I am a Marrano

I am a Marrano

As I sit in a synagogue service and pray, often I wonder what it means to be a Marrano.
I know my grand mother, Pauline, told me she was a Marrano. She would sew Catholic medals and crucifix's in the hems of skirts and pillows.
She would light votice candles on Shabbat and go Mass but never take communion.
She would touch her forehead or face or shoulders in various places so that it would lokk as if she was making the sign of the cross. What she really was doing was whispering Adonai (Lord) and making rapid movements that had some secret meaning.
In church, she would pray in Spanish in her native accent from Gerona, Spain. She also spoke Portuguese and knew a few Hebrew words. Grandma sold cloth to the nuns from which they made their habits.

My mother was raised never to speak to anyone about being Jewish. From her earliest years, she was told that “she had the map of Jerusalem printed on her face”.
Jewsih practices had to be performed in total secrecy. There was a connection between the Marranos of Gerona, Spain, and the Marranos of Belmonte, Portugal.

I had been handed down the same practices. On Friday night, The Sabbath candles were little red or bleu glass Catholic votice candle – the perfumed kind which I brought in a candle shop. The candle would always be in the bedroom, so as not to embarrass the non-Jewish members of my family. Today, I go to the synagogue alone, and my non-Jewish husband picks me up outside, but I go.

For generations, being a Marrano meant my family absolutely forbade any member to tell an outsider that he or she was Jewish. Even though the Inquisition had been over since the 1820s, the feeling was that it was never really over in most people’s beliefs and under no circumstances was any Jewish practice or mannerism to be shown to strangers.
Everything Jewish was done in the home. The holidays were celebrated by lighting votice candles. Shabbath meals consisted of porridge of cooked whole rye, wheat brown rice, millet, lentils and chickpeas, with celery, carrots and parsley.
Mother would take me to Mass at the church. We would sit while the others took communion. Many times I was told to cross myself and kneel in church while saying Jewish prayers in Spanish. Occasionally, a Hebrew word or two was mixed in. The word baruch (blessed) and Adonai were the only Hebrew words I remember.

In my early teens, my mother told me I was Jewish and to keep quiet about it. Later, I began to search for my roots. Why did my mother tell me I was a Marrano, a secret Jew? I was told that ancestors centuries ago had been tried in the Spanish Inquisition and reconciled to the Catholic Church or sent to the stake, that those who watched the auto de fes and who adjured de vehement went home and practiced Judaism in secret.
For generations the only way they preserved their religion was by an agreed-upon family code. Never take communion. Always say Adonay when you cross yourself and touch your closed eyelids. Light the sabbath lamps in a room where no one can see light escaping. The unsuspected votice candles lit on Friday night were lit in the bedroom, but never on the dining room table, lest someone say you were a Jew.

Wear big crosses, sometimes five inches in diameter. Share the family secret with adult children over age 13, so they could keep a secret. On Passover, outdoor picnics, no indoor seders or Haggadahs. Eat lentils, honey cakes, and greens, no meat, sometimes fish, vegetable, and grains.
When grandma was young, she left Gerona for Buenos Aires. Later, the family came to the U.S. He had two marriages. On both my mother’s and my father’s side, cousin marriages had taken place for generations back, for for another rule of the code was to stay genetically Jewish by marrying only relatives, such as cousins. My father’s brother was my maternal grandmother’s second husband. My uncle’s youngest brother married my mother.

Outside, no one knew of the Jewishness, the secret religion. Inside the home, we were taught how to conceal our Jewishness and why this had to be done. “If anyone finds out you’re a Jew, they will bash your face in”, I was taught from early childhood. On Friday night, the Shabbath candles were little red or blue glass Catholic votice candle...
People who say there are not more Marranos don’t know the real story. There are 500 to 600 Marrano families in Portugal and many in Spain, also. In the New World, some live in South America and some in Mexico. I’m talking about those people who remained genetically Jewish through cousin marriages for the past 300 years, who knew for sure that their families were Jews, who kept preserved relics like a 300-year-old Kiddush cup, tear vials candlesticks etc.

These people are in the US today and are coming out of their secrecy. The one thing that preserved that Marrano way of life was the profound secrecy of their religion.
Today in Albuquerque, New Mexico, people such as Loggie Carrasco are doing linguistic research in archaic Hebrew language found among the local Hispanic population.
For 300 year’s Loggie Carrasco’s family clung to Marrano practices and secert Jewish rites while outwardly similating Catholicism in order to keep the family’s right to Mexican lang grants.
If the Mexican government had discovered that Loggie’s family was Jewish, they would have lost their huge property holdings. In a recent court trial, Loggie won her rights to her property and the story was brought to light.

