Today, however, there are a growing number of efforts to rectify this situation. These are grounded in the hope that learning about the Southwest from a multitude of its residents of various cultural backgrounds will produce an historically more accurate view of the combination of influences that have helped to make the region the way it is today.
My particular contribution to this endeavor has thus far received almost
no scholarly attention at all, and I hope that from my humble beginning
that more research will soon become available on the subject. My research
focuses on an interesting sector of the Southwestern population, Jewish
women and their influence on the region. These people are minorities both
as Jews and
women, and so have received very little notice as they relate specifically
to the Southwest, as research on this locale tends to be currently more
concerned with its Native tribes and large Latino/a population. My work
then, by necessity, is more concerned with "quality" than "quantity", and
involves in-depth analysis of some of the few documents available on two
particular aspects
of the subject: the role of women in preserving crypto-Jewish culture
in the Southwest crypto-Jews are Jews of Hispanic descent who have
maintained some Jewish rituals although they were forcibly converted to
Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition), and the role of American pioneer
Jewish women in the planting of Jewish roots there.
In her article "Women, ritual, and secrecy: the creation of crypto-Jewish culture", Janet Liebman Jacobs explains the integral part women have played in preserving the remarkable culture currently known as crypto-Judaism. Crypto-Jews are descendants of Spanish Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity or leave Spain after the Spanish Inquisition beginning in the fourteenth century. Many crypto-Jews emigrated to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, including the region that is now the Southwestern United States. While they appeared to be like any other Christians in the dominant social spheres, in the home they secretly performed several Jewish rituals. It is the crypto-Jewish women who are largely responsible for the transmission of these rituals across generations, and Jacobs discusses in detail the various means they used to achieve this end.
She begins the article by explaining that a consciousness of fear and
persecution are deeply embedded in the Jewish people and especially those
of Spanish descent. This fear necessitated that the crypto-Jews keep their
real heritage hidden as only a family secret. For, if exposed, they faced
death at worst and at best a loss of status in their communities, which
for centuries were
controlled by the Catholic Church.
Jacobs then states that the life of crypto-Jews, kept secret because
of their fear of oppression, had to be lived almost entirely in a private
setting, the home. It is here that women maintained and transmitted the
rituals vital to establishing a strong identity over several generations.
She attributes this phenomenon to the Separate Spheres doctrine of traditional
Jewish Law (Halacha),
which obligates women to perform certain rituals that can be done in
the home, and therefore did not interrupt their other duties there (Jacobs,
103).
One of the most interesting of these rituals is the observation of the
Sabbath, when many crypto-Jewish women would actually light candles or
lamps on Friday evenings. They had several concealment and resistance strategies
to avoid being recognized as "sabatistas", or Saturday Worshippers. In
some communities they women would light the wick in a clay pot, since they
wanted to place it near a window while still concealing it. One account
even speaks of a community where the women would light the Sabbath candles
inside the church, where they would be least suspected! There were similar
rituals that lasted until almost recently for Purim, Chanukah, and Passover.
Evidence for the importance women placed on maintaining traditional Jewish
customs can be found in an account of the Purim Festival by one woman
Jacobs interviewed to obtain her data (her article is an ethnographic study,
which often relies heavily on this type of research):
The festival of Saint Esther is mainly a women's holiday in our way of doing things. Usually this holiday is dedicated to mothers teaching daughters the ways of the home and such. Pastries, rolled empananitas made with fired bread and pumpkin were prepared along with elaborate meals...The women lit candles to Saint Esther and other Saints... (Jacobs, 104)One interesting phenomenon to note about the crypto-Jewish Purim festival was that it referred to Esther the Jewish Queen in whose honor the holiday is celebrated, as Saint Esther. This is what Jacobs calls the creation of a syncretic religious culture, or an oppressed people's integration of their own deities or spiritually important figures with those of the dominant culture. This is a common cultural method of resistance to marginalization, and is also found in Latin American cultures, who when worshipping "Our Lady of Guadelupe" are just as likely to be praying to Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, as the Aztec goddess Tonantzinas (Anzaldua, 77).
Jacobs also points out the fact that many of the dietary laws, or "Kashrut" were also handed down over time. Many crypto-Jewish families would not eat pork or mix milk and meat, but again not to look conspicuous they would other keep pigs in their yards or put ham on their plates when strangers would visit them. Crypto-Jewish women often regarded the ritual food preparation not as a forced domestic responsibility, but as a holy experience and a way to keep their covenant with G-d, as one of Jacobs's subjects passionately testified: "For us, cooking is very spiritual. It is something only the women can do. It is our connection to G-d. Cooking is considered a sacred act. That is why only the women can cook." (Jacobs, 105).
Finally, Jacobs illustrates the ways in which many crypto-Jewish women revealed their identity to their children near the end of their lives, finally able to pass on their life-long secret to their descendants and make peace with the G-d of their ancestors. Often they would do this using a female-emphasized version of the covenant between G-d and the Jewish people to justify their practice of secrecy in giving their daughters and granddaughters a firmer sense of Jewish identity, rather than the actual persecutions which lead to the custom. One subject commented on this interesting rendition of the "chosen-people" discussion she learned when her Judaism was revealed to her:
My Grandmother would tell me about the Hebrews, why they are special and why we mustn't practice on the outside because it was like a covenant, you know and we had to practice very secretly because G-d had decided that we had to keep contact between him and us. She would say, "Remember we are Hebrew and even though our husbands are Christians and our children, we still pass down that we are Hebrews to our children because we have a covenant, a very personal and sacred relationship with G-d"Jacobs seems to effectively argue her claim that crypto-Judaism has been maintained by women through private religious practices in the home. By using actual narratives from people of crypto-Jewish descent, the reader can see the dominant pattern of female centered crypto-Jewish religious and cultural identity preservation. In each case various traditions are clearly passed
The current information available on the first non-Latina Jewish women
of the Southwest relies heavily on the memoirs of the women themselves,
as well as stories told by their relatives. So while there is little, if
any, scholarly work accessible at the present, I shall try to analyze the
information I did find to see if there are some dominant patterns that
can be found to dispel
traditional myths about frontier women, and reveal the little-known
contributions by the Jews among them.
