Remembering David Gitlitz (1942–2020)

Abstract

What I remember most about David Gitlitz is his infectious smile with his upbeat attitude that was always engaging and welcoming, especially for me as a newcomer to the El Paso Symposium; this in the mid-1980s when all scholarly events took place on the UTEP campus in conjunction, of course, with the Siglo de Oro Spanish Drama Festival at the Chamizal National Memorial. Just about the time I met David, Donald Dietz was founding the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater, Inc. (AHCT). At that time, the AHCT was not in the conference business, but was set up to record and preserve live performances at the Chamizal as well as solicit grants to provide partial funding for theater companies to present at the Festival. David, I believe, was the first vice president of the AHCT and I was among the first board members. After each performance, several of us went to private homes in El Paso for informal gatherings and discussion of the plays we had just seen. We all decamped in what was then the Travel Lodge of Highway 10, with interstate traffic constantly whizzing by. Later on, as some of you might remember, the AHCT organized receptions every night, following performances at the Chamizal. I remember David’s book on Lope de Vega from 1980 and his interest in Lope and theater allowed for many productive discussions in El Paso. The collegiality of the El Paso Symposium was such that I wished to continue attending and I’ve missed only two symposia since 1984. David certainly contributed to this friendly, welcoming atmosphere.As some of you know, David had a wide range of scholarly interests. He often attended festivities for the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City and, as a professor at the University of Rhode Island, conducted study tours for course credit along the Camino de Santiago. He always sent me information and at one point I was able to send a midshipman to study at the Escuela Naval in Spain and he was able to walk along this famous pilgrimage route with information that David had given me. He has a book on the Camino as well. While most of our discussions were at the El Paso Symposium itself, I did see David at the annual meeting of the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast for the “Quincentenary of a Continuing Encounter/The Iberian Peoples & Other Cultures,” organized by Susana Hernánez Araico in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1991. David, the keynote speaker, spoke on Jews in the “New World.” An avid hiker, David was also able to enjoy the outdoors surrounding Las Vegas.In his last e-mail to me on June 14, 2019, David spoke to me about his current passions. He was a contributing citizen to his village in Mexico, Santa Cruz Etla, “traditional but in transition,” and he was writing a book on his experiences there. His book Living in Silverado on Jews and the mining industry in the colonial period was about to be published in October 2019 by the University of New Mexico Press. Other books reflect his scholarly attention to the cultural encounters of Sephardic Jews and their contributions to Spanish culture, such as Secrecy and Deceit: A Converso Chronology in which he describes the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 that predated the expulsion edict in Spain of 1492. He also discusses the destruction of the Jewish community in Sevilla in 1391 and the transformation of two significant synagogues in Toledo into churches, the Tránsito, now a museum of Sephardic Culture, and what is now called Santa María la Blanca, that somehow managed to preserve its Star of David. He also invited me to come to Oaxaca, “one of the most lively, interesting, and exotic places I have ever visited, let alone lived in.” His enthusiasm was contagious! Since I received my PhD with the last name Ghertman, I asked him if he knew of any Sephardic connections with it. He did not!According to his obituary in H-Judaica, his last Facebook post on December 17, 2020, read, “We live in dark times, but there is light.” David will be missed by anyone who had the good fortune to know him. My condolences to his family.