Abstract
In the last chapter, I highlight the role that Queen Esther had for crypto-Jewish women in the diaspora. Isabel de Carvajal and her sister Leonor de Carvajal lived in New Spain and were central figures in upholding and furthering the Jewish faith. I analyze the manuscripts from their second Inquisition trial (1595–1596) to show that crypto-Judaism is a matriarchal religion. In this chapter, we see the practical accommodations of the Esther text for real crypto-Jewish women including material practices of the body and the home.
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Notes
- 1.
Gitlitz shows that for many conversos and crypto-Jews in Iberia, Esther was venerated like a Christian Saint (378).
- 2.
This chapter refers to two contemporary bibles the Biblia Ladinada and the Ferrara Siddur . The former is based upon a now lost fourteenth-century manuscript composed in Spain and I use Moshe Lazar’s Escorial I.J.3 edition. The latter was composed in Ferrara in 1552 for the use of the converso population living there. According to Lazar, the Biblia Ladinada was an ancestor of the Ferrara Siddur. It stands to reason that the Carvajal family or member of their network of crypto-Jews would have had access to these Castilian bibles.
- 3.
I first developed this connection in my article that appeared in e-Humanista (2015) “Crypto-Jewish Faith and Ritual in Nueva España : The Second Inquisitorial Procesos of Isabel de Carvajal .”
- 4.
Similarly we read in the Biblia Ladinada “aui a ella seuno la rregla de las mugeres doze meses, que asi se cumplian los dias de sus afeytes, seys meses en el azeyte del balsam, e seys meses en las especies e en los afeytes de las mugeres” (688). [In this way she completed the rule for women that within twelve months, they would undergo a number of beauty treatments: six months in balsam oil, and six months in spices and other beauty treatments for women] (my translation).
- 5.
“Todas las virgines” [All the virgins] ( Ferrara Siddur 149), “Todas las virgenes” [All the virgins] ( Biblia Ladinada 688).
- 6.
All the English translations from the manuscripts of Isabel and Leonor are my own.
- 7.
According to Susan Migden Socolow “discovery and conquest of America was predominantly a male enterprise, Spanish women did have a limited role in the early settlements” (52).
- 8.
For more information on the ancestry of these crypto-Jewish communities see Janet Liebman Jacob’s Hidden Heritage.
- 9.
See Jonathan Israel ’s Diaspora within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740).
- 10.
Obregón’s publication of Luis’s trial shows this communitarian aspect. Here is one such example; “en compañía de este y de las dichas su madre, doña Isabel, Mariana y Leonor” (302). [In his company as well as that of her mother, doña Isabel, Mariana and Leonor] (my translation).
- 11.
We can see throughout the text multiple instances where Isabel identifies herself and is identified by others by this gesture of self-denial; “no se acuerda quantos ayunos esta dos días a veces sin comer vocado ni beber” (334r). [She didn’t remember how two day fasts she did sometimes where went without eating a bite or drinking]. Isabel “no quiso subir a comer” (366v). [She did not want to come up to eat].
- 12.
Adler references that the Fast of Queen Esther is 3 days and Mariana observed them for “purposes of penance” (46).
- 13.
Cyrus Adler explains that the Fast of Queen Esther lasts for 3 days and Mariana observed them for “purposes of penance” (46).
- 14.
For more information on the Crypto-Jewish community in New Mexico , see Janet Liebman Jacobs ’ Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews. Another modern case that reflects secrecy and fear of discovery is the Jewish community of Belmonte , Portugal. This community lived isolated in the mountains of northern Portugal and believed themselves to be the only surviving Jews, until they were “discovered” by anthropologist Samuel Schwartz in the 1920s. They were also fearful and reluctant to reveal their religious identity, which was kept hidden for so many years. Today this community has a synagogue, but secret Jews from surrounding towns are only revealed as Jewish upon funerary rites, which occur in the Jewish cemetery.
- 15.
Miquel Segura Aguiló in his text Raíces Chuetas, alas Judías tells the story of his Chueta family and life in Mallorca. Most scholars agree that by the nineteenth-century crypto-Jewish practice, except in specific rituals, had died out on the peninsula and in colonies.
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Colbert Cairns, E. (2017). Sisters in the Law of Moses. In: Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57867-5_5
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