Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 September 1960 — Page 5

Friday, September 30, 1960

The National Jewish POST end OPINION

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Are the Indian Jews of Venta formed by individuals originally forms of worship constitute true

Prieta—a tiny mud-hut and brickwalled village hugging the side of the road 60 miles from Mexico City—descendants of the ancient Marranos, Spanish-crypto Jews who came here with the Conquistadores, or are they sprung from converts to Judaism of one or two generations ago? THIS QUESTION, which has baffled ethnic scholars and geneological researchers, was apparently no nearer solution after a visit to Venta Prieta by Dr. Raphael Patai, a noted anthropologist, who brought away with him one concrete and definite conviction — that the Jews of Venta Prieta, no matter what their genesis—were fervent, eager and enthusiastic in their Judaism! Dr. Patai said that neither the contention of the Indian Jews that they are descendants of the Spanish Marranos of the 16th century, nor the opposite view, that they are proselytes of recent standing, can be substantiated. ONE THEORY is that they spring from a splinter group Many Question Mexican Jews' Marranos Origin • Editor Jewish POST and OPINION In your issue of August 26th, you repeat a story from the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, which was headlined, "MuleRiding Rabbi Seeks Origin of Mexico Indans Claiming to be Jews.” There are some erroneous impressions, and I feel that your readers should know the follow-

ing:

1. There is a small group of Indian Jews in Venta Prieta, which is a little town over an hour’s ride by public bus from Mexico City. One does not have to ride a mule to get there. 2. A great deal is known about the Indian Jews who live there. Dr. Rafael Patai is a noted anthropologist. He lived with the Indian Jews in Venta Prieta for almost three months, back in 1949. He wrote several articles on them in Hebrew and English. The Menorah Journal, in one of its issues in 1950, had a long article by him which had several photographs. The Enciclopedia Judaica Castellana has much information about them. I hope the Rabbi speaks and reads Spanish. 3. There are many people who have studied the Indian Jews of Mexico. A Fulbright scholar is spending a year there now, making a full study of the Indian Jews. Their descent from Marianos is questioned by many. A two week trip may be of personal interest, but I deplore the publicity preceding the trip and the tremendous erroneous impressions that are conveyed. The Jewish Indians of Venta Rrieta are very proud and, unless they have been spoiled by tourists, dislike being objects of curiosity. They have a liason with the organized Jewish community Of Mexico City. They purchase their matzohs and even some elementary Hebrew books. They me, in many respects, different from the Indian Jews, who have their own congregation in Mexico City. If the Philadelphia RabPi had made inquiry among the many, including the undersigned, *ho are familiar with the Indian Jews, he might have decided to s Pend two weeks somewhere else. SEYMOUR B. LIEBMAN

belonging to the Iglesia de Dios or Church of God which is the Mexican branch of the Christian sect of the same name founded in the United States in the 19th century. The Mexican branch is of the Sabbath observing variety and its leaders took great pains to explain to Dr. Patai that members of the Church are probably the biological or in any case the spiritual descendants of the ten tribes of Israel, that they and only they are the real and true Jews and that the time would come when all Jews would recognize that only their doctrine and

Judaism. 'T SUCCEEDED in finding irrefutable proof,” said Dr. Patai writing in the Menorah Journal, "that the Indian' Jewish congregation in Mexico was organized as a result of, or at least as a step subsequent to, the secession of one of their present leaders from the Iglesia de Dios.” Dr. Patai decided on certain tests to determine the true origin of the Jews in Venta Prieta but when the plates of the Rorschach Test were presented to a middle aged woman before her low mud hut, she turned them upside down and said "No, I do not want to do it. I am a Jewess. Ruth was

Visit To Seek Indian Jews Ends In Seven Days In Prison

• Editor Jewish POST and OPINION The article in The POST and OPINION dated Aug. 26, the mule-riding rabbi, intrigued me to the point where I laughed secretly and decided to reveal my own experiences in tracking down the elusive Indian Jews of

Mexico.