Today, Loggie Carrasco, a Marrano, searches the US southwest looking for clues in the language and customs of the ancient community which existed in this part of the country when it was part of New Spain – in colonial Mexican days during the 17th century. Now she attends the local synagogue.
Another Marrano, Victor Diaz of San Diego is the Owner of the radio station, Radio Latina in Chula Vista, California. He owns many radio stations throughout Mexico and San Diego. For 300 years, his family lived in Guadalahara, Mexico, as Marranos. He remained genetically Jewish by constant cousin marriages for generations. He and his wife are both Marranos. He describes himself as a Catholic Jew, who had been a catholic man all his life and suddently became Jewish afetr contact with a rabbi who specializes in converting Marranos back to Judaism.

Marranos should not be confused with Indian Jews or the descendants of Mestizos who converted to Judaism of late. They are not the descendants of Indian slaves of Jews who adopted their religion, either. Although the recently converted Mestizo Jews of Mexico are devout Jews, the term Marranos applies here to specific families which have remained consciously, genetically Jewish through cousin marriages and selected marriages with other secret Jews from European ancestry in the Iberian penisula (Spain and Portugal).
Many of those people have been living in Mexico for more than 300 years and can be seen as totally different from the general Mestizo Latin American population at large. For example, without exception, all the Marranos I’ve met so far have similar coloring: fair skin, green, hazel golden brown, blue, or gray eyes; brown hair; semitic profiles and Armenid-shaped skulls.
They differ slightly from the Sephardic Jews of the eastern Mediterranean area since they are lighter in coloring with short, very narrow heads. They are extremely inbred for generations of marrying close neighbors or cousins, but do not have any genetic diseases peculiar to their people, perhaps because there are so few of them. Marranos came out of the closet during the 1930s Marrano renaissance in Belmonte, Portugal.
At that time, the Jewish board of Guardians set up the Basil H. Henriques Portuguese Marranos Committee of London on Commercial Road. In Majorca, for example, after 300 years, the Inquistion still taints the Chuetas (Chueta comes from the Catalonian word for Jew, Xueta).
All the family names were engraved in a church saying that they were secret Jews.Today, their descendants are still shunned by the local populace. Nico Aguilo, a Marrano from Majorca, Spain, went to a yeshiva in Israel, formally renewed his conversion to Judaism, retruned to Majorca, and proudly wears his skullcaps, trying to help other Jews come back.
In the Iberian penisula, it has become fashionable not to remain secret Jews. In Cordoba, Spain, the Beit Sephardi was established by two local business people who felt that it was time to announce their secret Jewish faith. It is a local center for study and culture of the Jewish history of Cordoba. Since one out of ten Spaniards reputedly were Jewish prior to the Inquisition, the social stigma that formely was attached to being a Marrano is diminishing.
The important Marrano holidays are Passover and Quippur (Yom Kippour), also called El gran Dia De Pardon, when all Marranos fast. Among Portuguese Marranos, Quippur is called Dia Grande or Dia Puro (pure day).
The pascua, or Passover, was called the day of the lamb. Marranos do not sit down to a seder, they sit down to a Haggadah, accent on the last syllabe. However, Portuguese Marranos do not have a Haggadah book. They use the Bible and read from Exodus.

Matzoh was made by mixing water and rye flour or chickpea flour, kneading it, and throwing it into the fire or oven. Matzoh was round, tasteless, undercooked dough. No tasty crakers for Marranos on this day of bitter bread. Portuguese Marranos in Belmonte call their matzoh pao santo (holy bread).
They pray in Portuguese and use the word Adonai, instead of Christos. Out of 4 000 residents, 600 are Marranos who will tell you that they are Jewish, but they still go to Mass and say their Jewish prayers at home.
Holidays were always scheduled a week before or after the real dates. This is still done today in the largest cities: Braganca, Rebordello, Oporto, and Belmonte, where most Portuguese Marranos live. Gerona is the center of Spain, although many, including some of my relatives moved to Malaga.

Today, in South America and in Mexico, there are still Marranos with their quaint customs. They are slowly coming forward but only when searched out by rabbis whishing to take them into the fold.
One of the best sources for inforlation about Marranos is dan Ross, a St Martin’s Press author, who wrote Acts of Faith, which examines Marranos on the fringes of Jewsih identity who are staring to come back. Amilcar Paulo of Oporto, Portugal, is the world’s foremost authority on the Portuguese Marranos living in Belmonte today.

Marranos are just beginning to make themselves known as crypto-Judios in Gerona. In Rebordello, Portugal, the 1930s Marrano renaissance caused local Marrano Moses Abraham Gaspar’s father to carve a giant star of David on his door post.
In Braganca, the local man of wisdow today is Joa Baptista dos Santos. But Belmonte, Portugal today is the only place where old and new Christians remain a central fact of life.
In 1979, the Oporto Synagogue was defaced with swasticas and slogans of “death of the Jews”, and a Portuguese Marrano’s clothing factory was defaced and burned down. Anti-Jewishness against Marranos who decalre themselves is rampant in northeastern Porugal today.
In Spain, in Gerona, and in the whole of Catalonia, Marranos and other Jews are treated very fairly, but freedom to worship openly as a Jew in Spain has only been legal since 1968.

Anne Cardoza