JOACHIM PRINZ

^M
"The story of the Marranos is a melancholy
chapter in the history of the Jewish people, a
chapter about which I knew nothing. I am
grateful to Dr. Prinz for enlightening me. His
researches obviously moved him and he has
written a moving account of what he found."
—Joseph Lash

On the wall of a peasant hut in a remote

Brazilian village, there hangs among the tradi-
tional Catholic pictures a parchment covered
with strange symbols no one in the village can
decipher.
In Buenos Aires, many well-to-do Catholic
women leave their daily card games early on
Friday afternoons to go home to serve a "spe-
cial" dinner on a white tablecloth, and though
they do not know why, to light weekly candles.
In a cottage on the Balearic Islands, a peas-
ant -woman tells in incredulous tones of the
strange behavior of her father, who, once a year,
would wrap himself in a white sheet with black
stripes, pray from a special book, and refrain
from eating from one night to the next.
These Christian people, and thousands more
like them throughout the world, whether they
are aware of it or not, are demonstrating their
ties to the faith of a common ancestor. They are
descendants of the Marranos—those Jews who
converted to Catholicism during the Inquisi-
tion but who continued to practice some ves-
tiges of this religion in hiding.
This book is a rich and stirring chronicle of
these "secret" Jews, from the fifteenth century
up to the present moment. Dr. Prinz tells how
they maintained their Judaism under unbear-
able hardship in Spain, then dispersed to other
European countries and to the New World, and
either because of persecution or simply from
habit—persisted in their double lives. We see
these new Christians baptizing their children
(continued on back flap}
DS124.P74
(continued from front flap)
and attending mass; in the cities of the Near
East, going to services in mosques and partici-
pating in pilgrimages. But still, they gather to
say the remnants of Jewish prayers, they may
bake special bread for Passover or closet them-
selves from the community on certain days of
the year; they may take part in civil marriages,
and then go home for special "family" services.
Many remarkable individuals have been
Marranos. The most famous, perhaps, is the
great teacher Spinoza. We read too of Shabtai
Zvi, the sensational self-appointed Messiah,
before whom people danced in the streets and
who led his followers through several religious
convolutions. Another anecdote concerns Bea-
trice de Luna who, as a young widow, found
herself at the head of an enormous international
banking house but who was able to practice her
Judaism openly only by living in Constanti-
nople under the protection of the sultan.
Compassionately, and with a wonderful sense
of story, Joachim Prinz, the author of this book,
shows how a few Marranos have attempted to
return to Judaism, some emigrating to Israel.
Their problems, as well as their faith, are a
fascinating reflection of the survival of Judaism
itself. For that is what the survival of the Mar-
ranos—a phenomenon unparalleled in history
—is about. In explaining the incredible resil-
ience of these people, Dr. Prinz casts new light
on the concept of the "chosen people," and
probes perceptively and sensitively into the
ultimate question of what it really means to be
a Jew. To these themes, to the continuity of
Jewish history, and to the attitudes and situa-
tions of Jews everywhere today, this book
brings a wonderful store of information, and an
important and inspiring perspective.
Jacket design: Pat Ugwudi
Random House, Inc., New York, N.Y. 10022
Publishers of THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY
OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: the Unabridged
and College Editions, The Modern Library and
Vintage Books
Printed in U.S.A.
10/73
 Dr. Joachim Prinz served as president of the American Jewish
Congress from 1958 to 1966, when he retired and was elected
honorary president. He was one of the ten founding chairmen of
the 1963 March on Washington. Born in Germany, Dr. Prinz was
a rabbi in the Jewish community of Berlin and was one of the first
Jewish leaders in Germany to speak out against Nazism and to
urge the immediate mass migration of Jews from Europe to
Israel. He was expelled from Germany in 1937 and came to the
United States. He is the author of Dilemma of the Modern Jew
and Popes from the Ghetto, as well as numerous other books in
both German and English. He lectures extensively and lives with
his family in New Jersey, where he is rabbi of a large congregation.
OTHER BOOKS BY JOACHIM PRINZ

The Dilemma of the Modern Jew

Popes from the Ghetto
The Secret Jews
The Secret Jews

JOACHIM PRINZ

R A N D O M H O U S E N E W Y O R K
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Prinz, Joachim, 1902-
The secret Jews.
Bibliography: p.
1. Maranos. 2. Sephardim. I. Title.
DS124.P74 910'.039'24 73-5024
ISBN 0-394-47204-7
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
 For my grandchildren
Adam, Barak, Jesse, Jim,
Nancy, Tammy and Tom
"It is of no use to Your Majesty to pour Holy water on
the Jews and call them Peter or Paul, while they adhere
to their religion like Akiba or Tarphon. There is no
advantage in their baptism except to make them over-
weening against true Christians and without fear, since
outwardly they are accepted as Christians. The royal
tribute which they used to pay when they were Jews
they pay no more. Know, Sire, that Judaism is no doubt
one of the incurable diseases."

—Solomon Ibn Verga

Spain, fifteenth century
I wish to thank my daughter, Lucie
Prinz, for the valuable work she did to
bring this book to its present form. It
was a labor of love and of great skill for
which I am very grateful.
The Secret Jews
 Chapter One

I n a remote Brazilian village, on the wall of an old hut, a

visitor in recent years found a parchment covered with
strange symbols. It was hanging among the traditional holy
pictures with which a pious Catholic decorates his home.
The owner of the hut knew nothing about the parchment
except that it had been a cherished family possession for
many centuries.
In another hut the visitor found a woman who remem-
bered a strange custom observed by her father. Once a year,
in the fall, he would wrap himself in a white sheet with
black stripes and pray from a special book—which had un-
fortunately been lost. "On that day," she said, "my father
would not eat from one night to the next." Moreover, there
was one custom which every household in that village
observed. On Friday night a white tablecloth was spread
in each hut and candles were lit. Nobody knew why. "It
has always been that way with us," they said.
Some members of the upper classes of Brazil also observe
this weekly ritual. The wealthy women of Rio de Janeiro
lead a sheltered monotonous life. A combination of rigid
4 / Joachim Prinz

Spanish and Catholic custom restricts them to church,

family and social activities. So, for many of them, the
routine revolves around a daily card game which occupies
them for most of the afternoon. But on Fridays, in certain
communities, the cards are put away earlier than usual so
that the ladies can get home before sunset to spread a white
cloth on the table and light the candles. When asked by a
Brazilian scholar why they did this, some said, "In honor of
the Prince of Peace." But not much solemnity is attached
to this ceremony. No prayers are said. It is as though they
were merely arranging flowers in a vase. Most of these de-
vout Catholic women would be amazed if they were told
that they were welcoming the Sabbath in accordance with
ancient Jewish tradition.
In fact, the old woman who has marked the eastern wall
of her hut with an ancient parchment called mizrah (usually
hung in an Orthodox Jewish home to indicate the direction
the man of the house should face when saying his prayers);
the man who wraps himself in a prayer shawl and fasts once
a year during the season, and perhaps on the very day, when
Jews fast to observe the Day of Atonement; and the
Brazilian women, rich and poor, who light candles and set a
festive table on Friday nights are all, whether they are
aware of it or not, demonstrating their ties to the faith of a
common ancestor. They are descendants of the Marranos,
those Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism but who
remained, secretly, practicing Jews and who handed their
tradition down from one generation to the next.
Today in many parts of the world, there are people who
now practice various religions but who have retained
vestiges of their Jewish heritage in their customs or rituals.
For some, like the ladies of Rio de Janeiro, what was once
5 / The Secret Jews

the family's pious act has become a social amenity. Others

are more conscious of their Marrano past and may include
some Jewish words or customs in their worship services.
Some have even returned to the original faith of their ances-
tors.
Once, in 1950, when I delivered a lecture in Santiago,
Chile, I was asked to receive a delegation of apparently
good, faithful Christians who were collecting money for
the purchase of land in Israel through the Jewish National
Fund. They confessed that this was their link to their Jewish
past. When I asked how they knew about their heritage
they said, "Our fathers passed it down to us, as they re-
ceived this knowledge from their parents and grandparents.
We recognized each other because each of us observed the
Sabbath, fasted on the Day of Atonement and kept other
Jewish customs." Today this group of Marranos call them-
selves Sons of Zion and have emigrated to Argentina, where
they live in a commune in preparation for their emigration
to Israel. They celebrate their own version of the Passover
meal, the Seder. It is held in a Marranic synagogue in
Buenos Aires and it lasts all night. The women wear white
dresses and black veils. They greet each other with a kiss
on the forehead. This is the way those of their forefathers
who were convicted by the tribunal of the Inquisition
greeted each other in the fifteenth century.
Although Marranos, covert Jews, have come to be linked
in the minds of most people with the Spain of the Inquisi-
tion (and most present-day Marranos are decendants of
Spanish Jews), Jewish existence in disguise predates the
Inquisition by more than a thousand years. The Visigoths
promulgated the first anti-Jewish laws when they ruled
Spain. The first anti-Jewish riots in Spain took place in the
6 / Joachim Prinz

fourth century, when Christianity was in its fledgling years.

It was then that Jews were first coerced into embracing
Christianity, but many of them did so while continuing to
cling to Jewish customs and beliefs. Little is known about
the early Spanish Marranos. They were few in number and
finally merged with the rest of the population. There were
also cases of Marranos in the Byzantine Empire, and even in
Africa (although all traces of them have vanished).
Nor is Marranism restricted to Christian lands. In the
nineteenth century, during a period of national and religious
unrest in Persia, several Jewish communities were annihil-
ated. Many of the survivors became Mohammedans but con-
tinued to practice their Jewish customs. Their descendants
live in a ghetto in the holy city of Meshed in present-day
Iran. They were originally called Djedid al Islam, converts
to Islam. Today they are permitted to practice Judaism in
addition to Islam, and they have Hebraized their Arabic
names. They call themselves jadidim and they exhibit what
is probably the most curious form of contemporary Mar-
ranism.
On the surface they are practicing Mohammedans. They
participate fully in the great pilgrimages to the holy places
in the city. They can be seen mingling with other Moham-
medans in the mosque but everyone knows that they con-
stitute a community of their own, a unique Mohammedan
sect with their own additional religion and with Hebrew as
the language of their prayers.
They pray five times a day, as the Koran commands:
". . . wherefore glorify God, when the evening overtaketh
you and when ye rise in the morning and unto him be
praised in heaven and earth and in the evening and when
ye rest at noon." The Mohammedan text varies only slightly
from the injunction to the Jew who must pray: ". . . when
7 / The Secret Jews

thou liest down and when thou risest up." The Jews pray
only three times a day; the jadidim evidently do not mind
adding two more prayers.
They fast during the holy weeks of Ramadan and also on
Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. They cele-
brate all the Jewish as well as the Mohammedan holidays,
but economic necessity forces them to keep their shops
open on the Jewish Sabbath. So they have developed a
unique way of doing business without violating the Sabbath
commandment. They put a young boy, not yet thirteen,
not yet a bar mitzvah, and therefore exempt from observ-
ing the Jewish law, in charge of the shop. If one asks for
the proprietor the boy will answer, as if by rote: "This is
the Sabbath. My father is sick. He is always sick on the
Sabbath."
Almost a hundred years after their incomplete con-
version the jadidim retain a dual allegiance to the law of the
Koran and that of the Torah which poses neither a religious
nor a psychological problem for them. They bury their
dead in the Mohammedan cemetery, but they wash the
body in accordance with Jewish customs, say prayers for
the dead and observe the prescribed seven days of mourn-
ing. Their weddings are performed by the Mohammedan
cadi, but as soon as the ceremony is over they return to
the home of the bridegroom's parents and recite the ancient
Hebrew blessings. Since the Mohammedans, like the Jews,
abstain from eating pork, the jadidim have only a few
dietary restrictions to add; and although the rabbinic pro-
hibition against mixing meat with milk is now forgotten,
the rudiments of the Jewish dietary laws are among the
many Jewish customs still observed by these strange, only
partly hidden Jews.
Another group of Mohammedan Jews are the daggatus,
8 / Joachim Prinz

the Jewish Bedouin of the Sahara. Few people know of

these secret Jews. We don't know how many of them still
roam the desert since there is no census in the Sahara. Their
base, if their home grounds can be called that, is in the little
town of Beja. In the 1920s one of their many visitors, Nahum
Slouschz, a French Jewish scholar, wrote:
The Jews of the Sahara Desert are highway robbers like
those among whom they live. Even when they pray, they carry
a rifle. They know nothing of the Talmud, or for that matter,
of monogamy. Elohim [one of the Jewish names of God] is
already forgotten and the Beth Hamidrash [the Jewish school]
they know little about. They have some notion that there is a
tradition according to which the Messiah will come on Tisha
B'av and he will be riding on a horse wearing a white robe. The
Bedouin Jews ride through the night of Tisha B'av wearing
their best garments, looking at every caravan to discover
whether the Messiah has arrived. When they saw me, a bearded
man whom they did not know, riding with a Jewish guide,
they were certain that I was the Redeemer. And it took me a
long time to convince them that I was not the Messiah, but
simply a professor from Paris.
In a sense the daggatus, like the jadidim, are now only
playing at being Marranos. They no longer need to practice
their Jewish customs clandestinely. The jadidim could wor-
ship in an ordinary synagogue, but they prefer to pray
in underground sanctuaries, still posting women at the doors
during the services to warn of approaching danger. It is no
longer a necessity, only a reminder of a time when they
were forced to worship in secret. It is a strange twist that
the jadidim and the daggatus cling to their Marranism in the
same way their forefathers did in Spain, although they are
now in fact really free to be full-fledged Jews. So powerful
9/ The Secret Jews

is the effect of "religion in hiding" that it imprints the

forced practices of persecution onto the lives of the people
even into future generations.
There have, of course, been other examples throughout
history of people who have been persecuted for their
religious beliefs and who chose to worship secretly. Perhaps
the best-known are the early Christians who hid in the
catacombs of Rome, forbidden to say their prayers until
Constantine the Great elevated their secret sect to the status
of the official Church of Rome. There have been many pious
deviates, persecuted by the established church or govern-
ment, who left their homeland to found new religions or
worship their old faiths freely. But nowhere is there any
real parallel to the story of the secret Jews, the Marranos.
These hidden Jews, whose strange customs have survived
into our own day, are a phenomenon as singular as the Jews
themselves. They are, in a sense, a vivid illustration of the
mysterious, indefinable essence of Jewish history. They can
be said to constitute a prototype of the uniqueness of
Jewish existence. For if the Marranos are a fascinating
enigma, the Jews are part of the same puzzle.
The question is really not the so-often-asked "What is a
Jew?" but "Why are the Jews still around? Why have they
so stubbornly survived so many centuries of persecution,
dispersal and disaster?" Some have tried to explain this by
referring to the Jews' claim that they are "the Chosen
People." If they are chosen, it would seem that they have
more often been elected for misery and exclusion, ghettos
or death, than for a comfortable, peaceful or specially
favored existence. Others have called the existential quality
of the Jews the "Jewish mystique." But it is more of a
mystery than a mystique. And the existence of Marranos,
10 / Joachim Prinz

who have continued to remember their Jewish heritage and

allegiance for centuries after their forefathers converted,
provides a very particular and illuminating aspect of this
puzzle and of the singularity of the Jewish phenomenon.
What has caused Marranism to survive? Why is there no
equally persistent example in other religions? Isn't their
continued existence, however tenuous their Jewish bonds,
however faint their Jewish memories, part of that strange
circumstance—the Jew in our midst?
The Jews are survivors of a civilization and faith born
four thousand years ago. Although there are older civiliza-
tions which still flourish today, they developed in their own
lands, self-contained and naturally self-perpetuating. It is
also true that many of the ancient people who played an
important role in antiquity still exist. But while some of the
temples of Zeus and Apollo still stand, their ancient deities
no longer play a part in contemporary Greek life. But the
Jews, who survived in their enemies' territories, who were
exiled from their own countries and then often forced to
flee from the countries of their exile, still worship the God
of their ancestors. They recite psalms and say prayers al-
most three thousand years old, and they still use the lan-
guage in which they were written. Against all the laws of
history, the Jews have survived with much of their ancient
culture intact. Nor does the mystery vanish if we try to
understand it in historical terms. The fact of Jewish survival
remains a puzzle whether or not we can describe events or
append a date or place to them.
In our recent past the establishment of the State of Israel,
and the continued existence of large Jewish communities in
the United States and other countries after the death of six
million Jews during the Hitler regime, are but two examples
11/ The Secret Jews

of this incredible resilience. The contemporary events are

not unrelated to an understanding of the Jews who more
than four hundred years ago, in the face of the most dire
circumstances, invented Marranism in its classical form out
of a desire to remain part of the people and the faith of
Israel.
We do not know how many Jews became Marranos, of
a sort, under the Hitler regime. There must have been
thousands who resorted to all kinds of tricks to hide their
Jewishness. They forged passports and identity cards; they
changed their names, dyed their hair and pretended to be
Aryans. Some fled into monasteries, others were hidden in
the homes of good Christians. After Hitler's defeat most of
them returned to Judaism. They had never been committed
to the Saviour they, for survival's sake, had pretended to
worship so fervently.
A different species of hidden Jew emerged during the
early days of Hitler. Families which had been living as
Christians for generations suddenly came forward to return
to their people. They had attended church diligently, mixed
freely with their Gentile neighbors, and were accepted as
equals. In fact, they considered themselves full-fledged
Christians. Often their children were not told of their
Jewish descent. It did not seem important.
Hitler's racial laws put an end to all this. Such people
were now considered Jews in spite of their conversion and
their proven devotion to Christianity. Some wavered be-
tween allegiance to their Christian faith and their sense of
pride and, perhaps, a growing identification with their
fellow Jews. Many of them returned to Judaism only after
they had been declared Jewish by the Gestapo; many of
them died as Jews in the concentration camps. But others
12 / Joachim Prinz

became enthusiastic believing members of the Jewish faith,

emigrating to Palestine and other countries where they
could openly return to the religion of their forefathers.
During the early years of the Hitler regime, I was invited
to visit the head of an old banking firm which had been
founded during the first decade of the nineteenth century
by the sons of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.
(One of these men was the father of Felix Mendelssohn-
Bartholdy, the composer, who was baptized at birth.) When
Hitler came to power the head of the banking house, Franz
von Mendelssohn, a great-grandson of Christians, was presi-
dent of the Lutheran Churches of Germany. He received
me in his private office in an eighteenth-century chateau and
announced that he had resigned from his office in the
Church, although, even according to the anti-Jewish
Nuremberg Laws, he was considered an Aryan. "I feel,"
he said with great emotion, "that a descendant of the Jewish
philosopher Moses Mendelssohn could no longer pretend."
With this, he took me to a small museum housed in is
mansion. The walls were covered with many of the
eighteenth-century portraits of his Jewish ancestor. A bust
of the philosopher stood in the center of the room. In a glass
case were the famous white porcelain monkeys which every
Jew had been forced to buy at exorbitant prices in the
middle of the eighteenth century to finance the Prussian
porcelain industry then being established by Frederick the
Great.
When we returned to his office we were both too moved
to speak. Finally I said to him, "You are a Marrano." Mr.
Mendelssohn had never heard the term. I then told him the
story of the Marranos, and particularly of those who had
returned to Judaism. "Too late," he said, "too late for me. I
13/ The Secret Jews

and my ancestors have been brought up as believing Chris-

tians for four generations. I can only return to my people,
not to its faith. I identify myself with their pain, their fate,
their pride." He did not return to Judaism, but his daughter,
Eleanora von Mendelssohn, a well-known actress, became
an Orthodox Jew.
In Hitler's Germany, as so often before in Jewish history,
persecution stimulated Jewish resilience and inspired a re-
turn to Jewish values. Oppression has repeatedly awakened
the Jews' dormant resources and created contempt for the
persecutor; the result has often been a renascence of
Judaism. This is not to deny that many Jews did convert
under the pressure of the Inquisition and the terror of the
Gestapo. There were certainly many thousands of sincere
converts who became devout Christians and totally gave up
their Judaism. But the phenomenon, which may contain at
least a partial answer to the riddle of the survival of the
Jewish people, is that through centuries of persecution in
each generation there have always been Jews who maintain
their Jewishness in some way, and that to the present time
their descendants manifest the memory of their ancestors'
faith in their rituals and their lives.
A more complicated aspect of this phenomenon occurred
recently in Russia. At the turn of the century young Rus-
sian Jews, whose forefathers had suffered for decades under
the czar's savage pogroms, were among the early converts
to Communism and followed the lead of Marx, Trotsky and
the other early Communist theoreticians—who themselves
were Jews, though, of course, not observant Jews. To rid
themselves of every vestige of their Jewish heritage and to
demonstrate their allegiance to the new system, which
scorned religion of any kind, some staged wild parties on
14/ Joachim Prinz

the Day of Atonement, while the remnant of the faithful

Jews were saying their prayers. (For those who wanted to
retain their Jewish identity, early Communism provided a
measure of religious freedom; some schools still taught Yid-
dish, many synagogues remained open.) The young Jewish
students, marching under the red banner with their fellow
Russians, were ecstatic about their sudden and glorious
emancipation from the Pale of Settlement, those areas of the
country to which Jews had been confined since the end of
the nineteenth century. They became super-Communists,
freed from the daily degradation, the insults and the recur-
rent pogroms which had become part of the history of the
Russian Jews under the czars. The new political dogma
seemed to promise that this sort of persecution would never
occur again.
The anti-Semitic brutality of the Stalin regime showed
this Jewish euphoria to have been a fool's paradise. The
Jewish schools were closed; most of the synagogues were
boarded up. Hundreds of Jewish intellectuals and profes-
sionals, all fervent Communists, were exterminated in the
purges. Soviet Jewry's Marranic period had begun. But it
remained a rather quiet, even dormant form of secret
Judaism until the creation of the State of Israel.
The Russian Jews, who had lived isolated so long from
the world Jewish community, suddenly had an Israeli
embassy in Moscow. They heard Hebrew spoken, listened
to the Voice of Israel on their radios, saw the Star of David,
which they had learned to hide, publicly displayed on the
flag of the new state. Young Russian Jews who had never
read a Jewish book suddenly rediscovered their Judaism. In
their case it took the form not of a return to the religious
precepts of their forefathers, but of a new nationalism
focused on the State of Israel.
15/ The Secret Jews

The ultimate stimulus, however, came from the Six-Day

War, in 1967. What had lain dormant in the minds of
thousands of Russian Jews now involved hundreds of thou-
sands, young and old. In 1967 young Communists—still, of
course, unwilling to pray in the temple, but no longer
mocking the observant Jews who chose to—celebrated the
gay festival of the giving of the law, Simchat Torah, by
dancing the Horah and singing Hebrew songs in Moscow's
Synagogue Square.
During the twenty-five years since the creation of the
State of Israel, thousands of Russian Jews have met secretly
to learn Hebrew as did the Marranos in Spain and Portugal.
Outwardly faithful Communists who go to party meetings,
they live a clandestine Jewish life, preparing themselves
for emigration to Israel. They still make up a tiny minority
of the three and a half million Soviet Jews, but the Mar-
ranos are a significant fact of Jewish life in Russia. They
would like to leave their double lives of deceit and make-
believe. During the past ten years many thousands have
gone to live in Israel.
Though this book will concentrate on other periods of
history and on other peoples, the covert Jews of the Soviet
Union are no less Marranos than were the fifteenth-century
Jews of the Iberian Peninsula.
 Chapter Two

I n 1971 I was visiting a Canadian Jewish scholar who

showed me his collection of Jewish ceremonial objects.
Wine cups, precious velvet coverings for the holy scrolls,
and many other rare and beautiful things used for Jewish
ceremonies were displayed in his home. On a table, in what
was obviously a place of honor, stood a highly ornamented
vase. I found it clumsy and graceless and could not under-
stand why it had been singled out for such prominence.
The more I looked at it, the less I liked it. But then my host
took the vase deftly in his hands and twisted it a bit. It
opened easily, and to my amazement, proved not to be a
vase at all. It was a veritable treasure house of every ritual
object used in a Jewish home, each of them in miniature:
a goblet for the holy-day wine, a tiny eight-branched
candlestick for the celebration of Hanukkah—the feast of
lights—a spice box for the ceremony at the end of the
Sabbath, and many others.
"I bought it in Spain," my friend said. "This is a replica
of a vase found in the home of a Spanish Marrano. On
ordinary days it stood in the living room, filled with flowers.
17 / The Secret Jews

When the Sabbath or a Jewish holiday came, it provided

everything the family needed to celebrate in accordance
with the tradition of their Jewish ancestors." Here was an
elaborate, ingenious example of the lengths to which the
hidden Jews of Spain had to go to preserve their Jewishness.
To understand the nature of these furtive worshipers, the
crypto-Jews of Spain, we must first explore the historic
context in which this unparalleled phenomenon arose. And
an examination of the strange name by which they were
called may, in itself, be illuminating.
The origins of the word "Marrano" are obscure. Orig-
inally those who became Catholics in Spain, whether Jew or
Moslem, were known simply as converses, those who con-
verted. But when the number of converted Jews swelled to
more than ten thousand in the fourteenth century, they be-
gan to form a visible part of the Spanish population, and the
distinction between the New Christians, cristianos nuevos,
and the original Old Christians became one of the major
political issues. "I am an old Christian," says Sancho Panza
in Don Quixote. "And to become an Earl that is sufficient."
The word marrano undoubtedly was coined by the
people and is a term of contempt and derision. Some
scholars believe that it comes from the Spanish word marrar,
meaning to deviate from truth or justice, a description of
the Jews who marran, or mar, the true faith with insincere
conversion. There are others who think it is derived from a
Spanish word meaning something like prostitute. But most
people agree that Marrano simply means "swine" and ex-
presses in the simplest terms the hatred of the populace for
the cristianos nuevos, the new—but not real—Christians.
The modern Spanish dictionary lists marrano as "pig, hog,
dirty man, cursed, excommunicated, and Jew."
18 / Joachim Prinz

But the history of the Jew in Spain predates not only the
word but the contempt that it clearly expresses. No
Jewish community in the world—outside of Palestine—was
older than that of the Iberian Peninsula. Long before Spain
existed as a political entity, Jews lived there. When the
prophet Jonah undertook his foolish flight from God in the
fourth century B.C., he boarded "a ship that was going to
Tarshish." Nor did he take just any boat. The Bible says
that "Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish." The ancient
Tarshish has been identified as the Spanish harbor town of
Cadiz, at the estuary of the river Guadalquivir in Andalusia.
Jonah would hardly have planned to travel to Tarshish, so
far from home, had he not known that he would find people
there who spoke his language and worshiped the God of
Israel.
It is due to the antiquity of the Spanish Jewish commu-
nity that the Sephardim, as the Spanish Jews are called, con-
sidered themselves the aristocracy of the Jewish people. The
Jew's long history in Spain is probably the reason for his
affluence, his creativity and his impact on the country. It
may also account for his identification with Spain, his al-
most total acculturation and, subsequently, his weakness.
Unlike the Jew of Eastern Europe, who spoke Yiddish in
his ghetto, the Spanish Jew spoke Arabic under Arab rule
and every Spanish dialect when he lived under the rule and
protection of the Christian kings. While the Jews in Spain
always lived in their own quarters, these juderías more
closely resembled the American Jewish neighborhood than
the degrading walled ghetto of medieval Europe or the Pale
of Settlement in which Jews were forced to live under the
czars. The houses of the Spanish Jews were frequently large
and comfortable, and they were usually in close proximity
19/The Secret Jews

to the castle or the bishopric of their protector. Often when

the areas became too small for a growing Jewish population,
new judería streets were added. And although some juderías
had gates, for centuries no walls were needed to protect
them from attack or to confine them to their neighbor-
hoods.
There are no exact statistics about the number of Jews
who lived in Spain, but the total population of the country
was approximately eleven million at the end of the Christian
Reconquest in the fourteenth century. The Jewish popula-
tion, always listed as "household" (that is, families which
paid special taxes to the crown or to the bishop), was small.
It is reasonable to assume that the Jewish community never
amounted to more than half a million people.
Under a rule established by the Visigoths, the Jews were
not permitted to own land. But as the chronicler Andres
Bernaldez has recorded, they were prominent in all other
fields. Bernaldez tells us that they were "merchants, sales-
men, taxgatherers, retailers, stewards of the nobility,
officials, tailors, shoemakers, tanners, weavers, grocers, ped-
dlers, silk merchants, smiths, jewellers, and other like
trades." This list makes it clear that they were firmly estab-
lished in the lower-middle class of the country. But it omits
the amazing involvement of the Jews in government, high
finance and the sciences.
During the reign of the Moors, with but few interrup-
tions, the Spanish Jews enjoyed not merely an equality of
rights not accorded Jews in other European countries until
the French Revolution; they held positions of great honor
and distinction. There was hardly a Cabinet during the
period between the eighth century and the Christian Recon-
quest which did not have a Jew serving as minister of
20 / Joachim Prinz

finance. And the importance of the Jews in government did

not diminish under the rule of the Christian kings. The
historian Valeriu Marcu has described their role:
These Jews, who were for the most part rich, consciously
furthered the great process of national construction. Through
its exalted representatives Jewish wealth fulfilled a political
function quite outside Jewry. In the domain of culture the part
played by the Jews was not less significant. The contact be-
tween the Christian and Arabian worlds, which was so impor-
tant for Western Europe, took place through the intermediary
of the Jews. The expelled Arabs had bequeathed to them the
inheritance of Hellenism, and the brilliant universities of the
Caliphs at Cordoba and Toledo continued their activities under
Christian rule—and the guidance of the Jews. Jewish scholars
had once competed with the Moors in translating into Arabic
the works of Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy and the Greek mathema-
ticians and scientists, and they now translated these further into
Castilian. Not only were they translators, but they were among
the first to produce original literature in the Castilian tongue;
they stood at the cradle of Spanish and they moulded it from a
dialect into a language.
Everything that the Jews had achieved in the fields of chem-
istry, astrology, mathematics and medicine in their collabora-
tion with the Arabs they now handed on alone. They were
enthusiastic proclaimers of experimental science and science
was practically their monopoly. Throughout the whole of
Spain the art of medicine was in their hands. The personal
physicians of the grandees, the kings and the archbishops were
all Jews. Even the pious rabbis, who had once opposed the
cultural alliance of Jews and Arabs and still proscribed the
scientific work of the Jews, made an exception in the case of
medicine.
While thousands of Jews suffered in the rest of Europe,
while the crusaders murdered them in the Rhineland and
21 / The Secret Jews

wherever they carried the cross toward Palestine in their

holy war, Spanish Jewry celebrated its Golden Era. But it
turned out to be only a prolonged interlude. By the four-
teenth century the peace of the Spanish Jew was also near-
ing its end. In the wake of the Crusades, all of Europe had
been engulfed in Jew-baiting masquerading as Christian
piety. There was hardly a country where the Jew could live
in safety, and in Spain, too, the stage was being set for the
end of the peaceful existence of the Jews, although their
traditional positions of power continued to protect them
for some time. Later, in Spain's attempt to make the entire
country Christian, synagogues as well as mosques were often
burned. The Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215 promul-
gated an and-Jewish policy which was embodied, in Spain
in 1256, in the Seven Part Code of Alfonso the Wise.
While the code was not enforced until much later, Jews
were often victims of local civil battles. Although at the
court of the king they enjoyed many privileges, they were
subjected to the anti-Jewish statutes of the towns in which
they lived. Valeriu Marcu points out this irony:
The impetus of those who directed the force of their hostil-
ity against the Jews was stronger than the most well-meaning
royal will. The walls of the ghettos did not, of course, impinge
on the royal palaces, and daily contact was only with hate-filled
subjects. Like the ghettos, the towns possessed their autonomy,
their fueros or statutes, and the Christian fueros were arrayed
against the Jewish ones. They wanted to enclose the Jews in
their Jewries. The king might do with his Jews what he would,
but the towns desired to keep them out of their territory. It
could therefore come to pass that Jews, to whom every state
office was open and who determined the policy of the country
as semi-dictators, were not allowed to use the same bath-houses
as the Christians or appear as witnesses before Christian tri-
22 / Joachim Prinz

bunals. In strict contrast to the royal patents, the town tried

to deprive the Jews of the right to carry on a trade or enter
into commercial transactions outside the ghetto and defamed
them wherever possible.
In 1348, when King Henry II came to power, Alfonso's
Seven Part Code and its anti-Jewish restrictions became the
law of the land. The code restricted everyday existence,
although it very clearly guaranteed that Jewish lives be
spared:
Jews are a people, who, although they do not believe in the
religion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet, the great Christian
sovereigns have always permitted them to live among ...
. . . The reason that the church emperors, kings and princes
permitted the Jews to dwell among them, and with Christians,
is because they always lived, as it were, in captivity, as it was
constantly a token in the minds of men that they were
descended from those who crucified Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The code prohibited the Jews from building new syna-
gogues except in places where they had been torn down.
The new buildings could not be "made larger or raised to
any greater height" than the old ones they replaced. Nor
could they be made luxurious or painted. But the code also
protected the houses of worship:
For the reason that a synagogue is a place where the name of
God is praised we forbid any Christian to deface it, or remove
anything from it, or take anything out of it by force . . .
Moreover we forbid Christians to put any animal into a syna-
gogue, or loiter in it or place any hindrance in the way of the
Jews while they are there performing their devotions accord-
ing to their religion.
Respect and even reverence for the faith and the customs
of the Jew were meticulously decreed by the code. Inferior
23 / The Secret Jews

though Judaism was, "the name of God" which is "praised

in the synagogue" must be duly honored. There is a par-
ticularly touching paragraph about the Sabbath:
Sabbath is the day on which Jews perform their devotions,
and remain quiet in their lodgings, and do not make contracts
or transact any business; and for the reason that they are
obliged by their religion to keep it, no one should on that day
summon them or bring them into court. Therefore we order
that no judge shall employ force or any constraint upon Jews
on Saturdays in order to bring them into court on account of
their debts; or arrest them; or cause them any other annoy-
ance. ...
The most startling part of the Seven Part Code dealt with
the problem of Jews who converted to Christianity. Re-
member that these high-sounding thoughts were written
only a few decades before thousands of Jews were coerced
to convert. A few years later the new converts were being
treated with contempt by the community, and finally tor-
tured and killed by the Inquisition. But the Seven Part
Code stated that
No force or compulsion shall be employed in any way against
a Jew to induce him to become a Christian; but Christians
should convert him to the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ by
means of the texts of the Holy Scriptures and by kind words,
for no one can love or appreciate a service which is done him
by compulsion. We also decree that if any Jew or Jewess
should voluntarily desire to become a Christian, the other Jews
shall not interfere with this in any way. . . . and we also order
that, after any Jews become Christians, all persons in our do-
minions shall honor them; and that no one shall dare to re-
proach them or their descendants, by way of insult, with having
been Jews; and that they shall possess all their property, shar-
ing the same with their brothers and inheriting it from their
24 / Joachim Prinz

fathers and mothers and other relatives, just as if they were

Jews; and that they can hold all offices and dignities which
other Christians can do.
All these pronouncements were but a pious preamble to
the most brutal anti-Jewish restrictions. While the Seven
Part Code decreed benevolence toward the Jewish faith,
the attitude toward the people was specific and harsh:
We forbid any Jew to keep Christian men or women in his
house, to be served by them; although he may have them to
cultivate and take care of his lands, or protect him on the way
when he is compelled to go to some dangerous place. More-
over, we forbid any Christian man or woman to invite a Jew
or a Jewess, or to accept an invitation from them, to eat or
drink together or to drink any wine made by their hands. We
also order that no Jews shall dare to bathe in company with
Christians, and that no Christian shall take any medicine or
cathartic made by a Jew. . . .
Jews who dared to live with Christians were put to death.
Sexual relations between Jews and Christian women "who
are spiritually the wives of Our Lord Jesus Christ because
of the faith and baptism which they receive in His name"
deserved capital punishment. Even a Christian prostitute
could not degrade herself by having "carnal intercourse
with either Moor or Jew." Furthermore, Jews were sus-
pected of celebrating Good Friday contemptuously, "steal-
ing children and fastening them to crosses or making images
of wax and crucifying them when they cannot obtain chil-
dren."
Far from being a theological, doctrinal declaration of the
Church, the Seven Part Code was in reality a prelude, if not
an invitation, to mass murder. The ancient battle of the
Church for domination over secular powers had been won
25 / The Secret Jews

