By Joshua Rosenstein, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Throughout more
than 5,000 years of Jewish history, time and again other
peoples have oppressed, murdered and desperately attempted
to convert Jews away from their religion.
In the story of
Hanukkah, the Syrians demanded that Jews abandon their
faith. They looted the temple, martyred thousands and forced
conversions. But Judaism survived despite a rising tide of
Hellenic customs and Jews who subscribed to them, the main
body of Jews clung tenaciously to their code of beliefs.
Even then, the tension between how much Judaism one can
retain in times of oppression was a difficult one.
History endlessly
appears to repeat itself. During the Spanish Inquisition,
the same kinds of oppression occurred. Yet among the
communities of forced or willing converts living in Spain in
the 16th century, a new attitude toward Judaism began to
take root. This modern way of approaching the religion
legitimated a pick-and-choose model of belief.
The convert
communities, even under strict observation by Inquisitionist
neighbors, chose the aspects of Judaism that they were
prepared to hang onto and which aspects they would abandon.
The concept that one could choose how Jewish to be was
revolutionary at the time. Today however, it is just as
relevant as it was 500 years ago.
Dr. David Gitlitz,
a specialist on just this subject, was scheduled to speak at
the Seattle Art Museum on Dec. 2 as a part of the Nextbook
History, Culture and Ideas Series. His lecture, Jews and
Crypto-Jews: The Early Years in the Americas, corresponded
to the Seattle Art Museums new exhibition, Spain in the Age
of Exploration 1492-1819. He is currently working on a book
about the varieties of pilgrimage in Jewish tradition.
JTNews spoke with Gitlitz before his visit.
Gitlitz,
originally from New York, earned his Ph.D. in Hispanic
literature from Harvard. He gradually became fascinated by
the converts and children of converts in Spain during the
Spanish Inquisition. He was intrigued by the ways that
people navigated multi-culturalism during the oppressive
times of the Inquisition by keeping one foot in two worlds.
The Spanish Inquisition lasted from 1480-1835, but Gitlitz
specializes in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.
The people of
16th-century Spain chose how much Judaism to accept as a way
of legitimizing the degree to which they thought of
themselves as Jewish, Gitlitz said. There were people that
followed all of the traditions of kashrut, something
almost impossible to do under the circumstances. Some chose
to eat everything but pork, and some only refrained from
eating pork for 40 days before Passover.
Historically,
medieval Jews had been black or white about their religion:
either they were Jews in appearance, belief, custom, ritual
and behavior, or they were not. But the convert communities
found themselves in a different world.
Today, Jewish
identity is, to a large extent, an individual feeling. We
feel we have a choice how much halachah to follow,
how much of the belief system we want to subscribe to, how
often we want to go to synagogue. We pick and choose from
the wide range of Jewish beliefs that reinforce our identity
and are comfortable for us. We feel we have the right, even
the obligation, to do this, said Gitlitz.
Gitlitz teaches
Hispanic and Judaic Studies at the University of Rhode
Island. Though he is Ashkenazi by descent, he feels he has
spent enough time immersed in Hispanic culture to be
considered an honorary Sephardi. He has lived for long
periods of time in Spain, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. He
also served as the UCLA endowed chair of Sephardic history
in 1994.
Gitlitzs
research has a direct correlation to the modern,
Jewish-American reality. Here, we are not coerced, but
rather seduced away from our Jewish heritage. In this time
and place as well, people choose how much of their Jewish
identity they want to hang on to. It is as much an issue now
as it was in 16th-century Spain, he said.
Like most Jewish
holidays, on Hanukkah we tell a story. It is a story that
has handed down and repeated through the ages, and it
generates difficult questions: how Jewish do we need to be
to fulfill the responsibility of our heritage? How do we
learn from our history and still be free to live our future?
Gitlitz looks to history to find the answers to these very
current questions.
The Inquisition
preserved incredibly detailed data. Scribes took down
verbatim testimony. The culture of peeping toms gave us a
richness of detail about ordinary people that we usually
dont find in historical documents, he said.