Introduction:

Modernity excluded the Jews from one of its biggest enterprises: the European discovery and settlement of America. Not withstanding, the Jews found ways to participate in this adventure, though in a Christian garb. The persecutions and social pressures experienced by the Jews from Castille, and in minor form by Aroganese Jewry, during their last hundred years in the Iberian Peninsula, a span of time in which almost two-thirds of the Hebrew nation converted to Christianity by coercion or voluntarily, forged a tendency in the baptized and their successors, the New Christians, to assimilate into the religion of the majority.

The case of Portuguese Jewry, as it is known, was very different from the Spanish. The whole Hebrew Nation of Portugal was forced, in a very short span of time, almost in one day, to accept a religion in whose authenticity  they did not believe and to whose popular culture and liturgical forms  they  did not believe and to whose popular culture and liturgical forms they had no time to assimilate. Because of the swiftness of this transition, and the  violation of their consciences, the immense majority of Portuguese Jews never  abandoned their ancestral religion, but only changed their external identity. Although they tried to appear good and devout Christians in the in the eyes of their neighbors and spies, in the intimacy of their homes they remained Jews and continued to educate their children in Jewish ways and religion.

The Portuguese Presence

1 The doubly forbidden

From the year 1560, Portuguese communities spread all over Spanish America.  Most of them were New Christians hoping to evade the tribunals of the  Inquisition in Portugal and, at the same time, they were attracted by the discovery of the rich silver deposits in New Spain and the region of Potosi. Furthermore, the conquest of the Philippines opened a new route to the East and that meant a wide sphere of action for many entrepreneurs. Besides, some New Christians had relatives and friends who were in the services of the Portuguese Crown or went as traders to the Lusitanian domains in Southeast Asia. The immense majority of them rejected assimilation and desired to survive, given the circumstances, as Jews in Christian garb. Due to this attitude they have been called crypto-Jews. At the same time they were the :double prohibited", since the prohibition in Spanish America included not only the descendants of Jews but was extended to every stranger.

Their presence had been detected by the Tribunal of the Inquisition established in Lima, Peru, in 1570. A group of persons had been denounced for "taking out the sinew from the lamb's leg" a Jewish custom well known to the Spanish inquisitors, as it reminded the Jews of Jacob's flight with the Angel, who, after being unable to defeat him, changed his name to Israel. It should be mentioned that this rite, related to the origins of the Hebrew nation and, due to it, to the  Promise of Messianic Redemption, was the first one to be practiced by the  crypto-Jews in Spanish America. It was also the last one that adhered too, before being absorbed by the culture of the majority. Indeed, even New   Christians assimilated to the religion of the majority  ( e.g., the grandson   of Pedro Rojas, the famous New Christian author of the fifteenth century   novel Celestina ), practiced this primal rite in the last decade of the sixteenth century.

The United Crown

In 1580 Philip 11 seized the Portuguese Crown and became Philip 1 of Portugal. The Lusitanians regained their autonomy only sixty years later. Due to this new political situation, between 1580 and 1640, which is the era of the United Crown, the Portuguese abounded in Spain and also in its overseas domains. It is necessary to underscore once again that a notable majority of them were not only New Christians, but crypto Jews. Many of them had fled Portugal in previous years and had settled temporarily in Jewish quarters and ghettos in Italy and other places. But the anti-Jewish rules, imposed by several popes of the Counter-Reformation, made their lives so miserable that many left the intolerant Christian kingdoms and settled in the territories of the Turkish Empire. Others returned to the Iberian Peninsula and embarked to the West r East Indies, as was the case of Ruy and Diego Dias Nieto; ( see, Life between Judaism and Christianity in New Spain 1580-1606, Mexico 1992 and 1994 ) Joao Rodriques da Silva had lived also in France, Italy, and in the Turkish Empire. He married in Salonica, where he left his wife and traveled once again to Italy, and from there to Spain from where he embarked for the Indies. He escaped from New Spain when the officers of the Inquisition were knocking on the door of his house. He was burned in effigy, as all absent persons were, in the Auto da Fe celebrated in Mexico City in 1596 and, due to it, he became in life a dead man in the Iberian Empire. His friend Jorge de Almeida lived in Ferrara until 1570, and when life became miserable for the Jews in the Duchy of the D'Este, due to one of the economic crises caused by the wars with the Turks, he left with his family for Spain. His cousin Blanca Rodriques settled in Seville and opened an inn where many crypto Jews stopped on their way to and from America. For them, kosher  food was served. Almeida fled from Mexico in 1590 after the Holy Office apprehended his wife Dona Leonor, one of the daughters of the Caravel  family, who had been burnt in person in the above mentioned Auto-da-fe together  with her mother Dona Francisca, and sisters Dona Catalina and Dona Isabel, and brother Luis. In 1594, Almeida was still in Madrid, thanks to his good   connections with some people in the Royal Court, he got a contract to carry merchandise from Angola to Cartagena. Although after the sacrifice of the  Caravel family he went back to Italy, years later he embarked once more  again for the East Indies. Indeed, crypto Jews developed the ability to walk in and out between Christian and Jewish society, because they knew how to behave properly in the synagogue as well as in the church. This ability, born in them as a consequence of religious coercion, permitted some of them to leave behind for a while the miserable social  and economic situation in the ghettos and to search for better   opportunities, For  example, Diedo Pezes de Albuquerque, born in Bordeaux and raised in Rouen,  France, arrived in New Spain 1618. He lived in Puebla, Mexico City, and  finally settled in the mining center of Zacatecas, where he opened a shop. Alvaro Mendes, arrested in Lima, Peru, formerly lived in France and sent  money to his relatives in Amsterdam. Julian Alvares came to Mexico from  Holland. Luis Franco Rodriques, resident in Cartagena de Indies, had   brothers in Holland and throughout his whole life yearned for a comfortable economic situation that would permit him to live with them as a Jew.