IT HAPPENED in 1943. I was then living in Mexico City as the founder and head of the first Yeshiva in that country. I was invited to address a group of these Indian Jews by their leader, a Mexican-Jewish attorney named Alaurano Ramirez. I walked over four miles each way on a certain Sabbath day to speak to the group of men and women of true Indian appearance who claimed to be descendants of the Marranos of Spain who fled to Mexico over 400 years ago. I SPOKE in English; Senor Ramirez translated. Their synagogue was quite small and unassuming. The worshippers could read no Hebrew. Ramirez performed single-handedly. Later, at the attorney’s office, I learned that a larger group had been living in a village called San Pablo in the state of Nayarit for many years, and he suggested I pay them a visit. He gave me a letter of introduction. The trip entailed taking a train to Guadalajara, several hundred miles, then a second train to a town called Tepic, high in the mountains. I put up at a hotel, and arranged for a guide to take me to San Pablo early the next morning — on horseback. We started out at six o’clock. NO SOONER had we left the town’s limits than we were stopped by a gendarme with a gun. "Extranjero?” he asked. Foreigner? I nodded. “Documentos tiene?” Do you have your papers? I shook my head negatively. I had forgotten to take along my passport and visa. This, said the gendarme, is serious. He escorted us back to town, into the office of an army general. Tepic was a military area. It was

wartime.

THE GENERAL fired questions at me, suspicion in his eyes, his voice. I tried to reassure him. I was a rabbi in good standing. I had entered the country legally. I suggested he telephone the Gobemacion in Mexico City. The general was shocked at my suggestion. He would write a letter and solicit information. Meanwhile, I would be held prisoner in the army barracks. I was aghast. I then suggested sending a telegram to Mexico City at my expense. The .general

refused to listen. He still suspected I was a foreign spy. To summarize, I languished in prison for seven days, existing on tomatoes and some fruits. My cell had no bed, no chair. I slept on the ground, under the watchful eye of a sergeant wrapped in a blanket. There were roaches everywhere. There was very little light. A man offered to drive me out secretly at night for $50, using the general’s own car. (Subsequently, I learned this was the .general’s chauffeur.) I did not accept the offer, suspecting a trap. I SPENT the week studying Maimonides out of a small volume I had taken with me. Strangely, the study of the sage filled me with a new kind of peace; I forgot the bars over my windows, the fact that I was a virtual prisoner in a dirty, smelly cell. I forgot my gnawing hunger, the roaches, the rats. The week flew by . . . I was finally released with a sharp warning never to travel without documents. The ironical part of the whole trip was to discover, on my return to Mexico City, that there is no such village as San Pablo anywhere in Mexico, that the whole thing had been a wild-goose chase. My guide had simply wanted to make a few easy pesos. Ramirez still insisted, however, that he was personally acquainted with the group. After 17 years, I am still in the dark. IT WILL BE interesting to le^m what Rabbi Solomon, the mule-riding rabbi from Philadelphia, will unearth on his visit to Venta Prieta. My personal conclusion is that the whole business of Indian Jews in Mexico is a farce. There is no proof. The Indians themselves have been duped by certain unscrupulous individusds into believing they are true descendants of the Marranos. I am not alone in this opinion. Still, if we are to accept the late Lewis Browne’s startling statement in one of his books, that there is some Jewish blood in every human being inhabiting this earth, we can be led to believe that there is some basis for truth in these Indians’ claims to a Jewish heritage. Ramirez has had them cfrcumcized; he has built a synagogue for their religious comfort (with American funds — donations on the part of visiting tourists). Who knows? They might even be the last remnant of the Lost Ten Tribes. RABBI LAZARUS AXELROD Miami Beach

the daughter of another people but she became a Jewess and was accepted and became the mother of David. I consider myself like Ruth. I am a good Jewess.” SHE ENTERED the hut and immediately emerged again holding in her hands, as final proof of her argument, some four or five Hebrew books; a Bible, several prayer books and a Hebrew language book.

