In Honor of Distinguished American Sephardi Federation Board Member Joel Marcus’ Mother, Esther Marcus, who celebrated her 91st birthday on 7 August. Echos y munchos!
Sephardi Ideas Monthly is a continuing series of essays from the rich, multi-dimensional world of Sephardi thought that is delivered to your inbox on the second Monday of every month.
This month’s feature extends our exploration of Crypto-Judaism in the American southwest with Geoffrey Clarfield’s, “Across the Borderline with Rabbi Stephen Leon” (New English Review, August 2015), a fascinating look at a Bridgeport-born rabbi who found his “unique mission in life” by ministering to the needs of Crypto-Jews in the region of El Paso, Texas.
Rabbi Stephen Leon
(Photo courtesy of El Paso Times)
“Across the Borderline with Rabbi Stephen Leon”
Clarfield opens his article at the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella in Old Granada, his launching point for sketching the history of the expelled Sephardim around the globe. He doesn’t like the place:
I have visited many churches, cathedrals and historical sites in southern Spain, including the enchanted Moorish ruins of the Alhambra. I was taken aback at the austere mood verging on hostility that permeated this final resting place of Ferdinand and Isabella… Was it not… possible that I had picked up on the authentic, hostile and intolerant spirit of these dead monarchs… patrons of the Spanish Inquisition?
But Clarfield doesn’t dwell on that spirit, following instead traces of those who suffered from the Inquisition instituted by the Spanish monarchs. This leads him to the present time in the Americas, where Clarfield notes a remarkable development,
More and more South American Catholics… who realize that they have a Jewish origin, have become bold enough to explore the possibility of a return to their ancestral faith. Knowing this, we should not be surprised that something unusual has been happening in a Conservative synagogue on the border of Mexico, in the Texan town of El Paso.
That’s where R’ Stephen Leon set-up shop in 1986 after serving as a rabbi in New Jersey for fifteen years, assuming leadership of Congregation B'nai Zion. But R’ Leon didn’t arrive expecting to attend to the needs of local Crypto-Jews. It just kind of happened to him on his first day at work:
During my first day on the job in El Paso, a guy from Juarez Mexico, just over the border called me saying, ‘Rabbino, I need to come and see you.’ He told me that he is a Catholic and his grandmother had recently passed away. He said, ‘When she was alive, every Friday night she would take me into a dark room in the house, light the candles, and say a prayer in a language I did not understand’… He arrived at my synagogue and we had a long conversation. Finally I told him that, ‘Lighting candles on a Friday nights is a Jewish custom.’ When I said that, he looked as if he was about to faint.
What’s more, the encounter wasn’t an isolated incident:
The longer I stayed in El Paso the more people came to me from both within Texas and across the border. These are the descendants of the secret Jews of the Inquisition, which only ended in Mexico just before the Civil War. I realized that I had to respond to all of this in a more meaningful way.
Translating the thought into action, R’ Leon made it his life’s mission to meet the descendants of Jews who survived the Inquisition and to help them return to Judaism. It soon became apparent, however, that conversion wasn’t always the answer:
For many B’nai Anusim, it is enough that they know who they are and where they came from. Many of them are simply unwilling or unable, to make a break from their family and religion.
One example is the man from Juarez who called on R’ Leon’s first day at work: “To this day, he shows up at my synagogue every Yom Kippur. Sometimes he makes eye contact with me and we acknowledge each other.”
But he never officially returned to the faith.
Plying his trade in the grey area that so often constitutes Crypto-Jewish identity, in 2014 R’ Leon established “The Anusim Center” in the Mesa Hills section of El Paso. The center’s mission is: “To educate the descendants of the Sephardim who were forcibly converted from their faith or expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, and to provide a path of return to those who desire to reclaim their Jewish ancestral heritage.”
Sephardi Ideas Monthly is very pleased to share the story of how R’ Leon came to assume this mission, another chapter in the amazing story of Crypto-Jews and Crypto-Judaism in the American southwest, with Geoffrey Clarfield’s captivating article, “Across the Borderline with Rabbi Stephen Leon.”
The Monthly Sage for August, 2018, is Hacham Raphael Haim Moshe Ben Naim.
(1845-1920)
Hacham Ben Naim (1845-1920) was born in Tetuan, Morocco, and moved to the Land of Israel at the age of six. Living with his family in poverty in the northern port city of Haifa, young Raphael Haim was quickly recognized as a prodigy by Hacham David Ben Shimon, who wanted to take the boy to study in Jerusalem. Raphael Haim’s mother, however, wasn’t ready to send her beloved son so far away, so Ben Naim’s studies were sponsored in the northern town of Tiberias instead. Ultimately, Hacham Ben Naim became a dayyan, or religious judge, in the city.
Internationally recognized as a scholar, Hacham Ben Naim travelled throughout North Africa before assuming a rabbinical position in 1886 on the island of Gibraltar, where he served for thirty years.
Hacham Ben Naim authored a number of works, including Peter Rehem, a collection of sermons and articles, and Rahamim Peshutim, his rabbinic responsa.
Hacham Ben Naim’s approach to Torah was infused with a deep love for all of mankind, as is so often the case with sages from the Classic Sephardic Tradition. In this passage from Hacham Ben Naim’s Rahamin Peshutim, he interprets a classic rabbinic text to mean that God loves all of humanity. He then provides a practical, personal example for how we, too, can love other human beings:
This is common custom here in Baghdad, may G-d protect it; those who have not yet married do not light at all and depend on their father's Hanukah menorah. Once they have married they do light on their own, but without reciting the blessing, and depend on their father's recitation.
