A Visit to Mexico's Oldest Jewish Community
Gardy, Alison
The Jews of Venta Prieta say their ancestors accomplished the impossible-they remained Jews throughout the Inquisition, even though they had no synagogue and no rabbi to instruct them during the...
...Its founders and most of its inhabitants were descendants of families who had spent 300 years hiding in Mexico's mountains after escaping the Spanish Inquisition...
...Returning with language and knowledge, the young instruct the old in ancient tradition...
...I want to take a photograph of the schoolroom before leaving Venta Prieta...
...Children training for their bar-mitzvah (coming-ofage) ceremony take lessons with Rabbi Lerer in Mexico City every other Sunday, making a four-hour round trip for a one-hour lesson...
...He says the documents and photographs he needs are in the possession of the oldest member of the community-a man almost 80 years old and filled with stories...
...Leave us alone...
...Because the 71-year-old rabbi has his own congregation to attend to on the Sabbath and is busy during the week, he performs mass weddings and bar-mitzvahs in Venta Prieta on the two or three Sundays in the year that fall on the first day of the lunar month, which is when the Torah can be read...
...The melodies are questions," he door sits a box for donations...
...What's important tions today...
...None of the articles explained Venta Prieta's history...
...If you're really interested," Miguel's anecd( opened, congregants raise their he says, "come back when I have visit, they tell a s hands, a gesture seen in church but time, and bring a short list of ques- A family, un not in synagogue...
...I'm writing my own book about the family," he ing family inter Catholic neighbi adds...
...Many Jews left Spain on ships bound for the New World, where they hoped the Inquisition would be less severe...
...So far, they have found work in the rapidly developing city of Pachuca...
...How many Jews can prove they are Jewish beyond three generations...
...When we asked our elder uncle what something meant in Hebrew," T611ez recalled, "he would only say, 'Shh...
...Later, later," says T611ez until it is too late and I have to run to catch my bus...
...There is no convenient time to talk to journalists," he says...
...The new generation felt more secure," says T611ez, who, along with Miguel's mother and other young people at the time, began seeking Hebrew books and schooling...
...They stay at a hotel in the city, then come here for a few hours to stare and dig up our past...
...He closes a book, its title concealed by a dust jacket, and looks up...
...Meanwhile, a pro-Nazi movement in the nearby town of Tulancingo scattered the Jewish community there...
...Today, the only non-family members of Venta Prieta's synagogue are from Tulancingo...
...The Catholic population died in such numbers that corpses were loaded onto carts and hauled away...
...There is no hunger anymore...
...Chagall's Twelve Tribes of Israel hang around the most of the 30 congregants trick- died when he w wall where the Stations of the ling in halfway through...
...been in when I first met settled in the mo "Some criticize us for these cus- him, wearing the same baseball where their nami toms and say they're Catholic," cap, leaning back in his chair, and T611ez...
...He says his father 'as young, and he of school to sup"Let's hear the says abruptly...
...The only Hebrew the elders could read was the Hebrew of the prayers," he says...
...He showed me a few articles about the community published in the United States and Mexico, and complained of their inaccuracies...
...It is easy to miss Venta Prieta...
...If there were if of our antiquity, have been written he United States...
...T6llez had to drop out Cross would be in a Catholic watches me read and listens to me port the family church, and outside the temple sing in Hebrew...
...What an otherwise standard service...
...30 years...
...The Holy Office of the Inquisition, established by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1478, had already burned thousands of Jews at the stake in the decade before the expulsion decree...
...While the shopping mall across the road hums with activity, the only person to walk into his store all afternoon just asks to use the telephone...
...He forbids people to look at the family records, and goes into a rage if someone tries to borrow them...
...Rub6n T6llez' great-grandparents farmed the land and gathered the family to pray in a little room...
...The rabbi has done wonders for us and we owe him a lot, but with all due respect, he is sometimes too openhearted...
...But the Jews of Venta Prieta say their ancestors accomplished the impossiblethey remained Jews throughout the Inquisition, even though they had no synagogue and no rabbi to instruct them during the centuries of hiding...
...The rabbi then sent me to the one man who knows the community's story...
...The community learned to speak Hebrew in Miguel's generation, and young people began taking trips to Israel through international Jewish organizations...
...It is the least I can all of this would then touch their fingers to their do before returning to Mexico City up years ago in t forehead and lips, a hand motion that evening...
...We just don't talk about religion, politics or anything...
...Then "fleei custom...
...Next to it, a flame flickers in a silver bowl filled with ' olive oil...
...T61lez does not worry that the younger generation's quest for upward mobility could lead to a flight from Venta Prieta...
...So as not to attract attention, the Sabbath service was shortened and people came and went one by one...
...He is a direct descendant of the community's founders and, at 53, he is Venta Prieta's reluctant elder spokesman...
...Likewise," says Miguel, "the next generation will correct us...
...We talk about everything but Venta Prieta...
...Miguel's brother and father are Catholic, for example, while he and his mother are Jewish...
...What's more, says Rabbi Lerer, "they can trace their lineage back to the early nineteenth century...
