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From: "Sephard Manager" <>
Subject: FW: New Mexican Sephardic Genes
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 01:54:49 +0000


>From:
>To:
>Subject: New Mexican Sephardic Genes
>Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 18:10:47 -0700
>
>This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
>
>Classification: Query
>
>Message Board URL:
>
>http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/CtB.2ACIAE/166
>
>Message Board Post:
>
>http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-heritage5dec05,1,3173654.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
>
>THE NATION
>
>DNA Clears the Fog Over Latino Links to Judaism in New Mexico
>
>Tests confirm what tradition and whispers have alluded to -- a Sephardic
>community often unbeknownst to many of its members.
>By David Kelly
>Times Staff Writer
>
>December 5, 2004
>
>ALBUQUERQUE As a boy, Father William Sanchez sensed he was different.
>His Catholic family spun tops on Christmas, shunned pork and whispered of a
>past in medieval Spain. If anyone knew the secret, they weren't telling,
>and Sanchez stopped asking.
>
>Then three years ago, after watching a program on genealogy, Sanchez sent
>for a DNA kit that could help track a person's background through genetic
>footprinting. He soon got a call from Bennett Greenspan, owner of the
>Houston-based testing company.
>
>"He said, 'Did you know you were Jewish?' " Sanchez, 53, recalled. "He told
>me I was a Cohanim, a member of the priestly class descended from Aaron,
>the brother of Moses."
>
>With the revelation that Sanchez was almost certainly one of New Mexico's
>hidden or crypto-Jews, his family traditions made sense to him.
>
>He launched a DNA project to test his relatives, along with some of the
>parishioners at Albuquerque's St. Edwin's Church, where he works. As word
>got out, others in the community began contacting him. So Sanchez expanded
>the effort to include Latinos throughout the state.
>
>Of the 78 people tested, 30 are positive for the marker of the Cohanim,
>whose genetic line remains strong because they rarely married non-Jews
>throughout a history spanning up to 4,000 years.
>
>Michael Hammer, a research professor at the University of Arizona and an
>expert on Jewish genetics, said that fewer than 1% of non-Jews possessed
>this marker. That fact along with the traditions in many of these
>families makes it likely that they are Jewish, he said.
>
>"It makes their stories more consistent and believable," Hammer said.
>
>It also explained practices that had baffled many folks here for years: the
>special knives used to butcher sheep in line with Jewish kosher tradition,
>the refusal to work on Saturdays to honor the Sabbath, the menorahs that
>had been hidden away.
>
>In some families, isolated rituals are all that remain of a once-vibrant
>religious tradition diluted by time and fears of persecution.
>
>Norbert Sanchez, 66, recalled the "service of lights" on Friday nights in
>his hometown of Jareles, N.M., where some families would dine by
>candlelight.
>
>"We always thought there was a Jewish background in our family, but we
>didn't know for sure," he said. "When I found out, it was like coming home
>for me."
>
>In 1492, Jews in Spain where given the choice of conversion to Catholicism
>or expulsion. Many fled, but others faked conversions while practicing
>their faith in secret. These crypto-Jews were hounded throughout the
>Spanish Inquisition.
>
>"In the 1530s and 1540s, you began to see converted Jews coming to Mexico
>City, where some converted back to Judaism," said Moshe Lazar, a professor
>of comparative literature at USC and an expert on Sephardic Jews, or those
>from Spain and Portugal. "The women preserved their tradition. They taught
>their daughters the religion. People began rediscovering their Jewishness,
>but remained Catholics."
>
>But in 1571, the Inquisition came to Mexico. Authorities were given lists
>to help identify crypto-Jews, Lazar said. People who didn't eat pork, knelt
>imperfectly in church, rubbed water quickly off newly baptized babies or
>didn't work on Saturday were suspect. If arrested, they were sometimes
>burned at the stake.