Clearly, many crypto Jews lost the ability to put down roots anywhere and wandered from one place to another. This was the case of Balthaser de Araujo, descendant of Abraham Senior, Chief Rabbi of Castile, supplier of the armies that conquered Granada and one of Isabel's loyal advisors. For this reason the Catholic Queen did the impossible by keeping with her the ancient servant and compelling him, together with his son in law, Meir Melamed, to a baptismal font. They took the name of Nunes and Perez Coronal, respectively. A branch of this family, trying to live in accord with the Law of Moses, moved to Portugal, from there to Bayonne and later to Galicia. In this kingdom, the Tribunal of the Inquisition was formally introduced in 1562 and began its functions only in 1574. When life for the crypto Jews became dangerous, the mother of Peter Coronels, alias Araujo, moved to Flanders and from there to Venice, where she had her sons circumcised and gave them Jewish names. Balthazer was called Abraham Senior after his illustrious ancestor. In Venice and
later in Salonica and then in Constantinople, he studied in a yeshiva together with his brethren. After that, he moved to Cairo, and later he settled in Alexandria. From there he returned to Bayonne, but out of fear of the Holy Office, he went back to Constantinople. Nevertheless, he "felt desire to see the world" and crossed the Balkans once again, travelling through Italy and Spain and finally embarked for the West Indies.

Travelers like Coronel- Senior, and the other persons mentioned above, infused new life into the small crypto Jewish communities and kept them in constant communication with the intellectual centers of Judaism.Occasionally these men, such as Juan Pacheco de Leon, who came to Mexico in 1639 from Livorno, Italy, became the spiritual guides for some groups of their co-religionists. Moreover, all these Jews carried books printed in Ferrara, Venice, or in some other cultural centers, which found their way to the most remote corners of the Spanish Empire. Manuel de Paz, imprisoned in Lima in 1634, had one of these Bibles. In 1637, Simon Vaez Sevilla was denounced by his "g-d-father", Pedro de Navia, for displaying a Bible on his desk. These types of Bibles circulated also in the Philippines, Macao, Malaca, Cochin and Goa.

One of the main characteristics of the period of the United Crowns was that the majority of the crypto-Jews tried to fulfill the commandments of the Torah. All of them observed Shabbat, though the men went to their business places so they would not be noticed. For the women, it was easier to pretend that they were sewing or embroidering without doing anything. A substantial number of them abstained from eating prohibited food, although they served bacon when they had visitors, calling pork meat ejecutoria or a nobility coat ( see in Cervantes; dialogue between Sancho Panza and don Quixote before the first one became governor of the island ). To the extent that circumstances permitted, they celebrated the three major annual holidays, namely Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkoth. They strictly fasted on the Great Day of the Lord or Yom Hakippurim and at the Fast of Esther.

Due to the religious oppression in which they lived, Queen Esther was considered by many as one of the greatest Hebrew heroines, because she saved her nation from destruction. Many of them fasted Mondays and Thursdays, days when the reading of the Torah is performed in the synagogues. By means of fasting, they asked G-d to forgive them their transgression, that is, their living as Christians. On the eve and at the end of the fasts, they dined only on Lenten dishes, such as vegetables, fruit, fish, eggs and cheese, as many Sephardi families do to this day. On the occasion of these banquets, the family and a small group of friends would gather to discuss the Law of Moses, reiterating that this Law is the only one by which man could live. The subject of the Messiah came up in all these meetings, since everyone yearned for a quick redemption of Israel. Some even predicted the date of his arrival. Manuel Dias, sacrificed at the Auto da Fe celebrated in 1596, calculated that the Messiah would appear by the year 1600. During his imprisonment, Manuel dreamed that the Anointed One of the House of David had opened the doors of the Inquisition's secret jails. Seeing himself outside and free, he said to some acquaintances;     " Look, G-d took up his cause....."

With this belief in his heart, during his second imprisonment, Luis de Carvajal confronted the Inquisitors and tried to convert them to Judaism. Others believed that the Savior would be born into a crypto- Jewish family. In 1620, when Juana Enricques was pregnant with her son Gaspar, it was believed that she would give birth to the Redeemer because she strictly observed the Mitzvot and because her husband, Simon Vaez, descended from the tribe of Levi. When Gaspar did not turn out to be the Messiah, other virtuous women were considered as possible mothers of the Redeemer. Indeed every irregular and strange happening was seen as a sign of his impending arrival. Simple men as well as educated ones believed with all their hearts that G-d had not forgotten his people. Thanks to this deep and genuine faith, that at the same time is a futuristic ideology that helps to overcome tragedies, the survivors of the Auto da Fes, in which their family and friends had been
devoured by the flames, had the strength and energy to educate their children in their ancestral creed.

Lecture given at Brown University on Monday, June 16, 1997.
Published in the Reunir Vol 111 January 1998. 
With permission by Mr B Bell, President of the Aristides de Sousa Mendes Society, Providence.