...Rabbi Lerer tions...
...reluctantly agrees to speak with me into a narrative, Also, when the Sacred Ark is again...
...I ask T611ez when he plans to finish his book and tell the whole story of Venta Prieta...
...The family dismantled the temple and returned to conducting services in the home of an elder...
...The Sacred Ark, which houses the Torah, is made of marble and onyx...
...So many took this path of survival that by 1550 almost 25% of Mexico City's Spanish population was known to be Jewish, and the community had its own Grand Rabbi...
...After lunch, he goes to see sponses...
...A rumor spread that the Jews had medicine and were hiding it...
...It's called 'The Lost History.' I just need a few more documents, to finish it...
...By then the Inquisition had become so despised by the general population that it was commonly referred to as the "Unholy Office...
...While he admires their "spirituality," Rabbi Bartfeld considers the heritage of the people of Venta Prieta to be as much Catholic as Jewish...
...They promise everything and deliver nothing...
...I have to read the Torah portion for this week...
...In 1923, when the family grew too large to fit in the elder's little room, they built a small temple...
...gradually unfold and together with )tes from my first tory: der the original gir6n, most likely ruz in the sixteenth g the Inquisition, Zamora, Michoang as usual," they untains of Hidalgo e was shortened to 1850s, the family :o a single couple sh secret...
...There is no welcome sign, no landmark visible from the road...
...I withered away t year-old nephew...
...He asks me what I am going to do with my life, and gives me marriage advice...
...A few months ago, a Hebrew teacher from Mexico City was transferred to Pachuca and has volunteered to give language classes in Venta Prieta...
...His name is Rubdn Tdllez...
...Historians have generally contended that Mexico's colonial Jewish population was either wiped out or converted...
...Only one Jew fell sick, but did not die...
...He met the Venta Prieta community in 1968, the same year he left the United StateS for Mexico...
...Amazed I am a Jew who wants to attend his synagogue's services, and a. impressed that I actually know how to pray in Hebrew, he relents...
...We get along as a family...
...Other Sephardic-from sixteenth-century first he gives hints of Catholicism appear during Spain...
...I came to see Venta Prieta, and have learned it does not quite resemble what has been written about it...
...Above his head hangs a collage of Coca-Cola ads...
...Of those who converted, many maintained Jewish customs in private...
...I wish I'd taken that photo," I say...
...We wanted to know more...
...But secrecy is an old habit, a vestige of a survival skill that kept the community alive for centuries...
...Why should they move away...
...Then, having granted me permission to write, but not to ask questions, he dismisses me...
...Before I leave, T611ez But his answers not too unlike the sign of the cross...
...While his wife and children history," he sa) Torah's cover with their hands do errands, I wash several days' any written proc (instead of with a prayer book), worth of dishes...
...But visitors keep coming-journalists, anthropologists, curiosity seekers...
...Inside, rows of old wooden pews with separate chair backs and armrests seat about 100 people...
...Founded in the 1850s, this small Mexican community lived through its first century guarding a deep secret-its Jewish identity...
...The about getting more streets paved in al plausible versi women, for example, touch the town...
...They can't prove their ancestry goes back to colonial times," says orthodox Rabbi Bartfeld...
...They write lies about us and never send us the articles...
...he asks...
...He leans back on a folding chair with one knee up against a rusted card table...
...Do you expect me to drop what I'm doing to attend to you just because you want to write about us...
...The great majority of Mexicans today have Jewish blood, though very diluted," says Orthodox Rabbi Abraham Bartfeld of Mexico City...
...The story really begins with the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492, during the Spanish Inquisition...
...arrived in Veracr Venta Prieta, they touch his robe century...
...The community built a new temple after the war, and a bigger one Members of the community prayed in a little room...
...The Jews of Venta Prieta say their ancestors accomplished the impossible-they remained Jews throughout the Inquisition, even though they had no synagogue and no rabbi to instruct them during the long centuries of hiding...
...So you want to write a story...
...So as not to attract attention, the Sabbath service was shortened and people came and went one by one...
...In the 1960s, they openly identified themselves as Jewish for the first time...
...We even have luxuries...
...Peace...
...he asks...
...Today the family has divided into two branches: Jewish and Catholic," he says...
...T611ez sits in a corner, wearing a plaid shirt, a baseball cap, and dark-green sun glasses...
...I may look like I'm just sitting here, but it's my time...
...Mexico's entire Jewish population numbers about 50,000, 80% of whom live in Mexico City...
...If it could choose, Venta Prieta would remain anonymous...
...Don't you understand how tired we are of strangers poking into our intimate lives with questions and criticisms, trying to see if we really exist, if we're really who we say we are...
...I cannot finish the book until he dies," says T611ez...
...Goodbye...
...He could not care less about what Mexico's Jewish community or any other outsiders might think of Venta Prieta...
...We agree to meet in five name of Tellezj once mentioned that when he visits days...
...Rough blue and yellow stainedglass windows with elongated Stars of David ring the small temVOL XXVII, No 2 SEPT/OCt 1993 11JOURNAL / MEXICO pie...