One traditional image that seems to have persisted even to the present
day is that the women of the American frontier, although given many laborious
duties, were under the strict control of husbands who forced them into
this plight. It seems to be forgotten that often survival was so difficult
that division of labor became a necessity, and that many women shared equal
responsibility with their husbands. When their husbands died they were
often left with the tremendous burden of raising children and running businesses,
simultaneously and alone. This frequently was the case with the first Jewish
women of the Southwest. Take, for example, the tone in an excerpt of a
memoir by pioneer Jewish woman Anna Freudenthal Solomon, which reveals
the partnership between herself and her husband in their relationship:
"We had a contract to deliver charcoal to the Clifton mining company...This
started our business...We employed a great many people...My husband attended
the outdoors work while I attended the store and the housework..." (Solomon,
3). It seems it would be difficult to argue that Solomon and her husband
were anything but full partners in their work, and probably their marriage.
For in the above passage one can hear the frequent use of words like "we"
and "our", which state not only was she most likely her husband's equal
in reality, but also in her mind.
Annie Rochlin, a pioneer Jewish women who lived in Nogales, Arizona on the border between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico in the early twentieth century, even had the sole responsibility of running her huge estate both during her marriage and after her husband's death. Her leadership and authority can be sensed in a reminiscence by her daughter-in-law Harriet:
With the Sonoran women who worked for her, my mother-in-law was just and straightforward. Having been a seamstress in a sweatshop she was a sympathetic patrona, employer, but everyone worked, and no one longer or harder than she. Able employees earned praise and affection, the distracted, dishonest, or complaining, chastisement. Working side by side, she and her helpers chatted. She knew their origins, vital statistics, and current concerns. Asked or unasked, she offered advice but didn't expect them to alter their ingrained ways.... (Rochlin, 3)This narrative not only destroys the images of most married pioneer women as passive robots forced to work for and answer to their husbands, but also the myth that all Jewish American women were (and are) lazy "princesses" who have never had to do any difficult work.
Pioneer Jewish women used their freedom and power not merely for the
sake of helping their husbands, families, and businesses, however, and
many were instrumental in the establishment of Jewish organizations as
well as the founding of Synagogues throughout the Southwest, ensuring the
existence of the vibrant Jewish communities that survive there today. Flora
Spielberg, for example, of Sante Fe, New Mexico conducted the first Sabbath
school for Jewish children in that city. (Gleicher, 5). Terese Marx-Ferrin
of Tucson, Arizona was president of the Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society
in 1890, an organization which oversaw the planning of Temple Emanu-el,
a congregation which still exists today (Anonymous, 4). Dora Loon-Capin
worked with her husband to keep a rental and hotel business running, which
currently makes donations to Jewish organizations throughout the Southwest
(Anonymous, 3). Jewish women pioneers and their contributions to their
religious communities hopefully now can give a more realistic image of
their roles there, and falsify the notion that all women of the period
were subject to the rule of a harsh patriarchal household and society.
After all, traditional Jewish legend even has an analogy that if a
man is the head of a household, a woman is its neck, which is certainly
needed to turn the head!
I hope now that I have taken some important first steps toward scholarly
recognition of an important, yet nearly unrecognized group of people and
their influence on the place in which they live. I would have even liked
to have given a biography of a currently famous Jewish woman from the Southwest,
but as I mentioned earlier this area barely exists as a legitimate field
of research. Perhaps the "pioneer" spirit will endure in some scholars
who in this age of multi-culturalism will continue to move away from historical
research as seen only through the eyes of the Euro-American. For
Jewish women, whether they have managed to maintain a culture for six-hundred
years despite facing the possibility of persecution, as in the case of
crypto-Jews,
or taken necessary steps toward the founding of Jewish communities,
like many of the first Jews who came to the American frontier, have made
invaluable contributions to the Southwest, and deserve long-overdue recognition
for their work there.
Works Cited
Anzaldua, Gloria. "Entering into the Serpent". Weaving the Visions. Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1989. 77-86.
Anonymous contribution to the Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives
Gleicher, Sherri Goldstein. "Flora Spielberg, Grand Lady of the Southwest Frontier". Southwest Jewish History1.2 (January,1996): 5-6.
Jacobs, Janet Liebman. "Women, ritual, and secrecy: the creation of crypto-Jewish culture.The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (June, 1996): 97-109.
Nidel, David. "Modern Descendants of Conversos in New Mexico." Western States Jewish History16 (1984):249-262.
Rochlin, Harriet. "Annie Shapiro Rochlin and Harriet Rochlin: Two Generations of Pioneer Jewish Women". Southwest Jewish History. 2.2: 1-4.
Solomon, Anna Freudenthal. "Solomonville: A Jewish Town on the Frontier in Arizona Territory: the Memoirs of Anna Freudenthal Solomon." Southwest Jewish History 2.4: 2-4.
pursue further research at the University of Arizona Library
Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives
send me comments at goldblat@u.arizona.edu