Returning to Judaism
after 500 years
By Rachel Amado Bortnick
The Inquisition is a present-day reality for three Dallas women of “crypto-Jewish” background who took the final step to close an ancestral circle, to mend the Jewish link that was broken 500 years ago. Judith de Mello Dutilh grew up without religion in Uruguay; Anna Real De Lay was raised as a Catholic in New Mexico; and Magda Hinojosa de los reyes was born in Mexico to a large Protestant family. Each of these Dallas-area women speaks of her ritual conversion to Judaism as a “return” after five centuries of Christianity maintained by the terror of the Inquisition.
Their ancestors were Sephardic Jews who under duress or to escape the expuslion order of 1492, converted to Catholicism in Spain and came to the New World as early settlers. (Many of the Portuguese Jews who were forced to convert en masse in 1496 established themselves in Brazil).
For centuries afterward, these conversos- also called Marranos, New Christians, Crypto-Jews, Hidden Jews or anusim, “the forced ones”, in Hebrew – were hunted and haunted by finding and punishing “Judaisers”.
Despite the ever-present fear or being discovered, many continued to maintain certain rituals, often in complete ignorance of their Jewish origins. Secret family rituals, the fear of being “discovered”, a fanatical mistrust of autsiders and a dominating sense of “us” versus “them”, have for centuries characterized crypto-Jewish communities and become traditions in themselves.
The existence of converso communities in the Southwestern United States, Mexico and Latin America has become public knowledge in recent years, but few individuals from within them have come forward to aknowledge their Jewish origins. Fewer still have taken the bold step of conversion into Judaism. The Inquisition was officially abolished as a tribunal of the catholic church 160 years ago, but, according to the “returnees” it, lives on the psuche of its victims descendants.
Judith’s story
Nearly two years ago, the ritual immersion in the mikveh completed the conversion of Judith de Mello Dutilh, Yehudith bat Sarah ve Avraham.
“Now the Inquisition is over” Rabbi Jefferey Leynor pf Congregation Beth Torah told her.
“No. Never!” responded the Uriuguay native. “The Inquisition will never be over for me”!
The grim specter of an Inquisition that had tortured, imprisoned and burned family members in Spain and Central America hovered over Judith’s affluent household in Rivera, Uruguay, on the Brazilian border. It determined the family’s sense of identity exclusivity and pride. “We knew we were descendants of converted Jews, of los quemados, the burned ones”, says Judith, 54 tears flooding her brown eyes. She was going public” with her story for the first time in this interview.The de Mellos original name was Ibn Attar (Ibn is the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew prefix ben meaning “son of” Benatar is a common Sephardic name). Even in the free religious atmosphere of Uruguay, they did not reveal their historical Jewish connection to outsideres, who called them los turcos, the Turks, a name given to people of Middle Eastern origin. They practiced no religion, but at home they had unique customs, rites and traditions, which were secrets never to be divulged to anyone, lest the family suffer unknown consequences. A picture of Maimonides hung in their rich library, but his books and all other Jewish books were kept behind closed doors.
Judith, now a grandmother, nurse and masseuse, remembers a song in Portuguese that she was taught at home as a young child: “Put a white linen tablecloth with two candles on the table, and don’t close the window because I want to see the stars when I sing to Hashem”.
Hanna’s story
Anna Rael de Lay, the most recent returnee, is a second-grade bingual teacher in her early 40s. In her native Santa Fe, New Mexico, no one in her Catholic family realized, or admitted, that their many particular customs echoed a Jewish past. On friday nights in her home, her grandmother lit candles. She never allowed milk and meat to be eaten together. Meat was butchered by the grandfather in the Jewish manner, and no one in her family ate pork.
“They said they were allergic. It would make them sick” remembers Anna. For Lent (around Passover) the men baked galletas, a flat bread resembling matzo. The women would prepare foods and deliver them to different families (similar to the custom of shalah manot at Purim). All the boys were circumcised. When someone died at home, the mirrors would be covered for a week (an Orthodox Jewish custom). Bodies never went to mortuaries. The wakes took place at home, and burial was done as soon after death as possible. When young Anna asked questions about these things, no one had an answer. Her family used to tell her, “Whatever happens in this house, no one needs to know”. Nowadays, because of urbanization and assimilations, the customs are disappearing. But the ingrained fear and the stigma of being labeled a Jew persist. Stanley Hordes, a researcher of the hidden Jews of Mexico, discovered that Anna’s family name, Real, had at one point been shortened from Yisrael. Anna’s brother and sister have akknowledged and reclaimed their Jewish heritage but do not see a need to convert. Her mother still denies any Jewish connection.
“Four years ago, after much urging, my mother joined me and some Jewish friends for a wonderful Passover at Stan’s house in Santa Fe”, recalls Anna, to illustrate her mother’s denial. “After dinner we passed around song sheets. The song Un Cavretico (the Ladino version of Had Gadya) was on it. My mother asked, “What’s the tune to this?” and Stan began to sing it. “Oh, I know it”, she said. “My father used to sing it. “We all looked at her. So she said. “My father used to know a lot of people. He probably learned it from somebody”.