Hillel says, ‘Be of the disciples of Aharon, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving human creatures and bringing them closer to Torah.’ 'Loving human creatures' – it says 'creatures' specifically, since they are the Holy One blessed be He's creatures… One who 'loves peace', 'loves the creatures', so that you will not say it means Israel [the Jewish People] specifically, but rather it says to love all human creatures, because they are creatures of the Holy One, blessed be He.
… Since the Holy One, blessed be He, loves all mankind and has proclaimed his love, how can one separate one nation and tongue from another? This is why when I see a funeral procession, for whoever it may be, I join it. I do so not only to follow the path of peace, in keeping with the view held by our master the Beit Yosef, of blessed memory…but also since it is our duty according to the law ‘as a stranger and a settler shall he live with you.’
Doña Isabel de Carvajal (Carbajal), was, as Luis, Mariana, and much the rest of her “Judaizing” family, tortured and eventually murdered by the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico. Lithograph by Primitivo Miranda for Riva Palacio and Manuel Payno’s El Libro Rojo—The Book of Mexican Martyrs (reprinted in Martin A. Cohen’s The Martyr: The Story of a Secret Jew and the Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1973), p. 248).
Maktuv*: An Evening of Islamic and Jewish Calligraphy:
Monday, 13 August at 6:00PM Join MALA and ASF for an interactive workshop led by experiential educator and artist Ruben Shimonov!
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Sold Out!
We will explore the significance of Arabic in Islam and Hebrew in Judaism, as well as the close relationship between both Semitic languages. It'll be a space to share our personal connections with the holy languages of our respective faiths and to engage with these two languages through a hands-on calligraphy workshop!
No background in Arabic or Hebrew calligraphy necessary. Refreshments will be served.
*As cognates, Maktoob and Ketuv mean “written” in Arabic and Hebrew respectively.
About our workshop leader:
Born in Uzbekistan, Ruben Shimonov belongs to the native Persian-speaking Jewish population of Central Asia. This community—the Bukharian Jews—have lived alongside their Muslim neighbors for 1300 years, engaging in cultural and intellectual commerce.
Given his background, Ruben possesses a strong passion for Muslim-Jewish community building. He has brought this interest to his academic, professional and community leadership work, including his involvement with the American Sephardic Federation (ASF) where he currently serves as the Vice-President of Education and Community Engagement on the Young Leadership board. Ruben is also an ASF 2018 Broome & Allen Fellow.
His interest in Muslim-Jewish dialogue has also informed his artistic work, inspiring him to create multilingual calligraphy that juxtaposes and weaves together Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. He currently studies at New York University, pursuing a dual Master’s in Public Administration and Judaic Studies.
Monday, 13 August at 7:00PM Congregation Shearith Israel
The Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue
2 West 70th Street
New York, NY 10023
How much do you really know about our "sister" S&P communities around the world?
Jamaica, Philadelphia, Montreal, Paris, and other wonderful communities, near and far, share in our rich, historical tradition.
Learn about them and hear first-hand accounts directly from friends who grew up in these communities, who will tell us about their unique histories and traditions as well as our shared ties going back hundreds of years.
Moderated by our lifelong S&P and ASF member and founder of S&P Central Joshua Mendes.
Professor Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis will present new research on the remarkable courtyard houses of the Farhi and other important Sephardic families in late 18th/early 19th century Damascus.
Her analysis of architecture and décor offers a lens into the Damascene Jewish community and its interaction with Ottoman culture.
Professor Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis, an active archaeologist and architectural historian, is the author of Bayt Farhi and the Sephardic Palaces of Ottoman Damascus in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries (American Schools of Oriental Research, 2018). She currently teaches at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY), where she also serves as the Acting Executive Officer in M.A. in Liberal Studies and directs the M.A. in Liberal Studies concentration in Archaeology of the Classical, Late Antique, and Islamic Worlds. She is the Deputy Director of Manar al-Athar, an open-access digital humanities resource for the study of the Middle East, co-director of the Upper Egypt Mosque Project, serves on the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America, and is both Smarthistory’s Governing Board Chairperson and Contributing Editor for Art of the Islamic World. Professor Macaulay-Lewis has a DPhil in Classical Archaeology from Oxford University.
We look forward to seeing you!
Image Credit: "Old Damascus, Jew's Quarter" by Frederick Leighton, 1874 (Photo courtesy of Museum Syndicate)
Yemenite Faces and Scenes & Episodes in Yemenite History
The Teimani Experience, which closed on 5 June, continues in part with a photographic exhibit in our Leon Levy Gallery and an art exhibit in the Myron Habib, A"H, Memorial Display.
On view until September
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Yemenite Faces and Scenes: Photographs by Naftali Hilger
Intrepid photographer and photo-journalist Naftali Hilger traveled extensively in Yemen in the late 1980s and early 1990s photographing structures, street scenes, and the last remnants of Jewish life. These images—including of Yemenite children learning to read Torah upside-down in their father’s shop and a family relaxing in their diwan (salon)—depict an existence that has faded into history as the ever-shrinking community has found refuge in a government compound at Sana’a.
Episodes in Yemenite History: Paintings by Tiya Nachum
A series of eight paintings by the artist and sculptor Tiya Nachum of Encino, CA. The paintings reflect the tragedies and triumphs of Yemenite Jewish history, from the Mawza exile to the founding of the Inbal Dance Troupe by Sara Levy. Each painting tells a story and each story is a history onto itself.
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