a hundred years before the anti-Jewish laws of Spain were

promulgated. No king, no duke, no municipal government
was free. Their dependence upon the clergy, both local
and papal, was a fact of medieval life.
As in other countries, the church laws, often translated
into the laws of the states, were only a pious reflection of
the people's reaction to the Jews whose foreign customs and
whose denial and rejection of the divinity of Christ in-
furiated the devout. Envy and jealousy of Jewish com-
mercial ingenuity and success fanned the flames of hatred
among the masses.
Anti-Jewish feelings grew during the years following the
enactment of the Seven Part Code. King Juan of Castile
succeeded Henry II, and when he died in 1390, his infant
son assumed the throne. The queen who ruled during her
son's minority was greatly influenced by her confessor, Fer-
rand Martinez, administrator of the archdiocese of Seville
and a sworn enemy of the Jews. In 1391, from his pulpit in
the great cathedral of Seville, Martinez called for the de-
struction of the twenty-three synagogues in the city.
Whether the Church stimulated the bloodshed or whether
it only yielded to popular demand, we do not know. In any
case, on June 4, 1391, the Jewish community of Seville was
destroyed by a mob that stormed the Jewish sectors and
burned the synagogues. It was the beginning of a storm
which swept the whole country.
Whatever caused anti-Jewish riots in other countries,
the Spanish massacres can only be understood as a part of
the effort to root out all non-Catholic elements in the coun-
try and unite it under Catholic rule. The reconquest on
which Spain embarked can be called Spain's own crusade.
Spain was the holy land. While other nations marched
26 / Joachim Prinz

against the infidels in Palestine, the Spanish crusaders found

them right in their own country: in the Jews and the
Moors. In Spanish eyes these two non-Christian peoples
formed an unholy alliance. After all, the social, economic
and scientific successes of the Jews were the result of hun-
dreds of years of tolerant Arab rule. In no other country
had they achieved such prominence. Nowhere else did they
wield such power.
While the fervor of the European crusaders may have
set the tone for the Spanish reconquest, here it was not a
select group of brave men, knights and their followers who
fought for the purification of the faith. In Spain a whole
nation rose up in holy indignation to expatriate the evil in
their body politic, to weed out the infidel, and by so doing,
cleanse the land and the Church. To them it was the great
battle for Christ, in the course of which they would not
only succeed in making Spain a country free of non-Chris-
tians but also rid themselves of the most formidable eco-
nomic competitors in their daily lives, the Jews.
The riots which had begun in Seville spread to Cordoba.
On June 20, 1391, the Jews of Toledo were massacred.
Only two of the city's many synagogues were left stand-
ing. The pogrom was blamed by the municipal authorities
on the pueblo menudo, the little people, the lower class.
There were some official attempts to prevent the riots, but
they proved unsuccessful. Not even in Segovia, the seat of
the government, could the Jews be saved. Burgos was bat-
tered by the "rage of the mob." Hardly a Jewish commu-
nity in Castile escaped. Aragon soon followed, in spite of
official protestations, and the Jews of Valencia barricaded
themselves behind the gates of the ghetto. And while au-
thorities seemed more determined here than elsewhere to
27 / The Secret Jews

stop the mob, nothing helped. One of the rioters was

hanged in front of the ghetto, but in spite of this gruesome
warning the frenzied mob smashed the gates and two hun-
dred and fifty Jews were killed. And so it went in brutal
monotony from one town to the other. The gang leaders
who stormed into the Jewish quarters and killed the Jews
in their synagogues carried the crucifix together with the
sword. To them the Jews were "traitors, homosexuals, child
murderers, blasphemers, assassins, poisoners and usurpers."
Because they were accused of having killed Christ, they
were now to be killed in his name.
The merciless violence soon moved swiftly from the
mainland to the Balearic Islands, which had a large and
ancient Jewish community. At first the governor of Ma-
jorca offered his hospitality to the Jews in his fortress.
About eight hundred found refuge there, but three hundred
who remained outside were killed. Others succeeded in
escaping by boat to Africa. The community of Ibiza was
annihilated. News of the effective pogroms in Majorca
reached Barcelona. On the Sabbath of the first week in
August 1391, one hundred Jews were killed there. The real
massacre began the following Monday.
The litany of misery, torture and bloodshed is endless.
It occurred in every Spanish town. In a letter to the com-
munity of Avignon, the philosopher Rabbi Hasdai Crescas
describes graphically the events he witnessed during those
terrible months. His account is of particular interest because
it tells of the emergence of an utterly new Jewish phenome-
non in the midst of the familiar bloodshed and suffering.
In his description we witness, for the first time in Jewish
history, the large-scale conversion of the Jews. The letter
is dated Saragossa, October 19, 1391:
28 / Joachim Prinz
If I were to tell you here all the numerous sufferings we
have endured, you would be dumbfounded at the thought of
them; I will therefore set before you only in brief detail the
table of our disaster set with poisonous plant and wormwood,
giving you a bare recital of the fact so that you may satiate
yourselves on the bitterness of our wormwood and drink from
the wine of our grief. As I suppose that you have been told the
story already, I will recount it as briefly as possible, commenc-
ing as follows:
On the day of the New Moon of the fateful month of Tam-
mus in the year 5151 [1391], the Lord bent the bow of his
enemies against the populous community of Seville where there
were between 6,000 and 7,000 heads of families, and they de-
stroyed their gates by fire and killed in that very place a great
number of people; the majority, however, changed their faith.
Many of them, children as well as women, were sold to the
Moslems, so that the streets occupied by Jews have become
empty. Many of them, sanctifying the Holy Name, endured
death, but many also broke the holy covenant.
From there the fire spread and consumed all the cedars of
Lebanon [Jews] in the holy community of the city of Cor-
doba. Here, too, many changed their faith, and the community
became desolate.
. . . [in] the community of Toledo, and in the Temple of
the Lord, the priests and the learned were murdered. The
rabbis, the descendants of the virtuous and excellent R. Asher
of blessed memory, together with their children and pupils,
publicly sanctified the Holy Name. However, many who had
not the courage to save their souls changed their faith here too.
. . . On the 7th of Ab the Lord destroyed the community
of Valencia in which there were about a thousand heads of
families; about two hundred and fifty men died, sanctifying
the name of the Lord, the others fled into the mountain; some
of these saved themselves, but the majority changed their faith.
29 / The Secret Jews
... the community of Barcelona ... was destroyed .. . The
number of murdered amounted to two hundred and fifty souls;
the rest fled into the castle where they were saved. The enemies
plundered all streets inhabited by Jews . . . and even set fire to
some of them. The authorities of the province, however, took
no part in this; instead they endeavored to protect the Jews . ..
and even set about punishing the wrongdoers, when a furious
mob rose against the better classes in the country and fought
against the Jews who were in the castle, with bows and mis-
siles, and killed them in the castle itself. Amongst the many
who sanctified the name of the Lord was my only son, whom
I have offered as a faultless lamb for the sacrifice. . . . Many
. . . slaughtered themselves. . . . Many also came forth and
sanctified the name of the Lord in the open street. All the
others changed their faith and only a few found refuge in the
towns of the princes. . . . however, these were precisely the
most esteemed. Consequently ... there is none left in Barcelona
today who still bears the name of Jew.

The converso had appeared and he was unique in Jewish

history. There had been virtually no converts from anti-
Jewish riots in the Middle Ages. In the rest of Europe, Jews
were murdered or they committed suicide rather than be-
come Christians. All previous attempts to convert Jews dur-
ing the Middle Ages in other parts of the world had been,
for the Church, dismal failures. In Mainz, during the Cru-
sades, an observer wrote: "Twelve thousand Jews were
roasted to such a degree that the window leading and the
bells of the Church of St. Quirinis were melted. In Eis-
lingen, rather than convert, the whole Jewish community
gathered in their wooden synagogue and set it on fire. In
Frankfurt, they set fire to their own houses and threw
themselves into the flames." An eyewitness watched thirty-
30/ Joachim Prinz

eight Jews perish during the Crusades and wrote: "How

stubborn the Jews are. I should find it difficult to believe if
I had not seen it with my own eyes, how they not only
sang and laughed as they burned, but many of them leaped
and exulted and suffered death with great firmness despite
the torture which they were evidently undergoing." How-
ever, in Spain, where a comparatively small number were
killed, many chose conversion. Comparatively few "sancti-
fied the Holy Name." Many more embraced the Cross.
It is reported by reliable contemporary historians that
within less than ten years, more than two hundred thousand
Spanish Jews were converted. The number grew as the zeal
of the Catholic Church increased and leading Jews—lay
leaders and even some rabbis—accepted the faith with even
greater fervor than the converting priests. In some in-
stances, whole communities were baptized. In Valencia, for
instance, all the survivors of the massacre converted.
Only a small minority of those who lived through the
slaughter returned to their communities and rebuilt their
synagogues. The majority, however, was anxious to accept
Christianity. "They came forward demanding baptism in
such droves," writes a chronicler of these events, "that in
all the churches the holy chrism was exhausted and the
priests knew not where to get more [baptismal oil]. But
each morning the Chrismatory would be found miracu-
lously filled so that the supply held out, nor was this by any
means the only sign that the whole terrible affair was the
mysterious work of Providence to effect a holy end."
Apocryphal as this story undoubtedly is, it bears a strik-
ing resemblance to the Jewish legend of the sanctification
of the Temple in Jerusalem in the second century B.C. The
Temple had been contaminated by Syrian pagans. When
the Jews, led by the hero Judas Maccabeus, overthrew the
31/The Secret Jews

tyranny of the Syrians, they went to the Temple to rededi-

cate it. Only a small supply of holy oil was left. But here,
too, it was miraculously replenished for the eight days it
took to cleanse the sanctuary. The Jews commemorate this
miracle during the feast of lights, Hanukkah, when eight
candles are lit on successive days in Jewish homes.
The eagerness of the Spanish Jews to convert was both a
disgrace and an enigma which tortured contemporaries and
haunted the Jews for generations even after the expulsion.
Ibn Lehamias Alami, a Jewish moralist of the early fifteenth
century, rather than accuse the Church, denounces his own
people. Both death and conversion were to him divine pun-
ishment for the sins of the Spanish Jews:

Because we had striven to dress like the Gentiles, we have

been forced instead to wear some strange clothing so that we
should be singled out for shame and contempt before the on-
looking public. Because we had despoiled our beard and hair-
dos, we have been ordered to grow our hair long and to wear
beards like mourners. Because, oblivious of the destruction of
the Temple we have built spacious and beautiful mansions and
palaces, we have been expelled and driven into the open fields
and slum-like corners.

Hidden within the theological notions of reward and

punishment, concealed behind these pious words, we can
find the reality behind the mass conversions, for the on-
slaught of the Spanish mob, its furor and its passions, can-
not have been greater than that of the crusaders or the
rabble that stormed the ghettos of Frankfurt and other
European communities. The massacres of Seville and To-
ledo were not more violent or bloody than the Russian
pogroms. In other parts of Europe the occasional converts
to Christianity were treated as rare exceptions. In Spain it
32 / Joachim Prinz

was those who withstood baptism who were unique, and

the number of New Christians was soon so great that they
set the tone for the whole community.
Parallels are dangerous tools of history; they are at best
illustrations. But we can find one example of Jewish con-
version to Christianity which may be compared to the con-
verso phenomenon. In the nineteenth century an estimated
one hundred and twenty thousand Jews converted in West-
ern Europe less than a century following their emancipa-
tion by the French Revolution. To be sure, even then there
were no mass conversions. Nowhere did whole communi-
ties succumb, but whole families did, and an astoundingly
large number of individuals realized how much easier it
would be to live as Christians in a Christian society rather
than swim upstream. Heinrich Heine, the German poet
who was himself a convert, said flippantly that his baptism
was really not a religious act at all but "the admission ticket
to Western civilization." He considered himself the "blank
page between the Old and the New Testament." Conver-
sion was a marriage of convenience to a society which had
not yet fully recovered from medieval prejudice, though
these converts were not forced to convert because of mas-
sacres or pogroms. Nor was the Christian faith of the nine-
teenth century as serious as the Catholicism of fifteenth-
century Spain. It was the religion of the majority, but it
was rarely as intimately connected with the political and
military power structure of the country as it was in Spain.
The nineteenth century produced millions of nonbelievers,
even among those who had always belonged to the Church.
And for the Jews who converted to Christianity, their new
faith was often as unserious as their Jewish convictions had
been.
35 / The Secret Jews

The similarity between these two groups of Jews who

lived centuries apart lies in the fact that both lived in rela-
tive freedom, a privilege not often granted to Jews. As we
have seen, the Spanish Jews were almost totally free for
many centuries. The term "Golden Era"—used for the
period of great Jewish activity which saw the writings of
Yehuda Halevi, the poet; Solomon Ibn Gabirol, the theo-
logian; and Ibn Ezra, the Biblical commentator—was also
an era of material affluence and influence. The Jews had
rights and even power in the highest circles of society. The
castles that were often placed at the disposal of the Jewish
community during that time present a striking contrast to
the ghettos and shtetls in which European Jews were forced
to live. The prosperity of the large Spanish Jewish commu-
nity, many of whose members converted during the four-
teenth century, had no parallel in any other country at that
time. Similarly, the Jews of nineteenth-century Western
Europe converted only after laws of equality had permitted
them to attain wealth and power, and granted them access
to a society from which they had been cut off for centuries.
The Jews, as a people, have learned to survive adversity.
Until this very day they have not learned how to survive—
as Jews—in freedom. Whenever they have been at liberty
to choose whether or not to be Jews, they have yielded to
some degree. Of course, this has not always meant outright
conversion. Often it has just resulted in a weakening of the
specifically Jewish fiber of survival. They simply assimilate,
in many ways, to the culture of the country in which they
live and become "like the other nations of the world." In
traditional Jewish thought this has always been considered
a curse. Many Jewish laws, such as the dietary restrictions,
have their origin in an attempt at the preservation of the
34 / Joachim Prinz

uniqueness of the Jewish people. They were meant to iso-

late the Jews from the customs and cultures of the people
among whom they lived. Creative Jewish continuity, as
well as physical survival, was the real goal of these admoni-
tions. In freedom the temptations to move away from the
strict observances of old customs have always been very
great.
So the walls of the ghettos of Central and Eastern Europe
served not only to isolate the Jews but to preserve their
Jewishness. In this closely knit society the strict laws of
moral conduct were administered by Jewish lay authorities,
and the rabbis saw to it that the rituals and beliefs of the
Jewish faith were observed. This provided enough Jewish
substance to meet all challenges. The ghetto walls separated
the Jews from the affluence of the Christian world, but
within them, Jewish spiritual life prospered. The average
ghetto Jew felt comfort and happiness in his Jewish exist-
ence and did not complain about the difficult restrictions
imposed upon him by the Christian community. In his eyes
there was not really so much to envy in the Christian
world. The material wealth he saw was not great and it
was in the hands of a very few. In addition, his Jewish heri-
tage had taught him that "the ignorant cannot be pious,"
and so, confronted with illiterate Christians who had to
recite their prayers by rote, the Jew, who spent his days with
books, experienced a sense of superiority which strength-
ened him. The "heroism" and stamina of the ghetto Jew
who preferred death to conversion was derived from no
more mysterious source than his deep religious conviction
and a strict adherence to his ancient tradition, which made
conversion an unthinkable alternative.
In Spain the Jews' close contact with the general com-
35/ The Secret Jews

munity under the reign of the Muslims, and later under the
Christian kings, made for laxity and indifference toward
their Jewish heritage. Jews ate at the tables of the Spanish
grandees without thinking of the dietary restrictions. Al-
though intermarriage was out of the question, close and in-
timate relationships between Jews and Christian Spaniards
were not rare. Only after the bitter experience of the mas-
sacres of 1391 did the rabbis remember to admonish the
Jewish community and to remind them that the ancient
laws must be observed. The conversos were lost to their
faith, but the little remnant of believing Jews who lived in
the rebuilt juderías had to be brought closer to the "foun-
tain of faith." All those who disobeyed the Jewish ritual
were to be punished. Nonobservance became a criminal
offense. In the minds of those who had resisted the tempta-
tion of conversion there was the deep belief that it was a
lack of Jewish tradition which had brought about the dis-
grace of the conversos.
But these rabbinical admonitions came too late for the
majority of the Jewish community. If they had been issued
a century earlier, such disciplinary cautions might have
served to protect the Jews from conversion. In retrospect,
they were only a remarkable documentation of the causes
for the downfall of Spanish Jewry:
Considering that everything depends on the worship of the
Creator, that the evil decrees came upon the world because of
the sins of the generation and that the preservation of the com-
munities depends upon their good deeds—this has been true in
the case of all past generations and is doubly so in that of our
generation, when on account of our sins, we have remained
but a few in lieu of many—we need to mend our ways and to
set up fences and regulations concerning the service of the
36 / Joachim Prinz

Creator as the service of our Lord the King, so that we may

continue to live in the realm.

Whatever the motivation or cause for the mass conver-

sions in Spain, the true results were soon discovered. Many
of those who had been lukewarm Jews had become indif-
ferent Christians. Having paid mere lip service to the re-
ligion of their fathers, they were bound to have little respect
for their new faith. Of course there were some genuine
conversions, but the great majority of the conversos did not
become faithful Christians, although they managed to look
like enthusiastic disciples. They were meticulous in their
public Christian behavior: they attended the service in the
cathedral, they carried rosaries instead of prayer shawls,
they recited "Ave Marias" instead of "Hear O Israel," they
joined in the processions, and as might be expected, their
donations to the churches were conspicuously generous.
But if the Christians, seeing these external manifestations
of the piety of their proselytes, thought that they had won
fervent new worshipers and believers for their Church,
they were sadly mistaken. If they thought conversion would
solve the problems of too great a Jewish influence in high
places, they were soon to see that they had committed a
tragic blunder.
It is true that the Jews, besides changing their names and
places of residence, married into the families of nobles; they
even entered the priesthood. But they did not yield their
social position or their economic influence. Within twenty
years the conversos had become, to the Christian commu-
nity, the major problem of Spanish life. Vincent Ferrer,
the priest who had devoted his life to the conversion of the
Jews and who had been beatified for the success of his
forcible baptisms of the Jewish community, had, in fact,
57 / The Secret Jews

been honored for failure. He and all the other fanatical

preachers had only succeeded in diluting the Christian faith
and burdening Spain with the almost insoluble problem of
make-believe Christians. The Church, in the end, had to
resort to even sterner methods to rid itself of the false con-
verts than those it had employed to force the conversions.
And the New Christians became a problem to themselves.
After a time the schizophrenic nature of their lives was dis-
cernible even to the man in the street. It became a badge of
honor to be able to say, "I am an Old Christian." It meant
"I am of pure blood." It was then that the New Christians,
particularly those who had not rid themselves of the mem-
ory of their Jewish heritage, were given the contemptuous
new name, Marranos—swine. The word articulated not
only the hatred of the populace for the false Christians, it
also carried over the envy they had historically felt toward
the prosperity of the practicing Jew.

The Church, which had tolerated, and the state, which

had encouraged, Jewish financiers, physicians, tax collec-
tors, councillors of the state and intimates of the kings, now
made it possible for the New Christians to climb even
higher. The conversions, so obviously superficial and per-
functory, had created an almost comical situation. Con-
versos became the symbols of successful Christian conquest
and were soon sought after by the nobility, which at one
time might have hesitated to invite Jews, however highly
placed, into their homes. Now every nobleman seemed to
have "his converso." The Marrano became the center and
the pride of Spanish social life. The Spanish Jewish intellec-
tuals, who had always been known for their wit and sar-
casm, could now be invited into noble homes without fear
of risking the bishop's displeasure. With their new Chris-
38 / Joachim Prinz

tian identities, the Jews were not merely acceptable, their

baptism made them sought after in high Spanish society.
Their role was similar to that of prominent blacks who
were invited into the homes of wealthy liberals in the early
days of the American civil rights movement.
The financial and social success of the Marranos was
miraculous. They had "conquered" Spain from within.
At the end of the fifteenth century the entire administration
of Aragon was in Converso hands; at the very moment the
Inquisition began to function, five converses—Luis Santangel,
Gabriel Sanches, Sanche de Paternoy, Felipe Climent and Al-
fonso de la Caballeria—held the five most important posts in
the kingdom. Sons and grandsons of Converses continued this
predominance. .. . . The persistence of Converses in Spanish
life . . . may be explained by the fact that so many of the lead-
ing families of the realm contained Converso blood that it
would have been impossible to ignore talented members from
them. What nobody can doubt is that Converso contribution
was out of all proportion to their members. The names of Fer-
nando de Rojas, author of the drama "Celestina"; the great hu-
manist Luis Vives; the blessed Juan de Avila; Luis de Leon; and
St. Theresa of Avila are only a beginning to the list of hun-
dreds of likely and unlikely Converses whose names have illu-
minated not simply Spanish but the whole of Western Euro-
pean history.

Although it is impossible to obtain reliable statistical in-

formation, it has been estimated that the total number of
New Christians never exceeded a quarter of a million. But
since the vast majority of the Spaniards were illiterate and
the somewhat less illiterate nobility were without great
ambition, a quarter of a million people of the caliber of the
Spanish Jews were bound to have a disproportionate influ-
ence on the population.
39 / The Secret Jews

From the Spanish point of view, the most insidious of the

Marrano successes was their invasion of the Church itself.
Marranos became not only monks and nuns and parish
priests; they also rose to high Church position and became
bishops and cardinals. Rabbi Solomon Halevi was one of
the sincere converts to Christianity who found his new vo-
cation in the Church. He became, after his conversion, the
Bishop of Burgos. Bartolomeo Carranza, Archbishop of
Toledo and Primate of Spain, and Hernando de Talavera,
Archbishop of Granada, were two other outstanding clergy-
men who were New Christians.
The monasteries were considered particularly safe refuges
for converses, and the Society of Jesus, which was founded
in the sixteenth century by St. Ignatius of Loyola, included
many monks of Jewish descent. Ignatius himself had been
suspected of observing Jewish customs in secret. The accu-
sation was a nonsensical fabrication, but it is said that Igna-
tius was proud to have been accused of being a close relative
of Jesus and the Holy Mother Mary. He was so utterly free
of anti-Jewish feeling that he appointed Diego Lainex, a
man known to have been born a Jew, to succeed him.
The list of New Christian clergymen of the highest
ranks, not to speak of simple monks and priests, is too long
to be mentioned here. Probably the most remarkable case
is that of St. Theresa of Avila, the greatest of Christian
women mystics, known as the "compatrona d'España" the
patron saint of Spain; she was a converted Jew. Some of
the most fervent of the conversos proved their loyalty to
the Church some years later by becoming the most vigorous
and brutal of the Grand Inquisitors. The most notorious of
these is Tomás de Torquemada, who was descended from a
Jewish family, as was his equally violent assistant, Diego de
Deza.
40 / Joachim Prinz

But others who entered the priesthood were Christians in

name only. Like so many of their fellow conversos, they
had developed a strange habit: they practiced Judaism in
secret. They were Judaizers. (In Portugal, almost two hun-
dred years after the conversion of their ancestors, forty-
four nuns, seven canons and eight priests were burned at
the stake for Judaizing.) Judaizing became so widespread
among the conversos that it soon was the great issue of the
time. At first some of the Marranos did not think it neces-
sary to hide their heresy. As it became more dangerous,
Jewish ritual was practiced under many safeguards. All the
same, there were many contemporary witnesses to the
secret Jewish practices of the Marranos.
These heretics [says Cura de Los Palacios] avoid baptizing
their children and, when they could not prevent it, they washed
off the baptismal water after they returned home from the
church. They eat meat on [Christian] fast days and unleavened
bread on Passover, which they observe as well as the Sabbath;
they have Jews who secretly preach in their houses and rabbis
who slaughter meat and fowl for them; they perform all Jewish
ceremonies in secret as well as they can and avoid, as far as
possible, receiving the sacrament; they never confess truly. A
confessor, after hearing one of them, cut off a corner of his
garment saying: "Since you have never sinned, I want a piece
of your garment as a relic to cure the sick." They assumed airs
of superiority, asserting that there was no better race on earth,
nor wiser, nor shrewder, nor more honorable through their
descent from the tribes of Israel.

In the Shevet Yehudah, a play by the Jewish writer

Solomon Ibn Verga, a Christian relates a conversation be-
tween an Inquisitor of Seville and a Duke. The Inquisitor
41 / The Secret Jews

admits how hopeless his task is of eliminating Jewish prac-

tices from the households of the "Christian Marranos." "If
you wish, Sire, to know how the Marranos observe the
Sabbath, let us go up to the Tower." On the tower, the In-
quisitor tells the Duke:
Raise your eyes and see. That house there is the house of a
Marrano, so is the other, and many others. Despite the hard
winter you will not see smoke coming out of any of them, for
they have failed to make a fire on account of the Sabbath. We
also have been told about one particular Marrano in Spain who
ate unleavened bread all year so that he could consume it on
Passover without raising suspicion; he claimed that his stomach
could not tolerate leavened bread. On holidays when the blow-
ing of the horn is prescribed, they go out in to the open coun-
try, and in the midst of the mountains and valleys they blow
the horn without being overheard by outsiders.
They have a man who clandestinely circumcises them. There
are some individuals who circumcise themselves, for they rely
on no other man for fear he might divulge the act. Some bring
with them the scrolls of the Laws of Moses in sacks of pepper
and similar things with the other commandments. It is of no
use to Your Majesty to pour Holy water on Jews and to call
them Peter or Paul, while they adhere to their religion like
Akiba or Tarphon. There is no advantage in their baptism ex-
cept to make them overweening against true Christians and
without fear, since outwardly they are accepted as Christians.
The royal tribute which they used to pay when they were
Jews they pay no more. Know, Sire, that Judaism is no doubt
one of the incurable diseases.

This was certainly a graphic way to put the situation so

that it would have the greatest impact on a medieval audi-
ence. To the ears of the medieval listener, a survivor, no
42 / Joachim Prinz

doubt of several of the plagues which periodically killed

whole populations, "incurable diseases" were a more threat-
ening reality than they are today when there is hope for
new cures and most epidemic diseases have been eliminated.
In the Middle Ages, "incurable" meant just that. No rem-
edy was in sight. Yet both church and state were searching
for a cure for the new disease which had already reached
epidemic proportions. The symptoms were Christians with-
out Christianity, worshipers without piety. Judaizing had
to be attacked, if only to pacify the ordinary man, to whom
Judaizing Christians were a mockery of the true religion.
But there was more to it than that. Spain had declared
the "reconquest" a success. Except for a stronghold in
Granada, the country was free of its Moorish infidels, and
hundreds of thousands of Jews had converted. This made
the realization that the Jews had "invaded" Spain from
within seem an unbearable outrage. It made a mockery of
the holy passions of the converters who had stormed the
synagogues with crucifixes held high like banners or swords.
Judaism was not only incurable, it seemed to be invincible.
Conversion, clearly, had simply forced the Jews to change
their names, but it allowed them to live in the most luxuri-
ous mansions and had even freed them of the special taxes
which were still being collected from those Jews who had
resisted the temptation to convert. Rather than solving the
"Jewish question," the mass conversions had created a new
problem: a powerful middle-class made up of secret Jews.
Almost a century had elapsed since the great massacres
of 1391 during which Spain had admitted a quarter of a
million Jews into the Church. For nearly three generations
these New Christians had lived their strange lives of mem-
ories, nostalgia and conflict. Many of them no longer re-
43 / The Secret Jews

membered their former existence as Jews and had been fully

integrated into Spanish life, church and nation. But those
who had never freed themselves of their Jewish past and
secretly practiced Jewish customs were now considered
Christian heretics by the Church they had adopted.
The incurable disease had to be cured. The remedy that
was chosen isolated Spain from the great new movements
of humanism and the Renaissance which were beginning to
blossom in much of Europe. While Italy shone in the splen-
dor of a new creativity, Spain renewed one of the cruelest
aspects of the Middle Ages. In contrast to the Renaissance,
which was opening the eyes of mankind to new vistas of
free inquiry and a new critical approach to religious dogma,
Spain reverted to a form of religious torment which dated
back to the thirteenth century. While the popes in Rome,
who might have intervened to prevent the tragedy that fol-
lowed, looked on passively, Ferdinand and Isabella called
for the re-establishment of the Inquisition to ferret out the
new infidels and heretics who had invaded the Church.
Heresy had been a problem for the Church since the
early Middle Ages. Ironically, it was the Crusades, during
which the Christians were exposed to many strange outside
influences, that encouraged the flourishing of religious de-
viates. The Church began to deal seriously with this prob-
lem in the twelfth century, during the reign of one of the
most orthodox and rigid popes, Innocent III. Then, at
the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, the battle against the
Albigensian and Athanasian heresies began. It was carried
out by the Dominican Order of Monks, and the instrument
through which they made their inquiries into these heresies
was known as the Office of the Inquisition. It had its own
rules of procedure and its own system of torture and pun-
44 / Joachim Prinz

ishment, the climax of which was the auto-da-fe, a public

hearing at which suspected heretics were either reconciled
to the Church or sentenced to death by fire. The execu-
tions were then carried out while the screams of the victims
were drowned out by the jubilation of the mob assembled
by the thousands for the performances. The Spanish rulers
of the fifteenth century had only to call for the re-establish-
ment of this old institution which would provide them with
a weapon against the heretics of their day, the Marranos.
The first of the new inquisitional tribunals was estab-
lished in Seville in 1478, but it was not until 1480 that it
began to function. By 1482 the Inquisition had been ex-
panded, with new Inquisitors appointed and new cities
added. It was at this point that Tomás de Torquemada, the
queen's fanatical confessor, whose name has become synony-
mous with the word "Inquisitor," came to power.

The Inquisition is considered one of the many traumatic

experiences of Jewish history, and as such, it is always
spoken of with dread. But, of course, the Inquisition had
no power over Jews at all. It was established for the pur-
pose of dealing with Christians who had deviated from
their faith. The Marranos who were called to account for
their secret practices appeared not as Jews but as allegedly
heretical Christians. The number of Marranos who were
executed in this particularly barbaric way is estimated at
approximately thirty thousand. The same Inquisition also
punished Muslims who were uncommitted Christian con-
verts. Many of these Moriscos, as they were called, perished
along with Marranos during the Inquisition's time of power.
However, no unconverted Jews were ever called to the
tribunals.
45 / The Secret Jews

An important factor, both for the vigorous prosecution

of the Marranos and the severity of the sentences they re-
ceived, was the deep-seated and widespread anti-Jewish,
anti-Marrano sentiments of the Spanish people and the
courts. The tribunals depended heavily on informers and
had little trouble finding them in the cities, like Seville,
which had large Marrano communities. The system of secret
police which invited informers, spies and eavesdroppers sub-
jected the whole society to a climate of suspicion which
often proved unfounded or was based on the slightest "evi-
dence."
Henry C. Lea, the great historian of the Inquisition, pro-
vides us with some examples of the sort of testimony which
was enough to convict accused Marranos during this time:
Changing the body linen or table linen on Saturday, lighting
candles on Friday and similar observances were proofs of a
most damaging character; even eating amin—a broth liked by
Jews—enumerated among the offenses entailing appearance in
an auto-da-fe. When Brianda de Bardaxi was on trial at Sara-
gossa in 1491, she admitted that, when a child, she had eaten a
few mouthfuls of Passover bread given her by a playmate, and
this was gravely detailed in her sentence as one of the proofs of
"vehement suspicion" for which she was severely punished. Cir-
cumcision . . . was an evidence almost decisive and, with male
defendants, an inspection by the surgeon of the tribunal was
customary; but in an earlier time, before the expulsion and
forced conversion of the Jews, it was merely an indication that
a man was a New, not an Old, Christian, yet in an auto-da-fe
at Saragossa in 1486, Pedro and Luis de Almazán, on this evi-
dence alone, were sentenced to perform penance with lighted
candles and to ten years of exile. . . . a propensity to cleanli-
ness by washing oneself was an indication of apostasy, and in
the trial of Marie Gómez at Toledo, in 1550, as a relapsed im-
46 / Joachim Prinz

penitent, one of the charges was that, in her former trial she
had not confessed that, some fifteen years before, a kid had
been killed at her house by cutting its throat.
How slander was the evidence requisite for prosecution is
manifested in the trials of a whole family in Valladolid. When
Dr. Jorge Enriques, physician to the Duke of Alva, died, the
body was soiled, requiring washing, followed by a clean shirt.
A number of witnesses thereupon deposed that it was prepared
for sepulture according to Jewish rites . . . So in 1625, Manuel
de Azvedo, a shoemaker of Salamanca, was denounced because
he had removed a lump of fat from the leg of mutton which
he took to a baker to be roasted. . . . Azvedo said he was ig-
norant of this being a Jewish custom but had been told that a
leg of mutton roasted better with the fat cut out.... he proved
he was an Old Christian on all sides; he was not acquitted but
the case was suspended. . . . In another case one of the charges
was that the accused in slicing bread held the knife with the
edge turned away and not towards his breast as was customary
with Christians. Trivial as all this may seem, one occasionally
meets a case showing that the Inquisition did not always spend
its energies in vain following up the slenderest evidence. In sev-
eral cases in Valladolid, the chief evidence was that the meat
before cooking was soaked in water to remove blood and
grease. This led to the discovery and punishment as Judaizers
of a group of some fifteen or twenty Benavente, who appeared
in the auto-da-fé. As soon as one was brought in, he implicated
others and the net was spread which captured them all. The
fact, however, that torture was freely used casts an unpleasant
doubt over the justice of the result.

