Juggling Identities: Identity and Authenticity Among Crypto-Jews (review)

Abstract

Juggling Identities: Identity and Authenticity Among Crypto-Jews, by Seth D. Kunin. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 278 pp. $50.00. This book discusses the diversity and the complexity of its subject, and in some ways acts rather like a review article in describing and criticizing the approaches the topic adopted by different scholars. Some of the latter have denied absolutely that Crypto-Jewish practices of some people in the United States Southwest have any connection with New Christian and Judaizing ancestors who fled northwards from the Inquisition in Mexico itself, while others take the opposite view. Professor Kunin's admitted goal is to indicate how these arguments have shaped Crypto-Jews' self-understanding and presentation of self, particularly in the public sphere, not suggest that they are either historically or sociologically supportable. This presents a serious problem for those who want know whether the Jewish customs practiced have indeed been handed down the generations. One major problem is the contradiction inherent in the term Crypto-Judaism itself. If secrecy is one of its primary constituents, how is it possible use the term refer individuals who acknowledge some form of Jewish identity or association? If they claim that their Jewish practices prove their descent from those who are of Jewish descent in the female line, they are no longer secret. Another issue which needs be recognized and discussed, though this book does mention it in passing is that Jewish communities and rabbis recognize as Jews only converts Judaism, though what constitutes conversion is disputed, and those who are descended in rhe female line from Jews. The latter are Jews whatever the circumstances of their conception or indeed their religious upbringing and practice. A major plank in the argument put forward by those who do not accept that the Crypto-Jews are in fact descended from seventeenth-century Judaizers fleeing from the Holy Office is that the Jewish customs they practice constitute behavior learned from varied late-nineteenth-century Pentecostal and Adventist missionaries. In his attack on Judith Neulander s view that CryptoJewish practices were learnt in this way Kunin produces some very convincing arguments, in particular that some of the practices are not found in those particular versions of Christianity. One senses that Professor Kunin leans more the view that how Crypto-Jews look at themselves and interpret their lives is more significant than the historical facts of their descent. He argues that self-definition is central. He writes of Crypto-Jews that they regard the practice as expressive of their Jewish identity, then that is its meaning. However, is this not tantamount saying that if one wants be Jewish, then any of one's religious practices can be called Jewish? Professor Kunin underlines that the counter-arguments of Neulander and others challenge Crypto-Jews' sense of self. …