>
>Many fled to what is now northern New Mexico, and remained secretive even
>after the U.S. gained control of the area in 1848.
>
>"Still, no one would come out and say: 'I am a Jew.' That didn't happen
>until the 1970s," said Stanley Hordes, a professor at the Latin American
>and Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico who is writing a book
>on crypto-Jews. "The first few generations kept the secret because of
>danger of physical harm, and later they kept it because that was just what
>they did. The $64,000 question is: Why the secrecy today? Why are people
>keeping this information from their kids and grandkids?"
>
>Some haven't.
>
>"I found out when I was 13," said Keith Chaves, 47, an engineer in
>Albuquerque. "My great-grandmother told me that we were Sepharditos."
>
>The family matriarch was a repository of knowledge and the keeper of
>secrets.
>
>"She kept a kosher knife rolled up in a piece of leather that she would
>only use for killing," Chaves said. "And she would kill the animal by
>cutting its throat in one motion. She abhorred the ways others killed
>animals."
>
>Born a Catholic, Chaves now attends an Orthodox synagogue in Albuquerque.
>He has made four documentaries on crypto-Jews and is working on a movie
>about his family history.
>
>"When I found out about my roots, I went to the library and my world opened
>up. I started peeling what turned out to be a 500-year-old onion," he said.
>"I have reclaimed my life. I live a Jewish life now. I think my
>great-grandmother told me because she expected me to do something fruitful
>with the information."
>
>Others have sought the truth on their own.
>
>Elisea Garcia was raised by a strong-willed grandmother with strange
>habits.
>
>"We would have a big dinner on Friday night with candles," said Garcia, 66,
>who is awaiting the results of a DNA test done on her son to see if he has
>the Cohanim marker, which is found only in the Y chromosome. "She would
>butcher the animals then examine them inside out for any sign of impurity.
>On Saturday we weren't even allowed to wash our hair."
>
>When her grandmother died, Garcia found a silver menorah hidden in her
>room.
>
>"I'm a curious person, but my uncle told me not to dig into things because
>they weren't important," she said.
>
>Garcia, a Catholic, attends both synagogue and church.
>
>"It makes me aware of the whole concept of God," she said.
>
>Greenspan, whose Family Tree DNA does the testing for Sanchez's project,
>said there had been a surge of interest in genealogy among Latinos looking
>for Jewish connections.
>
>"We believe a fairly high percentage of first families [arriving] in New
>Mexico were nominally Catholic, but their secret religion was Judaism," he
>said. "We are finding between 10% and 15% of men living in New Mexico or
>south Texas or northern Mexico have a Y chromosome that tracks back to the
>Middle East."
>
>They are not all Cohanim, and there's a slight chance some could be of
>African Muslim descent. But Greenspan said the DNA of the men is typical of
>Jews from the eastern Mediterranean.
>
>Test participants scrape cells from the inside of their cheeks and mail
>samples to Greenspan, who has them analyzed by researchers at the
>University of Arizona. The process takes about a month, with costs ranging
>from $100 to $350 depending on the detail requested. Women, who do not
>possess the Y chromosome, must have a male relative take the test in order
>to participate.
>
>Since discovering his past, Father Sanchez who wears a Star of David
>around his neck has traveled throughout the state giving talks on the
>history and genealogy of New Mexico. He also runs the Nuevo Mexico DNA
>Project and website that tells how people can take part.
>
>Sanchez describes his Jewish history as "a beautiful thing" complementing,
>not conflicting with, his priestly life.
>
>"I have always known I was Jewish; I can't explain it, but it was woven
>into who I was," he said.
>
>After Mass one recent morning, a group of parishioners filed out of St.
>Edwin's. None had a problem with their priest's dueling religious
>traditions.
>
>"He has taken us back to our roots," Robert Montoya said.
>
>And Theresa Villagas smiled. "We are all children of God," she said. "I
>think this just adds richness to our lives."
>
>
>


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