The auto-da-fé was the culmination of a long process of

suspicion, arrest, investigation, torture and long imprison-
ment. These preliminaries, sometimes extending over pe-
riods of many years, were often as difficult to endure as
death itself. Not everyone was, in fact, sentenced to die,
47 / The Secret Jews

only those who refused to admit heresy. In the majority of

cases, prolonged imprisonment in jails which defy descrip-
tion, and a thousand indignities and humiliations, were just
the prelude to a lesser but still severe punishment: exclusion
from society and confiscation of the prisoner's possessions.
Those who were fortunate enough to escape the pyre found
themselves in useless freedom, stripped of all their posses-
sions and incapable of finding employment. If they were
lucky they had friends who had escaped the Inquisition,
but often the person who befriended a former prisoner
became the object of suspicion and was himself arrested.
As at the opening of the bullfight season in the great
arenas of Madrid, the dignitaries of city and state were
seated on decorated balconies, surrounded by members of
the nobility, both men and women, and the highest clergy.
There were processions of church officials who carried
sacred objects to the site. But the highlight of the prelimi-
naries was the entrance of the accused wearing the gar-
ments of penitence, the sanbenito. Usually made of yellow
cloth, these sleeveless, open-sided robes were decorated
with crosses and the name and the sins of the culprit.
Those who were condemned to death wore black sanbeni-
tos ornamented with flames and devils. After the burning,
the sanbenitos belonging to the executed heretics were not
so easily discarded. They were usually hung in the church
as a way of warning people to shun the families. At times,
the wearing of the sanbenito became a form of punishment
for those who were not executed. Along with the other
penances exacted from the accused, the prolonged wearing
of the sanbenito was proof of the former heretic's devotion
to the Church, the "act of faith" which was the goal of the
auto-da-fé.
Although there are several engravings of autos-da-fé, they
48 / Joachim Prinz

convey nothing of the horrors of these elaborate public ex-

hibitions of human inhumanity. And in El Greco's famous
portrait of the Grand Inquisitor, Fernando Neno de Gue-
vara, we cannot find any evidence of this shameful spectacle
in the face we see. El Greco depicts a man of noble splen-
dor, both in dress and demeanor. His dark eyes behind
dark-rimmed spectacles, his thin lips and his stern look
bespeak only great dignity and sincerity. If this man was
the head of a pious murder scheme, his portrait certainly
does not show it. In actual fact, although the ecclesiastical
court pronounced the judgment with due dignity, it pro-
tected itself against self-accusation and collective guilt by
what we would call a technicality. The execution itself was
left to the state. The Grand Inquisitor, servant of the
Church, did not actually murder. He only recommended
it to the less vulnerable authorities.
Moreover, if it was piety and deep religious conviction
which motivated the men of the Inquisition, it was a reli-
gious faith which paid handsomely. Every conviction meant
not simply heretics punished or reconciled but fortunes
confiscated. And the proceeds filled not only the coffers of
the state but the treasures of the Grand Inquisitors as well.
It was common knowledge that the arrests and condemna-
tions of so many Marranos were not merely undertaken for
religious purification of these supposed heretics. The in-
come derived from the judgment, whether the sentence
was death or the result reconciliation, was enormous. Many
multimillionaires, even by today's standards, either died at
the stake or in dungeons. Others were released with minor
punishment. But no matter what the verdict, confiscation
of property was a foregone conclusion. The accused all left
the high tribunal as beggars. Perhaps this explains why the
49 / The Secret Jews

Inquisition, called out of the past in the 1480s, maintained

itself well into the nineteenth century.
In view of the virulent anti-Jewish, anti-Marrano feelings
both in the Church and among the people, it is not surpris-
ing that the burghers and common people, as well as the
nobles and the clergy, watched the proceedings and the
success of the Inquisition with great interest and satisfac-
tion. What is amazing is the reaction of the unconverted
Jew. While the Marranos understandably lived in fear of
being denounced by their servants, their friends, even their
children, the Jews felt safe, if not a bit smug. Because they
had their own reasons for disdaining the Marranos, they
shared the Christians' contempt for the neophytes. After
all, not all of the Marranos had been forced to convert;
some of them had left Judaism voluntarily. And the Jews
still lived restricted lives, while the Marranos were permit-
ted to live outside the juderías and were free of Jewish
taxes. If the Marranos felt a snobbish sense of superiority
toward the unconverted Jews, the Jews' attitude toward
the Marranos certainly contained envy and perhaps a bit
of self-hatred.
The tragic short-sightedness of the Spanish-Jewish atti-
tude toward the Inquisition, so apparent to us today, oc-
curred to none of the Jewish observers of that time. None
of them seemed to understand that the trials against former
Jews must have been stimulated by venomous hatreds which
threatened believing Jews as well as Marrano heretics. Only
a decade after the reconstitution of the Inquisition, the Jews
were expelled from Spain by royal decree. Few of the Jews
who lived through the Inquisition saw it as a prelude to the
end of the long history of their people in Spain. It was, in
fact, at the royal palace itself that they felt they had found
50/ Joachim Prinz

clear proof that their trust in the king's friendship was jus-
tified.
Like his predecessors on the throne of Spain, Ferdinand
surrounded himself with intimate Jewish advisers. Riba
Altes was his personal physician; Luis de Santanal was one
of the richest and most powerful men in the country; and
Abraham Senior, who was also the official head of the
Spanish-Jewish community, was the king's most trusted
councillor of state. This was not all. Practically the whole
royal household was of Jewish descent, many of them just
one generation removed from their Jewish origins, known
as Marranos to everyone in the realm. Isabella had selected
as her confessor Herando de Talavera, although she knew
that his mother was a Jew. Also, Pedro de la Caballería, a
very recent converso, had arranged the wedding of the two
monarchs. When the arrangements were completed, Abra-
ham Senior and Don Solomon of Aragon presented Isabella
with a magnificent golden necklace bought with money
that had been raised by Jews. Many years later when the
queen died, it was the Marquesa de Moya, a member of a
converso family and wife of the king's private chamberlain,
who closed the queen's eyes.
But the best proof of the Jews' security was the appear-
ance in 1484 of the most outstanding Jew of his time, Don
Isaac Abravanel, whose father had already held the highest
position in his native Portugal as financier of Prince Fer-
nando, son of King Joao. His grandfather and great-grand-
father had also been treasurers and financiers of the royal
household of Portugal. Don Isaac had inherited many mil-
lions of maravidas from his family and had added many
more himself. Yet he was not merely a millionaire and a
financial genius, he was a Jewish scholar of note and a dis-
51/ The Secret Jews

tinguished statesman. That he was received by Ferdinand

and Isabella was a sure sign that all was serene in the Jewish
community. With so much protection and such influential
friends at court, what could happen to them?
But even as Abravanel negotiated with the king, the plan
for the total expulsion of the Jews had been decided upon.
It happened that at that time the Spanish army was engaged
in the final struggle against the Moors, the battle for Gra-
nada. A great deal of money was needed and if a Jew of
Abravanel's financial genius could provide it, why not post-
pone the expulsion of his people until a more propitious
moment? That even Abravanel, a man of extraordinary
political experience and acumen, could mistake a polite and
cordial reception by the monarchs for assurance of his
people's security seems incomprehensible. But it is consist-
ent with the experience and attitude of Jews throughout
their history.
In any attempt at defining their specific psyche or "mys-
tique," we must include that most puzzling and yet most
revealing contradiction in the Jewish mentality: the ap-
parent inability of the Jews to understand or predict their
own catastrophes. The Jews, whose history consists of one
tragedy after another, have yet to be prepared for any one
of them. Clemenceau, who as a young man witnessed the
most notorious of anti-Jewish trials, the affair of Alfred
Dreyfus, is supposed to have remarked that "only the de-
fendant did not understand" the Jewish implications of the
trial. It can safely be said that the only ones who were
oblivious to the possibility of their own destruction in fif-
teenth-century Spain were the Jews. So they surrendered,
died or lost their fortunes, and those who survived were
finally expelled from the land of their birth.
52 / Joachim Prinz

This sort of blindness has been true throughout Jewish

history. Jews have always been the last to know what
everyone else could have predicted. It is as if they simply
do not believe it possible. In the Middle Ages they were
expelled from England, France and many of the German
states. As far as they were concerned, it "happened over-
night." They packed up and left. But nothing really hap-
pens "overnight."
In Vienna, after the Thirty Years' War, for example, the
wealth of many of the Jewish families intoxicated the whole
Jewish community, and the fact that a few families were
even knighted seemed assurance of a safe existence. In 1670,
because the queen of Austria suffered several miscarriages,
the whole Jewish community was expelled. It was pre-
dictable that the anti-Semitism of the large majority of
Viennese society would make the Jews easy and natural
scapegoats. However, it came as a shock to the Jews. In
Russia, some Jews seemed to prosper during the Thirty
Years' War because they were the tax collectors for the
state. They did not seem to realize that this was a hazardous
occupation for a minority community. They were oblivious
to the feelings against them which were growing among the
poor, the peasants, the illiterate. In 1648, half a million Jews
died in a single pogrom led by a peasant Cossack. They
were unprepared for this event; nor did they foresee the
pogroms in Russia which were stimulated by the outrageous
laws of May 1881 creating a special Pale of Settlement. No
major voluntary emigration by Russian Jews followed the
promulgation of these laws. And twenty years later, only
a relatively small percentage of Jews left. The majority
stayed on.
The most tragic example of this Jewish readiness to play
53/ The Secret Jews

the role of the eternal victim occurred during the Hitler

regime. There was a full decade between Hitler's Putsch
in Munich and his advent to power. Only a handful of
German Jews were apprehensive. Hardly a Jew took him
seriously. The Jewish intellectuals ridiculed him. The aver-
age German-Jewish patriotic burgher discounted him as an
Austrian foreigner. When he finally became Chancellor,
the Jews were calling it an "episode" which would soon
pass. It took Hitler from 1933 to 1939 to decide on the
"final solution" to the Jewish problem, the extermination
of the Jews. The German Jews had five years during which
they could have escaped. Only forty percent did.
This form of political naivete and blindness must be con-
sidered as one of the characteristics of the Jewish collective
unconscious. The Jewish people are optimists, addicted to
a passionate belief that they cannot possibly have enemies
bent on their destruction. Restrictions may be part of their
daily lives, but destruction, they believe, is utterly impos-
sible. Much of this optimism is reflected in Jewish wit. But
basic to this psychological quirk is another, more serious
component of the Jewish mentality. The Jews seem to have
a perverse talent for developing an unhappy and totally
uncritical patriotism for the countries in which they live.
They were Frenchmen who adored the tricolor when, dur-
ing the days of Dreyfus, the streets of Paris were full of
mobs yelling "A bas les juifs!" They were loyal Germans
and faithful Englishmen, and loving children of Russia, in
spite of the storm troopers, degradation and pogroms. And
by 1492 they had been Spaniards for centuries.
That is why the Spanish Jews were caught by surprise
when the edict expelling them was proclaimed to the jubila-
tion of all of Christian Spain. They had lived in the country
54/ Joachim Prlnz

since long before Christ. They were not foreigners. Many

of them had even become New Christians only in order to
appear to be more Spanish. It is pan of the Marrano phe-
nomenon that they did not merely embrace the Cross; their
conversion, in many cases, was a kiss to the country as well.
Yet the country continued to consider them unwelcome
strangers.
The collective scene of the summer months of 1492,
following the order for expulsion, has been compassionately
described by Andrés Bernáldez:
Trusting in the vain hopes of their blindness, they chose the
hardships of the road and they left the land of their birth, small
and big, old men and children, on foot or riding asses and other
beasts and on carts, travelling to the ports from which they
were to sail, and they went along the road or across the fields
with great hardship and risks, some falling, some rising, some
dying, some being born and some falling sick. . . . Their rabbis
kept encouraging them and they made the women and their
youngsters sing and play the tambourines to cheer the crowd.
They had not made plans concerning their belongings,
and most of them left everything behind. Some eighty thou-
sand succeeded in getting across the border to Portugal. (It
was just as safe for them as Holland was, four centuries
later, for the parents of Anne Frank. Within a few years
the Inquisition reached into Portugal.) About ten thousand
went by ship to North Africa, Italy, Turkey. Most of them
never reached their destinations. Sometimes the flimsy ships
were wrecked by storm. In some cases the captains robbed
them of the little money, gold and jewels they had man-
aged to hide.
Many of them, about fifty thousand, remained in Spain,
swelling the number of Marranos. A hundred years after
55/ The Secret Jews

the massacre of 1391 these people, whose ancestors had sur-

vived the pogroms of Seville and Toledo and had remained
faithful to the heritage of their people, finally let go of their
faith. Unlike their fellow Jews who had to sell a house for
a donkey or a field for a piece of cloth in order to flee the
country, these New Christians had only to surrender their
religious beliefs to find freedom.
There were many, of course, who became new Marranos
—new Judaizers—creating new problems and posing new
challenges for the Spanish authorities. Before their conver-
sion the new Marranos had seen what the Inquisition could
do. They had felt the effects of anti-Jewish feelings among
the people. Now they were eager to convert. Among the
first was Abraham Senior, the king's councillor. With his
whole family he assumed the name of Coronel and became
a Christian. The monarchs waited in vain for Don Isaac
Abravanel to follow suit. He chose to leave the country
instead.
The year 1492 had been a year of great triumph for the
Spanish nation. Granada, the last Moorish stronghold, was
conquered, and much of the credit for the victory went to
the queen, who visited the battlefield to bolster the morale
of her troops. But the financial backing essential to the
battle had come, as we know, from Abravanel, the Jew,
who was now in exile. Not a single believing Jew was left
in all of Spain or in the Balearic Islands. The Muslims were
defeated. Spain was a purely Catholic country. It was a
year of many fulfillments.
And on August 3, 1492, another glorious triumph was
beginning. Christopher Columbus sailed his three ships to-
ward an unknown world on a voyage which was to fulfill
two of the great goals of Spain, gold and honor. This
56 / Joachim Prinz

strange, adventurous man who was considered a charlatan

by many, an "eccentric traveller with a flair for histrionic
gestures" by others, became the center of attention.
His famous journal begins with a sentence which, rather
oddly, connects his expedition with the expulsion of the
Jews: "After the Spanish monarchs had expelled all the
Jews from their Kingdom and lands in January [he appar-
ently forgot that the edict was issued a few months later,
in March] in that same month they commissioned me to
undertake the voyage to India with a properly equipped
fleet." No other contemporary event has been so connected.
The Christian reaction to the expulsion was quite mild, not
much fuss was made about it. The mention of it as a major
event, a milestone in Spanish history, was left to Columbus,
who was so secretive about his origins that Bernáldez
thought he "looked and sounded like a person from another
land." He was referring to the exotic, outlandish manners
which Columbus affected. As a matter of fact, Columbus
never called himself by his real name, Cristoforo Colombo,
but preferred to call himself Cristóbal Colón.
There has been much speculation that Columbus himself
might have been a Marrano. The Spanish historian Salvador
de Madariaga is convinced that Columbus was descended
from a Jewish family which, after conversion, moved to
Italy. He cites a case in which "at the great auto-da-fé at
Tarragona, on July 18, 1489, clothed in the garb of peni-
tence, Andreas Colón, his wife Blanca, and his mother-in-
law Francisca Colón. . . . all confessed that they had ob-
served rites, ceremonies and holy days of the Jews" and he
adds, "What must have been the feelings of Christopher
Columbus when he heard that members of the Jewish race
bore his name and had been condemned by the Inquisition."
It seems to be common knowledge that Colón was an old
57 / The Secret Jews

Spanish-Jewish family name, but it is less certain that Co-

lumbus was a Marrano.
What is known is that Jews, as well as Marranos, played
a role in making the expedition possible and participated in
the voyage itself. The influential Marrano Luis Santanel
was among the few who took the young Columbus seri-
ously, and it was he who arranged the first audience for
him at the court. He also advanced seventeen thousand
florins to the crown to help finance the voyage. Other
Marranos and Jews became involuntary backers of Colum-
bus when fortunes confiscated from them helped defray the
cost of the second journey.
The maps that Columbus used were prepared by the
Jewish cartographer Abraham Zacuto, and the naval acad-
emy which had a part in planning the trip was headed by
another Jew, Yehuda Crescas, a famous map maker and
son of the philosopher Abraham Crescas.
On board Columbus' ship there were many Marranos.
The list that has come down to us includes Rodrigo Sán-
chez, superintendent; Dr. Marco, ship's surgeon; and Mesta
Bernal, the physician. Luis de Torres, a Jew who had been
converted just a day before the ship sailed, served as official
interpreter, and a Marrano, Rodrigo de Triana, was the
seaman who sighted the first land. Most of the crew re-
turned to Spain with Columbus. Only De Torres stayed,
and in Cuba he returned to Judaism. He was the first mem-
ber of the large communities of Judaizing Marranos who
went to the New World and were soon to become active
in the development of the new export trade.

The fifteenth century ended with Spanish Jewry com-

pletely devastated. Thousands had lost their lives. A quarter
of a million had been forced into baptism, and many of
58 / Joachim Prinz

them lived precariously and unhappily in the twilight zone

of Marranic existence, between the Church and a syna-
gogue which no longer existed. The Inquisition had put to
death thousands of Judaizing heretics and reduced the re-
mainder to the status of beggars. And at the end of the
century the most radical cure for the "incurable disease" of
Judaism had been found. The Jews were expelled. The
glorious and tragic history of Spanish Jewry had come to
an end.
This woeful inventory of Jewish experience amounted
to a catalogue of victories for the Spanish church and state.
The Church had good reason to feel triumphant. If con-
version of the infidels was a Christian goal, it had been
fully realized. Not only Jews but also Muslims had found
refuge in the Church. These Marranos and Moriscos, who
had been discovered sliding back into old habits, had been
uncovered by the Inquisition, which the Church considered
Christ's own Supreme Court on earth during twenty dark
years, illuminated only by the fires of countless autos-da-fe.
Ferdinand and Isabella could look back on their reign
with the greatest satisfaction. Until the very end, they had
benefited from the invaluable services of their court Jews,
their physicians, their tax collectors, financial advisers and
skillful statesmen. The expulsion was the greatest coup of
all. It had rid the country of the last of the Jews and had
filled the empty treasury of the state with millions. The
colonial system in the newly discovered territories estab-
lished Spain as a major maritime power and was bound to
bring new wealth to the country.
At the end of the fifteenth century the Marranos were no
longer a national problem. The process of integration into
Spanish society of the fifty thousand new conversos who
59 / The Secret Jews

were a legacy of the expulsion was almost complete. The

number of Marranos who never ate pork or who abstained
from bread during the week of Passover dwindled consid-
erably. It may have been that it was too risky to indulge
in these customs while the Inquisition was in power, but
it was probably simply that most of them had forgotten
their Jewish heritage. Many had taken their places in the
Spanish economy or were holding offices in the Church.
Others were integrated into caballero families, and through
intermarriage there was hardly a family in the urban popu-
lation which did not have some Jewish blood. For the first
fifty years of the sixteenth century there was no more talk
of conversos. But one more chapter remained to be written.

With the deaths of Isabella in 1504 and Ferdinand in

1514, the reign of the Hapsburgs began. Charles V and his
successor, Philip II, two foreigners, entangled Spain in
European affairs after centuries of isolation. Spain went to
war with France and England. In 1588 her great Armada
was destroyed, and after these adventures Spain found her-
self depopulated and impoverished despite the gold that
came from her overseas possessions. It was in this atmo-
sphere that the conversos again moved into the center of
Spanish life.
Internal problems and international defeats in battle gave
rise to a spirit of chauvinism in sixteenth-century Spain
which can be compared to the climate in Germany in the
1930s when that country also grappled with internal eco-
nomic problems and suffered from a lowering of interna-
tional prestige. In the face of Spain's deterioration, the
Spaniards began to develop a racial theory and practice
similar to Hitler's Nuremberg Laws, which declared all
60 / Joachim Prinz

races except the Aryan to be impure. In Spain the edict was

called the Estatutes de Limpieza de Sangre, Statutes of the
Purity of Blood. It had been promulgated in 1449 and was
used by the Inquisition throughout its reign, but it was not
in general use until the sixteenth century because Spain until
that time was too successful a nation to have need of such a
law. It required a collective sense of inferiority to be gen-
erally accepted.
The spirit of the time was expressed in a book on the
Spanish nobility which was published in 1533. The author,
Juan Acre de Otalore, stated that Spain was the oldest
country in the world, and that the very demeanor and
physiognomy of the Spanish noblemen were proof of their
superiority to any other race in the world. The most out-
rageous assertions were made seriously. De Otalore pro-
claimed that Spanish philosophers wrote a thousand years
before Plato; that Spaniards were Christians a thousand
years before Christ was born; that Tubal, Noah's grandson,
had come to Spain at the time of the great flood and that it
was the Spanish people, rather than the Jews, who were
elected from "all nations of the world." He also listed five
characteristics which distinguished Spaniards from any
other people. He called these the cinco excelencias: military
valor, great wealth, pure literary taste, a combination of
knowledge and the most devout piety, and genuine nobility.
To this was added the most important ingredient: purity of
blood.
But since Jewish blood had contaminated the Spanish
population, racial purity was obviously lacking and had to
be restored. The old forgotten Estatutes de Limpieza de
Sangre were now unearthed to become the accepted law of
the land. And since there were no longer any Jews in the
61 / The Secret Jews

country, the conversos and their descendants became the

main target.
The new anti-Jewish measures were promulgated and
supported by the Cathedral of Toledo, which considered it-
self the national shrine in Spain, only slightly less important
to Catholics than St. Peter's in Rome. The most passionate
agitator for racial purity was Juan Martínez Silecese, the
Archbishop of the Cathedral of Toledo. Since he came from
peasant stock, he was opposed by the clergy of noble
descent. In general, the cry for Limpieza de Sangre came
from the burghers and lower classes. The nobility had good
reason for opposing it, since scarcely a noble family could
claim racial purity. To permit the promulgation of a law of
racial purity meant inviting endless family disgrace. It was
easy enough to ascertain that the mothers of important
members of noble families had been Marranos and, at times,
even accused of Judaizing practices. The lower classes had
nothing to fear from a law which required sworn testimony
to the racial purity of people in high positions. The nobility
was not so calm.
The greatest scandals were created within the Church it-
self, and particularly in some monastic orders which, as we
have seen, had provided sanctuary for many Marranos, both
sincere and insincere converts. Ignatius of Loyola had
called the statutes an insult to Jesus and his apostles, all of
whom had been Jews. But after his death and that of his
Marrano successor, only limpios, those free of Jewish blood,
were permitted to lead the order. Because of the edict the
Jesuits lost their social prestige, and the sons of noble
families preferred to join the Dominicans, where they were
sure to meet caballeros.
The law which had now been generally accepted was not
62 / Joachim Prinz

simple to enforce. At the universities, some of which had

enthusiastically voted for racial purity, as well as in the
major churches, former Marranos occupied high positions.
The literary scene was replete with important writers who
did not even attempt to conceal their Jewish origins. There
were many cases of high dignitaries who were proven to be
of "mixed" royal and Jewish blood. Perhaps because of their
importance, it was decided that these Marranos who held
high positions would not be eliminated, but none of them
would be promoted.
Withholding information of racial impurity was punish-
able by heavy fines. In order to prove the racial purity of a
family, two witnesses were required, and it is easy to
imagine how corrupt the procedure of "proving" the
proper lineage became. Bribes were commonplace. Docu-
ments were destroyed and new ones manufactured. Forgery
and lies were the order of the day. As in the days of the
Inquisition, one couid trust neither servants nor the mem-
bers of one's own families. Thousands of people, no longer
conscious of their Marrano descent, were discovered and
accused of being "impure." Informers prospered.
Contemporary foreign observers shook their heads in dis-
belief at this new Spanish chauvinism. One of them wrote:

Spain is not the only country in Europe which has experi-

enced the presence of Jews, Muslims and other infidels. But in
France where Jews were confronted with the choice of con-
version or expulsion under three kings, those who preferred to
remain in France and convert were simply known as Christians
and were not molested by a statute of racial impurity, nor by
the appellation "Jew" or "New Christian." When a Frenchman
visits Spain, it is assumed that he is an Old Christian, but when
a Spaniard visits France he is known to be a Marrano. What
else would prompt him to leave his own country?
63 / The Secret Jews

A Spanish cleric, Padre Pedro, was even more critical:

If it were true that Jewish blood is identical with evil char-
acter, how are we to account for the numerous and remarkable
examples of true piety and devotion on the part of men of
Jewish blood? We Spaniards have finally succeeded in creating
a nation of madmen. We still distinguish between New and
Old Christians, while other countries which permit their Jews
to pray in their synagogues do not seem to feel menaced by
Judaism. It is a shame that our country, mentally sick as it is,
searches for Jewish blood which hardly exists, almost a hun-
dred years after the expulsion of the Jews. With such an atti-
tude it can only bring dishonor on itself.
Whenever birth or antecedents determine the social status
and the acceptance of a people, there is no escape. The
promulgation of the racial laws and the continued existence
of the Inquisition made life for the Marranos in Spain in-
tolerable. The only solution was emigration. In spite of
strict laws prohibiting Marranos or their offspring from
leaving the country, thousands of ships, often piloted by
bribed captains, left the harbors of Spain bearing the New
Christians from their homes in Spain and Portugal to the
many countries which were willing to accept them. Soon
there were Marranos in many parts of Europe. Others went
to the new territories of the recently discovered Indies: the
Caribbean islands, Brazil, Peru and Mexico.
The integration of the Marranos into the social and
economic structure of their new homelands was incredibly
rapid. The ready welcome they received must not be sup-
posed to have been based on altruism on the part of the
governments of these countries. It was founded on the
simple notion that "pecunia no olet." The new immigrants
brought with them large fortunes, and capital from the
hands of Jews was as useful as that from the hands of Gen-
64 / Joachim Prinz

tiles. So the Marrano dispersion had the effect of permitting

Jewish immigrants to participate in the development of the
new capitalism. Others contributed their talents, intelligence
and energies to the natural sciences, philosophy and medi-
cine which were developing almost as fast as the new com-
merce.
Among the Spanish Marranos only the rich and educated
were able to pay the ransom for their emigration. The poor
remained in the "old country." They were at last com-
pletely integrated into the population and were soon for-
gotten. But of the Marranos who emigrated, there is much
to remember. In the history of emigration, their story forms
a unique chapter of achievement.
 Chapter Three

Some of the seventeenth-century Marrano emigrants

from Spain and Portugal went to Muslim countries.
But the majority immigrated to the Papal States of Italy and
to other Christian lands, and a particularly large and creative
Jewish community was established by Marranos in the
Netherlands, where Amsterdam became the center of that
country's Jewish population. Because the early days of this
settlement were recorded as a "Memorial for the Coming
Generations" by the community's first rabbi, we have a
good idea of what life was like for this group of immigrants.
Those who went to other countries undoubtedly had similar
experiences.
What was to become one of the cultural centers of
Sephardic Judaism began modestly. As Rabbi Uri Halevi
tells it, he was living in the seaport of Emden in the year
1604, when ten Spanish Marranos and four boys with all
their "wares, furniture and household goods which con-
stituted a large fortune" arrived in two small boats. Above
the door of the rabbi's house was a Hebrew inscription, but
the Spanish immigrants who walked by on a tour of the
66 / Joachim Prinz

city could not read Hebrew. They did, however, notice

that a goose was just being delivered. This inspired them to
return to their inn and ask the innkeeper to buy them a
goose for their dinner. The innkeeper happened to buy the
goose from the rabbi. When he reported to the strangers
that he had bought their dinner from "the Jew," they were
astonished and pleased to have found one of their people,
and the next day, following the innkeeper's direction, they
returned to the house with the Hebrew inscription over the
door and introduced themselves as Marranos. They said
they wanted to have themselves circumcised so that they
could return to the religion of their ancestors, and they
asked the rabbi to help them establish a Jewish community.
Since Emden was a Lutheran stronghold, the rabbi dis-
couraged them from settling there, suggesting instead that
they travel to Amsterdam, rent a house on Junkerstraat
across from the Montalbaan Tower, and wait for him to
arrive within the month. This they did. At the appointed
time the rabbi appeared in Amsterdam, and all ten men and
four boys were circumcised, and a room in the house was
set aside for services.
Yet not all of Amsterdam was hospitable to the new
settlers. Some Flemish citizens complained to the mayor
about the "people from Spain who had themselves circum-
cised by two out-of-town Jews and had set aside a room for
daily prayers." The rabbi and his son were ordered to be
put under arrest. With some difficulty they persuaded the
authorities that the wealthy new immigrants would be an
asset to the city, and that if they were allowed to establish
their Jewish community there, other equally prosperous
settlers would soon follow. Eventually, permission was
granted for the Jews to settle in Amsterdam "with every
67 / The Secret Jews

freedom in the world.... to live in accordance with Jewish

law and religion and to build a house of worship." The
rabbi from Emden became the spiritual leader of the com-
munity, and his son became its cantor.
It was not long until the news of the freedom granted to
the Jews of Amsterdam spread to Spain and Portugal, and
many other Marrano families arrived to take up residence
there. The rabbi circumcised the newly arrived men and
boys, instructing the immigrants in the precepts of Judaism,
and he wrote the rules and bylaws of what became the
Holy Jewish Community of Amsterdam.
The Marranos who immigrated to Amsterdam found the
Dutch to be a sober, industrious and rather adventurous
people, citizens of a nation involved in world affairs, prom-
inent in international trade and tolerant—as we have seen—
toward anyone who could contribute to this new, open and
very commercial community. The Netherlands had gained
its independence from Spain in 1581, but even prior to that
date it had rapidly conquered the world trade market.
Through their control of the East and West India trading
companies, the Dutch were among the most prominent and
successful traders in the world.
Thanks to the painters of that time, we have a graphic
idea of the seventeenth-century Hollander's life, and we
know how he looked. The Breughels depicted the world of
the burgher and farmer; Frans Hals painted portraits that
conveyed the Dutchman's zest for life; Ruisdael made the
heavy skies over the dull Dutch landscape look dramatic;
and most important, Rembrandt broke through the con-
ventional portrait art of his predecessors and discovered the
landscape of the human face, which he painted without
flattery to his subjects. Rembrandt considered the new
68 / Joachim Prinz

Jewish immigrants as the authentic descendants of the great

Biblical figures, and he often used Jews as models for his
remarkable interpretations of the Old and New Testaments.
Amsterdam had become a Protestant bulwark and,
through French Huguenot immigration, largely Calvinistic.
The Calvinist creed which held that prosperity in this
world was an indication of God's favor, fitted admirably
into the enterprising spirit of the time, and so did the new
Marrano immigrants. In this economic, political and cul-
tural climate they developed their own life. Soon they
were an autonomous community with a neighborhood of
their own—the Jodenbreestraat—where Portuguese and
Spanish, rather than the language of the land, were spoken.
Most of the books of the Marrano scholars and writers con-
tinued to be written in their mother tongues or in Latin.
(Other communities created their own Judeo-Spanish
known as Ladino, just as the German Jews who found
refuge in Eastern Europe had created Yiddish from medi-
eval German.) There was evidently no insistence on linguis-
tic assimilation by the Dutch authorities as long as the
Jewish settlers remained law-abiding, productive citizens.
And this they seem to have been.

The growth of the Jewish community was phenomenal.

New Christians, eager to return to Judaism, seemed to come
from everywhere. The promise of religious freedom,
coupled with material success, attracted not only those who
came directly from the Iberian Peninsula, but others who
had already established themselves in North Africa, Italy
and Turkey. Soon Amsterdam was known as the "New
Jerusalem." In addition to those Marranos who came to
declare themselves as Jews, there were some Spanish and
69 / The Secret Jews

Portuguese Christians, notably in the diplomatic commu-

nity, who revealed their Jewish origins and became active in
the numerous Jewish communal activities. Approximately a
hundred Jewish organizations came into being, and in
Amsterdam alone, the number of Marranos who returned to
Judaism had risen to four thousand by the middle of the
seventeenth century.
They established a Jewish school system whose curric-
ulum was so thorough and disciplined that it challenges any
of the Jewish schools of today. They erected synagogues.
Today's visitor to Amsterdam can still admire the Sephardic
synagogue built in 1675. The magnificent mahogany ark
was built with wood sent to Amsterdam by Marranos who
had settled in Pernambuco, one of the many Marrano com-
munities in Brazil. There were two additional houses of
worship and both were luxuriously decorated to reflect the
prosperity of the congregations. It is reported that a wed-
ding held in one of these, in the seventeenth century, was
attended by guests whose combined wealth was estimated
at forty million florins.
But in spite of this growth and prosperity, for many of
the Marrano immigrants of the seventeenth century the re-
turn to Judaism had created doubts and conflicts. It was, of
course, not their exile that made them unique; Jews have
always been immigrants. Throughout their history they
were forced to leave countries which had been their home-
lands for centuries. Often they had to find new homes not
in the country of their choice, but in any land that would
accept them. They had to make difficult economic and
linguistic adjustments, but slowly they rebuilt their lives.
And however desperate their poverty, however rigorous
their new life, the Jews usually managed to transfer their
70/ Joachim Prinz

heritage virtually intact to the new world, wherever it was.

The self-contained little societies they founded provided
them with sustenance and security. It may not have been
home, but to the new immigrant it looked very much like
home. His wife cooked the familiar old-world specialties; in
time there was probably a replica of the little synagogue he
had left behind, and the new congregation was, more often
than not, made up of friends and relatives who had emi-
grated with him. The things that had formed his spiritual
life in the past had not changed much. Whatever difficulties
he experienced in the outside world, on his own ethnic
island the immigrant was safe. His poverty may have been
appalling, but he found compensation in the rich heritage
which had always been central to his life.
This was not true of the Marranos who left Spain and
Portugal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though
in their case the adjustment to the outside world may have
been easier because they did not have to contend with pov-
erty, in regard to their Jewishness they were virtually bank-
rupt. They had declared that they wanted to live as Jews,
but they had no heritage to transfer to the new world; they
had forsaken their homes, but they had left no little shul or
synagogue behind. They had, at best, only a very limited
notion, a distorted memory, of what it meant to be Jewish.
For three generations they had been Catholics without faith,
and now they were Jews without knowledge. The religion
to which they were so eager to return was, in reality, quite
foreign to them.
There had been waves of Marranic immigration dating
back to 1492, and the character of each of these exiles was
different. The Marranos who left Spain and Portugal in the
fifteenth century, perhaps only a decade after conversion to
Christianity, had experienced Jewish life, knew Hebrew and
71 / The Secret Jews

were, on the whole, quite knowledgeable about Jewish laws

and observance. So if the seventeenth-century immigrants
were ignorant of Jewish customs and practices, the
Sephardic centers to which they came afforded them ample
opportunity for a religious re-education. In each of them
they found a knowledgeable Jew, like the rabbi of Emden,
who instructed them in Jewish law. But often, and
especially for the intellectuals among them, the facts of
Jewish life were quite different from what they had ex-
pected.
Traditionally, the Jews of Spain had practiced a Judaism
that was much freer, more flexible, than that observed by the
Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. The religion of the
Sephardim in exile, however, was unbendingly restrictive
and intolerant of any deviation from Orthodox practice.
Having recently returned from what they considered to have
been Christian idolatry, the Sephardim, no doubt, felt that
they had to prove good faith again and again. Obedience to
the strictest rules was a prerequisite of Jewish survival for a
people who had been professing—and often believing—
Catholics. Even some of the outstanding Sephardic rabbis
were not more than one generation removed from Chris-
tianity. So they were very conscious of the Orthodox estab-
lishment of the Eastern ghetto and felt that they were under
the scrutiny of the rabbis of Brest Litovsk, Vilna and other
Ashkenazic centers; these rabbis were, after all, not "re-
turnees" to Judaism and were therefore considered repre-
sentatives of authoritative, authentic faith. So while the
Sephardim added some Spanish embellishments to the tradi-
tional rituals, they took their cues from the Orthodox rabbis
of the East and often consulted them on questions of reli-
gious practice.
The overwhelming majority of the seventeenth-century
72 / Joachim Prinz

immigrants, accustomed to Catholic authoritarianism, well-

defined doctrines and enforced theological discipline, prob-
ably found nothing objectionable in an equally compulsive
Judaism. The flight from rigid Catholicism to Jewish re-
strictiveness must have seemed quite natural to them. Some
Sephardic customs even contained faint echoes of Catholic
rituals. To this day, for instance, the Sephardi throws a kiss
at the Holy Ark as he enters the synagogue, gesturing with
a reverence similar to that of the Catholic who kneels and
crosses himself as he approaches the altar of his church. On
the whole, then, the "returning" Marranos felt quite at
home in the Sephardic synagogue with its solemnity and its
churchlike formality. Most of them also found security in
the six hundred and thirteen commandments and pro-
hibitions which were the backbone of Orthodox Jewish
existence.
But there was an important minority which had doubts.
Some simply had difficulty in understanding the Jewish
precepts and the kind of Judaism which had developed
during the decades of their family's Catholic existence.
Others suffered from a more complicated religious dilemma
which was, in part, a reflection of the time in which they
lived.
The seventeenth century was an era of doubt and con-
flict. At the center of religious life there were three clearly
defined orbits of faith: the Catholic Church, freshly in-
vigorated by the Counter Reformation which met the chal-
lenge of Martin Luther with new fervor and increased
emphasis on the Church doctrines; the new religious phe-
nomenon of Protestantism in its various forms, including
groups similar to the Calvinists who were very active in the
new capitalist era, but as stubborn in their beliefs as the
75 / The Secret Jews

Catholics; and the Jews, not very many in number, but

bent on preserving the ancient traditions, a task in which
they were assisted by the isolation of the ghetto. These
three worlds were firmly established. Their adherents found
security in their respective faith world: the Christians in sin
and salvation, the Jews in law and justice. All three were in
clear conflict with the new intellectual world of the times
and with its newly born skepticism.
While the vast majority of the world's population still
held fast to its religious convictions, the intellectuals of
Venice, Florence, Paris and Amsterdam began to have
doubts about the blind acceptance of religious dogma.
Science began to replace God. The new man of the seven-
teenth century lived in the sphere of sic et non ("yes as
well as no") upon which Pierre Abélard had speculated in
the twelfth century. Some of the intellectuals among the
Marranos had come in contact with this new, questioning
world, and their personal Jewish problem was, to a large
extent, a similar conflict. They were also faced with a "yes
and no" choice. They were no-longer Christians, but not-
yet Jews. Their inability to come to terms with this prob-
lem brought them into discord with existing Jewish com-
munities and into sharp differences with the rabbinical
world, which could not tolerate them.
In 1660 Isaac Orobio de Castro, himself a Marrano and
therefore abler than most to analyze the Jewish-Marrano
conflict, described the situation in Amsterdam. What he
observed is applicable to other cities in which Marranos
lived. De Castro first praises these Marranos "who have left
the idolatry [of Spain and Portugal], who undergo circum-
cision as soon as they arrive, love God's law and are eager
to learn that which they and their ancestors had forgotten
74 / Joachim Prinz

during the years of their imprisonment." He admires their

humility and their eagerness to listen to those who are
knowledgeable and able to explain the meaning of Judaism
of which they know so little. But for some of the Marranos
he has only a severe admonition:
There is another group that returns to Judaism who indulges
in the idolatries of logic, metaphysics and medicine. They are
not less ignorant about the Divine Law than the others, but
they are full of vanity, haughtiness and a sense of superiority
because they believe they know everything although, of course,
they know not the most essential. They place themselves under
the happy yoke of Judaism and begin to listen to our explana-
tions. But their vanity and so-called superiority prevents them
from accepting our teachings. They use sophistic arguments
against everything that is sacred and divine, only for the pur-
pose of appearing to be witty, scientific and intellectually keen.
The trouble is, that the young and the ignorant admire them
and follow suit. They all land quickly in the abyss of atheism
and apostasy.
Neither the Sephardic nor the Ashkenazic rabbinical
authorities displayed patience with these apostates. They
called for their excommunication. The Ashkenazim, who
were consulted in such cases, judged these troubled "New
Jews" with customary rigidity, leaving no room for a con-
sideration of the psychological problems of a Jewish con-
vert who had lived under the Cross for many generations
and had come in contact with the new Renaissance world
dominating the intellectuals of that time. (Among these
"deviates," for example, were several physicians who viewed
Jewish customs and beliefs as medieval, since they had been
trained in the new natural sciences, which often conflicted
with Jewish doctrines.) The Sephardic rabbis, some of
whom had lived under the Inquisition or had lost relatives
75 / The Secret Jews

to the autos-da-fé, were even more severe. It is understand-

able that they had to watch over the purity of their new
faith, but they lacked the compassion which might have
helped greatly in overcoming the conflicts of conscience
and conviction which plagued so many of the Marranos. As
survivors of the Inquisition, the rabbis could have been ex-
pected to practice understanding and forgiveness. Instead,
they created their own Jewish form of Inquisition, replete
with informers, and although they did not kill the trans-
gressors, they demolished their lives through the pronounce-
ment of the herem, the official excommunication.
In contrast to their harsh attitudes toward those who
deviated from strict Orthodox interpretations of the Jewish
law, the rabbinical community was rather liberal when it
came to accepting "returning" Marranos. We know of no
case of rejection of any of those who wanted to return to
Judaism, even though they had lived "in sin" for genera-
tions, unable and often unwilling to commemorate the
highest Jewish holidays, the dietary laws and many other
Jewish rituals. "An Israelite, although he had sinned, is still
an Israelite," the rabbis said in an astonishingly generous
interpretation. All the Christian practices, the prayers in the
Church, the Hail Marys and Pater Nosters, were wiped out
in that one sentence, as were the infractions of the dietary
laws and other sins against the Jewish faith. A Marrano who
expressed a readiness to return from his "Babylonian exile"
was accepted without question. But once he returned to
Judaism, the strict law applied to him. Any deviation from
Jewish belief received the harshest of penalties, solemn pub-
lic excommunication from the community.

