Posted on 12/09/2006 8:48:01 PM PST by CedarDave
RUIDOSO — Within weeks of assuming the job of New Mexico state historian, Stanley Hordes started receiving some odd visitors. They would enter his Santa Fe office, close the door — and gossip about their neighbors.
"So-and-so lights candles on Friday nights,'' they would whisper.
"So-and-so doesn't eat pork,'' they would say.
Hordes wasn't the first scholar who had ever heard such things. But as a curious new arrival from Louisiana, the young historian was intrigued.
So Hordes began visiting rural villages to interview the "viejitos,'' Hispanic old-timers whose families had lived in the state for generations, sometimes since the original Spanish settlers came up from Mexico.
He was astounded by what they told him.
Though the people Hordes spoke with were clearly Catholic, they reported following an array of Jewish customs. They talked about leaving pebbles on cemetery headstones, lighting candles on Friday nights, abstaining from pork and circumcising male infants.
When Hordes asked why they did such things, some said they were simply following family tradition. Others gave a more straightforward explanation.
"Somos judios,'' they said. We are Jews.
What was that supposed to mean? Their villages were built around old Catholic mission chapels, not synagogues. The Hebrew scrolls of the Torah were Greek to them. They didn't really know anything about the Jewish faith — and yet, they called themselves Jews.
Were they?
People don't just decide they're Jewish for no reason. Cultural traditions and identities, no matter how tenuous, have to come from somewhere.
A quarter century later, Hordes has a stirring explanation of how Judaism got to New Mexico. Like so many Jewish stories — the Exodus, David and Goliath, the Hanukkah story — it is an ancient and epic tale of triumph against overwhelming adversity.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
New Mexico is a very different place....
The article is available for free at the ABQ Journal. However, you have to view a 30-second commercial before you can access it.
The conversos who ended up in Mexico and the southwest US are well known to Jewish history, with even DNA research having been done.
Author Crenson seems like another historically-ignorant MSM-type.
The article discusses the DNA testing and the controversy surrounding some of the conclusions.
( http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~nachumd/sch/sch/PAPERS/Folklore.txt)FRrom another site an interesting comment:
"And a Spanish Catholic asks:
"Who, other than Spaniards and their descendants, have names like Jesús, Cruz, or Jesús María? Not the Italians, not the French. Look at Spanish sacred art. Nowhere are crucifixes bigger, bloodier, more explicit than in Spain. They wanted to show how 'muy Católicos' they were. Many of those who became such 'super-Catholics' were Marranos who put off the Church's spies by asking, 'Would I name my son Jesús if I were not the most Catholic of Catholics?'"
A subscription or registration is not needed. See post in #3.
This topic has always interested me. Thanks for posting.
Thank you for a good read, the article is also here:
http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_4812519
http://www.google.com/search?q=Hispanic+New+Mexicans+Intrigued+by+Hints+of+A+Hidden+Jewish+Past&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
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