...Isn't that nice...
...Miguel wonders if their dietary laws might not have protected the Jews from the virus...
...Descend...
...But inside, it is too peaceful...
...The community's founders, a couple named T611ez, settled in Venta Prieta when it was just an outpost, a ghostly presence that came to life with the visit of the occasional traveler...
...You've already wasted enough of my time," he says...
...But these are was hoping you wouldn't come," and their Jewi not Catholic traditions...
...In the half century following the expulsion, roughly a third of Spain's Jews were burned at the stake, a third fled, and another third were forcibly converted to Catholicism...
...They are he greets me, "because frankly I emerged from h our traditions and we're not going don't feel like answering any ques- Venta Prieta...
...going to the dentist...
...Rabbi Lerer sent me...
...They iding and founded lot the family's ly to this original ants of this foundmarried with their ors and with their 12 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACtA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12JOURNAL / MEXICO Catholic and Jewish cousins...
...In the last 50 years, they have built their own temple, bought their own Torah, and, in keeping with biblical tradition, have had an eternal flame of olive oil-which requires constant attention-burning inside the temple...
...You'll have to come back, he replies...
...Miguel's generation is more career-minded than previous generations...
...I was thinking how T611ez can p isn't where your hands are, but much your visit reminded me of genealogy direct where your heart is...
...Its sign says La Paz...
...But if my job takes me to another state," Miguel says, "I'll go...
...At terse, vague rewe have are severions of our earliest ys...
...He even offers to put me up at the community's guest house, "as a guest, but not as a journalist...
...I tell him I would be happy to come back at a more convenient time...
...But an accident several years ago left the man deaf and babbling incoherently...
...He found that they had recognizably Jewish characteristics: they did not eat pork or mix milk and meat, and virtually all the men were circumcised...
...But I have gotten enough...
...Once you publish it, you'll never have to talk to a nosy stranger again...
...Our handshake is warm and firm...
...In fact, the Inquisition there lasted longer than it did in Spain, where it was finally suppressed in 1808...
...During and kiss his hands, even though " Then I return, he is in the they escaped to such behavior goes against Jewish same position he had cAn...
...There are answers he has not given...
...He believes the only legitimate Jews in Mexico today are twentieth-century immigrants from Europe and North Africa and their descendants...
...Miguel's mother remembers that a terrible viruela negra (black plague) struck Venta Prieta in her childhood...
...By the says Miguel Copca, T611ez' 20- reading the dust-jacketed Torah...
...It's a waste of time...
...to change them...
...I glimpse a hint of a smile...
...During World War II, a rumor spread that Palestinians were coming to kill the Jews of Venta Prieta...
...It was Rabbi Lerer who piqued my curiosity about Venta Prieta...
...Life is comfortable here...
...Replicas of Surrounded by portraits of Jewish heroes and scenes from Israel, a boy stands inside the clubhouse for community youth...
...And then with words, We are not objects in a museum...
...That's the idea...
...in 1967...
...But Mexico's orthodox rabbinate, wary of the long centuries that the Inquisition's refugees spent underground, disputes Venta Prieta's claim that it is Mexico's 10NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10JOURNAL / MEXICO oldest Jewish community...
...He runs a little store out of the back of his house on the only paved The front door of the synagogue in Venta Priet...
...Saturday morning prayer begins at eight and lasts until 11:30, with hide a faint smile...
...street in town...
...In Mexico, the Spanish authorities established a Tribunal of the Inquisition in 1571 which existed until the colony's War of Independence in 1821...
...New Spain was not the haven Jews imagined...
...I show him the rabbi's card...
...Go away, say a man's eyes when a visitor asks if she is in the right place...
...Today the village sits in the shadow of a giant new shopping mall across the road, and its secret has been out in the open for Alison Gardy is a freelance writer based in New York...
...He tries to couple...
...Besides," he adds, "people have property here and a cemetery, and they can't take either with them...
...Conservative Rabbi Samuel Lerer disagrees with the orthodoxy...
...It appears at first to be nothing more than a cluster of small stores, unpaved streets, and low flat houses hiding among the dry brown and yellow hills on the outskirts of the old mining city of Pachuca in central Mexico...
...During the war, the Inquisition accused the revolutionary priest Jos6 Maria Hidalgo y Costilla, the father of Mexican independence, of practicing Judaism, among other "crimes...
...He is withdrawn and embittered, and he hates journalists...
...The number might have been even larger, since many Jews disguised themselves as Catholics...
...Miguel's mother remembers angry townsfolk entering and searching their house, and remaining suspicious until long after the plague subsided...
...A white polyester curtain with two fierce lions of Judah sewn in sequins covers the Sacred Ark...
...Could I at least attend tonight's Sabbath service...
...There are questions I have not asked...
...Shh!' and turn the pages of the prayer book...
...Venta Prieta's synagogue stands behind a forbidding white wall, but a little door opens onto a courtyard filled with bouncing children, whose faces represent a cross-pollination of continents: Europe, North Africa, Indo-America...
Vol. 27 • September 1993 • No. 2