Uriel da Costa and Baruch Spinoza are the two outstanding

cases of public excommunication from the great Marrano
76 / Joachim Prinz

community of Amsterdam. Their lives and their fate present

us with two extreme examples of what it meant to be a
secret Jew who returned to his people. Although an artist
of the nineteenth century painted Da Costa as a grown
man playing with a child who was supposed to be Spinoza,
the two probably never met. They are shown together, no
doubt, because their common fate has linked them in his-
tory, though we remember Da Costa only because of his
excommunication.
Uriel da Costa was born in Portugal in 1585 into a family
that had converted to Christianity in the fifteenth century.
From 1604 to 1608 he was a student at the Collegium
Coimbrese, a college of the Jesuit University of Coimbra,
where he studied canonical law. He received the first con-
secration of a priest as a young man of twenty-five and was
elected treasurer of the main church in his hometown of
Oporto. Five years later he fled to Amsterdam with his
mother, Sarah, and his four brothers, Aaron, Mordecai,
Abraham and Joseph. What prompted him to leave his
homeland so that he could return to the religion of his
Jewish forefathers is best described by Da Costa himself in
the moving autobiography he called Exemplar Humanae
Vitae ("Example of a Human Life"). This is the beginning
of that remarkable document:
I was born in Portugal in the city which bears the name of
the country and which is usually called Oporto. My parents
were members of the nobility. They were descendants of those
Jews who were once upon a time in this very country forced
to embrace the Christian religion. My father was a believing
Christian, but a man of strict honor who emphasized his rank
and station in life. It was in this house that I grew up in ac-
cordance with his status. We never lacked for servants, neither
77 / The Secret Jews

did we lack for noble Spanish horses in our stables which we

used for horseback riding. My father was a master at it, and I
followed his example early in life. After undergoing training in
many fields in accordance with tradition among people of our
standing, I decided to devote myself to jurisprudence. . . . It
is unbelievable what I had to suffer because of religion. Accord-
ing to the tradition of the country I grew up in the Roman
Catholic religion, and since I was terribly afraid of eternal
damnation, I was very eager to observe the tradition punctili-
ously. I occupied myself with the reading of the New Testa-
ment and other spiritual books, read the summation of the
Defenders of the Faith, and the more I thought of them the
greater were the difficulties I experienced. Finally, I became
completely confused. I was consumed by fear and anxiety, by
sorrow and pain. It seemed to me impossible to confess the sins
in accordance with Roman Catholic custom so as to obtain
proper absolution, and I found it impossible to fulfill what was
demanded. I was desperate thinking of the redemption of the
soul, as it was indeed true that it could only be achieved by
following the rules of the Roman Church. But because I found
it difficult to give up a religion to which I was accustomed
since birth and which had deeply affected me in my faith, I
began to doubt at the age of twenty-two whether it was really
true what I was taught of the life to come. I tried to reconcile
faith with reason, for it was reason which whispered into my
ear something utterly irreconcilable with faith....
Since I could not find any peace within the Roman Catholic
religion, and since I was longing to find some satisfaction in
any religion, I began to read the Books of Moses and the
Prophets, knowing full well that there was great competition
between Jew and Christian. In the Old Testament I found
many things which contradicted the New Testament com-
pletely, and what was said of God there offered fewer diffi-
culties. In addition to this, the old covenant is accepted by
78 / Joachim Prinz

Jews as well as Christians, and the new one only by Christians.

Finally I began to believe in Moses and decided to live accord-
ing to his law because he received it from God, or so he main-
tained, and he simply considered himself an intermediary called
to his office by God himself or even forced into it.
Considering all this and taking into consideration the fact
that in the country in which I lived there was no freedom of
religion, I decided to change my residence and to leave the
home in which I and my fathers had lived. I did not think
twice about giving up my ecclesiastical office and relinquishing
it to somebody else. I did not think of either my advantage or
my reputation which were in jeopardy at that time. I left my
beautiful house situated in the best neighborhood of the city, a
house which was built by my father. So we embarked on a ship
under the greatest danger, for it is known that those descended
from Jews were not permitted to leave the country without a
particular permit by the king. My mother was with me, as well
as my brothers, whom I had won over to my newly won con-
victions about religion. It was a daring enterprise which could
have failed, so dangerous was it in this country to even discuss
matters of religion. It was a long voyage, and we finally ar-
rived in Amsterdam, where we felt the Jews could live in
freedom and fulfill the commandments. And since I was im-
bued with it, my brothers and I immediately submitted to
circumcision.
After the first few days I began to understand that the cus-
toms and institutions of the Jews were not at all in accordance
with what Moses had written. If Moses' commandments had
to be observed strictly as written, then the Jews were wrong
to have invented so many things which deviated from the laws
of Moses. I believed in doing something pleasing to God if I
defended freely and openly the law of Moses. The present-day
sages of the Jews have maintained both their customs and their
evil character. They still fight stubbornly for the sect and the
79 / The Secret Jews

institution of the despicable Pharisees not entirely unselfishly,

for it is true what many people have said, that they do all
these things in order to sit in the first row of the temple and
to be greeted in the market place with particular respect. They
would not permit me to deviate from their opinion in the
slightest, but indicated to me that it was my duty to accept
every little bit of their interpretation. If I would not do so,
they said, they would have to threaten me with exclusion from
the community, and indeed with complete excommunication,
both in terms of theology and human relations. I believe it was
not right for a man who had exchanged security at home for
freedom abroad, and who had sacrificed every possible advan-
tage to permit himself to be so threatened. I believe that in the
light of such circumstances it was neither right nor fair nor
manly to submit to people who were not even permitted to sit
in judgment in a court. So I decided to take everything upon
myself and insist upon my opinion. This is the reason why I
was excommunicated by the community. Even my brothers,
whose teacher I was, passed me by, so afraid were they of the
authorities that they did not even greet me on the street.
Like many of their contemporaries, Da Costa's family
knew only that they were New Christians, Christians of
Jewish descent. But "my father was a believing Christian,"
Da Costa tells us. And so was he himself until he began to
doubt the validity of Christian theology. His concept of
Judaism was based on his reading of the Old Testament,
which he found more acceptable than the New Testament.
So when he left Portugal for Amsterdam in search of his
ancestors' faith, he had expected to find a Biblical Judaism
which, of course, no longer existed.
There have been several fundamentalist Jewish sects
which insisted that Judaism be based on Biblical writings
and the observance only of Biblical commandments. At the
80 / Joachim Prinz

time of Jesus the aristocratic Sadducees insisted on this kind

of adherence to the written law; in the early Middle Ages
the Karaites lived in accordance with the commandments of
the Torah and rejected any new interpretation of what they
considered divine law. Da Costa was a throwback to the
Sadducees and the Karaites. Soon after his arrival in Am-
sterdam he realized that the Judaism of the Sephardim and
Ashkenazim had little in common with the Biblical ideal for
which he was searching. In the course of the centuries,
Judaism has become interpreted law. It had become a
rabbinical faith built upon the authoritative interpretations
of the written law by the rabbi who insisted that even such
a well-known commandment as "Thou shah keep the Sab-
bath" could not be understood without the rabbinical com-
mentary which defined the observance of the holy day.
It was the historical reality of Judaism that Da Costa and
many of his fellow Marranos found hard to accept. Since
they had not been part of the historic development of their
faith, they depended on the Bible for their information
about it. The rabbi is not mentioned in the Old Testament,
and in Da Costa's reading of the New Testament he had
apparently overlooked the new rabbinical Judaism which
was personified by Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, who fought
against the Pharisees.
Samuel da Silva—the physician and Jewish scholar who
had attended Da Costa's circumcision, taught him Judaism
and introduced him to the synagogue—did not have any in-
sight into this serious, yet naive young man and did not
make him understand the realities of contemporary Jewish
practice. Later Da Silva even wrote an angry thesis against
his former pupil.
There was something masochistic about Da Costa, and
81 / The Secret Jews

although one is often deeply touched by the calamities to

which he was subjected, one sometimes suspects him of hav-
ing actually enjoyed them. This may be a harsh judgment;
yet his refusal to learn and accept the reality of Jewish life
(even without identifying it) is astounding. It speaks not
merely of stubbornness, but perhaps also of a lack of simple
intelligence. Spinoza, who had deeper doubts about Judaism,
drew the consequences: he disapproved and left it. Da Costa
wanted to change two thousand years of history. Even the
most naive should have anticipated fierce resistance on the
part of the religious establishment. The result was a tor-
tured, frustrated, desperate life and an even more hopeless
end.
In addition to his autobiography, two of Da Costa's writ-
ings have survived, each of which caused an immediate con-
temporary response. His "Theses Against Tradition" (Pro-
postas contra a tradiçao) and "On the Immortality of the
Human Soul" (Sobre a mortalidade de alma do homen)
both touched and wounded the fundamental concerns of
Orthodox Judaism. In both books his source is the Bible.
Nowhere in the Bible, he claims, does he find justification
for most of the practiced Jewish customs, nor does the Bible
speak of resurrection or immortality of the soul. His two
contentions are correct, but the customs had grown out of
the daily life of the Jews of which Da Costa knew nothing.
The "Theses Against Tradition" was written while Da
Costa was on a mission attending to the family's banking
business in Hamburg. He forwarded some of his first anti-
rabbinical theses, dealing with phylacteries, circumcision,
dietary laws and other Jewish customs, through one of the
bank's messengers to León da Modena, the chief rabbi of
Venice, one of the richest and most influential Jewish com-
82 / Joachim Prinz

munities. No doubt the bank negotiated many business

transactions in that city and was in communication with
fellow Marranos in the banking business. The response was
immediate and negative. The chief rabbi of Venice refuted
all of his arguments. Neither Da Costa nor the Jews of
Venice knew how many doubts had beset Da Modena's
soul. He had written a passionate book against gambling,
one of the pastimes of the people of Venice in which the
Jews lustily participated. After his death he was discovered
to have been a very active gambler himself, with consider-
able gambling debts which had to be paid by the commu-
nity. However, during his lifetime he was respected as a
great Sephardic rabbinical authority. He recommended Da
Costa's excommunication to the rabbis of Hamburg, and
since Da Costa had already left for the Netherlands he was
excommunicated in absentia in Venice. In Amsterdam,
where he wrote his tractate against the immortality of the
soul, he did not fare much better:

A boy, actually the son of my sister who lived with me,

went to the community leaders and accused me of earing food
which was not in accordance with Jewish law, and said that I
could not possibly be a Jew. It is because of this denunciation
that a new war against me ensued. That cousin who [had
previously] intervened on my behalf . . . claimed this could be
interpreted to my disadvantage, and since he was very proud
and pretentious, in addition to being ignorant and impudent,
he began an open war against me, causing all my brothers to
side with him. . . . In addition to this domestic war, a public
war ensued which was carried on by the rabbis and the people.
They began to persecute me with a new hatred and did so
many things against me that I could only react with utter and
justified contempt.
83 / The Secret Jews

In the meantime something new happened. By chance I had

a conversation with two people who came from London to
Amsterdam, one an Italian and the other a Spaniard. They
were Christians and not of Jewish descent. After I explained
my situation to them, they asked my advice about admission
into the Jewish community and conversion to the Jewish re-
ligion. I advised them against both, telling them to remain
what they were, as they did not know what kind of yoke they
were about to be burdened with. However, I asked them not
to mention our conversation to the Jews, and they promised
they would not. But these scoundrels betrayed me, thinking of
nothing but their own gain, which they hoped they would re-
ceive as a token of gratitude from my dear friends, the Phari-
sees. As soon as they learned about my conversation, the elders
of the synagogue met with the rabbis, who were hot with
anger. The mob that had assembled there during the meeting
cried out: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" I was invited to appear
before the Great Council. There I was told with great solem-
nity, as though we were talking about a matter of life and
death, that if I was a Jew I should await their judgment and
act accordingly. If I was not a Jew, they would again excom-
municate me. . . . Then they read from a document in which
it was written that I had to appear in the synagogue wearing
garments of mourning and holding a black candle in my hand,
repeating certain horrible words in public assembly that my
action was depicted as outrageous and sacrilegious. I then was
supposed to be publicly whipped with a leather whip, after to
lie down over the threshold of the synagogue so that everyone
assembled there could walk across my body. In addition, I was
held to fast on certain days. Upon reading this document I was
boiling inside, and an unquenchable anger seized me. However,
I controlled myself and simply replied that I could not possibly
be expected to do all this. After hearing me out they decided
to again excommunicate me from the Jewish community. Some
84 / Joachim Prinz

were evidently not satisfied with such judgment and spat at me

when they saw me in the street, among them being children
who had learned such behavior from their parents.

We do not know the exact number of excommunications

imposed on Da Costa. It may be that he was also excom-
municated by some of the Ashkenazic East European com-
munities. It is unthinkable that the Ashkenazim would have
been silent about Da Costa when even Venice demanded
the ban.
The ceremony itself was painful. It did not reconcile Da
Costa. Had he been more courageous, or at least wiser, he
would have severed his relationship with the Jews alto-
gether. But this he did not do. In spite of the excommunica-
tion he returned to his splendid home and persisted in a
battle which seems as childish as Don Quixote's attacks on
the windmills. He lived in material prosperity and independ-
ence, but in incredible loneliness and self-torture. His
wife, Sarah, had died but he found it impossible to remarry.
After the final excommunication his brothers shunned him
altogether. A faithful housekeeper was his only companion.
There were no visitors. He lived that way, in dismal
wretchedness and misery, for seven years. Finally, although
he had not come to any salvation for himself, he decided to
ask for reconciliation. He apparently did not realize how
deeply denigrating the ceremony of reconciliation would
be. He describes it in one of the most moving chapters of
his Exemplar Humanae Vitae:
I entered the synagogue, which was crowded with men and
women who had come to observe this spectacle. When the
time came I went to the pulpit from which the rabbi used to
preach, and I read in a loud voice the list of my confessions:
85 / The Secret Jews

"I merit to die a thousand deaths for what I have committed,

to wit: desecration of the Sabbath, betrayal of the faith which
I insulted to such an extent that I prevented others from con-
verting to Judaism." In order to repent for my sins I would
submit to whatever they decide about me and carry every
burden laid upon me. I also promised that I would never again
repeat all the treacherous acts I had committed. After reading
the confession I descended from the altar and the president of
the community approached me, whispering in my ear that I
was to stand in any of the corners of the synagogue. Going to
one of the corners, the sexton approached me and asked me to
strip off my clothes. I disrobed to my waist, wrapped a scarf
around my head, took off my shoes, and stretched out my arms
so that they touched one of the columns of the synagogue.
The sexton then tied my hands with ropes to the column. The
cantor came, and with a leather whip he was given, beat me
39 times according to the law which provides for 40 lashes.
But these people are so conscientious they are afraid they
might give me more than the law states. While he whipped me
I recited the psalm. When this was over I sat down on the
floor and the rabbi came, releasing me from the ban of excom-
munication as though at this moment the gates of heaven had
opened up for me which hitherto had been locked. Then I
dressed, and lay down again over the threshold of the syna-
gogue while the sexton held my head. Following this, all the
people, men and women, walked over me and out into the
street. There were children among them, and also old people.
No monkey could have invented a more despicable, tasteless
and ridiculous action. Afterward when everybody had left I
rose and someone helped me get the dust off my clothes, so
that no one should say that I was not treated honorably. Al-
though they had whipped me just a short time ago, they ex-
pressed their pity for me and patted my head, and I went
home.
86 / Joachim Prinz

The autobiography ends with this passage:

This then is the true story of my life. This is the role I
played in this vain theater called the world, in my own vain
and restive life. Now I expect to be charged jusdy by people,
jusdy and without passion, and in the kind of freedom which
calls for truth. For this is what behooves men who are men of
truth. If you find in my story something which awakens your
pity, then you should recognize and bemoan that sad lot of
man, for you are part of it.
So that everything is said and nothing is omitted, the name
which I bore in Portugal while I was yet a Christian was Ga-
briel da Costa. When I came to the Jews—I should never have
come to them—I changed my name slightly. Today I am called
Uriel.
In spite of his reconciliation with the Jewish establish-
ment, Da Costa could not truthfully return to his family,
his banking business and the Marrano community as though
nothing had happened. He would never forget the humilia-
tion of the ceremony in the synagogue, nor would those
who had trampled over him, nor the man who had admin-
istered the thirty-nine lashes. So Da Costa saw no way out.
Sometime during his seven years of despair Da Costa had
bought a pistol. Now he used it to end his life.
In the cemetery in Oudekerk which the Marranos had
acquired in 1614 there are many Da Costas, but Uriel's
grave is not among them. Because Da Costa was a suicide he
was probably interred in an unmarked grave. As he had
planned, the Exemplar Humanae Vitae became his last will
and testament. Reading it now, three hundred years later,
we are still moved. It is a bitter document, a story of human
woe and vanity, misery, sorrow, stubbornness and frustra-
tion. But it is also an example of a very special human life
87 / The Secret Jews

whose form was dictated by the conflict of being a "New

Christian" and a secret Jew.

Baruch Spinoza was only eight years old in 1640 when

these events took place. He may have been one of the many
children at Da Costa's ceremony of reconciliation. He may
even have been one of those who walked over his body as
he lay prostrate on the threshold. No one knows. Just six-
teen years later, the same solemn herem, excommunication,
was pronounced on Spinoza, banishing him from the Jewish
community of Amsterdam just as it had excluded Da Costa.
But here the parallel between the two men ends. Spinoza's
response to his excommunication was as different from Da
Costa's as the two men themselves were different. Once he
was excommunicated, Spinoza, the great philosopher, devel-
oped his rich intellectual life in complete isolation from the
Jewish community which had banned him. Da Costa, who
had given up everything to become a Jew, could not live
with his exclusion. They were both victims of the same
narrow-mindedness, but neither in their lives nor in their
temperaments were they at all similar.
The ban against Spinoza was announced on July 27, 1656,
in the hearing of the assembled congregation of the com-
munity of Amsterdam. It was preceded by a short introduc-
tion:
"The leaders of the Jewish community herewith inform you
that for a long time they have had knowledge of the evil opin-
ions and actions of Baruch de Espinoza. Through various means
and promises we have endeavored to persuade him to leave his
evil paths. We could not see any improvement in his terrible
heretic thoughts which he lived and taught, and horrendous ac-
tions which he committed, about which we received information
88 / Joachim Prinz

every day from many trustworthy witnesses. The statements

of the witnesses were made in the presence of the aforesaid
Espinoza. As all this was done in the presence of our rabbis, who
confirmed that these statements had been made, we decided
with rabbinical approval that the aforementioned Spinoza be
banned and removed from the household of Israel as we now
and herewith place the following ban on him:
"In accordance with the decisions of the angels and the judg-
ment of the saints, we ban, expel, and curse Baruch de Espinoza,
with the approval of the holy God and this entire congrega-
tion. This is done in the presence of our sacred Books of the
Law containing the 613 commandments and prohibitions. We
ban him with the same ban which was pronounced by Joshua
over the city of Jericho, and with the same curses which the
Prophet Elishah pronounced over the young man, and with all
the curses which are inscribed in the Law. Cursed be he during
the day and cursed be he during the night. Cursed be he when
he lies down and cursed be he when he returns. God will never
pardon him. The anger and wrath of God will always descend
on this man and bring all the curses which are written in the
Book of the Law. God will destroy his name under the heaven
and for evil will he eliminate him from all the tribes of Israel,
with all the curses of heaven which are written in the Book of
the Law. And you who adhere to the Lord your God will live
today and forever.
"We herewith decree that nobody is permitted to communi-
cate with him either directly or in writing, that nobody may
do him any favors and that nobody may be permitted to dwell
with him under the same roof or approach him within four
cubits. Nobody is permitted to read any of his writings pub-
lished or written by him."

Spinoza was not in the synagogue when the ban was read,
nor did he attempt a reconciliation with the congregation.
89 / The Secret Jews

For some time he had had nothing in common with the

community. He was no longer tied by nostalgia, sentiment
or loyalty to this group of people whose beliefs he no
longer shared. His Hebrew name, Baruch, means "blessed."
Now he simply took its Latin equivalent: Benedict. Clearly
he did not consider the excommunication as a sign that he
was no longer favored by God.
Very few portraits of Spinoza have survived. The most
revealing would have been the self-portrait he is known to
have painted but which, along with his other drawings and
paintings, has been lost. According to Johannes Colerus,
one of his biographers, Spinoza was of "medium size, a man
with finely cut features. It was easy to see that he was a
Portuguese Jew. . . . the color of his skin was swarthy, his
hair was long and his eyebrows black." But although
Spinoza looked like a Jew and was by birth and training a
Sephardi, in this respect as in others his thinking did not fit
into the rigid mold demanded by the leaders of the Marrano
community. How, then, did this young man of twenty-four
come to be accused both of "terrible heretic thoughts" and
"horrendous actions"?

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam into a Jewish

family, but he was a Marrano. The family had fled Spain
and journeyed to Portugal and France. We do not know how
many of them practiced Judaism illegally, but we do know
that they arrived in Amsterdam at the beginning of the
seventeenth century and were converted according to the
law of Moses. The immigrants left many members of the
family behind in Spain and Portugal. Eight of them were
later incarcerated by the Inquisition for practicing Jewish
customs. However, another relative, Don Diego de Espinoza,
90/ Joachim Prinz

was made a Grand Inquisitor in spite of his Jewish ancestry.

The family's first home was in the Jodenbuurt, near the
river Amstel. They later moved to another house, near the
Hourgracht, not far from Neveh Shalom, the Portuguese
synagogue, where both Abraham Spinoza, Baruch's grand-
father, and Michael, his father, held honorary positions.
Abraham was the .administrator of the Jewish cemetery
(where all the Spinozas except Baruch are buried), and
Michael was the chairman of the Monte de Piedad, a free-
loan society for poor Marranos. Michael did fairly well in
his business, and the Spinozas lived comfortably.
The atmosphere in the house was Marranic. The lan-
guage was Portuguese. The dishes which were served had
nothing in common with the cuisine of the Netherlands.
There were constant arrivals from "home," and the prob-
lems of adjustment to the new country and to the Jewish
laws and customs were discussed around the table.
The family also had terrible personal problems. When
Baruch was only six, his mother died. She had been his
father's second wife. Twice married, he was twice
widowed. Of six children, only Baruch and his half-sister
Rebecca survived. But personal tragedy was accepted as
the natural lot of the Marranos, who had lived with tragedy
for so long. The daily stories reported in great detail about
the trials, the autos-de-fé and the martyrdom of relatives
and friends. Jacob Freudenthal, the nineteenth-century
philosopher who devoted his life to the interpretation of
Spinoza's life and philosophy, writes:
Spinoza learned daily the tragic history and suffering of his
people. There was hardly a family in Amsterdam which did
not count many of its members or ancestors as martyrs. Many
of those who had come to Amsterdam as Marranos had spent
91/ The Secret Jews

agonizing years in the prisons of the Inquisition. Mennaseh ben

Israel, Spinoza's teacher, arrived in Amsterdam with his body
severely maimed by torture.... every household in the Jooden-
buurt recited bloody stories of inhuman suffering. . . . the les-
sons Spinoza learned from all this were only too clear. . . . He
learned of the unspeakable consequences of intolerance and
hatred. . . . and of the victory of the spirit over brutal force.
. . . and utmost contempt for the kind of pious fanaticism
which had forced his people to embrace a faith in which they
could not believe.
The young Spinoza attended the famous Marrano school,
which required punctual and regular attendance from eight
to eleven in the morning and from two to five in the after-
noon. The "free time" had to be used for preparing for the
difficult classes. The teachers were scholars of international
reputation. Three of them had a great influence on Baruch
Spinoza: Isaac Aboab de Fonseca was the scion of a famous
Marrano family. A poet and scholar, he was also a student
of the Cabala and a secret believer in the Messianic move-
ment of Shabtai Zvi, the false Messiah. For a while he was
the rabbi of the Jewish community of Pernambuco, Brazil,
and, as such, he was the first rabbi in the New World.
Another teacher was Saul Levi Morteira, an Italian Jew,
brought up by Marrano parents. In addition to being a
teacher, he was a member of the Beth Din, the Jewish court
which excommunicated Spinoza. The third, the most color-
ful and the best-known of his teachers and also a member of
the court, was Manasseh ben Israel, a Marrano who was
born Manoel Dias Soeiro.
Baruch Spinoza was an extraordinary student. That he
mastered the Bible and its medieval commentaries can be
taken for granted, but his main interest was philosophy. His
92 / Joachim Prinz

own philosophical system was to be profoundly influenced

by the medieval Jewish philosophers whose works he
studied as a young boy in the Marrano school. All of them
were Sephardic Jews whose philosophies had been largely
determined by the Greeks, particularly Aristotle and Plato.
The most famous of these Jewish thinkers, Moses
Maimonides, applied the rational principles of Aristotle to
traditional Judaism and had accepted reason as the yard-
stick, even for theological notions. Although he had lived
in the twelfth century, Maimonides' system was not in con-
flict with the rationalism of Descartes which was so influen-
tial in the developing Renaissance three hundred years later.
But for all its excellence, the curriculum of the Marrano
school included neither the philosophy of Descartes nor
any courses in the natural sciences. For this, Spinoza had to
look elsewhere.
He began to attend private classes given by Franciscus
van den Enden, an ex-Jesuit, physician, philologist, diplo-
mat and bookseller who was to become his lifelong friend
as well as his teacher. Van den Enden was a member of a
freethinking Christian sect, the Collegiants, who worshiped
without clergy or ritual. With his hunchbacked daughter
Clara he taught Spinoza mathematics, physics, mechanics,
astronomy, chemistry and medicine. Spinoza also learned
Latin at Van den Enden's school, with Clara as his special
tutor.
As he began to expand his intellectual horizons and give
expression to his developing ideas, Spinoza attracted a circle
of disciples, not merely among Jewish but even more among
Christian intellectuals. With several members of the Col-
legiants, Spinoza began his intensive study of Descartes
which culminated in his first published work. But even be-
fore any of his writings had been published, the number of
93 / The Secret Jews

his students grew, drawn perhaps as much to Spinoza the

man as they were to his ideas.
When he was still a student at the Marrano school
Spinoza had studied the writings of the twelfth-century
Jewish philosopher Abraham Ibn Ezra, in which he read the
sentences that became the cornerstone of his thinking:
"God is the One who is the All. He is in everything and
everything is in Him." Spinoza interpreted these statements
as a kind of pantheistic theology which had little in com-
mon with the stern monotheism of Jewish Orthodoxy. To
Spinoza, "He is in everything" meant a God-centered uni-
verse in which God was identical with Nature. His God
was neither the God of the Church nor of the Synagogue.
It was not a God who needed prayer or demanded ritual.
Spinoza's God was the "center of all things," not the direc-
tor of an institution.
Spinoza had become a "God-intoxicated man." Later,
philosophers spoke in admiration about his mathematical
system, but the real source of Spinoza's philosophy was his
idea of God. His Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was the
first attempt ever made at a critical analysis of the Bible. It
was not published until after his excommunication (anony-
mously), but it contained the religious creed which he
espoused to his students and which was considered heret-
ical: "All our knowledge and our certainties depend solely
upon our recognition of God's existence. If we had no clear
conception of God, we must begin to doubt everything.
The more we understand Nature, the more complete is our
understanding of God. Our most precious possession is cog-
nition and understanding. Our happiness depends upon our
knowledge of God. But cognition is amor dei, the love of
God."
In a man of such profound piety, the ban must have
94 / Joachim Prinz

evoked nothing but pity for the religious bureaucracy of a

community of men of very small stature. Indeed, it is hard
to understand why Spinoza, so profoundly influenced by
his Jewish heritage, should have been subjected to excom-
munication. As a matter of fact, by the time the ban was
pronounced on Spinoza, it had lost its significance in most
Jewish communities. Only in Amsterdam, which still
walked the treacherously narrow line between its Catholic
past and its newly acquired Jewish present, was it still in
force.
By 1655 the reputation of Spinoza as a teacher had
spread. It is said that several of his Jewish students testified
about his teachings to the Jewish community, but this can-
not be proved. It was also rumored that the community
offered him a stipend for life if he would retire to a quiet
place to think by himself and discontinue the meetings with
the students. It was not only the teaching of what they con-
sidered heresy that disturbed the Orthodox minds; it was
the additional fear that Spinoza's pantheistic idea of God
and his critical analysis of Scripture would create Christian
animosity against the young and insecure Jewish commu-
nity. There were even whispered reports about an attempt
on Spinoza's life instigated by the Jewish community,
but for this, also, we have no documentary proof. We only
know that Spinoza would not have accepted the stipend or
been frightened by the assassination attempt.
All during 1655 the heads of the community met with
their spiritual leaders to consider what could be done in
the face of the growing danger of a heresy more alarming
even than Da Costa's. Spinoza was the most brilliant of
their students, the son of one of the most active and highly
respected members of the congregation. For the two schol-
95 / The Secret Jews

ars who were members of the religious court, Isaac Aboab

de Fonseca and Manasseh ben Israel, both proud of their
most promising student, it must have been an agonizing and
conscience-ridden battle. But the decision was finally made.
Ironically, during the year just preceding his excommu-
nication, Spinoza had faithfully observed the period of
mourning for his father. Although he had come to the con-
clusion that neither ritual nor institutionalized religion had
any validity, for twelve months he daily attended the serv-
ices of the congregation to say Kaddish, the prayer for the
dead, because his father would have wanted it. In the Book
of Contributions of the Jewish community of Amsterdam
can still be found the entry: "On the fifth day of Decem-
ber 1655, the Sabbath of the Hanukkah festival, Baruch
Spinoza contributed six placas [pennies]."
The excommunication ban freed Spinoza from the burden
of such religious responsibilities. He could now devote his
life to philosophy. To him loneliness and banishment meant
serenity and peace and time to work. He lived for a short
time among his Collegiant friends in Ouwerkerk, a village
south of Amsterdam, taught in Van den Enden's school,
and began to write the philosophical books which have
earned him immortality.
He received several other offers to teach. The Elector
Palatine offered him a professorship at the University of
Heidelberg at a salary which must have seemed a fortune
to the impoverished Spinoza. Because the condition for this
great honor was that Spinoza, free in everything, should
refrain from attacking the teachings of "the official religion
prevailing in our realm," he refused the post. When Louis
XIV invited him to the court of Versailles to be the resi-
dent philosopher of the royal household, Spinoza declined
96 / Joachim Prim

the honor. He preferred peace and demanded complete

freedom. He had learned how to grind optical lenses, an
occupation guaranteeing a small compensation. But it was
a profession that may have hastened the end of his life be-
cause the fine dust from the lenses aggravated an inherited
tendency toward tuberculosis, the disease to which he
finally succumbed.
After leaving Ouwerkerk he returned to Amsterdam, and
in 1660 he left his native city. He spent the next three years
in Rijnsburg, headquarters of the Collegiants, and then
moved to Voorburg, near The Hague. In 1670 he moved
to The Hague, and the following year he rented a room in
the house of Hendryk van der Spyck in that city. This was
to be his last home. In spite of the fact that very little was
published under his own name during his lifetime, he had
become one of the sages of the day. Though he had a col-
lection of one hundred and eleven books, his rooms were
humble and bore no physical resemblance to the elegant
salons of the rich Jewish ladies of eighteenth-century Berlin
who attracted the intellectuals of their time. Still, wherever
he lived, the thinkers, philosophers and statesmen, and even
members of high society came to visit and pay homage to
him. Copies of his early writings circulated in Holland and
abroad.
Even the Christian Church, in at least twenty synods,
issued violent reprimands against Spinoza. His Tractatus,
which appeared only under his initials, was known to be
the work of "the unspeakable Jewish heretic Baruch Spi-
noza." But he remained calm and even entered into a philo-
sophical correspondence with one of his most severe critics
whom he assured of his great esteem and understanding.
Yet he was not, as some people depicted him, a man eager
97 / The Secret Jews

to please and ready to forgive. In his later life he often dis-

played the fire of his convictions and a readiness to fight for
them. When, in 1672, French armies occupied the Nether-
lands, he participated fearlessly in several political battles,
and when his friend the great Dutch statesman John de
Witt was killed by a mob in the street, the quiet philoso-
pher had to be restrained from marching against them with
a placard on his shoulders denouncing tyranny and violence
and mob rule. He was certainly a quiet man, but he was not
meek. And to the end of his life he remained a God-intoxi-
cated man.
Spinoza died in 1677. His body was interred in the ceme-
tery of the New Church on the Spuy. Six carriages followed
the hearse with many well-known personages in them. The
receipt for the funeral read: "On February 25, 1677, Bene-
dictus Spinoza was buried. The fee amounts to 20 gilders.
It was paid."
The list of his personal belongings after his death is the
most moving and probably the most graphic description of
his incredible modesty: a bedstead, an old Turkish robe, a
few pairs of socks (several in need of mending), two pairs
of shoes. No bank account, no cash. He had always said
that he just wanted to earn enough to pay his rent, to feed
his body and to leave enough money for his funeral ex-
penses. But there was not enough money to buy a grave,
and so he was interred in a "rented grave" where six per-
sons had previously been buried. There is no marker, cer-
tainly no tombstone. He is memorialized by his philosophy,
the only monument he could afford.
Spinoza had lived all his life as a Marrano, a man between
two worlds. He could not accept the medieval world which
the Marranos of Amsterdam had chosen at a time when
98 / Joachim Prinz

new ideas—the philosophies of the Renaissance and the new

humanism of the century—were flourishing in the world.
Nor did Christianity, to which his forefathers had suc-
cumbed in Spain, satisfy his yearning for truth and justice.
He was buried in a Christian cemetery without any clerical
attendance. No final blessing was said. He died as he had
lived for most of his life—neither Christian nor Jew.