*T shall not forget her standing there,” wrote Dr. Patai, "in rage, barefoot, amidst her smelly animals, her tall sparse figure towering above the mud hut, holding out proudly, almost triumphantly, her store of Hebrew books.” Editor’s Note: Dr. Patai’s article was written 10 years ago. This synopsis fits in with the letters on this page •

Mexican Indian Jew Studies in N. Y. Yeshiva

By SUZANNE MESSING NEW YORK (P-O)—The 14-year-old son of a Mexican Indian has just completed his first year of study at the Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Javier (Shimon) De La Vega Carvajal, who looks just like one-of-the-boys at school, says he hopes to stay at the Yeshiva until he is ordained

a rabbi.

SHIMON’S FATHER is a Mexican Indian who has converted to Judaism. His mother’s history is more complicated. She is a member of a Mexican group loosely referred to as Indian Jews. The history of these people has been a provocative mystery. The Indian Jews first became known to the Mexican Jews of European background in the 1920’s. Since then the Europeans have been trying to learn their history. According to the word-of-mouth stories told among the group these people are descendants of Spanish Jews who came to Mexico. There many of them intermarried and when the Spanish Inquisition extended to Mexico many of them ceased their practice of Judaism and even kept from their children the fact that they were Jews. AT THE END of the Inquisition many resumed their Jewish practices. Today in Mexico, both in the capital and in many villages. there are groups of these people who look very much like their Indian neighbors but who practice Judaism. According to Shimon, his grandfather’s mother came to Mexico when she was young. She married twice, the second time to a Catholic. Shimon’s grandfather is the son of the first husband, presumably a Jew. When this woman was on her deathbed she told her son (Shimon's grandfather) that he was a Jew and gave him a Hebrew Bible. THE YOUNG man then set out from his village in the state of Guanajuato and went to Mexico City. He learned Hebrew and as much of Jewish practice as he could and thereafter became a sort of self-appointed missionary. His mission — to reconvert to Judaism the other Jews whose backgrounds were similar to his. The Yeshiva first heard of Shimon when one of its members went to Mexico and met the boy's grandfather. The old man said his great hope was that one of his grandsons would be a rabbi. A Sephardic rabbi in Mexico City attested to that fact that Shimon was circumcised and the son of a Jewish mother, THE YESHIVA then decided to

sponsor the boy. The school pays all of Shimon’s expenses including tuition, food, lodging in the dormitory and even an occasional suit or pair of shoes. When Shimon first came, all he knew in Hebrew was his aleph-beth which his grandfather had taught him. According to Rabbi Chaim U. Lipschitz of the school* at the end of the school year he was up to Gomorah, which is in the rabbi’s words, "remarkable progress.” SHIMON, WHO sleeps in the dorm on weekdays, goes home every weekend to the home of a local businessman. It is the custom at the Yeshiva for local families to take home a Yeshiva boy for the Sabbath every week. Shimon’s family lives in Mexico City so that he was familiar with urban living before coming here. However, he has had many new things to get adjusted to including a new language and very different food. He already speaks English and says that hot dogs are his favorite American food. But he misses enchiladas. Next year Shimon will probably be joined at the Yeshiva by the oldest of his three brothers. 1 THE MEXICAN Jews of European descent have on the whole been cool to this group of indigenous Jews as they are sometimes called. Most Jews simply don’t believe that these people are really of Jewish background. Some leaders I spoke to in Mexico said they couldn’t show too much friendship towards these people for fear that the Mexican Catholic Church would accuse the Jewish community of trying to convert some of its members, Shimon is obviously aware that some people doubt his story. Recently he brought a photograph of his grandfather performing a Jewish marriage ceremony to Rabbi Lipschitz's secretary. He told her, "Now you see I'm not lying about my grandfather. I'm

telling the truth.”

Ben-Gurion Says Eilat Will Soon Outgrow Haifa Eilat in the Negev will outgrow Haifa, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion promised, during a visit to the desert town where he conferred with the Municipal Council and civic leaders. Ben-Gurion declared that live urban centers will be set up in the Negev in the coming 10 years at a total investment of $500 million of which "one fifth will be allocated to Eilat.” Eilat's future is linked directly with the development of the Negev, the population of which will reach a million people, the Prime Minister declared.