jews annual edition, and discounts on attendance at conferences and other activities.  Complete dues information and more may be found at www.cryptojews.com 

 

This on-line newsletter La Granada is available upon request at no cost.  We welcome your comments and invite contributions of original materials including artwork, music, photography, poetry, short stories, personal accounts, announcements of relevant community activities, links to other resources, and more.  Please address your email to editor.[email protected]