Both Spinoza and Da Costa felt compelled to verbalize

their religious doubts and were prepared to fight for their
convictions. Many others among the returning Marranos
must have thought as they did, but rather than address the
religious problem directly, they preferred to show their
modernity in their professions, in the natural sciences, litera-
ture, medicine and international trade. If they were disap-
pointed not to have found in the new Marrano communities
a religious echo of the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere
of the seventeenth century, they did not express it.
The most profoundly tragic aspect of the stories of Da
Costa and Spinoza lies in the failure of the Jewish commu-
nity to come to terms with the ideas which they represented.
One might have expected the Jewish community, which so
loved scholarship and philosophy, to have gained from the
intellectual accomplishments of Da Costa and Spinoza. The
rabbinical leaders of Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, and all
the other places of Marrano refuge might indeed have stim-
ulated the beginning of modern Jewish history and applied
the questioning spirit of the times to Judaism. They could
have saved many of their intellectuals the doubt which
separated them from the Jewish community. They could
have absorbed Spinoza's pantheism and Da Costa's criticism
within a new interpretation of the Jewish tradition. Had
99/The Secret Jews

they done so, Sephardic Judaism might have assumed a new

spiritual leadership of the Jewish world, and had they pre-
vailed they would have emerged as a new creative force, the
forerunners of Moses Mendelssohn and the movement of
enlightenment which developed much later, in eighteenth-
century Germany. Instead, they succumbed to the obscur-
antism of Vilna and they set the tone for the Sephardic
Judaism of the future.
To this day there is no Sephardic synagogue which is
not strictly Orthodox. Although not all Sephardic Jews
are personally Orthodox, Orthodoxy has remained the offi-
cial Sephardic tradition. Nowhere in the entire Sephardic
world has Reform or Conservative Judaism penetrated. It
is as if they are still fearful of any deviation which would
undermine their no longer newly established Jewish faith.
And although they still retain some, almost unconscious
vestiges of the Church—such as the kiss thrown to the ark
—they cannot condone any more obvious references or
similarities to the Church under whose shadow they lived
for so long.
Perhaps an anecdote will illustrate the impact their his-
tory in Spain still has on present-day descendants of the
Marranos. I was once invited to preach in the main Sephar-
dic synagogue in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. I was sitting next
to the chief rabbi on the platform before the altar, waiting
for the service to begin at the scheduled time. However,
although two thousand people had filled the beautiful tem-
ple, nothing happened. After a long while I turned to my
colleague and asked the reason for the uncommon delay.
He replied, with some embarrassment, that I was sitting
before the altar with my legs crossed, and that reminded
the Sephardic community of the Cross which their ances-
100/Joachim Prinz

tors had been forced to worship many centuries before. It

was a great relief to the rabbi and the congregants when I
uncrossed my legs. The service began. They were no longer
"in the shadow of the Cross."
 Chapter Four

M uch has been written about the religion of the

Marranos in Spain and Portugal. The description
of their brand of Judaism includes the list of Jewish cus-
toms which they remembered, the special prayers which
they said, and the few holidays which they still, furtively,
commemorated. Yet one important element of their religion
has not been sufficiently stressed: their belief in the coming
of the Messiah.
Although the idea that the Messiah is still to come is an
essential part of Jewish doctrine and is the reason for the
Jewish rejection of Jesus as Christ—the Messiah—it found
a more fervent acceptance among Sephardic Jews than
among Ashkenazim. (There have been something like ten
Messianic movements in Jewish history, and not a single
one was led by an East European Jew.) Among the Mar-
ranos it became a central belief and a hope for the immedi-
ate future. In fact, the idea of the imminent arrival of the
Messiah was never far removed from their actual life, and
they seem to have been almost obsessed by the notion that
he might be just around the corner. Gerson Cohen, the
102 / Joachim Prinz

Jewish medievalist, claims that this Marranic belief may ac-

count for the many conversions among Spanish Jews, who
perhaps counted on the Messiah to rescue them from their
conversion. Anything between the present and the Mes-
sianic tomorrow was thought to be just an episode. The
Marranos' hope for the Messiah was so well known that the
Spanish verb esperar ("to hope") became a catchword in
the sixteenth-century Spanish drama to identify the char-
acter who was of Jewish descent. "Esperanza is the Jewish
characteristic par excellence, and the satiric use of such
terms is a leitmotif in the Spanish drama of the Golden
Age."
Not satisfied with traditional Jewish concepts of the
Messiah myth, the Spanish Jews created their own unique
version of the Messianic prophecy. "When the Messiah
comes to Spain," they said, "he will arrive in the guise of a
fish, for if he appeared as a man the Inquisition would catch
and burn him. As a fish he will enter by swimming up the
river Tajo and then accomplish redemption." Like the
Marrano himself, the Messiah had to be a Jew in an elabo-
rate disguise. A famous Marrano physician and mystic,
Abraham Cardoso, took the analogy one step further when
he wrote: "It is ordained that the king Messiah don the
garments of a Marrano and so go unrecognized by his fel-
low Jews. In a word, it is ordained that he become a Mar-
rano like me."
The reasons for the attraction the Marranos felt for the
Messianic vision are complicated and open to speculation.
Perhaps one factor was the Sephardic contact with the non-
Jewish world. As we have noted, the Ashkenazi's life inside
the ghetto permitted him to cultivate his Jewish beliefs
without regard to the religious practices of those outside
103/ The Secret Jews

the walls. The Sephardi, living among those who believed

that the Messiah—Christ or Mohammed—had already come,
may have felt a need to reiterate with equal fervor his own
contention that his Messiah was still expected, and might
have added, somewhat defensively, that he might indeed
come tomorrow. Whatever the reason, the fact remains
that Marranic expectations of a very special kind were at
the core of the Marranic version of Judaism, and as such
are an important aspect of the anatomy of the secret Jew.
In fact, the influence of this belief is still noticeable in the
Marranos of the present day, and it had an impact on the
history of the crypto-Jew.
Because of this Messianic obsession, it is no wonder that
several individuals pretending to be the Messiah found im-
mediate acceptance among the Marranos. In the early days
of the Portuguese Inquisition, for example, a poor, unedu-
cated New Christian tailor named Luis Diaz, remembering
the Messianic tales which he had heard from his Jewish
parents, came to the conclusion that he not only had pro-
phetic gifts but was, in fact, the promised Messiah. He was
looked up to with reverence by his fellow New Christians,
both in his native town of Setúbal and in Lisbon, which he
frequently visited. Wherever he went he was treated with
extravagant signs of respect, his followers kissing his hands
devoutly when they encountered him in the street. In the
end, however, he was executed by the Inquisition.
In 1524, an adventurer named David Reubeni appeared
in Venice, claiming to be the son of a Jewish king. The
Marranos there, and later in Rome, eagerly welcomed him
as the forerunner of the Messiah, who, in the prophecy, is
supposed to be heralded by the appearance of a descendant
of the Biblical King David.
104 / Joachim Prinz

In the seventeenth century the Marrano's Messianic long-

ing became especially strong and had important conse-
quences. During this period, Messiah fever infected not
only Jews but also Christians who were predicting the sec-
ond coming of Christ. The Millennium, reckoned by
Christian mystics from the time of Jesus' birth, was at hand.
The Thirty Years' War had left much of Europe devas-
tated, hungry and hopeless; though religious in its origins,
it had brought nothing but misery to the people. Moreover,
the Church, all-embracing and universal, was now split by
the Reformation and was no longer the rock of comfort it
had once been. It was a good time for mysticism, since
nothing else seemed to offer solutions, and the suffering
which was traditionally expected to precede the coming of
the Messiah was all too visible. All over Europe men
claimed to have the answers. The leading mystic of the
time was Jacob Boehm, a Silesian shoemaker, who was
wrestling with the problem of evil. In England a Puritan
sect whose members called themselves the Men of the Fifth
Monarchy had great influence while they waited for Christ
to return to earth. The Messianic yearnings of the Marranos
of Amsterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Bayonne and Venice
were in tune with the times.
The Messianic dream was not exclusively the property of
crackpots and charlatans. It found an important expression
in one of Spinoza's most eminent teachers, Manasseh ben
Israel, a Marrano, born as a Christian in Lisbon, and cir-
cumcised and converted to Judaism in Amsterdam. The
face of ben Israel, preserved in several engravings and in a
portrait by Rembrandt, conveys little: a Vandyke beard
and small, almost Oriental, eyes; a rather empty and com-
monplace face. Even such a genius as Rembrandt, whose
105/ The Secret Jews

portraits were so revealing, apparently discovered nothing

extraordinary in the features of his friend Manasseh. He
may indeed have been a talented teacher, but he was neither
a significant philosopher nor a great theologian; and al-
though he wrote a great deal, there was little which was
noteworthy. Besides being a rabbi, he was a successful busi-
nessman, supplementing his meager earnings as the spiritual
leader of the famous Amsterdam synagogue of Neveh
Shalom (Paths of Peace) by engaging in trade with rela-
tives in Brazil. He also founded the first Hebrew printing
press in Holland, which for two centuries thereafter was
the world's center for Jewish book publishing.
In spite of his apparent mediocrity, ben Israel attracted
many of the greats of his time and corresponded with im-
portant people, not only in the Netherlands but beyond its
borders. Today he would probably be remembered only as
Spinoza's teacher were it not for the fact that he was that
rare combination of fanatic mystic (and a fervent believer
in the coming of the Messiah) and practical politician. Sel-
dom have political acumen and theology been so harmoni-
ously wedded. These qualities established Manasseh ben
Israel in Jewish history as the man who made possible the
return of the Jews to England, a country from which they
had been expelled in 1290 by Edward I.
To Manasseh ben Israel, the demographic distribution of
the Jews over the globe was of great Messianic significance.
In the last chapter of the Book of Daniel, which deals in
mysterious terms with the time appointed for the resurrec-
tion and the coming of the Messiah, it is written that the
knowledge of the last days of mankind (when the Messiah
will come) are to be "kept a secret and the book would be
shut as a secret till the crisis at the end; ere then many shall
106 / Joachim Prinz

give way and trouble shall be multiplied on earth." But

when will it be? When will the Messiah come? The answer
in Daniel's cryptic language is: "When the power of Him
who scattered the sacred people should be over, then the
end of all should arrive." In the mystical interpretation, the
Prophet seemed to say that the Messiah could not come
unless the "sacred people," the Jews, were actually scat-
tered all over the world, until there would be no country
without Jews.
Manasseh ben Israel had read a report by Antonio de
Montezinos, a Marrano, describing a strange discovery he
had made in America. In a sworn affidavit to the Jewish
community of Amsterdam he told about some Indians he
had met in Quito, Ecuador, who were familiar with Jewish
customs and who claimed to be descendants of the ancient
Hebrew tribes of Reuben and Levi. Since De Montezinos
was a well-known globetrotter, his report was received
with the greatest respect, and Manasseh ben Israel consid-
ered it so important that he repeated it in his pamphlet
"The Hope of Israel," published in 1650. Only four years
later twenty-four Portuguese Jews landed in New Amster-
dam (later to be named New York) to become the first
Jewish settlers in North America. The Jewish presence on
the South and North American continents meant that there
was now only one country where Jews could not live. The
fact that they were still barred from England seemed to be
the only factor preventing the Messiah from fulfilling the
prophecy of Daniel. Therefore, it became Manasseh's per-
sonal crusade to open England to Jewish immigration.
England was in turmoil. Charles I had been executed, and
for the first time in her history, England was a republic
under the leadership of the extraordinary Lord Protector
107/The Secret Jews

Oliver Cromwell. The public execution of a beloved king

created an atmosphere of moral uneasiness among the peo-
ple, and the religious issues of Presbyterianism versus Ca-
tholicism favored the development of mystical movements
in the country. There was an Old Testament flavor to some
of these religious movements which favored Judaism over
any of the Christian denominations. A few of the believers
in these sects even went to Holland and converted to
Judaism.
Although there was a small community of Marranos who
had come to England in the sixteenth century, they, natu-
rally, did not profess Judaism openly. In London they
formed a distinctive group of about one hundred, married
within their own community and held Jewish services
secretly in their rather sumptuous homes. Almost all of
them were well-to-do, some of them very rich. Among
them was Antonio Fernandez Caravajal, one of the richest
men in England. He had acquired a large fortune in the
Canary Islands, and owned a fleet of merchant ships which
was used for his far-flung commercial interests in the new
East and West Indian territories, in South America and in
the Levant. He had arrived from Portugal in 1630, and un-
like his fellow Marranos, is said to have practiced Judaism
openly. In a reported conversation with a Franciscan monk,
he is quoted as saying, "Don Mathias, although I am a Jew,
we shall meet in heaven." To Cromwell, Caravajal and his
fellow Marranos were indispensable. Burton, a contempo-
rary writer of a "parliamentary diary" speaks of "The Jews
[he means the English Marranos], those able and general in
intelligence, whose intercourse with the continent Crom-
well had before turned to a profitable account."
If Manasseh ben Israel knew about the English Marranos
108/Joachim Prinz

—and there is no evidence he did—he probably discounted

their importance. In the early 1650s he had planned to
travel to England to submit a plea for readmission of his
people, but he became ill and his relative, Manuel Martinez
Dormido, went in his behalf. When the appeal was turned
down, Dormido insisted that Manasseh be invited to submit
his petition in person, and a commission appointed by Crom-
well was to consider the matter of the Jews' readmission.
The commercial intercourse between England and Hol-
land was bringing many Englishmen to Amsterdam, and
ben Israel was already known in England. It is known that
Queen Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles I, had visited
the Amsterdam synagogue in which ben Israel preached
and that his welcoming speech was delivered in English. It
was difficult to refuse permission for his visit to England, so
ben Israel's petition for the readmittance of his people was
officially submitted in 1655. A few paragraphs from this
document will indicate the thrust of his request:
These are the boons and the favor which I, Manasseh ben
Israel, in the name of my Hebrew nation, beseech of your most
serene Highness, and may God prosper you and give you
much success in all your undertakings. Such is the wish and de-
sire of your humble servant.
The first thing which I ask of your Highness is that our
Hebrew nation be received and admitted into this mighty Re-
public under the protection and care of your Highness. . . .
that it please your Highness to allow us public synagogues, not
only in England, but also in all other conquered places which
are under the power of your Highness, and to allow us to ex-
ercise our religion in all details as we should, that we should
be allowed to have a plot or cemetery outside the city for
burying our dead without being molested by anyone.
109 / The Secret Jews

Ben Israel's welcome in London was, in reality, merely

an act of courtesy. Cromwell was favorably disposed to-
ward his position and actually had made up his mind to
readmit the Jews before the plea was made. His experience
with the Marranos, not merely as traders but as a source
of political and military information, had been most satis-
factory. It stood to reason that the Jews, whose relatives
were scattered all over the globe and whose relationship
with Spain and Portugal were still intact, could furnish the
most reliable intelligence about events in the rest of the
world. Some Spanish and Portuguese Marranos, ostensibly
Christians but practicing Jews in reality and observing Jew-
ish customs in their homes, even held important positions—
for instance, the Marquis of Niza, a Marrano and a great
admirer of Manasseh ben Israel, was Portugal's ambassador
to France.
So when the commission made a statement indicating
that there was no legal obstacle to a return of the Jews,
since no legal document prohibiting this had been found, it
was quite sufficient for Cromwell. His final decision was
that "the Jews deserving it, may be admitted into this na-
tion to trade and traffic and to dwell among us as Provi-
dence shall give occasion, so long as they make no parade
of their religion."
Winston Churchill, in his History of the English-Speak-
ing Peoples, offers this sober analysis of Cromwell's reasons
for the admission of the Jews: "Religious toleration chal-
lenged all the beliefs of Cromwell's days and found its best
friend in the Lord Protector himself. Believing the Jews to
be a useful element in the civic community he opened
again to them the gates of England which Edward had
closed four hundred years before. There was in practice
110/Joachim Prinz

comparatively little persecution on purely political grounds

and even Catholics were not seriously molested. A man
who in that bitter age could write 'We look for no com-
pulsion but that of light and reason' and who could dream
of a union and a right understanding embracing Jews and
Gentiles cannot be wholly barred from his place in the
forward march of liberal ideas." No general history of Eng-
land ever mentions Manasseh ben Israel and his role in this
turning point in the history of English Jewry.
After a year in London, ben Israel was granted an annual
stipend of one hundred pounds. Although his mission had
succeeded and his petition had provided Cromwell with the
excuse he wanted to admit the Jews to England, ben Israel
was disappointed. He had wanted a solemn declaration by
the Lord Protector, or at least a meeting of Parliament,
which would have recognized the religious, Messiah-oriented
reasons why this should be done. He wanted a proclamation
heralding the coming of the Messiah now that the prophecy
of Daniel had been fulfilled. Although he was a gifted po-
litical analyst, in this case his mystical goals must have
blinded him to the pragmatism of the English people and
to the mercantile spirit of the time which had contributed
to new freedoms for Jews in many parts of the world "pro-
vided that they were ready to invest capital there."
Personal tragedy caused him additional grief. His son,
who had accompanied him to England, died there. Manas-
seh, broken in spirit and physically ill, took his son's body
home to Amsterdam. There, only a year later, he died
without knowing that in reality, he had helped to open a
new chapter in the history of his people. The Messiah did
not come, although pseudo-Messiahs continued to spring
up and attract followers, particularly among the Marranos.
111/The Secret Jews

The most colorful and fantastic of these was one of the

most controversial figures in all of Jewish history. He was
Shabtai Zvi, born in Smyrna in 1626, a few years after the
start of the Thirty Years' War. Throughout his life he was
imbued with an extraordinary understanding and feeling
for the spirit of his times. Mysticism and tragedy formed
the background and motivation of his memorable life. Its
aftermath was the founding of a new Marranic community
in Asia Minor.
One of the three sons of a poor father, Shabtai Zvi, be-
cause of his frail health, was elected to devote his life to the
study of the mystical Cabala, an ancient Jewish theosophy
which had exerted a profound effect upon Christian thought.
There was never a system of Jewish thought closer to
Christianity than the religious movement of the Cabala, to
which many devout Jews were attracted. Although it con-
tained some curious notions of Trinity, which some of the
conversos of Spain had used to assert the veracity of the
church fathers and the New Testament, the Cabala was not
considered a heretical pursuit. It was in the pages of the
Zohar, the sacred Cabalistic Bible, that converts to Chris-
tianity found a justification for their new belief in the
divinity of Christ. Throughout Church history such Chris-
tian theologians as Johannes Reuchlin and Pope Leo X
studied Hebrew in order to comprehend the mysteries of
the Cabala.
It was natural that Shabtai Zvi should be a Cabalist, since
Smyrna was one of the most important centers of this
mystical movement. While still a young man, he attracted
a group of scholars who gathered around him to spend end-
less hours in meditation on the ten S'phirot, or emanations,
which, according to the Cabala, were the only means of
112 / Joachim Prinz

reaching the inscrutable Ein Sof, the endlessness of God.

Not merely study was required, but a kind of passion which
led to ecstasy. This ecstasy, an integral part of the Cabalistic
male community's worship, led to their opponents' claim
that there was moral laxity among the Cabalists. (There are
indeed some sexual components to the Cabalistic devotions.)
In the fifty years of his life, Shabtai Zvi wavered between
the total abstinence of an ascetic, almost monastic life on
the one hand, and unbridled passion on the other. During
the ascetic period of his early career, he divorced two wives
to free himself from any kind of sexuality. Later he found
it not only acceptable but desirable to marry Sarah, a young
waif who had led a life of rather easy virtue in Livorno,
Italy.
But meditations in a private circle in Smyrna, however
profound and rapturously ecstatic, far away from the
masses of the Jewish people, could not spark an interna-
tional movement, and this was, clearly, what Shabtai Zvi
had in mind. His hopes and personal ambitions involved
the whole of the people of Israel, not just a local group in
Smyrna. What was needed was an idea common to all Jews
—and if it could also appeal to the Christians, so much the
better. The idea that naturally presented itself to Shabtai
Zvi was the ancient hope for the coming of the Messiah. As
we have seen, talk of the Messiah was in the air in the
seventeenth century. According to the Cabala, in one inter-
pretive calculation, he was to appear in 1648; in certain
Christian tradition, 1666 was the year of the Millennium,
the year when Christ was to appear for the second time to
redeem the world.
Shabtai Zvi, playing on these hopes, announced that the
Messiah would indeed come soon. An event in 1648 made
113 / The Secret Jews

this an auspicious year for his proclamation. There had

been a pogrom in the Ukraine which reportedly took the
lives of half a million Jews. Carried out at the instigation of
the Cossack leader, Bogdan Chmielnetzky, it is, to this day,
remembered as one of the worst calamities in Jewish history.
Shabtai announced that the Chmielnetzky pogrom and the
Thirty Years' War had been the prelude of suffering which
would be followed in 1666 by the coming of the Messiah.
Thus, the expectation of the great and mysterious event
could be shared by Christians and Jews alike. The tragedy
of the Jewish massacre and the Thirty Years' War linked
them in common prayer and hope.
Then Shabtai made the decisive move. He proclaimed to
the world that the expected Messiah was none other than
Shabtai Zvi himself. He was at that time twenty-five years
old, attractive, obsessed with the Cabala, and filled with
vanity and lust for power. The force of his personal mag-
netism and charisma evidently convinced many people that
he was right.
Such ambitions called for a dramatic act that would shock
all of Jewry and focus all eyes on Smyrna, home of the new
prophet. The Cabalistic meetings with his friends were now
frankly conspiratorial, and a plan was decided upon. In
1651 Shabtai, in front of the open ark, pronounced the
name of God. Instead of using the euphemistic "Adonai,"
which is commonly expressed, he boldly said "Jehovah,"
the sacred name which was pronounced only once a year,
on the High Holy Days by the High Priest in the ancient
Temple in Jerusalem. Only the Messiah, proclaiming the
beginning of the New Era, was permitted to pronounce
this holiest of names. At the conclusion of this outrageous
rite, Shabtai announced the cancellation of certain fast days,
114 / Joachim Prinz

and proclaimed that all Jewish rituals would eventually be

declared invalid.
The reaction to this bold and unheard-of act was imme-
diate, and it was not restricted to Smyrna. Without benefit
of modern means of communication, Shabtai's declaration
was broadcast, by word of mouth, around the world. The
response was not entirely favorable: Shabtai's teacher, Jo-
seph Escapa, pronounced the herem, excommunicating him
from the Jewish community of Smyrna. Shabtai departed
for Cairo, which, for a time, became the center of his
Messianic movement.
It was in Cairo that the final organization took place,
complete with finances and propaganda. Financial assistance
came from Raphael Joseph Chelebi, a rich Jew, treasurer
of the Turkish governor of Cairo. Without Chelebi, Shab-
tai's movement might have remained a local incident, but
with his help and the growing enthusiastic acceptance of
the Jewish masses, Shabtai was hailed as the Messiah. Tht
green Messianic flag, the symbol of the movement, was
soon seen throughout Europe and the Middle East.
Shabtai devoted the next years to feverish propaganda
efforts. The opposition on the part of the Orthodox chief
rabbis was overcome by the fervor of Shabtai's adherents
and the loyalty of his inner cabinet. There was little time
left. The fateful year of 1666 was approaching rapidly.
Jews everywhere were selling their properties, packing
their few belongings and moving to the various harbors to
wait for the Messiah to take them to Jerusalem. An example
of the kind of confidence Shabtai Zvi inspired is contained
in the memoirs of one of these Jewish pilgrims, a simple
German woman who left her hometown of Hameln to sit
on her bundles in Hamburg, waiting patiently for the Mes-
siah she was certain would come. She writes:
115/ The Secret Jews

Some sold all their worldly goods—their house and all that
belonged to it—and hoped every day that they would be de-
livered. My father-in-law, peace be with him, lived in Hameln
and he gave up his home there and left behind his house and
court and furnishings, and many good things, and moved to the
city of Hildesheim, to reside there. And he sent to us, here
in Hamburg, two large barrels with all kinds of linens. And
inside there was every sort of food, such as peas, beans, dried
meat, and many other things to eat, plum preserves for in-
stance, and all manner of foods that keep. For the good man,
peace be with him, thought that it was quite simple to go from
Hamburg straight to the Holy Land. These barrels remained
in my house for over a year. Finally they grew afraid that the
meat and the other things might spoil, so they wrote us to open
the barrels and take out whatever there was to eat, lest the
linen rot. And so it stood for about three years, and he always
thought he would use it for his journey, but such was not the
will of the Most High.
We know very well that it was promised to us by the Most
High, and if we are completely devout, from the very depths
of our hearts, and not so wicked, I am certain that the Omni-
present would have mercy upon us. If we only kept the com-
mandment to love our neighbors as ourselves! But merciful
God, how ill we keep it! The envy and senseless hatred that
are betwixt us! These can make for nothing good. And yet,
dear God, what you have promised us, that you will give us,
in kingliness and grace. Though it delays so long in coming,
because of our sins, we shall surely have it when the appointed
time is come. And on this we will set our hopes, and pray to
you, almighty God, that you may at last gladden us with
perfect redemption.

The Messianic uproar in the Jewish world was fantastic.

Wherever Shabtai appeared, he was received with such
exaltation that it must have served to strengthen his own
116 / Joachim Prinz

belief in himself and his mission. The passion ran particu-

larly high among the Marranos in Amsterdam. When Shab-
tai came to that famous community, the people removed
the holy scrolls from the synagogue and danced in the
streets to the music of Spanish Jewish tunes.
Then, in the midst of this jubilation, with the sound of
the music and the visions of the dancers still fresh in his
memory, Shabtai made his fatal mistake. He moved on to
Constantinople. Upon his arrival he was arrested by the
grand vizier, who was afraid that his presence in the city
would spark revolutionary upheavals among his people. In-
stead of leading his people on to Jerusalem, the Messiah sat
in a Turkish jail.
Some people expected the movement to collapse. The
humiliation of their leader—which he had not prophesied—
seemed proof that his powers were not supernatural. But
although some of his followers were disillusioned, the core
of the movement remained faithful to him. Shabtai, declar-
ing that prison life was unbecoming and beneath his dig-
nity, solicited contributions from his followers. Money
poured in from all over the world and was used for effec-
tively generous bribes which permitted him to lead the life
of a king in his cell. After a time he was transferred from
the prison to a suite of elegantly furnished rooms. His jail
became a royal court in which he lived with Sarah, who
had become the female symbol of his movement as the
"Messianic Bride." He received ambassadors of the move-
ment from many countries, among them an old and learned
Cabalist from Poland, Nehemiah Cohen, who had come to
see for himself what kind of man and Cabalist Shabtai was.
Cohen spent three days and nights with the Messiah, and
came to the conclusion that Shabtai was a dangerous charla-
117/The Secret Jews

tan. Realizing that this was not merely a threat to his own
people but to the whole world, since he thought Shabtai
was talented and reckless enough to start a revolution, Co-
hen transmitted his thoughts first to the grand vizier and
then to the sultan. The judgment of both of them was that
Shabtai deserved to be put to death.
All this happened in 1666, which was to have been the
year of Messianic redemption. Shabtai was taken to Adria-
nople to face the sultan, but first he met the sultan's physi-
cian, a Jew who had converted to Islam. The physician ad-
vised him to do likewise; and when Shabtai appeared before
the sultan he informed the mighty ruler of his sincere desire
to embrace the religion of the Prophet Mohammed and to
pray to Allah instead of to the Jehovah whose name he had
so solemnly, so recklessly and so effectively proclaimed
only fifteen years before. The delighted sultan gave him
the name of Mehmed Effendi and the honorary title of the
Sultan's Doorkeeper. All thoughts of execution were ap-
parently forgotten. Sarah and the entire entourage, blind
believers in their leader's wisdom and infallibility, followed
his example and also became Mohammedans. Then they all
moved to Dulcingno, a seaport of what was then Montene-
gro (now Yugoslavia), not far from the Albanian border.
There they lived as Mohammedans, but whenever possible
they attended services at the local synagogue. The ambi-
tions of the king of the Jews were forgotten, and in the
hills surrounding Dulcingno, Shabtai Zvi, the Messiah of
Smyrna, died at the age of fifty.
Even in death his influence did not abate. Many of his
followers in Mohammedan countries converted to Islam in
the belief that their master had done so only to "liberate
the impure sparks inherent in Islam from their spiritual
118 / Joachim Prinz

prison." In Hungary and Moravia some Jews solemnly

adopted the surname of Sheps or Shoeps as proof of an un-
shakable belief in Shabtai. Others began to create a new set
of Jewish beliefs of which they thought the master would
have approved.
Among the new preachers of the movement there were
Marrano fugitives from Portugal. One of them, Abraham
Miguel Cardoza, preached a sort of Jewish Holy Trinity
in which Shabtai was proclaimed to be the incarnation of
God. A similar theology was invented by Nehemiah Hay-
yun and one of the most fervent "Shabtai Tzvinickes"—or
Sabbatists, as they were sometimes called—Jacob Querido,
together with many hundreds of others, followed the mas-
ter's example by going to the mosque to be converted to
Islam. In December 1686, more than three hundred families
converted to Islam in Salonika. Like Shabtai and other Mar-
ranos, they continued to attend Jewish services secretly and
observed certain Jewish customs in their homes.
This was the origin of the most important group, nu-
merically and historically, of Islamic Marranos. The faith-
ful Mohammedans call these hidden Jews doenmehs, the
renegades. They called themselves ma'aminim, the true be-
lievers. To traditional Jews, whose rejection of Shabtai Zvi
and his movement was now fully vindicated, they remained
kofrim, traitors. Over the years the doenmeh movement be-
came firmly established in Asia Minor. In the nineteenth
century the sect was estimated to have twenty thousand
members. Salonika remained its main seat until that city
became Greek in 1913. Although the Jewish community
remained there under Greek rule, the doenmehs moved to
Constantinople.
In Salonika in the early days of the movement the ten
commandments "of our Lord King and Messiah Shabtai
119/The Secret Jews

Zvi" were proclaimed by the doenmehs. They still form

the credo of the surviving doenmehs of our time.

I believe in the one and only God.

I believe in his Messiah, the true redeemer, our king Shab-
tai Zvi, descended from King David.
I swear not to take the name of God or his Messiah in
vain and not to take an oath in their name.
I take upon myself to carry the message of the mysteries
of our Messianic faith from one community to another.
I shall assemble with my fellow believers on the sixteenth
day of the month of Kislev to discuss with them the secrets
of our Messianic faith. [This is the month during which
Shabtai had announced his Messiahship.]
I swear that I shall never convert anybody to the faith of
the Turban, called Islam.
Daily will I read in the Book of Psalms.
I shall meticulously adhere to the customs of the Turks so
as not to arouse their suspicion. I shall not only observe the
Fast of Ramadan but all the other Muslim customs which
are observed in public.
I shall not marry into a Muslim family nor maintain any
intimate association with them, for they are to us an abomi-
nation and particularly their women.
I shall circumcise my sons.

To this day, doenmehs assemble for prayers in their own

house of worship in Istanbul. Some of the devotions are still
said in Hebrew and Aramaic, but most of them are recited
in Ladino, the "Yiddish" of the Sephardic Jew. Although
at the beginning of the movement the male children were
120 / Joachim Prinz

circumcised on the eighth day after birth, as is the Jewish

practice, circumcision now takes place on the third birth-
day of the child. The Sabbath is not commemorated, but
several new festivals have been added. One of these is the
ninth of Av (a day of fast in the traditional Jewish calen-
dar, where it is remembered as the day of the destruction
of the Temple in Jerusalem), which among the doenmehs
has been chosen as the birthday of Shabtai Zvi and is com-
memorated with great hilarity and merrymaking. Because a
roasted lamb is specifically prepared as the main dish, the
celebration is called the Festival of the Lamb. Sexual laxity,
a feature of the movement's early days, continues to prevail
among the doenmehs, and the celebration of Shabtai's birth-
day usually ends in a sexual orgy. After the lamb is eaten,
the candles are extinguished and a common exchange of
wives takes place. Children born of such unions are re-
garded as saintly, conceived in a mysterious way as chil-
dren of the holy Messiah Shabtai Zvi, who is believed to
have been present at the moment of this holy intercourse.
With this disregard for the traditional Jewish chastity, it
is no wonder that the book of the Bible the doenmehs re-
gard most highly, and read most assiduously, is the Song of
Songs. In the eighteenth century Dervish Effendi, who fol-
lowed the epileptic Chonio as the leader of the Salonika
doenmeh community, tried to eliminate-marriage altogether
as an institution unworthy of the sainted memory of Shab-
tai. Sarah, the harlot of Livorno and the Messianic bride,
was still remembered as the great example of ideal woman-
hood. But the Jewish heritage of the doenmehs proved too
strong, and the Festival of the Lamb remains their only
official concession to free love as a religious doctrine.
From rime to time the Turkish governors of Salonika,
121 / The Secret Jews

who received complaints about the sect from the Moham-

medan clergy, tried to investigate the strange existence of
the doemnehs. Their clannishness, their refusal to mingle
with Mohammedan families, and their marital restrictions
had become a well-known fact, difficult to hide from the
majority of the people among whom they had lived for
many generations. Socially, they seemed impenetrable, al-
though in their Moslem religious practices they were be-
yond reproach. In fact, they often seemed even more de-
vout followers of the Prophet Mohammed and more sincere
worshipers of Allah than the rest of the community. They
fasted during Ramadan, and their leaders and adherents
were found in large, even conspicuous numbers among the
pilgrims to Mecca. It was well known that in the seven-
teenth century Joseph Zvi, one of the immediate followers
of Shabtai Zvi and one of his inner circle, died on the way
from his pilgrimage to Mecca, and the day of his death is
still commemorated.
Nevertheless, there were some indications to the outside
community that all was not what it seemed and that the
Islamic faith of the doenmehs was a little too obviously and
purposefully observed. In most cases, large contributions
to the governor's private purse prevented a closer investiga-
tion. However, in 1859 Husni Pasha, then governor of
Salonika, investigated thoroughly and found a doenmeh
school system where a special brand of Islam was taught.
As a result, the schools were closed. Thereafter, greater
caution and secrecy were imposed by the Sabbatists, and
the sect remained intact.
Another investigation, the final inquiry, took place in
1875 under Governor Nehdad. The resulting memorandum
submitted to the Turkish government praised the doenmehs
122 / Joachim Prinz

for their industry and high moral standards. By then the

doenmehs had become highly respected and were an im-
portant civic factor in the community. They were bright,
industrious and successful in the world of business and in
the professions. Yet during the investigation no one had
succeeded in attending their private prayer meetings, no
one had heard their Hebrew and Ladino songs, and cer-
tainly no outsider was admitted to witness the celebration
of Shabtai's birthday. The Festival of the Lamb remained
the secret of all secrets.
The revolt of the Young Turks in 1908 against the au-
thoritarian regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid began among the
intellectuals of Salonika. It was from there that the demand
for a constitutional regime originated. Among the leaders
of the revolution which resulted in a more modern govern-
ment in Turkey were Djavid Bey and Mustafa Kemal.
Both were ardent doenmehs. Djavid Bey became minister
of finance; Mustafa Kemal became the leader of the new
regime and he adopted the name of Atatiirk. His opponents
tried to use his doenmeh background to unseat him, but
without success. Too many of the Young Turks in the
newly formed revolutionary Cabinet prayed to Allah, but
had as their real prophet Shabtai Zvi, the Messiah of
Smyrna.
Messiah fevers continued to infect the Marranos. Perhaps
the most bizarre case involved Jacob Frank, who was born
in Russia in 1723. By the time of his death, in 1791, he had
managed to convert from Judaism to Islam and then to
Christianity, carrying many thousands of followers with
him in his religious exultations and peregrinations.
Convinced that he was the heir to Shabtai Zvi's Messianic
role, he converted to Islam hoping to attract the doenmeh
123 / The Secret Jews

Marranos as his followers. When this scheme for leadership

did not succeed, he embarked on a pilgrimage through
Eastern Europe, picking up the followers of Shabtai Zvi as
he went. By the time he arrived in Poland, he had a consid-
erable retinue of devotees, who thought of God as the
Holy Father, of Frank as the Holy King and of his wife
as the Holy Matron.
This sect took the Cabala as their Holy Book, thereby
incurring the wrath of the traditional Jewish community
which obviously would take umbrage at this supplanting of
the Talmud as the book by which Jews lived. Nor were the
community relations of the Frankists helped by their prac-
tice of dancing naked in mixed groups, by their wife-swap-
ping, and by other similar licentious customs. It was for
these transgressions, utterly shocking to the Jewish com-
munity, that the Frankists were finally jailed and excom-
municated in 1756.
Notice of the excommunication was sent to the Polish
authorities with the recommendation that the Frankists be
punished by death. Undaunted, Frank himself appealed to
Bishop Dembowsky, the Catholic prelate of Brody in the
Ukraine. Then Frank led his followers to convert to Chris-
tianity. He led them, but he himself remained a Jew—for
a time.
The infuriated Talmudists set upon these New Christians
and cut off their Jewish beards. To add to their difficulties,
their protector, Bishop Dembowsky, died, and the Frankists
were expelled from Poland. They scattered over the conti-
nent, and two years later Frank himself turned up in Po-
land, where, in what must be considered a miraculous
circumstance, the king became his godfather at his final
conversion—to Roman Catholicism.
124 / Joachim Prinz

Whatever the motives and religious aberrations of Jacob

Frank, or of his predecessor Shabtai Zvi, they can be con-
sidered two examples, albeit extreme, of that curious phe-
nomenon, the crypto-Jewish experience.
 Chapter Five

