Los Criptojudios: un fenomeno religoso y social (review)

Abstract

144 SHOFAR This prepared the way for rising rates of radical assimilation over the last few decades. The faster erosion of Jewish sentiments and numbers in the absence of deep local family traditions and communal loyalties and a concomitant awareness of group identity and solidarity is emphasized by the chapter on "German Immigrants in the Victorian Age." For most their Jewishness was weak prior to their arrival in England and they failed either to form their own or to join the local Jewish community. They vanished largely without trace within a generation, aided by the surname changes engendered by the anti-German hysteria of World War 1. That personal convenience and a desire not to be different were the main cause of radical assimilation rather than religious conviction or a wholesale rejection of Judaism is revealed by the chapter which details the largely ineffective efforts of Christian missionaries. "The Fruits of Missionary Labours" were few and gained at a heavy financial cost. On the other hand, Judaism failed to kindle a spiritual fervor among the mass of British Jews in these three centuries. This is a good history on a relevant theme. Sociologists and communal leaders could learn a lot from reading it and pondering its message. It provides only the slightest inkling of hope that in the absence of antisemitism the inevitable end of emancipation need not be the inexorable attrition of the Jewish population of the diaspora. Barry A. Kosmin, Director North American Jewish Data Bank, CUNY Graduate Center Los Criptojudios: un fenomeno religoso y social, by Boleslao Lewin. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Mila, 1987. 250 pp. It is taken for granted today that the history of the Jews in Colonial America fascinates many scholars and readers. This was not always the case, however. The great nineteenth-century historian H. Graetz did not include them in his monumental History of the Jews. Even in the first half of the twentieth century, the historian S. Dubnov, though more sensitive to the subject, failed to comprehend all its ramifications. In defense of these great historians it may be argued that times have changed since they wrote their books, and that the Jewish communities in America, which were miniscule and of secondary importance until the 18805, have become more important and more prominent in Jewish life today. Indeed, S. W. Baron, writing in the Volume 9, No.3 Spring 1991 145 1970s, devoted most of volume 15 of his Social and Religious History of the Jews to the Jews in the American Spanish and Portuguese empires. There is, however, a further reason for the reluctance displayed by some writers for dealing with this topic. These early settlers in the Americas were not Jews as we understand the term today, but were "crypto-Jews"-converts to Christianity, who secretly maintained some form of Judaism. They were persecuted by the Inquisition in Iberia and in America for their practices. Many endured horrible martyrdoms and some paid for their belief with their lives. In the mind of a great Spanish historian such as the non-Jewish Julio Caro Baroja, there is no doubt that these people were Jews. His three-volume Histo1)' ofthe Jews in Modem and Contemporary Spain contains a chapter on the expulsion of 1492, and describes how those who were expelled settled in their new havens around the Mediterranean and in Europe. However, he also followed the history of those who preferred conversion and remained in Iberia and the Iberian empires, as if their history was a direct continuation of the medieval history of the Jews in Spain. His attitude was not completely rejected by Jewish historians in Jerusalem or New York, although some people did express severe reservations when his History first appeared. BoleslaoLewin, a prominent specialist in South American colonial history, takes sides in this debate. In his very well researched and authoritative book, he is careful to label these people as "Criptojudios," and not simply "Judios," but the abundant evidence which he quotes leaves us with no choice, to my mind at least, but to consider them as Jews. To be sure, they practiced a "curtailed" and twisted form of Judaism, with many hardships and without access to...