Anna’s Catholic schooling exposed her to intolerance of Jews “from the inside” – the view of Jew as different, as strangers, as “bad people who killed Christ” – but she never heard these at home. Even now, when people who assume that she is Catholic make an anti-Semitic remark or are shocked when they see her wearing her star of David necklace, she says she realizes the Inquisition is not over.
Magda’s story
“That is the Inquisition!” assert Magda Hinojosa de los reyes, probably the forerunner of all known returnees in the Dallas community, who shed the crypto” from her Jewishness 20 years ago. “There’s still that fear, the fear of persecution, of being suspected that you are not a true and sincere Christian. “From my view, the Inquisition was not a law, not a tribunal, not a historical event that had a beginning and an end “explains Magda, who was born in Tampico, in the state of Tamaulipas in Northeastern Mexico”. (For us) it has been a mindset, an attitude, an oppressive cloud that has been over our community for centuries. It’s a fear that has been programmed into our system. Until people in the world are tolerant toward Jews. It will always be there”.
The proud, 46-year-old mother of three “fully Jewish children from a former marriage to an Ashkenazic Jew is director of international services at Baylor University Medical center. She has related the story of her return in her many public talks and it was also the subject of an article in the January 1992 issue of D magazine.
Magda’s long road to Judaism was filled with much emotional turmoil. Her parents, who are Assembly of Good ministers, some of her nine siblings and most of her relatives are practicing Christians.
But once she discovered her Jewish ancestry, her decision was simple.
“When I visited Cordoba, Spain in 1972 and sat at the foot of the statue of Maimonides. I had a powerful feeling. I had been there before she recounts. “In the little synagogue (of Cordoba) I felt my soul and my identity merge, and from then on I had no question”.
Three Roads to the Same Destination
Judith sees the Inquisition’s hand in the personal difficulties she has endured for the sake of her religion. She sees the hand of Hashem in everything good that has happened to her, including her “miraculous” chance encounter with Magda, who considers the coincidences that brought her and Judith together to be “divinely-guided”.
Judith divorced her Christian husband after 17 years of marriage and three children when he began to insist that she practice his religion. In 1981, she left her home in Syracuse, New York, and went back to Uruguay with her youngets daughter, then 6. Three years ago they joined her older daughter and grandchild in Dallas.
Soon after she arrived in Dallas, Judith called a Women by the last name of Hinojosa associated with a Mexican art exhibit she wanted to visit. It turned out to be Magda’s cousin who, upon learning that Judith was a Sephardic Jew from Uruguay (that’s how Judith introduced herself), took her number and passed it on to Magda. ? Within two days, in their first phone conversation- with lasted several hours – Magda and Judith discovered they are “cousins through a common de los reyes ancestor in the 17 th century” and that both of their families are originally from Galicia, in the Northwestern corner of Spain.
Judith revealed to her new friend that she had never actually taken the formal step of conversion to Judaism, and that she was determined to do so before 1992. Shortly thereafter, Magda took Judith to meet Rabbi Leynor.
Judith’s family in Uruguay is very proud of what she had done. Her children – a son who is a christian and two daughters who don’t associate with any religion – have always known that their mother was really a Jew and are not surprised about her decision to make it formal.
“I waited five hundred years”, declares Judith, “but when the time came to go to the mikveh, I was so impatient. I just couldn’t wait another minute. When I came out, I felt I had done it not for myself, but for all my people who suffered from the Inquisition for 500 years”.
A vivid historical memory is one of the attributes shared by all three women. Each can recite a long list of ancestral family names, with their places of origin and even their sojourns and detours as they ran away from the Inquisition to their final place of settlement.
A beautiful, young, pregnant women who was Anna’s first maternal ancestor on this continent. “”Who was the father of her child?” Anna wonders.
Soft-spoken Anna conveys a feeling of peace and serenity as she describes how her return to Judaism “has filled a void that has always been there”. Mr Hordes and other Jewish friends have made her feel at home with Jews and Jewishness. Her husband, a Methodist, is supportive of her decision. And her 14 year old son will “make his own decision when the time comes”. Her face beams when she says “All I know is that I have closed the circle and I feel good about that”.
Magda experienced her own spiritual fulfilment last summer during her emotionally charged first trip to Israel. A feeling of being home surged within her there. At the Kotel (the western Wall) in Jerusalem, she made her decision to make aliyah some day. For now, she attends religious services at co,ngregation Young Israel in Dallas, where the language is Hebrew and the rituals are Sephardic. “We have survived a 600-Year-long Holocaust”, she says. (The first wide-spread conversions occured in Spain in 1391). “I’m convinced the chain was supposed to link with me”.
The story of theses deeply spiritual women, so genuinely enthusiastic about their “new old” religion, is one of survival, courage and hope. They have proven the strength of the Jewish spirit that survived in hiding for centuries by their own strength in rejecting the masquerade of Christianity, in refusing to be held captive by the centuries-old fear.
“In the next 20 years, conversos will be coming back to judaism in droves” predicts Magda. “Shabbat is our permanent covenant. No matter how many detours it takes, the Jewish spirit comes back”.
Rachel Amado Bortnick a Sephardic Jew from Turkey, is a Dallas writer.
ESL teacher, lecturer and editor of the newsletter of the American Association of Jewish Friends of Turkey
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