The strange story of the secret Jews cannot be under-

stood without a consideration of the extraordinary
contribution they made to the field of international com-
merce. Because Jewish communities existed in so many
parts of the world—Europe, the Levant, the countries of
the Far East, and by the seventeenth century, in the New
World—Marranos were presented with natural opportuni-
ties to participate in international trade. Language barriers
were easily overcome, since all Marranos spoke Spanish or
Ladino, no matter how far apart they were geographically.
And in a sense these commercial enterprises, which spanned
so many continents, became something like a family affair
in which a common heritage and religion forged bonds that
were often as strong as any biological ties could have been.
After the discovery of the New World, the descendants of
the rich Spanish Jewish families, who had financed the voy-
ages of Christopher Columbus and contributed (sometimes
through the Inquisition's confiscation) to the treasuries of
the princes of Aragon, began to play a pivotal role in the
development of the new capitalism. And when international
126 / Joachim Prinz

commerce became the main source of income, particularly

for those countries whose explorers had discovered new
sources of gold, spices and other riches, the Marranos be-
came deeply involved in the exploitation of the new mar-
kets.
Early in the sixteenth century, Portugal had moved into
the forefront of international commerce. Her famous navi-
gator Vasco da Gama had reached India in the spring of
1498 through a new route—around the Cape of Good
Hope. This event transformed Portugal from a second-rate
nation to the leading seafaring country of the century—at
a time when twenty percent of its population was Jewish.
Many of these were secret Jews, Marranos, refugees from
the Spanish Inquisition. It is not surprising that upon their
immigration to Portugal they pursued their previous occu-
pations. A contemporary source lists them as "cobblers,
bakers, tanners, soap makers, tailors, hatters, cloth manu-
facturers, builders and metal craftsmen." In the professions
they were so predominant that "physician," "astrologer,"
"mathematician" and "alchemist" were virtually synony-
mous with the word "Jew." The conversos were mostly
members of the middle class, yet the number of rich fami-
lies was considerable, and they played a significant role in
the early capitalist ventures on which their adopted country
embarked in the sixteenth century.
Some of the richest of the Portuguese Marranos were
able to establish branches of their enterprises in England
and on the Continent, and many ventured into the New
World to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities
for their diversified commercial undertakings. As their
number abroad swelled, especially after the Inquisition
reached Portugal, the term "Portuguese Merchants" was
121 / The Secret Jews

the name applied, tongue in cheek, to those converses who

had left Portugal and established businesses in other coun-
tries. They maintained official membership in the Church,
but they were usually known to be Marranos and were
often able to practice their religion more or less openly.
Their contribution to the commercial well-being of a town
or even a country protected them from expulsion and per-
secution.
The wealth of these Portuguese immigrants, according to
figures which have come down to us, was staggering. In
France there were Marrano settlements in Bordeaux, Avig-
non, Nantes and Marseilles, and it became a compliment to
a Christian businessman in these cities to characterize him
as being "riche comme un juif." In England, as we have
seen, there were, in the early seventeenth century, only
about one hundred Marrano families, but they were among
the most successful merchants of London. In Germany,
forty Marrano families participated in founding the Bank
of Hamburg in 1619, and by the middle of that century
they were accused of having too luxurious a life style, as
evidenced by their palatial homes and their ostentatious
funerals and weddings. The fortune of the Marranos of
Altona, near Hamburg, was estimated at almost six million
marks, and some of the finest homes in Amsterdam be-
longed to newly arrived Marranos.
The affluence of many of the Marrano families was de-
rived from their commerce with the new Americas. It is
known that six hundred Marranos left Holland for Brazil
in the middle of the seventeenth century. A traveler who
visited that country reported: "Among the free inhabitants
of Brazil who were not in the Dutch West India Company
service, the Jews were the most considerable in number.
128 / Joachim Prinz

They had come there from Holland and built stately houses
in Recife. They were all traders which were of great con-
sequence to Dutch Brazil."
Others settled in the West Indian archipelago and be-
came deeply involved in the newly developing sugar trade.
In the seventeenth century the European settlers, on the
island of Barbados, were mainly Marranos who had emi-
grated from Holland after converting to Judaism. It was
these new immigrants who introduced an improved method
of refining the sugar cane which saved the island's faltering
sugar industry and resulted in a prosperous market for what
eventually became its main export.
In British Jamaica, the Jews were active in the cultivation
and refining of sugar, and they were so valuable to the
economy that when some Christian merchants asked the
governor in 1681 to exclude the Jews, their petition was
rejected with these unequivocal words: "I am of the opin-
ion that His Majesty could not have more profitable sub-
jects than the Jews and the Hollanders." By the eighteenth
century the Jews were paying most of the taxes on the
island of Jamaica, and both industry and international trade
were in their hands.
The Marranos also settled in the Dutch island of Surinam
and in the French possessions of Martinique, Guadeloupe
and Santo Domingo, where they quickly became important
members of the commercial establishments.
These successes in their business ventures had a far-
reaching effect, for after a time, when nations began to
understand the almost unlimited possibilities which the new
markets opened, emigration of Marranos, who were known
to be efficient and experienced in international commerce,
was encouraged and enthusiastically welcomed. The French
129 / The Secret Jews

king, Henry II, welcomed merchants "who were called

New Christians" in a proclamation which decreed that they
be "permitted to establish themselves in the realm without
being naturalized." A report to Charles V stated with satis-
faction that "Portuguese merchants of Jewish origin arrived
in Marseilles and went up the River Rhone to settle and
trade in Lyons." None of the usual obstacles, none of the
traditional limitations were set. The Jews were more than
welcome and nobody cared where or how they worshiped
as long as they contributed to the economy.
Then, in 1683, the French government insisted upon a
general expulsion of the Jews from France. Special instruc-
tions were sent to the authorities of Bordeaux, which had
a considerable community of Marranos, warning them "not
to expel more than a dozen Conversos every year because
if they are forced to leave Bordeaux, it would ruin the
city's economy as the commerce is almost entirely in the
hands of that sort of persons." Those Marranos who did
have to leave France went to Santo Domingo, where a large
group of the French colonists were New Christians who
had come from Bordeaux and La Rochelle.
It should not be forgotten that these were the same peo-
ple who, a few decades before their settlement in the New
World, had been victims of the Inquisition's persecution.
They had succeeded in establishing important businesses in
Portugal, accumulated considerable fortunes, and had shown
an amazing adaptability to the techniques which the new
era required. They were willing to accept the risks of new
ventures in international trade, unafraid to leave the secu-
rity of the European countries for unknown and often un-
charted territories, and they exhibited a resilience and vi-
tality which was quite remarkable for a people which had
130 / Joachim Prinz

so recently been threatened by extinction in the autos-da-fé.

Their commercial successes can be seen as a victory for hu-
man endurance and a tribute to the strength of the Marrano
spirit.
Whenever they could they converted to Judaism, but
where it was advantageous for them and the country in
which they lived to be known as Christians, they were seen
in church. However, no one was deceived. The "Portu-
guese Merchants" were known to be Jews both by origin
and by conviction. Their life as Christians was just part of
a grandiose masquerade in which both Christian society and
the Marranos played their respective parts. If there was a
Marrano wedding in a cathedral, it was common knowledge
that the couple had been married in a Jewish ceremony at
home before coming to the church. The second ceremony
was merely a social obligation and had no religious signifi-
cance whatsoever. It was a demonstration that the banking
house of the father of the bride was a Christian institution
with which emperors, dukes, bishops, and heads of govern-
ment could safely do business. The fiction of their Christian
allegiance was a business arrangement. And the Marrano sub-
terfuge in many countries, unlike the experience of the Jews
in Spain, was not fraught with danger; it was simply a social
convention. Only in countries where the Inquisition was
active was the Christian front maintained meticulously and
Jewish customs practiced in utter secrecy.
It must be stressed that certainly thousands of the return-
ing Marranos chose to remain Catholics and soon lost their
Marranic and Jewish identity. But wherever it was possible,
the majority established Jewish communities as soon as they
could: in Mexico in 1528, in Curacao in 1654, in Chile be-
fore 1570, in Cuba in the middle of the sixteenth century.
131 / The Secret Jews

As long as Brazil was Dutch, prosperous communities of

former Marranos existed in Recife, Pernambuco and Ita-
maraca.
Unfortunately, we have very few biographical sketches
of the Marranos who lived luxuriously and often mysteri-
ously, both on the European continent and in the New
World. Their lives must have been filled with the kind of
adventures we associate with people of any new frontier.
But although we know quite a bit about the Jewish scholars
of that time, few of the industrialists emerge as real people.
There is, however, an outstanding exception: Joseph Nasi.
Several biographies of this extraordinary man exist, but
no one has as yet written a novel based on his incredible
life, and there is hardly a character in Jewish history who
deserves a good novelist as much as he does. He was de-
scribed as "an elegant chevalier, who wears a sleeveless coat,
made of black Italian velvet with glittering gold buttons,
a pointed golden hat such as are now in vogue, a cultured
man and a brilliant conversationalist, well known in Spain,
Italy, Flanders and by high ranking personalities every-
where." Joseph Nasi was, in many ways, the prototype of
that new international Marrano phenomenon, the moneyed
aristocrat. He was a man of many disguises and talents, a
shrewd trader, a smooth diplomat, a cunning politician, a
passionate lover, a Jew and Christian in happy interchange-
ability.
He was also a man of many names: he was called Juan
Miquez in Spain, Joao Miguez in Portugal, Juan Michez
in Germany, Michesius in Latin, and finally, when after
his circumcision he emerged as a Jew, he called himself
Joseph Nasi. He was born in Lisbon, probably in 1514, but
he lived in Antwerp, Hamburg, Venice, Ferrara, Paris and
132 / Joachim Prinz

finally Constantinople. His disguise as a Christian aristo-

crat was so perfect that during an investigation into his
Jewish origin by the Spanish Inquisitor Ruy Fernandez, the
royal factor of the Spanish court wrote: "One claims that
he is Jewish, which, I submit, is difficult to prove." But
there was no such dispute about his wealth. A Portuguese
contemporary, Joao de Castello Branco, stated flatly: "He is
the richest man of his time." Since this was said at a time
when the Fuggers in Germany had an estimated wealth
of sixty-three million florins, this may have been a slight
exaggeration. But the fact remains that the emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, and his sister, regent of
the Netherlands, Queen Mary, each received generous loans
of two hundred florins from Nasi's bank. Huge sums were
paid to the Vatican and other heads of states as bribes in
many of Nasi's political interventions on behalf of his fel-
low Marranos in various parts of the world, for central to
the life of Joseph Nasi was his constant concern for his
Marrano brethren wherever they lived and a special de-
votion to those who needed help.
Joseph Nasi was related to the house of Mendes, one of
the most active and successful banking houses in Europe,
and although he had many other avocations, he was pri-
marily a banker during his early life. It has been suggested
that the Mendes family, having brought a large fortune
from Spain, was admitted to Portugal under a special law
which granted freedom of trade to some six hundred rich
Jewish families who had converted to Catholicism but
were known to live their lives as secret Jews. At any rate,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Mendes family
members lived in mansions, moved in the highest circles of
the country, and the firm was regarded as the leading trad-
133 / The Secret Jews

ing house in Portugal, with banking links to the Levantine,

Asian and African trade. It had branches in many parts of
the world, and the names of some of its agents in London,
Venice, Ferrara, Ancona and the Netherlands are known.
What was probably not known to the authorities was the
fact that the agents of the house of Mendes were often
engaged in illicit activities, outside their banking roles.
In fact, the agents of the house of Mendes formed a kind
of international intelligence organization which relayed
information about any difficulties encountered by the Mar-
ranos in the cities where they had branches. Many of the
agents were themselves Marranos, but there were some
bona-fide Christians among them who sent money to Mar-
ranos in distress. Whole Marrano communities received
subsidies from the house of Mendes. Although it was hardly
possible to conceal such considerable transfers of money
from one branch to the other, nor to hide the purposes for
which the money was used, the bank of Mendes was con-
sidered a Christian institution. Perhaps the fortune of the
family and the complicated involvement of governments
and leading families in their efforts made it possible for the
authorities to ignore the Jewish descent of the family.
The head of the family, Francisco, was married to the
daughter of one of the most distinguished and wealthy
Spanish Jewish families, the Benveniste; for years the
Benvenistes had been financial advisers to the kings of Ara-
gon. Francisco's wife concealed her Jewishness under the
adopted name of Beatrice de Luna. While Lisbon remained
the headquarters of the firm, its most thriving branch was
in Antwerp under the direction of Diogo Mendes, Fran-
cisco's brother.
The choice of Antwerp for the most important of the
134 / Joachim Prinz

branches of the house was not accidental, for Antwerp had

become the leading harbor of Europe and surpassed all but
Paris in power and wealth. More than a thousand agents in
the city represented foreign banks and trading firms. As a
result of the influx of foreigners, there was a housing short-
age in 1530. The building housing the stock exchange had
to be enlarged three times within a few decades. Five hun-
dred ships landed in the harbor every day.
British firms, Spanish and French merchants, the German
houses of Fugger, Welser and Hochstetter, as well as
Spanish and Portuguese enterprises, were represented. The
official policy of the authorities toward foreigners was
understandably liberal, since the wealth of Antwerp de-
pended upon them. No wonder that a royal decree of 1537
permitted conversos of Jewish descent to settle in Antwerp
"with their children, servants and furniture, with all rights,
freedom and franchises accorded to foreign merchants." It
must have been well known that many of the hundreds of
Marrano families who came to Antwerp, attracted by this
liberal policy, would be Judaizing. In fact, there is some
evidence that Diogo Mendes attended some of the clandes-
tine services the Marranos held in the basements of their
homes.
In 1539, fate suddenly altered the affairs of the house of
Mendes. Francisco died in the prime of his life, leaving
his young wife Beatrice de Luna and their little daughter
Reyna. Though they had been married for only eight
years, the vast fortune of the family, including their inter-
national business interests, was now completely controlled
by Beatrice, a beautiful young woman of twenty-four, who
possessed extraordinary strength and intelligence. She de-
cided to liquidate the business in Lisbon and transfer the
fortune to the branch in Antwerp. When Antwerp became
135 / The Secret Jews

the headquarters of the firm, the management continued

in the capable hands of Diogo Mendes. Since all final de-
cisions had to have Beatrice's approval, it was important for
her to oversee the various business affairs and undertake the
journey from Lisbon to Antwerp.
For reasons of security, it was decided that she should
travel via England. She left with her infant daughter, her sis-
ter, her nephews and, most important, with Joseph Nasi
(who was, of course, still called Joao Miguez). She also had
a large entourage of servants, and as a noblewoman, she was
welcomed in England by people of her social station. The
mayor of Antwerp had dispatched a message to Thomas
Cromwell recommending "very specially the beneficence of
the king to Madame Beatrice, a lady of honor and means, sis-
ter-in-law to Sir Diogo, who, for the last twenty years had
resided in the city of Antwerp, a good friend and supporter."
When the entourage arrived in Antwerp on one of the
boats which made up the merchant fleet of the house of
Mendes, they immediately moved into one of the great man-
sions of the town. After an introduction to Queen Mary,
Beatrice was given a position at the court which corresponds
to the present-day office of lady-in-waiting, and Joao Miguez
held a comparable position at the court of Charles V.
On the surface, everything seemed to go well. The business
was in good hands and Beatrice proved to be a prudent and
shrewd administrator of one of Europe's largest fortunes.
Her upbringing in a family of wealth and social graces, as
well as her unusual beauty, guaranteed her acceptance in the
highest social circles. Indeed she became a beloved and re-
spected member of the community. Parties at her house were
elegant and generous and attracted both nobility and money
barons.
The wedding ceremony of Diogo Mendes to Beatrice's sis-
136 / Joachim Prinz

ter took place in the cathedral of Notre Dame. The Catholic

rites were performed by the cardinal and two bishops, and
certainly nothing could have been more Catholic. Yet we
can be certain that the couple had been married according to
Jewish ritual by the time they boarded the magnificent car-
riage that transported them to the cathedral. Under the
veneer of Christian nobility they were, after all, Jews in dis-
guise.
Despite the generally accepting climate, there were periods
of persecution against Jews. Twice Joao was arrested for
Judaizing, and during his stay in jail (each time for about two
months) an attempt was made to confiscate the Mendes for-
tune. Both times he was freed by intervention of the highest
authorities, Charles V and Queen Mary. An investigator into
the accusation wrote: "The accused is not quite guilty of any
crime. He is subject to the Emperor's decree according to
which strangers who come from Portugal can stay in An-
twerp as long as they please. In as far as he is concerned,
an investigation in Portugal, France and Antwerp prove that
he had always been a good Christian."
Yet life had become too dangerous for the family. It was
true that the authorities looked the other way or imposed
only mild punishments for Judaizing, but Beatrice de Luna
wanted the freedom that would permit her to become a
recognized, openly practicing Jew. She had wanted to leave
Lisbon long before her husband died and go to a country
which would free her to change her name to something
more recognizably Jewish, making her dual worship at the
cathedral and in the secret Marrano prayer meeting un-
necessary. Even in the early years of her marriage her goal
had been the Ottoman Empire. Business reasons and the
protection of large interests had not permitted her to realize
137 / The Secret Jews

this dream, but now things were different. All that was
needed was time to prepare her flight to Constantinople
without the loss of too much of her fortune.
The trip was planned with all the care and secrecy of a
conspiracy, and all precautions were taken to conceal the
plan. To the outside world Dona Beatrice, lady-in-waiting
to the queen, remained the same. She never missed a mass
and her contributions to the Church continued to be lavish.
But in the inner circle of the family and with the help of
some of the oldest and most trustworthy of her servants
(some of whom were also Marranos), arrangements were
being carefully made over a long period of time. The first
stopover on the journey was to be Venice.
But things did not go according to plan. Just as large
trunks and cases filled with money and jewels were being
loaded onto ships, government officers intervened and three
large coffers containing immense quantities of pearls,
diamonds and gold bullion were confiscated. A charge was
brought against Beatrice for Judaizing and smuggling.
However, she could not be found. The house, still elegantly
furnished with hangings and paintings on the walls and
Persian rugs on the floors, was empty. Not a single servant
had been left to watch over the property.
As it transpired, Beatrice and her servants had left An-
twerp allegedly to take the cure in Aix-la-Chapelle. From
there the servants, more than twenty in number, all of them
Portuguese, departed one by one, and in the end, Beatrice
and her daughter Reyna were on their way to Venice.
Upon their arrival, in 1544, they were immediately arrested
as Jews, and the portion of the fortune they brought with
them was confiscated.
One can be fairly certain that Beatrice did not spend the
138 / Joachim Prinz

next two years in a Venice jail. No doubt she was under

house arrest, living in a fair amount of comfort. Apparently
she was treated with respect and deference, probably be-
cause of the fear of international repercussions. The most
important and successful diplomatic pressure came from
Turkey from the sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent. He in-
structed his ambassador to Venice to submit to the Doges a
personal message demanding the release not merely of the
noble lady and her daughter, but of the confiscated prop-
erty as well.
At the end of two years, Beatrice and her entourage
boarded a ship which brought them to Constantinople,
where four elegant carriages awaited them. Dr. Moses
Mamon, the sultan's personal physician, a Jew, was in the
welcoming party which the sultan had sent to pay respects
to Beatrice and to her great fortune. They were escorted to
their new residence which was situated "not in the neigh-
borhood where the other Jews lived, but in a beautiful villa
surrounded by gardens in the suburb of Galata for which
she paid a rent of one ducat a day."
Beatrice de Luna immediately converted to Judaism and
took the more simple-sounding name of Gracia Mendes
which she chose because it was the Spanish version of the
name Hannah, which means "grace." From then on Dona
Gracia became the queen of the Marrano dispersion, gen-
erous in helping them, courageous in fighting for them, and
most eager to make Constantinople, with its large Jewish
community, one of the important spiritual and intellectual
centers of Judaism.
Of the hundred thousand Jews in Constantinople at that
time, most were Sephardim, and at least ten thousand were
Marranos. Turkey had become the most secure refuge from
139 / The Secret Jews

Christian persecutions. Muslim rulers simply could not

understand Ferdinand's policy of expulsion, which, as the
sultan remarked, "had impoverished Spain and enriched
Turkey." The sultan could afford to be liberal. Never be-
fore, or after, had Turkey experienced so many military
and economic achievements as under the rule of Suleiman
the Magnificent. In a short span of time the territories now
known as Hungary and Rumania had been added to her
holdings, as well as Tabriz, Rhodes, Algiers, Baghdad and
Aden. Suleiman was considered one of the most powerful
rulers of the sixteenth century. He was prudent in his
political dealings and did not hesitate to enter into alliances
with "nonbelievers." While none of his predecessors would
have permitted themselves to make common cause with
non-Muslims, Suleiman held none of these prejudices, and
made ample use of Christians and Jews. The newly arrived
Mendes family was, in fact, destined to play a decisive role
in his undertakings.
Shortly after his aunt, Dona Gracia, had settled in Con-
stantinople, Joao Miguez arrived with a large entourage of
servants and with Don Samuel, Don Abraham and Don
Solomon, three other members of the family. Their arrival
in one of the Mendes ships was treated as an affair of state,
for it was only infrequently that a new immigrant of such
splendor and such credentials settled in the capital. A con-
temporary writer was particularly impressed that the
twenty servants were "dressed like gentlemen" and that
those among them who were not Jewish had to convert and
undergo the rite of circumcision. And so did Joao Miguez,
who was at last able to discard his assumed Christian name.
He became Joseph Nasi; his new name became famous not
merely in Jewish but also in Turkish history.
140 / Joachim Prinz

His circumcision took place in the month of April in

1554, and in June he married his young cousin Reyna,
Gracia Mendes' daughter. No longer was there any neces-
sity for disguise. High dignitaries, including the French
ambassador, attended the splendid wedding, which probably
took place in the largest of the forty-five synagogues in
Constantinople. The days of pretense were over. The
Jewish ceremony was performed openly and all the ancient
traditions were observed: the seven blessings were pro-
nounced, the Aramaic marriage contract with its antiquated
legal provisions were read, and the poor of the town re-
ceived their prescribed share of charity. A new sense of
freedom increased the family's joy. They had been liberated
"from the yoke of slavery." When the news of the marriage
reached Lisbon and Antwerp, Joseph Nasi was accused of
having "betrayed his faith in order to marry a rich Jewess."
We do not know under exactly what circumstance Nasi
entered the inner circle of the sultan's advisers. After Sulei-
man's Jewish physician introduced the family to the ruler,
the sultan had to make his own judgment about the useful-
ness of the newcomers. There is some evidence of financial
transactions having taken place between the sultan and the
house of Mendes shortly after Dona Gracia's arrival, and it
can be assumed that like so many other heads of state, the
sultan occasionally needed more than just financial advice
from the Mendes family.
The firm continued to prosper, but Joseph Nasi's main
interest no longer lay in banking or importing. He became
a political adviser and even, at times, an actor in the political
arena. No Jew of his time, or probably of any time before
the emancipation of the eighteenth century, played such an
important role in world affairs. We know that he had ex-
141 / The Secret Jews

tensive political correspondence with Maximilian II, em-

peror of the Holy Roman Empire, William I of Orange,
and with Sigismund II, king of Poland.
But his most ingenious political dealings concerned the
Marranos of the world. From his strong position in the
powerful Mendes family, Joseph Nasi devised what can be
called a specific Marrano strategy, a plan for economic and
political revenge against those who had mistreated Mar-
ranos. The Mendes family determined that if a country or
a town discriminated against Marranos, they would have to
pay for it. The family had always helped individual Mar-
ranos. They had put up bail money for those in jail and
sent ships for the rescue of persecuted Marranos. Now they
embarked on a more ambitious plan: the ruin of those who
hated them.
In more recent times some Sephardic Jews have displayed
a particular talent in the field of politics. Benjamin Disraeli,
the great British statesman, and Theodor Herzl, the founder
of Zionism, are two illustrious examples of political thinkers
whose ancestors were Sephardic Jews. But none of the Mar-
ranos of the sixteenth century had the means or the inclina-
tion of the Mendes family. It was a rare combination of
money, power and piety that made their plan possible. More
important, the Mendes family refused to accept the tradi-
tional role of Jewish acceptance of catastrophe and injustice
as part of their fate. They were really the first Jewish
activists. Not only were they unwilling to be passive about
their fate, they were prepared to react forcefully in order to
change it.
Two cities which became targets of the Mendes plan are
known, although there must have been others: Venice and
Ancona. Venice, which had become a haven of refuge for
142 / Joachim Prinz

Jews expelled from Spain, contained an ancient Jewish

community dating back to the early Middle Ages. In fact,
it was in Venice that the term "ghetto" was adopted to
identify the Jewish quarter. The policy of the city govern-
ment toward Jewish immigrants, and especially Marranos,
had fluctuated. Sometimes economic considerations caused
the authorities to be liberal; at other times, anti-Jewish
propaganda provoked hostility. In 1550 a hostile atmosphere
had prevailed, resulting in the expulsion of all Marranos. In
the house of Mendes the personal experiences of Gracia
Mendes, who had suffered indignities at the hands of the
Venetian government for two years, had not been forgot-
ten. Venice was listed among the enemies of the Jewish
people.
When a fire destroyed much of the city's harbor in 1571,
it was asserted that the house of Mendes had paid notorious
arsonists to set the blaze. And while much of the city was
still in flames, Joseph Nasi counseled the sultan to occupy
the Venetian island of Cyprus, declaring it a Turkish
possession. Later this brazen act backfired, and both the
Turkish defenders and the Jews of Venice were made to
suffer because it was common knowledge that it was Nasi
who had been behind the scheme to occupy the island. But
in the end Cyprus, the most important base of Venetian
power, was in the hands of the Turks. Joseph Nasi had his
revenge.
Their other plan, which had been put into effect two
decades before and became known as "the Ancona Affair,"
had not been as successful. Ancona is an old Roman harbor
city on the Adriatic, some hundred and thirty miles north-
east of Rome. Its famous Romanesque church was built on
the site of a temple to Venus, and still includes some
143 / The Secret Jews

columns of the ancient pagan sanctuary. In the sixteenth

century Ancona was part of the Papal States, which
stretched from Rome far up to the northeast, including
Ferrara. The Jewish community, which dated back to the
thirteenth century, depended for its well-being on the atti-
tudes of each succeeding pope. A few of the popes had
enforced the church doctrine that called for social separa-
tion and degradation of the Jews. Others had administered
the Papal States as any secular government would, consider-
ing not merely spiritual values but the economic and social
welfare of the people as well. Under these popes the Jewish
community lived unmolested and often much favored, and
Ancona's Jewish bankers and moneylenders lived very well.
Occasionally special papal decrees even exempted them
from wearing the badge required of all Jewish citizens.
Such decrees were, of course, rewarded by generous Jewish
contributions to the papal treasury.
Because the periods of freedom and liberality were more
frequent than those of anti-Jewish feelings, Ancona had be-
come a major attraction for Marranos from both Spain and
Portugal. They settled there under papal protection, and
with consent changed their adopted Marrano names to
Jewish ones. They erected synagogues and were held in
high esteem by most of the Christian community. Thus it
was quite natural for the house of Mendes to establish a
flourishing branch in Ancona. Gracia Mendes may even
have stopped in Ancona on her way to Constantinople. Cer-
tainly she visited the city several times and knew most of
the Marrano families personally.
In May 1555 the last of the benevolent popes, Julius III,
died and was succeeded by Giovanni Pietro Cardinal
Caraffa, a fanatic anti-Semite on whose insistence Hebrew
144 / Joachim Prinz

books had been burned in Rome. As soon as Caraffa was

elevated to the papacy he sent his representative to Ancona.
In disregard of the assurance given to the Marranos by his
predecessors, the Inquisition began in Ancona. The Mar-
ranos there, comparatively recent converts to Judaism, were
considered baptized Christians and were placed under the
jurisdiction of the Inquisition. Trials were held, converts
were tortured, and although some were able to pay their
way out of prison with enormous sums, those who could
not or who refused to deny their return to Judaism died
during the several autos-da-fe which were held in Ancona.
The news of the tragedy reached Gracia Mendes in the
autumn of 1555. To her it was not merely another report of
a Marrano tragedy, but many of the people who had been
put to death were her intimate friends. The outrage of
Ancona called for extraordinary action, and Gracia Mendes
became the prime mover of the plan. After several meetings
with family members, a call was issued for a complete boy-
cott of the harbor of Ancona. The boycott was to last for
eight months, after which time the results were to be
assessed and new measures contemplated. The appeal for the
boycott was sent to the entire Marrano Diaspora, which in-
cluded the large community of Salonika, as well as those in
Italy and the Netherlands. The plan found enthusiastic
approval in the Marrano group associated with the Mendes
family and in every community reached by the message.
Suleiman himself took a personal and official interest in its
execution. In fact, through a special emissary, a French
Christian nobleman, Suleiman sent a letter to the pope ask-
ing for protection for those he designated "his" Jewish sub-
jects. Although the document reads as though it were moti-
vated by economics rather than human compassion, it is one
145 / The Secret Jews

of the rare examples of the intervention by an important

ruler on behalf of his Jewish citizens:
. . . When you shall have received my Divine and Imperial
Seal, which will be presented to you, you must know that cer-
tain persons of the race of the Jews have informed my Ele-
vated and Sublime Porte that, whereas certain subjects and
tributaries of Ours have gone to your territories to traffic and
especially to Ancona, their goods and property have been
seized on your instructions. This is in particular to the preju-
dice of Our Treasury, to the amount of four hundred thousand
ducats, over and above the damage done to our subjects, who
have been ruined and cannot pay their obligations to Our said
Treasury, on account of the customs duties and commerce of
Our Ports which they had in their hands.
The papal response was polite and noncommittal. By the
time it was received in Constantinople, most of the prisoners
had already been burned at the stake and their property
confiscated. The sultan had done more than his duty. It was
now up to the Jews to avenge their dead. The results of
their efforts could soon be felt. Countless business ventures
in Ancona went bankrupt, and the once busy harbor was
almost empty. Merchandise, originally designated for
Ancona, went to Pessaro in the north, or to other ports.
Though at first the boycott seemed effective, it failed in
the end. It failed not because of the determination of the
pope, but because those Italian Jews who were not Mar-
ranos felt threatened themselves by the boycott. Not only
were they afraid that their temporarily peaceful existence in
Italy would be jeopardized, they feared commercial re-
prisals as well. Cowardice—shared and expressed by the
Sephardic rabbis of Italy—and a lack of historic perspective
rendered the boycott ineffective. The Marranos of Ancona
146 / Joachim Prinz

were dead or had fled the city. The house of Mendes closed
the doors of its offices in the harbor city. No ship of the
famous bank ever made port in Ancona again—but others
did. The rabbis of Ancona pleaded on behalf of the remain-
ing Jewish (non-Marrano) community, which was bound
to suffer from the boycott. The Turkish rabbis wavered in
their support of Dona Gracia. After a few months the boy-
cott had to be called off.
Both in the planning stage and its stipulated goals, the
Ancona affair was the antithesis of what is sometimes con-
sidered the traditional Jewish resignation to their fate as a
persecuted minority. Had it succeeded, it might have served
as a model for future generations. But the design came from
the Jewish aristocrats whose great wealth and political
power made them impervious to reprisals or persecutions.
The majority of the Jews still lived with memories of past
persecutions which were too powerful for them to forget,
and with the actual threat of future tortures if they dared
to take action against the authorities. It was not until the
establishment of the State of Israel that Jews really felt that
they had mastery over their fate. Until then Jews, with
some notable exceptions like that of the defenders of the
Warsaw ghetto, continued to meet their fate stoically and
with the kind of resignation that met the pleas of Joseph
Nasi and Dona Gracia.
During the years following the Ancona affair, Joseph
Nasi became increasingly involved in Suleiman's family.
Although it is not known what role Joseph Nasi played in
the royal family's tragedies, there are some who claim that
he had financed Selim, the sultan's son, in a struggle for
power in which he eliminated his brothers. There is little
proof of this charge. What is known is that Joseph Nasi was
eager to maintain a close relationship with the royal court.
147 / The Secret Jews

It was imperative for him to cultivate the successor to Sulei-

man, who was now in his late sixties. It is reported that
when Selim served as governor of a province in Asia Minor,
Nasi undertook the long and arduous journey to bring him
"precious vestments, thoroughbred horses and diamond-en-
crusted weapons," with the acclamation: "It is your destiny,
my prince, to succeed your father to the throne."
Selim, in turn, had persuaded his father to grant Nasi
possession of the region around the Lake of Tiberias in
Palestine. He was undoubtedly familiar with another of
Joseph Nasi's plans: to settle fellow Marranos in the Holy
Land. This premature Zionist notion is further testimony to
Joseph Nasi's imaginative view of Jewish history. Sulei-
man had no special interest in Palestine so long as the
Muslim shrines of Jerusalem were not endangered, and he
was eager to please the house of Mendes, which had done
him so many favors. He deeded to Nasi not only the ruins
of Tiberias but seven of the neighboring villages. Nasi
appointed Rabbi Joseph ben Ardut as his agent in charge of
rebuilding the walls of the city. Ben Ardut arrived in Ti-
berias with an order from the sultan that "All laborers and
builders in the seven villages must report for the rebuilding
of Tiberias. He who does not appear will be punished."
Since Tiberias had once been a great city, there was an
abundance of building stone, and for mixing the mortar, the
workers had all the sand surrounding the Sea of Galilee. As
the work began, a leader of one of the villages warned the
Arab workers that if they continued to build the city their
"religion would be destroyed." This had been prophesied,
according to the seer, in an old book. The workers
promptly stopped the building. Joseph ben Ardut went
immediately to the pasha of Damascus and complained that
an order of the sultan had been disobeyed. The terrified
148 / Joachim Prinz

pasha had the two leaders of the Arab workers arrested and
executed. The strike was broken and the building was con-
cluded. According to Joseph Ha-Kohen, a contemporary of
Nasi who included the whole story in his book Vale of
Tears, the circumference of Tiberias was fifteen hundred
cubits when the work was finished in late November 1564.
The next step was the planting of hundreds of mulberry
trees, for Nasi had developed a detailed plan for the pro-
spective settlers of Tiberias. They were to raise silkworms
and establish an industry which would rival that of the city
of Venice. Thus, in addition to its Zionist goal, the settle-
ment of Tiberias would discomfit that city so hated by the
Mendes family.
Joseph Nasi's plan for the Holy Land was remarkable
because it had all the features of twentieth-century social
planning: freedom, security and a self-sufficient, prosperous
economy to support the people. But in 1564 Joseph Nasi
was just a visionary. The Marranos did not respond. They
evidently preferred urban life, however dangerous or ten-
uous, to life in isolated Tiberias. The city reverted to ruins;
the houses which had been erected remained empty. The
mulberry trees were never cultivated, and in time, withered
and died.
Joseph Nasi had understood that the plight of the Mar-
ranos of Ancona and the repeated exile of his people into
other parts of the world were a warning that the Jews
needed a homeland of their own. It was not until three hun-
dred years later that Theodor Herzl translated the same
urgency that Joseph Nasi had felt into the reality of mod-
ern Zionism.
Suleiman the Magnificent, who had ruled the Ottoman
Empire for forty years and had made it into the most
149 / The Secret Jews

powerful political entity of the sixteenth century, died in

1566. His son Selim, as expected, succeeded him, Joseph
Nasi at his side. Selim II had inherited the throne but, un-
fortunately, none of the greatness of his father. He is re-
membered in the history of Turkey as Selim the Drunk and
reigned for only eight years. Nothing much was accom-
plished during his reign and a large part of his failure was
due to a strange Marranic conflict. His two advisers were
his grand vizier and Joseph Nasi. When the grand vizier
counseled close relationship with Venice, Joseph Nasi ad-
vised against it. It had become a rule for him that no Mar-
rano could make peace with Venice. So an important
alliance which could have benefited the empire was not
consummated.
As soon as Selim ascended the throne he bestowed upon
his friend Nasi the title of Duke of Naxos and the Aegean
Islands. It was a high honor for a non-Muslim to actually
have governing power over the islands, but Joseph Nasi
deputized a Christian of Jewish descent to serve as governor.
After Selim's death Nasi retired from public life to de-
vote himself mainly to furthering Jewish scholarship. He
attracted Jewish thinkers to Constantinople, established a
Hebrew printing press in Belvedere, and remained to the
end of his life the great powerful protector of the Marranos.
He died in 1579 in his early seventies.
While most Marranos were satisfied to find a haven of
refuge, to return to Judaism and live in peace, Joseph Nasi
and the house of Mendes, one of the richest and noblest of
the Marrano families, never forgot that they were part of a
large brotherhood of Marranos, and they never forgot those
who had caused the Marranos pain.
 Chapter Six

I n 1908 Carlos I, the extravagant and licentious king of

Portugal, was assassinated in the street. His son Manuel
II, who succeeded him, turned out to be an equally unen-
lightened monarch. In October 1910 the people forced
Manuel to abdicate and to flee to England. The coup, in
the end, proved abortive. By 1912, following the failure of
a general strike, the entire country, from Lisbon to the rural
areas, was caught up in the hope for new freedom.
The provinces were even more impatient for revolution
than the capital. In August 1910, two months before the
abdication, Oporto, the "Capital of the North" and Lisbon's
ancient rival, provided the catalyst for the revolution. The
people of Oporto prided themselves on their activism. There
was an old saying: "Coimbra sings, Braga prays, Lisbon
shows off, but Oporto works and acts." On that August day
the republican leaders and their followers assembled in
Oporto's square. Longshoremen from the famous port
mingled with the radical intellectuals. They had gathered to
witness a symbolic act to serve notice to the country and
the world that the time for revolution had come.
151/ The Secret Jews

The main actor in this performance was a young man

long known to the literati and intellectuals of Oporto as a
person of fervor and daring. His name was Arturo Carlos
de Barros Basto. While the crowd cheered, Basto climbed
to the roof of the town hall and replaced the royal flag
with the banner of the revolution. This gesture symbolized
the political mood of Oporto, and it turned out to be an
important impetus for the abdication of the king. Basto be-
came a patriotic hero.
Barros Basto is important to us not because of his heroic
political act, but because he was destined to discover the
hiding places of Portugal's more than fifteen thousand Mar-
ranos. We are indebted to him for much of our information
about these crypto-Jews. At the time of the flag raising on
the roof they were still living in almost total obscurity, and
it was not generally known that Basto himself was a descend-
ant of Jews.
Basto was born in Amaranta on the river Tamaga but
grew up in Oporto in the home of his grandfather, who, in
accordance with Marrano tradition, imparted the secret of
his Jewish heritage to Basto on his thirteenth birthday. He
was not taught more than the faint recollections which had
been handed down through the generations of his family,
but some passionate stirrings must have been awakened in
him. From his earliest youth Basto apparently harbored a
desire to return to the religion of his Jewish ancestors. His
grandfather himself does not seem to have considered such
an idea; he lived like all the other Marranos of Oporto,
openly a Catholic, privately, and largely in his memories, a
Jew. For him it was enough to have carried out his family
duty by telling his grandson the secret of his Jewish heri-
tage.
152 / Joachim Prinz

After the usual education of children of the middle class,

Basto chose a military career. During World War I, when
Portugal sided with the Allies, he fought "with distinction"
and returned to his homeland a hero. He was appointed
press censor and director of military prisons. His office was
located in an ancient building which had once been a
synagogue. For the rest of Basto's life he considered this
curious coincidence a sign of the validity of his secret wish
to convert to Judaism.
Since the Jewish community of Oporto was so small that
it had neither rabbi nor synagogue—the occasional Sabbath
services were held in a private home—Barros Basto decided
to go to Lisbon to make his public declaration during
services in the small but dignified synagogue there. He sat
quietly in his pew, a young man wearing the uniform of an
officer, decorated with the British and Portuguese medals
of valor which he had received during the war. To the
worshipers, he was, of course, a stranger. They looked at
him with curiosity but asked no questions. The prayer book
lay open before him but he did not know Hebrew and had
to follow the prayers in the Portuguese translation. Basto
seems to have learned the order of the service, however, and
he waited for the dramatic moment he had chosen, the most
important part of the Sabbath service, the reading from the
Torah—the sacred scroll which contains the five books of
Moses.
The scrolls are considered the most precious possession of
any congregation. They are dressed in velvet mantles, cov-
ered with silver ornaments and kept in the ark, hidden
from the congregation behind lavishly ornamented curtains.
The moment when the ark is opened with the singing of an
ancient prayer is of great significance to Jews. The scroll is
153/ The Secret Jews

taken out and the rabbi, who kisses the Torah which he
holds in his arms, turns to the congregation and says the
prayer which admonishes the Jews to adhere to the ancient
faith: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One." In order
to emphasize the singleness of God, the word "One" is
spoken with great fervor and is drawn out so that no
breath is left in the rabbi's body to utter another word.
This was the moment which Barros Basto had waited for.
He left his seat, a soldier in uniform, acting as though he
were attacking an enemy position. He stormed the pulpit,
seized the scroll, kissed it, and with great passion pro-
nounced the only Hebrew he knew, "Shema Yisrael"—
Hear O Israel. He quickly added, in Portuguese, "Your
God, who is One, is my God. From the world of the
Trinity I am returning to the kingdom of one God, the
God of Israel, the creator of the world. I am one of your
people. Your people is my people. I am a Marrano. I wish to
be accepted into the Jewish brotherhood."
They asked him to return to his seat. The rabbi agreed to
meet him after the service, which, one can imagine, was
concluded in some haste. Still, no member of the congrega-
tion spoke to Basto. After the service the rabbi and the
elders of the synagogue received him. He told them about
his grandfather, about his Marranic background, his new
belief, his deep conviction which urged him to return to
Judaism. He asked for admission into the Jewish community
and offered to submit to circumcision. But the reaction of
the leaders of the congregation was disheartening. They
rejected his plea.
Basto did not realize that he was facing one of the most
frightened and timid Jewish communities in the world. The
Jews of Portugal had their own haunting memories. Since
154 / Joachim Prinz

the fifteenth century there had been no national community

in Portugal. The persecutions under King Manuel I (son-in-
law of Ferdinand and Isabella) had forced thousands of
Jews into baptism. His royal decree in 1497, declaring that
all the remaining Jews were slaves, was followed by a
slaughter which in brutality rivals any persecution in Jewish
history. Not until the middle of the nineteenth century did
a handful of Jews return to Portugal. At first they were not
even allowed to have a synagogue. When the revolution of
1910 granted them the same religious freedoms which it
briefly gave to other Portuguese citizens, the Jews re-
mained timid. No Jew had dared to participate in the polit-
ical struggle in which Basto had been so active, for they
considered themselves tolerated settlers rather than fully
accepted citizens.
By 1918, when Basto appeared in the synagogue, times
had again become difficult for everyone. The Catholic
Church had been defeated and humiliated by the revolution
of 1910, which had forced it to denounce celibacy and per-
mit its priests to marry. The Church was not likely to forget
those experiences now that it had regained its old power.
For a Jewish community, ill at ease and fearful of a repeti-
tion of persecutions, the conversion of Barros Basto, a
Roman Catholic, might seriously threaten their existence.
The young man left the synagogue, but he was by no means
prepared to give up his plans. If he could not be converted
in Portugal, he would turn to another country.
Basto devoted the next two years to the study of Hebrew
and Jewish history. When he had mastered both, he again
decided that he was ready for conversion and applied to the
Sephardic chief rabbi of Morocco. The circumcision and
conversion took place in 1920 in Tangiers, one of the oldest
155/ The Secret Jews

North African Jewish communities which, at that time, had

a Jewish population of ten thousand. According to Jewish
custom, every male convert receives the name of Abraham
in honor of Abraham, the first Jew. Thus, Basto was named
Abraham ben Rosh.
He returned to Portugal a Jew. But in addition to all the
obligations which a pious Jew is called upon to assume,
Basto had decided to take on a Jewish career. He would
bring Judaism to the secret Jews of Portugal. He became a
Jewish missionary to his Marrano brothers.
The Portuguese Marranos were assumed to be a forgotten
tribe. Few people admitted knowing of their existence. But
when Basto proclaimed publicly that he wanted to set out,
like Joseph in the Bible, to "find his brothers," he dis-
covered that it was actually common knowledge that most
of the Marranos lived in the mountainous region of Portugal
known as the Beira Baixa.
The Beira Baixa is the poorest part of the country. The
winters are glacial, the summers unbearably hot. The poor
crops have to struggle against the terrible climate and the
rocky soil. The neo-Christians had probably moved to this
inhospitable region during the bloody years of persecution
because they felt safer there than in the large towns, and in
this barren isolation, protected from the influence of the
large cities, old customs could more readily be preserved.
The Marranos had gone to the mountains during the fif-
teenth century; a decade after World War I, Barros Basto
found them still living fifteenth-century lives in Belmonte,
in Fundao, in Covilhá, and in many other little villages.
They were pious, primitive, superstitious peasants or small
businessmen. All of them were ostensibly sons and daugh-
ters of the Church. They crossed themselves when they
156 / Joachim Prinz

passed a crucifix or a statue of a saint; they went to village

churches to receive absolution and joined the Christian
villagers in prayer; in every room of their houses there were
the statues of those saints that protected their crops and
their family lives.
But they were a different sort of Catholic. They were
conscious of the fact that in spite of their Catholic piety
they were judeu—hidden Jews. They ate the same simple
food as their neighbors, but, if possible, they did not eat
pork. On the Sabbath or a Jewish holiday they did not eat
meat at all. According to contemporary accounts, even a
hundred years before Basto rediscovered the people, pork
was never eaten. By 1920 the prohibition had been relaxed.
Every evening after the church bells had tolled for the
last time, the Jews of Beira Baixa rose and said: "O God,
give us this hour of grace. Cause our suffering to end and
permit us to see our victory with our own eyes. Let our
teachings be spread here and on the holy mountain of Jeru-
salem." This is a Marrano—a Jewish—prayer. But the hid-
den Jews of the mountains of Portugal don't know of the
existence of today's Jerusalem. When they pray, they mean
only the ancient city of the Great Temple of Solomon.
They have no idea what contemporary Judaism means. To
them Judaism is a strange rite practiced only clandestinely.
Open Jewish services and free Jewish existence, as we know
it, is not authentic Judaism to them. And the Jewish customs
that they observe are often only half-understood distortions
of Judaism as it really exists.
One of the centers of Portuguese Marranism that Basto
uncovered is Monsanto, a village rich in Portuguese history
and customs. However, the Marranos of Monsanto have
their own ancient memories, and their customs are also very
/J7 / ^e Secret Jews

old. When a Marrano in Monsanto is near death, no priest

is permitted to be present at the deathbed. When the Mar-
rano dies, nine men of the community arrive so that with
the dead man they form a minyan, the Jewish quorum for
prayer. They wrap the corpse in a white shroud and say to
him: "You will come to the valley of Jehosaphat where our
dead are judged. There Satan will come to you and he will
ask you, 'What is your faith?' and you will respond in these
words: 'All my life I have been a Hebrew, and if I have not
done everything that God demanded of me, it is only be-
cause in my ignorance, I did not know what to do.' "
This answer is reminiscent of an interesting document
found among the records of the Mexican Inquisition in the
Francisco Rivas Library in Mexico City. It reads: "This is
the case of Juan Mendez, age twenty-three, not circum-
cised, son of the gatekeeper of the church, who admitted
that because of the Jewish blood of his grandmother he has
a certain tendency to doubt the validity of the Christian
faith. During the ecclesiastical interrogation the young man
said this sentence: 'If I knew that the Law of Moses really
existed, I should without any doubt adhere to it.' " There is
hardly a better definition of the Marranic way of life which
Basto found in Monsanto and the other villages he visited.
It is a life of faint memory, based on vague tradition rather
than certain knowledge.

Barros Basto continued for many years on his missionary

journey. Wherever he could find Marranos, whether in the
poor and primitive villages or in the homes of the rich and
sophisticated citizens of the larger cities, he tried to con-
vince them to return to their ancient religion. He gained a
public reputation as a fervent proselytizer, intolerant and
158 / Joachim Prinz

totally absorbed in his cause, but to the Marranos he was the

"Master."
The master did not travel alone. Two physicians whom
he had converted in Oporto became the official circum-
cisers. The group traveled by rail, car or mule, a strange
twentieth-century missionary caravan, something that has
no parallel in all of Jewish history.
I arrived in Braganza [capital of Tras-os-Montes province]
on Sunday evening, October 16, 1927 [Basto wrote]. Several
crypto-Jews awaited me at the station. There were greetings
and small talk. Most of these people were of the opinion that
nothing could be done, as the majority of the Marrano families
were still afraid to avow their faith publicly. But I decided to
approach several families on Monday morning. I put on my
uniform and presented myself, accompanied by several gentle-
men known in the community as Jews. We told the servants
who received us to inform their masters that a Jewish officer
from Oporto wished to speak with them. We succeeded to a
certain extent. The elderly women who had joined us wept
with joy mixed with fear. During the following day we cir-
cumcised five men.
The movement spread. Basto found some villages where
the majority of the inhabitants was crypto-Jews. In the
ancient city of Moncorvo, which had once been a Portu-
guese center of Jewish learning, he found a hundred clan-
destine Jews. In Mogadouro and in Vilharno, not far from
Braganza, practically all the inhabitants were Marranos.
Basto conducted services in both towns, and they were at-
tended by the strangest people, some of whom had never
been known to be Marranos. Since no one knew Hebrew,
all services were conducted in Portuguese. The prayer book
had been prepared by Basto in advance of his excursions.
159/ The Secret Jews

In Braganza most of the rich Marranos were afraid to

come, but some did. A general and a major, both of an old
family of landed gentry, attended and spoke—for the first
time in many generations—of their Marranic tradition, re-
porting that according to family custom, their women did
not usually attend church services. However, on those occa-
sions when they did, they would meet with other crypto-
Jews after the services, and in a back room, away from the
windows, they would conduct a special service for Mar-
rano women. There they would say the prayer of Esther,
whom they considered to have been the first Jewish Mar-
rano. In the story which is the basis of the Jewish holiday of
Purim, Esther was married to the king of Persia, who did
not know that she was Jewish. When the king's minister
plotted to kill all the Jews, Esther revealed herself to the
king as a Jew and thereby saved her people. So, like the
Marranos, Esther had worshiped a strange god and had had
to conceal her Jewish origins.
The Marrano women of Braganza prayed in the words of
Queen Esther: "O my Lord, thou art our king. Help me, a
desolate woman, who has no helper but thee; for my danger
is in thy hand. Since my youth I have heard in the tribe of
my family that thou, O God, tookest Israel from among all
people and our fathers from all their predecessors for a
perpetual inheritance, and thou hast performed whatsoever
thou didst promise them. And now we have sinned before
thee. Therefore thou hast given us into the hands of our
enemies because we have worshiped their gods. O Lord,
thou art righteous."
"Santa Esther" became the Jewish Marranic counterpart
of Santa Maria. Since they had learned for centuries to
think in terms of the Catholic Church, turning the Jewish
160 / Joachim Prinz

woman, Esther, into a saint was a natural transformation.

For them the parallel between their fate and that of Esther
was too apparent to be overlooked. And since Esther's
story ends with Israel's redemption, the worship was also
comforting and hopeful. They knelt before the Catholic
madonna, but their thoughts were with Esther, the Jewish
woman who had worshiped the gods of Persia. The Mar-
ranos of Braganza lived the uneasy lives of conversos,
haunted by their ancestors' betrayal of Judaism and tor-
mented by their own inability to leave the Church and
openly worship the god of Santa Esther.
For Barros Basta each meeting with these clandestine
Portuguese Jews was an encounter with his brethren. He
had drawn singular consequences from the discovery that he
was a Marrano. He had done more than just return to
Judaism; he was determined to help his fellow Marranos
find their peace as Jews as he had done. But he was not
ultimately successful. In spite of the fact that congregations
of returned Marranos were founded and even synagogues
built through his efforts, they did not survive him. He
founded a magazine, written and published for the Mar-
ranos who had found their way back to Judaism. It bore
the proud name of Halapid, the Torch. A few copies can
still be found in some libraries, a touching but very small
monument to the passion of the man who patiently taught
Judaism to adults as if he were teaching children. But like
the congregations, the magazine did not last. It was Basto's
personal tragedy that he did not raise a son or find a suc-
cessor who could have continued his work. After his death
in 1961 little was left of his revolutionary movement. Like
the political cause that he had helped to lead in 1910, his
personal quest had failed.
161 / The Secret Jews

The other "explorer" who discovered the Portuguese Mar-

ranos was Samuel Schwarz, a Jewish mining engineer from
Poland who, in 1915, was invited by the Portuguese govern-
ment to survey the geological conditions of the country.
Two years later he found himself in Belmonte, an almost
inaccessible spot in the north of Portugal, not far from the
Spanish border. It was here that he discovered the Mar-
ranos. His fascinating experiences are described in his book
The Neo-Christians of Portugal in the Twentieth Century,
published in 1925 at the height of Barros Basto's mis-
sionary work. To Schwarz the discovery, which he re-
ported with so much enthusiasm and in such great detail,
was merely a curious footnote to Jewish history as he knew
it. Unlike Basto, he had no plans for the Marranos. He col-
lected as much material about them as he could and reported
on what he found, but it never entered his mind to convert
them to Judaism. He was a deeply committed Jew, perhaps
uncommonly interested in Jewish history, but he was essen-
tially a scientist reporting an unusual species. If he and
Basto ever met, there is no record of their encounter.
Adonai, the Hebrew name for God, remains the only
Hebrew word remembered by the Portuguese Marranos,
and it was this word that actually led to Schwarz's dis-
covery of the mountain "Jews" in Belmonte. Schwarz knew
that Belmonte had once been the seat of a famous Jewish
community with a thirteenth-century synagogue which
had been taken over by the Church, but he did not think
that there were any Jews still living in the city. So he was
surprised when he was warned by a merchant delivering
fuel to him not to buy anything from his competitor across
the street because "his name is Baltazar Pereira de Sousa and
he is a Jew." The de Sousas had been faithful Christians for
162 / Joachim Prinz

centuries, so it intrigued Schwarz that they were still con-

sidered Jews, and that the word "Jew" was spoken by the
rival merchant with the same sort of contempt that anti-
Semitic Poles used for Jewish competitors in his hometown.
He decided to go to see this "Jew."
It took some persuading, but after a time the merchant
admitted to Schwarz and his companions that he was, in-
deed, a secret Jew. However, he added, he was currently
something of an outcast among his own people because he
had married a Christian woman, "which is not done among
our people." Fascinated, Schwarz asked the man to intro-
duce him to the other hidden Jews of Belmonte. Perhaps
because the merchant was in disfavor or simply because
the Belmonte Marranos believed that Jews no longer ex-
isted, they refused to believe Schwarz when he said he was
a Jew. The men in particular were skeptical. But one of the
women said, "Since you pretend to know Jewish prayers
different from ours, recite them to us in Hebrew, since you
claim that Hebrew is the language of the Jews." Schwarz
pointed out to them that they did not understand Hebrew,
but the women insisted, and so Schwarz and his friends be-
gan to recite the most familiar, most often spoken Hebrew
prayers. Schwarz describes the event in his book:
It was a delightful summer afternoon. A gentle breeze filled
the air. From afar we could see the beauty of Serra de Estrela
which the rays of the sun filled with such glorious light, re-
minding us of the Biblical description of Mount Sinai. Then
suddenly something utterly unforeseen happened. One of my
friends decided to recite the most sublime of Jewish prayers,
said daily by every Jew, the prayer that proclaims the Oneness
of our God. "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One." This
is the prayer which the Jews, prisoners of the Inquisition, must
163 / The Secret Jews

have pronounced and often screamed in the hour of their de-

spair. My friends said in Hebrew: "Shema Yisrael, Adonai
Elohenu, Adonai Echad."
When he said the word Adonai, the women, as though in
ecstasy, covered their eyes with their hands, and one of them,
an old woman, recited a prayer in Portuguese saying in an
authoritative voice as the sacerdotisa, the one who leads in
prayers and knows them all: "He is really a Jew, for he knows
how to pronounce properly the name of our Lord Adonai."

In Belmonte it is the mothers who pass on to their daugh-

ters on their eleventh birthday the secret of their Jewish
heritage. The little girls are told that Judaism is a religion
to be practiced in secret and that they are to forget what
the priest taught them. The mothers then teach their
daughters the special Marrano prayers. The first to be
learned is the prayer of forgiveness: "Forgive me, Adonai.
I did not know your law, but now that I know it I shall
keep it." There is also a special Marrano version of the
Lord's Prayer, the Pater Noster: "O Lord, thou who art in
heaven because of thy grace, thou permittest the sinners to
call you Pater Noster, our Father. But I, Adonai, I cannot
pray as they do, for I know thou alone art in heaven. Look
down from heaven on our misery and help us, O Lord, in
thy goodness and from all our sins redeem us. Give us, O
Adonai, zeal and fervor to serve thee, and save us in this
world from their evil doing." When the Marranos of Bel-
monte enter the church, dip their hands into the holy
water and make the sign of the cross, they seem to be like
all the other Catholic members of the congregation. But,
quietly, they say, "I swear and confirm that this is but
wood and stone, and nobody is the Lord but thee."
Schwarz had arrived in Belmonte in the spring. Walk-
164 / Joachim Prinz

ing through the village, he noticed a group of people who

were baking small unleavened cakes. The villagers had not
eaten any bread for three days before the unleavened cakes
were distributed, and when he spoke to them and learned
this, Schwarz realized that he was witnessing a Marrano
version of Passover. They called it the time of Pasqua. In
the past, in order to escape the watchful eyes of the Inquisi-
tion, the Marranos would start the holiday three days earlier
than known Jews did. These villagers had long forgotten
the word "matzot," the Hebrew name for unleavened
bread. They call it pao santo, holy bread, and in accord-
ance with a Jewish custom that can be traced back to the
days of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, the women throw
the first part of the dough into the fire.
One family is designated for the special honor of baking
the pao santo. The whole Marrano community gathers in
this family's home, which is thoroughly cleaned as, tradi-
tionally, all Jewish homes are cleaned for the holiday. The
floors are covered with white linen. Like certain Orthodox
Jews throughout the world, the women wear white dresses,
the men cover themselves in white garments resembling the
shrouds in which they will be buried.
Special china is used during the Marrano Passover, as it is
in Jewish homes. The flour is put into special bowls and
special prayers are said. While the bread is baking, every-
body kneels. It should be noted that kneeling is a gesture
almost unknown among Jews, except in the symbolic kneel-
ing of the rabbi during the High Holy Days. When the
unleavened bread is ready, the people rise, kiss one another,
and each family takes home its share of the holy bread
wrapped in white cloth. There is also a special Passover
wine. It is prepared during the autumn months and stored in
165 / The Secret Jews

barrels which no one is permitted to touch. The wine is

pure, and unlike the ordinary wine the people drink during
the year, does not contain any spices.
No Marrano in Belmonte works during the week of Pass-
over. The villagers meet three times a day for prayer, the
traditional timetable for daily prayer of the pious Jew. On
one of the days they gather for a Passover picnic somewhere
in the mountains, praying and singing and dancing. The
dance is stately, like the ritual dances of Africa; the song
is unique and distinctive, and is sung only during this one
week in the mountains of Portugal. Then the people go to a
river, and waving olive branches, recite the "water
prayers." The olive branches may be a recollection of the
Jewish harvest festival of Sukkoth, in which the branches
of three plants are used and during which, in Jewish an-
tiquity, a feast of water pouring was performed. In Bel-
monte the Marranos sing while waving the olive branches:
"There comes Moses with his raised switch to beat the sea."
They beat the surface of the river hoping it may part in a
repetition of the miraculous parting of the Red Sea. The
olive branches used in the ceremony are kept through-
out the year, and in the following spring they are used to
light the oven in which the pao santo will be baked.
The Sabbath is also observed in a special way. On Friday
afternoon the woman of the house prepares the "Candle of
the Lord," a wick of fresh linen dipped in pure olive oil.
These wicks have seven threads, and they are prepared by
people specially trained to say certain prayers continuously
until the wick is properly woven. The wick is then placed
in a jar as it was during the Inquisition when the Marranos
took great care not to betray their Jewishness. (This
braided wick may be a faint memory of the candle used by
166 / Joachim Prinz

Jews in the ceremony of Havdallah, which bids farewell to

the Sabbath at the end of the day when three stars have ap-
peared in the sky. According to authentic Jewish custom, it
is a candle made of seven strands of wax braided together.)
In Belmonte the Sabbath meal begins with a prayer, as
does Friday night in Jewish homes all over the world. In
Hebrew the Sabbath prayer is called Kiddush. But the
Marranos remember only a distortion of the sound of the
Hebrew word, and they call their prayer Idus. Of course,
to make sure no pork is eaten, no meat is served on the
Sabbath.
The Sabbath is not merely ritually observed, but as in any
Orthodox Jewish community, affects ordinary commercial
transactions. Samuel Schwarz reported a scene he observed
on a Friday afternoon in 1922 in Belmonte. A Marrano
merchant was sitting at a hotel table conversing with a
prospective customer who was eager to buy some articles
not obtainable in any other stores. It was late in the after-
noon, and while they were still discussing the price, night
fell. The Marrano excused himself and went home. The
next day the customer, eager to finalize the deal, offered the
Marrano a higher price than that proposed on Friday. The
Marrano, however, refused to deal with him on the Sabbath
and asked him to return after sunset. When the man came
to see him again, he was prepared to pay the price he had
suggested earlier in the day, but the Marrano refused. He
would take only the price agreed to on Friday because he
did not want to profit from a business deal contracted on
the Sabbath.
When the Marranos of Belmonte rise in the morning they
say in medieval Portuguese, the language they and their
ancestors had spoken before King Manuel I forced them to
167 / The Secret Jews

become Catholics: "May the Lord Adonai keep me from

my enemies, those who wish me ill and those who talk
badly about me; the injustices of the Inquisition and the
irons of the king, of all that is bad. May the Lord of Israel
save me. Amen, O Lord Adonai, to heaven He goes and in
heaven He arrives."
For these hidden Jews there might as well still be an
Inquisition. They speak of King Manuel I in their prayers
as if he were still alive. They still live in fear of an institu-
tion which has long been abandoned and of a king who died
in 1521.
In the evening they lie in their beds and say: "I now lie
down and am as always in thy power, O Adonai. Great are
thy mercies, for we must make our devotions. Praised be
Adonai when we lie down and praised be Adonai when we
get up. In thy power are the souls of the dead, in thy power
are the souls of the living. To thee, O Lord Adonai, I com-
mend my soul and all that thou hast given me and may give
me in the future."
They are still afraid that their Judaic past might be dis-
covered. On the way to the fields or their shops they say:
"Bless me, O Lord Adonai, go with me forever, grant me
thy grace and thy shelter, thy goodness and thy love. Please
do me the great favor that nobody should betray me, that
only the angels of the highest Lord Adonai accompany me
forever." They say: "Adonai is the Lord. He is my shelter
and my castle. May I not fear the dread of the night nor the
spies who spy in the afternoon or the great slaughter of the
darkness."
This anxiety has developed into a curious collective para-
noia. The fear of something that existed hundreds of years
ago, transmitted from one generation to the next, has
168 / Joachim Prinz

created something like a congenital neurosis, so that in the

twentieth century the Marranos of Belmonte are still afraid.
The timetable of their terrible, unshakable memories is very
old: 1391, the slaughter of Seville; 1405, the bloodbath of
Toledo; 1492, the expulsion from Spain; 1497, the massacre
of Lisbon. Yet, the memories of all of these events are still
very much alive in the mountains of Portugal.

The discovery of the Portuguese Marranos by Barros

Basto and Samuel Schwarz was followed a few years later
by the revelation that a whole community of Marranos
existed on the Balearic Islands. Here the secret Jews are
called chuetas, which means "swine," and may refer to the
pots of steaming, cooking pork that they traditionally kept
in front of their doorsteps to prove to the world that they
were pork eaters and therefore not Jews.
Shortly before Hitler's ascent to power, Ezriel Carlebach,
a German Jewish journalist descended from an old Ortho-
dox rabbinical family, published his book entitled Exotic
Jews. In it he described his journey to the prosperous Jews
of the island of Majorca. (He evidently did not know that
there were also eight chueta families, recognized as former
Jews, on the much smaller island of Ibiza.) Ezriel Carlebach
knew he would find chuetas in Palma de Majorca, for their
existence had been common knowledge for a long time. But
no Jewish historian or folklorist had bothered to visit them
before Carlebach did in 1930.
He was directed to the "Jewish Quarter," which con-
sisted of thirty houses, twenty of them with jewelry stores
on the first floor. Some of the houses were simple, others
very attractive. In the shop windows there were statues of
saints, many different versions of Mary, crucifixes, bap-
169 / The Secret Jews

tismal fonts, Christian silver amulets of all sorts, and photo-

graphs of the pope. When Carlebach saw these exhibits of
Christian religious artifacts, he was certain that he had been
misdirected. This could not be the "Jewish Quarter," and
these stores could not have anything to do with the "Jewish
merchants" of whom he had been told. He started to leave
the street, to try and find more reliable information about
the chuetas. As he walked toward the arch which formed
the entrance to the quarter, he saw a Majorcan spitting with
much gusto and contempt at the street and muttering some-
thing about the "cursed judíos." Then he knew that he had
come to the right place. The crosses that he had seen in the
showcases were part of the schizophrenic life of the Major-
can chuetas. To Carlebach they became "the crosses of
Jewish fate."
Carlebach went back into the narrow street, part of a
medieval town which was now only a mecca for tourists
and sightseers, though it had once been an important Span-
ish outpost. He was determined to find out whether any-
thing was left of the Jewish memory which, it seemed to
him, haunted the place, so he went into one of the stores.
The "Jewish" silversmiths bending over their workbenches
on a silver statue of the madonna were pious Catholics. And
not merely pious in the ordinary sense, but obsessed with it.
I looked at the eyes of the man who moved slowly toward
the counter. His eyes were sad. I was under the impression,
probably utterly unfounded, that he looked at me somehow
knowingly. First we gazed at each other without speaking a
word. Then he inquired simply what I was looking for. I said,
"A ring."
"A ring," he said with some regret, "but you can have rings
everywhere. I specialize in holy articles, beautiful madonnas,
170 / Joachim Prinz

a crucifix studded with precious stones. A ring is an ordinary

thing. The statue of a saint will help you to live piously." But
I insisted that all I wanted was a ring. To be sure, I could get
rings in any other store, but the ring I wanted to buy was not
an ordinary ring. I was looking for one with a special inscrip-
tion. "What kind of inscription?" he asked. Speaking slowly, I
looked at him intensely. "A ring with the word 'Zion' or
'Adonai.'" I had hoped to discover some reaction in his eyes,
a gleam, some excitement, a flushed face. Nothing. He looked
at the shelves, opened some glass cases. Two women who had
been in the store as I came in tried to help him. "Too bad," he
said, and the women nodded in agreement, "but I do not have
any such thing. As I told you, I specialize in crucifixes and
other holy articles. I am sorry." They looked at each other,
shrugging their shoulders again, looking at each other as
though they had found a rather strange customer. I glanced
at them once more and then left.
But Carlebach did not give up. Sometime later he re-
turned to the store. This time he no longer pretended to be
a customer. He had decided to let the storekeeper know
that he had come to inquire about the Marranos. As proof,
he had brought some issues of Barros Basto's magazine
Halapid, which he showed to the old man. The silversmith
showed no interest in them, nor did he seem to recognize a
picture of Basto of whom he would have heard if he were,
indeed, a Marrano. Finally, Carlebach showed him a per-
sonal letter which Basto had written to him. The silversmith
looked at the picture and then at the letter, but he returned
them with a strange, shy smile. Carlebach began to think
that the man really did not know anything about the Mar-
ranos. But he couldn't believe it.
"I probably had expected too much," he wrote. "People
here who for hundreds of years had learned and practiced
171/ The Secret Jews

the art of silence were not going to reveal their secrets to a

complete stranger. I had acted with too much haste. I had
to learn to be patient."
It was in this mood that he strolled in the streets of the
old city, passing many churches and medieval houses until
he came to a Dominican monastery. Suddenly something
which he seemed to have forgotten occurred to him. He
walked into the monastery, through the dark halls, into the
cloister. The walls were covered with hangings and pic-
tures. He stood in front of one of them. It looked as though
it had been painted with blood.
And then he remembered that in the early seventeenth
century a few chueta families who had lived the life of de-
ceit and pretense decided to end it all and flee from an
island which had denied them acceptance because their
ancestors had been forced to convert in the fifteenth cen-
tury. One night they packed up and escaped to the harbor
where they boarded a little boat. It was hardly seaworthy.
The fifty-six Marranos, who had decided to join their Jew-
ish brothers in Italy, to return to Judaism and to be free
again, sat tightly together. Before they started on their
daring journey, they joined hands and together recited the
prayer of Kol Nidre, which is said on the eve of the Day of
Atonement. It had special reference to Marrano existence,
and some scholars think it may even have been written for
Marranos. "All the oaths that we swore and all the promises
that we made, may they all be declared as null and void as
though they had had never been made. Pardon us, O Lord,
and forgive our sins!"
They left the harbor . . . but a few hours later a storm
broke the mast and they were back in Palma. A quickly
gathering mob watched the boat and its desperate crew in
172 / Joachim Prinz

jubilant expectation of what they knew would happen

when the boat landed. As soon as it reached the shore, the
crowd threw itself on these helpless men, women and chil-
dren whose families had lived on the island for generations.
No trial was needed. For chuetas to leave the island with-
out permission was a capital crime, punishable by death. All
of them were burned on a pyre which had speedily been
built in the court of the monastery. The picture in the
cloisters depicted the gruesome scene. Below the picture
was a cross. It was made from the bones of one of the
judíos.
Perhaps Carlebach had been drawn to the monastery be-
cause it was the evening of the Day of Atonement. Soon
the Kol Nidre prayer, which in his mind was associated
with the Marranos, would be chanted in synagogues all
over the world. But there was no synagogue in Palma. Since
for the first time in his life he would not be attending a
service on this holy night, he decided that he would com-
memorate the holiday in a daring new way, among the
chuetas of Majorca. It was already dark. In the streets the
people were on their way home, and priests in long black
robes walked into the church to celebrate the mass.
Carlebach was in a somber mood. He went back to the
place where he had met defeat twice before. The shop was
situated on the same street where the conversos had lived
for centuries, the Calle de Sayel. He took along the Portu-
guese prayer book of the Marranos which Barros Basto had
published in Oporto. He was sure the chuetas would un-
derstand it, although their language was, of course, Spanish.
He walked once more into the store. "I placed the prayer-
book on the table right in front of the three chuetas, the
man and the two women. And then I said quietly but de-
fiantly, 'I am staying here with you and I shall read with
173 / The Secret Jews

you from the prayer book which contains the prayers of

the Day of Atonement. You know it begins tonight, the Dia
Puro de Senhor, the Pure Day of the Lord. I will pray here
with you, here and now.' "
Nobody looked at him as he walked into the back room.
Then the old silversmith entered. It took him a while bef6re
he came toward Carlebach, but then he looked at the Por-
tuguese prayer book. He tried to read it, but he could not
because by now it was too dark for his weak eyes. He asked
Carlebach to read it for him.
Carlebach read: "Grande Deus de Israel. Lord of Hosts,
accept my fast, my flesh and my bones, as though they
were a sacrifice. Look, Father, thou has sent us away, far
way, into slavery, without Kohanim, without Levites, with-
out teachers. If we do not do thy will, it is because we
don't know any better. If we do not fulfill thy command-
ments, it is because they torture us and persecute us. There-
fore we pray to thee, O Father, save us from torturers and
from evil neighbors who betray us. Save us from questions,
torture and fire." The old man sat down. Since the words
were Portuguese, he had not understood them, but the
prayer seemed to have made an impression on him.
He looked at me [Carlebach reports] and his wife came and
looked at me fearfully and anxiously. Then he said, "What is
that?" I said, "This is a prayer, a Jewish prayer, a prayer for
Yom Kippur, Dia Puro."
"Dia Puro," they repeated in a murmur. Then they said,
"Dia Puro, today is the day, the day of pardon for all sins, for
those who serve in an alien temple."
They began to think. Then something began to dawn on
them. It was a dark memory. The inarticulate strange memory
of the blood.
Suddenly they asked, "Hej Yisrael?" [Because of Israel?]
114 / Joachim Prinz

It was very dark now, the bells from St. Eulalia no longer
tolled. The mass had ended. People who had left the church
were coming back, stopped at the door of the shop, and they
all entered. They gathered around the table in the corner of
the room, in front of the kitchen. They were eager to listen
and I told them: "There is a town in this world. Its name is
Warsaw in a country called Poland. There are a thousand
synagogues there. A hundred times a thousand Israelites. To-
day is Dia Puro, the Pure Day of Forgiveness. The town is
empty, the market is dead, the gardens will not be attended.
Everybody will have left for the synagogue, for one of the
thousand synagogues. There the Jews pray and cry to God,
and God listens."
The chuetas opened their eyes widely, turned toward me,
their faces burning, and now they asked me as though they
did not believe me, "A hundred times a thousand Israelites?"
I said, "There is Zion, a fortress on a hill, surrounded by
mountains. Jews come from all over, Moscow, Rome, London,
and they go up to the mountain and bow down, all of them
bow down."
There was silence. The people bowed their heads as
though they were in church while Carlebach continued to
read the prayer of Yom Kippur: "Grande Deus de Israel.
Because we have not thought of the poor and the orphans,
evil times have come to us and scattered us to all corners of
the world. I pray thee, Grande Deus Adonai, listen to me,
according to thy will, but forsake me not, so that the na-
tions may not say, 'Where is your God?,' for I know that
God is in heaven. It is He who gives you good and evil."
While he was reading, something was happening. The
two old people and the young ones rose, and suddenly there
was an echo in the room as the chuetas repeated, "Grande
Deus de Israel, Adonai." The ice had been broken.
175 / The Secret Jews

Outside, pots of pork were steaming. Inside, however, it

was Kol Nidre, the eve of Yom Kippur. According to an
old chueta custom, candles had been put into a jar; they
were lit and they flickered. Then, as Carlebach tells it:
The grandmother of the group rose, and with her, genera-
tions of Church Jews and oceans of pain, mountains of perse-
cution and hunt, generations of Jews who lived their lives pre-
cariously between the cathedral and the pyres of the auto-da-fe.
These are worlds of lies and suffering. Hearts were tortured
until the last Jewish spark was extinguished. But some little
gleam was left. It was as though somebody had recovered from
a heap of ashes, a glowing atom, which was just about to flicker
a bit, and maybe burn again.
But it did not. It flickered and it was soon extinguished.
After a half-hour, everything was over. Somebody
opened the door, light came in, and Carlebach could see
once more the indifferent bitterness of their faces. He un-
derstood how victorious the Church had been. These were
Marranos who would never return to their old faith. Even
if they were to enter a synagogue, they would pray to the
God of the Holy Trinity. They knew no other God.
The only thing that binds them to us is that until this very
day they suffer because they are known to have been Jews.
They are discriminated against because they are still considered
Jews. This and this alone binds them to us [Carlebach con-
cluded]. As they received me now, as they joined me in speak-
ing of Grande Deus de Israel, the Great God of Israel, as one
of the old women shed tears, and another one embraced me,
it was with the voice of the blood, not of the faith.

They had welcomed Carlebach not as a representative of

their people, but only because he did not despise them or
176 / Joachim Prinz

hate them. This gave them confidence, even though he was

a stranger. The chuetas that Carlebach found no longer had
any connection with the community of Jews about whom
Carlebach had tried to tell them. They did not even really
remember the martyrdom of their Jewish ancestors. They
were only chuetas because the other Majorcans would not
let them forget it, because of the strange kind of anti-Semi-
tism which excluded them from the rest of Majorcan so-
ciety. The only bit of Jewish knowledge that Carlebach's
chuetas had was the awareness that Grande Deus de Israel
had caused them to be martyrs. Whenever they are particu-
larly pressed and in dire need, they say, "Hej Adonai"—
"because of Adonai." These two words answer many ques-
tions: Why must we participate in the holy processions
more eagerly than others? Why must at least one member
of our family become a priest? Why must our contribution
to the church be larger than that of others? Whenever a
child asks these questions, the answer is: "Because of Ado-
nai"—"Hej Adonai."
But Carlebach was, after all, only a visitor and an out-
sider among the chuetas. What he saw and interpreted as a
"shrunken" faith was only the small portion of the chueta
tradition that a secret sect reluctantly reveals to a complete
stranger. Others who have actually lived among the chuetas
have been able to compile a long list of Jewish customs
which exist until this day, and even to collect enough
chueta prayers to fill a slim volume of liturgy, prepared for
their clandestine Jewish services over a period spanning
hundreds of years.
For much of our information about these people we are
indebted to Baruch Braunstein, who spent many months
with the contemporary chuetas and studied many of the
177 / The Secret Jews

documents in Spanish archives which deal with the chuetas

of the Balearic Islands. He also found many of their pray-
ers, some of which are touching documents of a centuries-
old devotion to Judaism. Others are expressions of those
constant companions of Marranic life, fear, guilt and anxi-
ety, and uniquely express their particular needs. They pray
to God to forgive their sins and ask Him to understand their
infidelity and have pity on their conflicted twilight exist-
ence:
"Our Almighty Father, who daily worketh miracles, take
pity on us, O great God, and upon thy innocent flock, who
are stung by bees with such great affliction. Thou who art
powerful, God eternal, be willing to have pity upon them.
Blessed be thy holy name, now and forever. Show us thy
light, O Lord, hide it not from us. If our ancestors had
sinned for a time, thou, O Lord, didst pardon them; thus
saith the Scriptures. Thou, great God, who art in heaven
on thy holy throne, have pity on us, great Lord, and upon
thy suffering people."
The chuetas share a great many customs with the Portu-
guese Marranos. For instance, when the chuetas bake bread
they also throw a piece of dough back into the fire. Like so
many other Marranic customs, this is considered an old
habit. Ask a chueta woman why she maintains this strange
practice and she will say, "This is the way my mother and
my grandmother used to bake bread. It is an old family cus-
tom. It adds to the good taste of the bread."
Like the Portuguese Marranos, the chuetas of the Balearic
Islands refrain from eating meat on the Sabbath to avoid
violating the dietary laws. As the family assembles around
the table, the father recites the prayer Recibimiento del Sa-
bat, the reception of the Sabbath. This prayer is the same
178 / Joachim Prinz

Idus that Schwarz heard in the mountains of Portugal. The

Jewish prayer of Kiddush is a weekly reminder of the crea-
tion of the world and the sanctification of the seventh day.
But the Friday-night prayer of the chuetas does not even
mention the Sabbath. It recalls the story of the blind Tobit
who "found the light out of sorrow and blindness." It ex-
presses the Marrano dream, to find their way out of grief
and blindness as "Saint Tobit" did. The chuetas have a spe-
cial Sabbath bread and they eat a special Sabbath dish. For
the Marranos of Portugal, this dish is fish, but the chuetas of
Majorca eat a special kind of omelette, not eaten on any
other day.
Although by the time Carlebach came to Majorca the
chuetas hardly remembered Yom Kippur, according to ear-
lier accounts they did observe the holiday during the seven-
teenth century. They called it "El Ayuno" or "El Dia del
Pardon," the Fast or Day of Forgiveness, or "El Ayuno
Mayor," the Great Fast. That may be why they didn't un-
derstand Carlebach's "Dia Puro de Senhor."
At a trial of the Inquisition in 1677, Pedro Onofre Cortes,
who was described as a "descendant of Jews, a native of
this city [Palma] of the Calle de Say el" (the street Carle-
bach visited), in confessing his "heresy" described the com-
memoration of the Day of Atonement among the chuetas
of Palma.
Some chuetas remained in the shops to ward off the sus-
picious guards of the Inquisition. All other members of the
community assembled in its large gardens, surrounded by high
walls to protect them from curious or dangerous onlookers. The
prayers opened strangely with the singing of "Osana, Osana,"
the Spanish version of the Hebrew word for salvation, the
Hosannah of the New Testament which the Jews sing during
179 / The Secret Jews

the festivals of pilgrimage, but never on the Day of Atone-

ment. The men covered their heads with white handkerchiefs
which might be a reminder of the tallith, the prayer shawl
worn by Jewish men during the morning prayers, or even
reminiscent of the white garments which pious Jewish men
wear during the whole day of solemn prayers.
It is doubtful that a service conducted in such secrecy
could have lasted until sunset. It was probably only a token
service at best. Whenever it ended, it is known, it con-
cluded with a ceremony of the "kiss of forgiveness" be-
tween members of the congregation.
Because it would have been too difficult to celebrate two
major holidays within ten days, the holiday of Rosh Ha-
shanah, the Jewish New Year, was entirely forgotten
among the Marranos. But it is remarkable that two and a
half centuries following the conversions, Marranos were
still celebrating Yom Kippur on the island of Majorca,
however strange and distorted their version of the service
was.
Among the chuetas, fasting is an almost obsessive occii
pation. The Jewish calendar lists only two major fast days:
the Day of Atonement and the ninth day of Av, which
commemorates the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.
The chuetas fast much more often even than the very Or-
thodox Jew, who observes several additional days of fast.
The evening meal before the day of fasting is especially
elaborate among the chuetas. Only new salt is used in the
dishes and at the table. Special clothing reserved for fast
days is worn. And there is a ceremony of cleansing the
body which is meticulously observed.
The chuetas also worship Saint Esther, and their Saint
Esther Day is a holiday even more sacred than the Day of
180 / Joachim Prinz

Atonement. The Marranos' celebration of the heroism of

Esther has little in common with the Jewish holiday of
Purim, which celebrates the same happy event, the rescue
of the Persian Jewish community from certain destruction.
In Jewish tradition, the deliverance from Haman, the arch-
enemy, is celebrated in a day of masquerade and merriment.
Although the "Scroll of Esther" is read in the synagogue,
there is no solemnity attached to it. Each reading of the
name of Haman is greeted with a loud noise, and it is cer-
tainly the least orderly service of the year. "On Purim,"
orders a Talmudic admonition, "you must drink so much
that in your drunkenness you will no longer remember
whether you bless Haman, the evil schemer, or curse Mor-
decai [Esther's uncle], the Jew who saved the community."
In contrast, among the chuetas Saint Esther Day is pre-
ceded by three days of fasting. After the fast a ritual bath
is taken and new clothing is worn "in memory of the mar-
vels which the God of Israel has done in liberating the chil-
dren of Israel, and in honor of freedom and triumph over
Haman." There is a special holiday menu, reserved for this
day and never varied. It consists of fish, spinach and peas. It
is a holy meal eaten with sadness and solemnity. "We do it
to express our contrition over our apostasy and the betrayal
of the faith of our fathers," a chueta replied when asked
to explain the significance of the holiday.
Passover among the chuetas has also completely changed
from the traditional Jewish observance, and it differs also
from the Pasqua of the Portuguese Marranos. The Seder
meal, which is often observed even by Jews who observe no
other custom, is unknown. The story of the Exodus from
Egypt, which is read from the Haggadah, the book of tales,
in traditional Jewish practice, is not even mentioned by the
181 / The Secret Jews

chuetas. Their version of the holiday is the feast of the first-

born. This is not far removed from Jewish tradition. Pass-
over was always connected with the first-born of Egypt
who were slain as part of the ten plagues visited on the
Pharaoh, and in whose memory the Orthodox Jewish first-
born are supposed to fast on the day preceding Passover.
Among the chuetas, honoring the first-born constitutes the
whole content of the feast. It is in their honor that a whole
lamb is roasted and eaten by the family. This, no doubt, is
the paschal larnb eaten at the Exodus together with un-
leavened bread. But the idea of freedom, the central theme
of Passover, is forgotten. Passover, usually a festive and
happy holiday, has become a somber reminder of the
crypto-Jews' precarious existence and their unrelieved re-
morse. "We celebrate it," they say, "because God has cas-
tigated us, knowing that we have become idolaters like the
Jews of Egypt."
Circumcision has disappeared, for obvious reasons. In the
early days on the mainland in Spain, children were still cir-
cumcised, and in one of the investigations of the Inquisition
it was found that a Judaizing Christian circumcised himself
with a piece of glass in jail. But the custom was soon abol-
ished. The eighth day in the life of a male child, on which
circumcision should take place, is not commemorated at all.
Not even a special prayer is said.
But in marriage and death the chuetas have preserved
some Jewish customs. The marriage ceremonies are, of
course, performed by the priest in the local church with all
the Catholic rites. But like the other Marranos we have dis-
cussed, the chuetas marry in two separate ceremonies, once
in the church and the other in a form of the "Jewish" wed-
ding ritual. The chueta version of this Marranic custom is
182 / Joachim Prinz

particularly original and colorful. A few days before the

day of the marriage they go to the cemetery and visit the
graves of their ancestors. There, standing among the crosses
which have been placed even on the graves of chuetas, the
couple recites a prayer called the "Jewish Oath." The
community, before consenting to the marriage, has made
certain that both bride and groom are descendants of Jew-
ish families.
Intermarriage is strongly discouraged among the chuetas.
This prohibition is, after all, one of the few ways they
have of preserving their fragile heritage. A novel on this
theme was written in 1916 by Vicente Blasco-Ibanez. The
book, called The Dead Command, describes the difficulties
of a marriage between an impoverished Spanish nobleman
and the daughter of a rich Marrano from Majorca. In the
novel the passionate rejection of intermarriage on the part
of the crypto-Jews resulted in this particular marriage
never being consummated. And Braunstein tells us that as
late as the close of the seventeenth century, the Hebrew
word malshin (slanderer or denouncer) was applied to
anyone who married outside of the Marrano group, and the
offspring of such a union were called half-breeds.
Death in the chueta community calls for the observance
of another set of Jewish customs. When death is approach-
ing, the priest of the Church is called to administer the last
rites—unlike the Portuguese custom, which bars the priest.
As soon as this is done, the dying chueta is turned to face
the wall, an old but unexplained Jewish custom. After
death, the washing of the body begins in strict observance
of the Jewish law which governs this ritual. But first, all the
windows are closed—even today—to prevent detection by
the spies of the Inquisition. The corpse is washed with wa-
183 / The Secret Jews

ter and oil. The body, wrapped in a white shroud, is bur-

ied in the Christian cemetery and a cross is placed on the
grave. But when the family returns to the privacy of their
home, they mourn the dead with Jewish rites. They ob-
serve a day of fasting, though this is not a Jewish custom; it
has been added by the chuetas. After the fast, no food may
be cooked in the house of mourning. Neighbors provide the
meals, a custom which is observed by Jews all over the
world. No meat is eaten during the seven days of mourning
lest any dietary laws be violated. And although the Jewish
custom of cutting the clothing of the close members of the
family has been forgotten by the chuetas, they wear the
same clothing throughout the thirty days following the fu-
neral service.
 Chapter Seven

That the Marranos have survived and that some of

them still live their strange separate lives today is in
itself amazing. Their clannishness, their secrecy, their
ancient guilt, their fear of dangers which threatened their
ancestors but which no longer exist, have helped, no doubt,
to preserve them. But one of the most remarkable aspects
of the Marrano phenomenon is the strange way in which
they have transmitted the customs and traditions through-
out the generations, and the fact that so many of the same
distorted rites, the same variations of old Jewish themes,
exist in Marrano communities separated by thousands of
miles of land and sea.
How could the Marranos, having burdened themselves
with the dual existence in both church and synagogue,
transmit any Jewish heritage, however diluted or distorted,
from generation to generation? Where did they obtain
their information about Jewish customs? How did they
preserve these facts for the next generation?
It is usually forgotten that while the Marranos lived in
their own peculiar kind of spiritual "captivity," Jewish
185 / The Secret Jews

communities existed in Spain itself until 1492 and were, of

course, in existence in other parts of the world. In those
early days of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the
memory of the expulsion and the enforced conversions still
fresh in their minds, the Jews developed secret signs and even
a clandestine language which enabled them to recognize fel-
low Jews. For although there were many restrictions for
Marranos, some were permitted to trade in other countries,
as we have seen. One word, one handshake, one twinkle of
the eye was often enough for a merchant in Italy to recog-
nize the trader from Spain or Portugal as a fellow Jew.
Of course, the elaborate system of espionage maintained
by the Inquisition made them cautious lest they be re-
vealed as "Judaizers," and both the Marrano who had to
return to his family back home and the Jew of Venice or
Florence with whom he dealt in business understood the
imminent dangers their meetings invited. There were
family gatherings behind locked doors. Jewish customs
were observed as the family sat around the table, and the
ceremonial objects which they gave their Marrano visitor
as gifts were hidden among the legitimate merchandise he
carried back home with him. And often they were dis-
guised. For instance, a menorah, the candelabrum for
Hanukkah, might be decorated with a statue of a madonna.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some two or
three generations after the conversion of their ancestors,
the Marranos' most coveted book was a prayer book. In
the thorough investigations of the Inquisition, such prayer
books were found in the homes of Marranos on the Spanish
mainland as well as on the Balearic Islands. Most of them
were in Hebrew, although the Marranos by that time no
longer understood the language. In the early days of the
186 / Joachim Prinz

fourteenth century, some Marranos took Hebrew lessons

secretly with priests who themselves were converses. But
after a few generations, Hebrew was generally lost to the
Marranos, and only a few distorted words—like the Idus
of the Portuguese or the single word "Adonai"—were left.
More important than prayer books in preserving their
way of life were Jewish calendars, which were quickly
copied and widely distributed. In this way the chuetas of
Majorca and Ibiza, and the Marranos in other parts of the
world, knew when to celebrate the Jewish holidays. Later
the dates were only approximately determined, as spring
became the time for Passover and autumn for the Day of
Atonement.
In fact, since these people had forgotten the meaning of
most customs and holidays, and had changed many of the
observances and prayers to fit their own needs, after a
while almost everything amounted to an approximation.
Yet, many Marranic customs in one country resemble those
in others. It is understandable that the chuetas and the
Marranos of the Iberian Peninsula share many of the same
rites. But the same customs can also be found in the Carib-
bean islands and in many South American countries. In
their isolation from the rest of Jewry, the rituals they
developed became their own authentic Judaism.
For instance, the Marranos have a form of ritual
slaughter, a dimly remembered vestige of the Orthodox
Jewish direction on killing animals for food. At a meeting
of Marranos arranged by Barros Basto in 1926, Rabbi ben
Jacob, a Sephardic rabbi of Salonika, had an encounter
with a "little clean-shaven man" who told him that he was
the shohet—the ritual slaughterer—for the community.
The rabbi asked him if he really knew the laws concerning
187 / The Secret Jews

ritual slaughter, and if he adhered to them. The man said,

"If you don't believe me, why don't you ask the people
here." And sure enough, the Marranos replied that the man
was, indeed, their shohet; they would eat only meat that
had been slaughtered by him. There was, however, one
small difference between this shohet and the shohet of
Orthodox Jewish communities in other parts of the world.
In the first place, he owned no ritual knife, and in the
second place, he slaughtered not only cattle but pigs as
well. He slaughtered them exactly as the Christian butcher
did, but before doing so, he said a Marrano prayer which
was addressed to the animal: "Adonai has created you and
me. Yet I must kill you. But I want you to know that I
have mercy and pity. Praised be Adonai, who gives us food
to eat." The shohet then explained that he had plans to
emigrate to what was at that time Palestine. The rabbi had
his doubts that among the Orthodox Jews of Palestine, this
particular shohet would find ready acceptance.
For although the shohet, like all the other Marrano ex-
amples we have given, remembered some rudiments of
Jewish prayer and custom, there is always a question about
the depth of the Jewish identity of the contemporary Mar-
rano. Five hundred years is a long time, but five hundred
years without teaching, without any kind of authentic in-
terpretation, without a living, creative community, without
history, is eternity. All that is really left is a faint memory,
however sacred. Everything from conviction to custom
had to be diluted and, of course, much was completely
lost. It is miraculous that even the memory, however pale,
has survived.
Yet no one can speak of the Marrano who has not re-
turned to his people as being part of Jewish tradition, let
188 / Joachim Prinz

alone a member of the Jewish community. The Marranos

are a remnant. They have preserved a remnant Judaism in
which Esther and even Adonai wear halos. Perhaps that is
the reason why Barros Basto's mission ultimately failed.
The Marranos he met were not really prepared for Jewish
life, and no Jewish school could change that fact. They
had lived for so many centuries with subterfuge and in
secrecy, and with their special version of Jewish observ-
ance, that the transition to open Judaism was too difficult
and, perhaps, impossible for them to accomplish.
More recently, there was an attempt to convert to
Judaism the chuetas of Majorca, but this attempt, like
Basto's, and perhaps for the same reasons, also failed. In
1961 a group of Israelis, believing that Jews should have
more active missionaries, organized themselves for the pur-
pose of gaining converts to Judaism. In their search for
natural objects for conversion, they discovered the chuetas
of Palma. Israel Lippel, one of the most active members of
the group, traveled to Spain, and after spending some time
in Barcelona, learning more about the chuetas, he went on
to Palma.
He met with sixteen heads of families from the chueta
community and then began to hold meetings in their
homes. At these meetings he told chuetas about Israel, gave
them copies of the Old Testament translated into Spanish,
and Spanish-Hebrew dictionaries. He gave each of the
women a mezuzah (the tiny scrolls which are attached to
the doors of Jewish homes) to wear around her neck, and a
larger one to put on the door. He delivered lectures on
Zionism and held discussion groups. He had himself photo-
graphed with a group of chuetas. In the picture he is wear-
ing a prayer shawl, holding a Hebrew book in his hand,
189/The Secret Jews

and above him is the crucifix which can be found in every

Spanish Catholic home. At the end of his trip he reported
that at least three hundred chuetas would soon be coming
to live in Israel.
A few months later it was reported in the New York
Daily Forward, a Yiddish-language newspaper, that a letter
had been sent from the chuetas of Majorca to the Prime
Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, asking for permis-
sion to enter Israel:
We have heard that God has remembered his people and
that after two thousand years the Jewish State has been re-
created. We are several thousand men, women and children,
the remnants of Spanish Jewry. The cruel Inquisition forced
our ancestors to deny their religion and accept the Catholic
faith. We appeal to you as the head of the Israeli government
to help us to return to the faith of our fathers, to our people
and to our homeland. Regretfully we know very little of
Jewishness and therefore urge you to supply us with books on
Judaism written in the Spanish language. We Marranos yearn
to return to our people.
In the end, neither three hundred nor "several thousand"
chuetas came to Israel. A total of twenty-four men, women
and children arrived, and they were admitted as immigrants
under the "Law of Return" which guarantees admission to
all Jews. But tragically, the chuetas thought they could
continue to live as they had always lived, under the pro-
tection of the Church. They could not cope with the kind
of Jewish life they found in Israel. They could establish no
relationship with the Israelis, who were foreign to them,
not only in language and thought, but also in the customs
which they should have had in common. The chief rab-
binate of Israel, not known for its liberalism, insisted that
190/ Joachim Prinz

the men, regardless of age, immediately undergo circum-

cision and submit to proper procedures for conversion. The
chuetas, the rabbis said, had kept no documents through
the centuries attesting to the "purity" of their Jewish origins.
The whole ill-prepared adventure ended in disaster. The
poor chuetas who had come with many hopes for a new
spiritual experience found that it was not possible in pres-
ent-day Israel. They quickly returned to Majorca.
If they had stayed, these people would have wanted to
take their special kind of worship into the new country
with them. Some Marranos have managed to do this. More
than a century ago a small group of Marrano immigrants
built a little synagogue in Jerusalem. On Yom Kippur, if
you passed this small shul, you would witness a strange
event. At a certain point during the service the congrega-
tion would come outside, and in front of the synagogue on
the holiest of Jewish holidays, the men would play a game
of cards. This was a Marrano habit left over from the days
of the Inquisition when in order to fool the guards, they
would station men outside their place of secret worship.
The card players were set there to divert the officers from
the furtive worship that was going on inside. Hundreds of
years later this bizarre ceremony was an important part of
their worship. It was the only Judaism—the only kind of
Yom Kippur service—they had ever known.
In striking contrast, a group of Belgian Marranos success-
fully immigrated to Israel in 1970. But they were young
people, mostly in their thirties, and they had, according to
a report in the Jerusalem Post, "always fasted on Yom
Kippur, eschewed pork, eaten matzo on Passover, and all
the males had been circumcised." Members of the com-
munity never married in church, only in civil ceremonies.
These Marranos were altogether more in touch with
191/The Secret Jews

authentic Judaism. In fact, their families had hidden from

the Nazis during the war for fear of being identified as
Jews. "We felt different and people knew we were," one
of their members said.
They had emigrated from Italy in a group and settled in
Liege, where they lived in a large community of people
who considered themselves Marranos, but they had grad-
ually made up their minds to return to Judaism. Several
Jews had helped them get jobs in Liege. After a time they
appealed to the Belgian rabbinate for conversion and for
assistance in immigrating to Israel. Because of their Italian
background the chief rabbi of Rome was called in, and
after a year's inquiry he ruled that eleven families were
really of Marrano origin and could convert. Between Rosh
Hashanah and Yom Kippur of 1970 they went to Italy and
were officially converted: the women took ritual baths, the
men were subjected to a special ritual which made their
circumcisions official, and the children were given Jewish
names. Then they immigrated to Israel.
Unlike the chuetas, the Marranos of Liege knew exactly
what to expect when they got to Israel. "We decided to
come for the sake of our children's future," said one of
them, a young man wearing a skull cap. "We know that
this is the only country where we can live as real Jews, and
openly so. This is what we want."

The Marrano is clearly defined by the historic terms of

time and place. The Christian Marrano or chueta is the
product of historic processes in Spain and Portugal of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Mohammedan Mar-
rano is the product of the conversion of Shabtai Zvi in the
seventeenth century.
While he lives as an uneasy convert, the Marrano's
192/Joachim Prinz

Judaism is an illicit, underground faith, the religion of the

secret Jew, the Jew in hiding who practices a few, often
misunderstood Jewish customs clandestinely.
An open, recognized Judaism is beyond the Marrano's
experience. To him, Judaism is the skeleton in his closet.
He is not necessarily ashamed of it, but he is frightened by
its consequences. Long after the Inquisition was dead, the
fear of discovery was very much alive.
To many scholars, Marranism is only a peculiar aspect
of Jewish history. To me, it is an important factor in what
one might call the "Jewish condition." How else explain
those modern Jews who know that their ancestors were
Marranos but who have no other links with either Judaism
or the Jewish people? The reasons they have not forgotten
may be a psychiatric or even a mystical problem, beyond
ordinary logic. There are today, throughout the world, but
particularly in Spain, Portugal and Latin America, many
such people. Their "historic memory" no longer constitutes
a personal burden. On the contrary, it is often—as in the
case of many present-day Spanish intellectuals—a source of
great pride and a proof of their ancestral uniqueness. What-
ever it is, it exists.
One of the most dramatic stories of this mysterious Mar-
ranic existence was told to me by the late Moshe Sharett,
former Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister of
Israel. It took place in the autumn of 1947, when the Zion-
ists were anxiously awaiting the great United Nations de-
bate which would create a Jewish state or destroy hope for
it. During the months before that historic meeting, Zionist
leaders engaged in feverish activity to win the votes of the
member states of the United Nations. Every bit of infor-
mation was carefully scrutinized, and if there was any
doubt of a positive vote, contacts were established to con-
193 / The Secret Jews

vince the wavering government of the justice of the Jewish

cause.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, later President of Israel, was told
that a certain South American government had decided to
vote against the creation of the Jewish state in deference to
its large and influential Arab population. Moshe Sharett
and Weizmann carefully planned a visit to the ambassador
of that Latin American country, and a full history of the
man they were to see was assembled.
Weizmann and Sharett were cordially welcomed by the
diplomat. Weizmann presented the case of the Jewish peo-
ple, bereft of six million, one third of its population,
desperately in need of a country which they could call
their own.
The diplomat seemed ill at ease. When Weizmann
paused, he said, "Gentlemen, my government and I are
painfully aware of the great suffering of your people,
but..."
At this moment Weizmann rose suddenly, looked straight
into the eyes of the diplomat and said with a trembling
voice, "Your Excellency, may I say to you at this private
meeting that is not becoming for you to speak of the Jews
as 'your people.' I know enough about you and your family
to say that you ought to be speaking about 'my people.' The
blood of the Jews which runs in my veins flows in yours as
well. You are the descendant of a Marrano family."
The diplomat paled and his hands shook when he
escorted his guests to the door. His government did not
vote against the Jewish state.

The Marranos adventure continues today. New Mar-

ranos have been discovered in Mexico. Seven thousand of
them who live in the Peralvillo district of Mexico City have
194 / Joachim Prinz

returned to Judaism, which they call the "Church of God."

These mestizos, who have retained Jewish customs and
"remember" their Jewish ancestors who came to Mexico
with the Spaniards, now have a synagogue of their own
and treasure their Torah scrolls, which they received from
American Jews. Other Marranos live, though often secretly,
in Venta Prieta, Toluca, Cocula and Apipilco.
In Monterrey, in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon,
where a number of mestizos now openly confess their
Jewish origin, the Catholic church of the Christian indios
is still called El Synagoga. The religious and psychological
problems of these indios have not as yet been examined.
But there is no reason to believe that their concepts of
Judaism as a secret cult, their ignorance of Jewish history
or the meaning of Jewish tradition will be very different
from the chuetas of Majorca or the Marranos of Portugal.
These cases of actual and genuine Marranos are simple
enough. But Marranism as a "Jewish condition" is of a
completely different character. It is a phenomenon of the
modern Jew. More than a hundred thousand Jews con-
verted to Christianity between the time of the French
Revolution and the beginning of the twentieth century.
Many more continued their lives, unconverted, but totally
separated from the Jewish people or its faith. They are
known as "assimilated Jews." (The assimilated Jew is not
to be confused with what we may call the "acculturated
Jew"—who is a member of the society of the country in
which he lives, who shares its language, its mores, its
aspirations, but preserves his allegiance to the Jewish peo-
ple, its traditions, its hopes and its anxieties. He is not al-
ways a religious Jew maintaining customs and beliefs of the
Jewish faith, yet his "Jewishness" is undenied and he has
no desire to change it.)
195/ The Secret Jews

The assimilated Jew of whom we speak is one of "Jewish

descent," who may deny it, hide it or be ashamed of it.
Like the Marrano, his Jewishness is the skeleton in his
closet. He would prefer to associate with "others" rather
than cultivate his Jewishness. In many respects he is very
much a modern Marrano. For although he is trying to keep
his Jewish origin secret, he remains latently Jewish. There
was a time when this type of Jew was a rarity. We are
approaching the time when he may represent a majority of
the Jewish community. Religious and secular ties are be-
coming less binding. A very large number of young Jewish
people throughout the world have only tenuous ties with
their Jewishness. But—and this is the problem which re-
minds us so much of the Marranos—can Jewishness be for-
gotten?
As the fate of the Jew is unique, illogical, alarming and
vexing, so is the very fact of the existence of an ancient
people in the modern world a great riddle. Theologians
weigh the question of a divinely ordained continuity of
Jewish history. Christian theology has sometimes claimed
that the very existence of the Jews was God's punishment
for collective sins. Like Cain, we wander from country to
country into the arms of merciless persecution which, ac-
cording to these theologians, we richly deserve.
But such persecutions are no longer in vogue. The Jews
exist even in a more peaceful world. Is there an unseen, an
invisible hand that guides the destinies of the only ancient
people still around? Are we to be the living witnesses of
Hebrew antiquity, the great and the tragic experiences of
Egypt, Babylon and Palestine? So some people believe. Yet
all these are speculations with little expectation of sound
and sane analysis. There is only one clear fact: Jews are.
Yet, as religious values evaporate, as the number of inter-
196 / Joachim Prinz

marriages grows, as we come closer to Jewish integration

into the general community, we have to face what Jews
will be like fifty or a hundred years hence: many syna-
gogues will no doubt have closed. Much of the battle for
Jewish identity and the creative continuity of Jewish civil-
ization will have been lost, and then we will be faced with
the real problem of the new Marranos. Though a small,
deeply committed Jewish community will continue to exist,
the "Marrano community" will be larger. A few customs
may be remembered. Some memories, anecdotes, jokes, little
sentimentalities—but probably not much more.
Yet, Marranism is also the story of Jewish tenacity, the
Jew's incredible talent for survival. As the Marranos of the
fifteenth century, in a very deep sense, helped the Jewish
people to survive in spite of indescribable cruelties, so will
there be left in the Marranos of the year 2030 some residue
of "Jewishness," which may, perhaps, be enough to pre-
serve for the Jewish spirit the glorious reputation of in-
vincibility.
 Source References

PAGE
8. "The Jews of the Sahara Desert. . ." Nahum Slouschz,
Travels in North Africa.
20. "These Jews, who were for the most part rich . . ."
Valeriu Marcu, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
21. "The impetus of those who directed . . ." Quoted, ibid.
22. "Jews are a people .. . any medicine or cathartic made by
a Jew. . . ." These portions are taken from the Seven Part
Code quoted in Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval
World.
28. "If I were to tell you here . . ." Rabbi Crescas letter
quoted in Yitzchak Baer, A History of the Jews in
Christian Spain.
30. "They came forward demanding baptism . . ." Henry
Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition.
32. Heinrich Heine, Hebraische Melodien.
33. "They simply assimilate . . ." From the prayer Alenu:
"Make us not like the other nations of the world."
38. "At the end of the fifteenth century ..." Kamen, op. cit.
40. "These heretics avoid baptizing ..." Quoted in Baer, op.
cit., Vol. I.
198 / Source References

PAGE
41. "Raise your eyes and see.. . ." Solomon Ibn Verga, The
Tribe of Judah.
45. "Changing the body linen . . . the justice of the result."
Henry C. Lea, Inquisition of Spain.
54. "Trusting in the vain hopes . . ." Quoted in Madariaga,
Christopher Columbus.
56. "eccentric traveller..." Ibid.
56. He "looked and sounded..." Ibid.
56. "After the Spanish monarchs had expelled . . ." Ibid.
56. "at the great auto-da-fé at Tarragona . . ." Ibid.
60. Re "purity of blood." Kamen, op. cit.
63. "A Spanish cleric . . ." Lea, op. cit.
65. "Memorial for the Coming Generations." Carl Gebhart,
ed., Die Schriften des Uriel da Costa (author's trans.).
65. Rabbi Uri Halevi's account, ibid.
73. ... these Marranos "who have left the idolatry ..." Ibid.
74. "There is another group that returns ..." Ibid.
76. "I was born in Portugal..." and all quotes in this chapter
by Uriel da Costa, ibid.
87. "The leaders of the Jewish community . . . published or
written by him." Quoted in Jacob Freudenthal, Die
Lebensgeschichte Spinozas (author's trans.).
89. Spinoza was of "medium size . . ." Johannes Colerus,
Levensbeschryving van Benedictus de Spinoza (author's
trans.).
90. "Spinoza learned daily . . ." Jacob Freudenthal, Spinoza,
Leben und Lehre (author's trans.).
97. "When, in 1672, French armies .. ." Ibid.
102. "Esperanza is the Jewish characteristic ..." Yosef Hayim
Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto.
102. "When the Messiah comes to Spain . . ." Ibid.
102. Abraham Cardoso quote, ibid.
seh ben Israel.
107. Fernandez Caravajal quote, in Cecil Roth, A Life of Menas-
199 / Source References
PAGE
107. Burton quote, ibid.
108. "These are the boons and the favor . . ." Quoted in
Marcus, op. cit.
109. Cromwell's edict, ibid.
109. "Religious toleration challenged all the beliefs ..." Win-
ston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peo-
ples,Vol. II.
115. "Some sold all their worldly goods . . ." M. Lowenthal
(trans.), Memoirs of Glueckel or Hameln.
119. The ten commandments of the doenmehs. Gershom Scho-
lem, Doenmeh's Prayer Service.
126. "A contemporary source . . ." Quoted in Baer, op. cit.
127. "Among the free inhabitants . . ." Werner Sombart, Die
Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (author's trans.).
128. Governor of Jamaica, quoted ibid.
129. King Henry H's proclamation; a report to Charles V; in-
structions for Bordeaux. Ibid.
131. Quotes re Joseph Nasi, in Cecil Roth, The House of Nasi.
134. Royal decree of 1537, in Marcus, op. cit.
135. Message to Thomas Cromwell, in Roth, The House of Nasi.
136. "The accused is not quite guilty . . ." Ibid.
138. "not in the neighborhood . .." Marcus, op. cit.
139. "had impoverished Spain ..." Roth, op. cit.
140. "betrayed his faith . . ." S. M. Dubnow, Weltgeschichte
des judischen Volkes (author's trans.).
145. Suleiman's letter to the pope, quoted in Roth, op. cit.
147. "It is your destiny . . ." Ibid.
147. The story of Rabbi Joseph ben Ardut, from Joseph Ha-
Kohen's The Vale of Tears, quoted in Marcus, op. cit.
156. The customs of the Jews in Beira Baixa and Monsanto, in
Samuel Schwarz, Os Cristaos-Novos em Portugal no seculo
XX (author's trans.).
157. "This is the case of Juan Mendez ..." Quoted in Lucien
Wolf, Jews in the Canary Islands.
200 / Source References

PAGE
158. "I arrived in Braganza..." Quoted in Cecil Roth, L'Apô
tre des marranes (author's trans.).
159. Prayer of Marrano women in Braganza, quoted in Schwarz,
op. cit.
161. Schwarz's experiences in Belmonte, ibid.
168. The material regarding the Marranos in Palma de Majorca
is based on Ezriel Carlebach, Exotische Juden (author's
trans.).
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 About the Author

JOACHIM PRINZ served as president of the American Jewish Con-

gress from 1958 to 1966, when he retired and was elected hon-
orary president. He was one of the ten founding chairmen of the
1963 March on Washington. Born in Germany, Dr. Prinz was
a rabbi in the Jewish community of Berlin and was one of the
first Jewish leaders in Germany to speak out against Nazism and
to urge the immediate mass migration of Jews from Europe to
Palestine. He was expelled from Germany in 1937 and came to
the United States. He is the author of Dilemma of the Modern
Jew and Popes from the Ghetto as well as numerous other books
in both German and English. He lectures extensively and lives
with his family in New Jersey, where he is rabbi of a large
congregation.