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backgrounds after generations
of it being hidden from them.

Philadelphia local Ronit
Treatman is a member of
more than 25 of these groups,
including “Sephardic and
Crypto-Jewish Research.”
In 2012, Treatman found
out about her own background
through DNA testing: A surprise
finding indicated that family
members had moved to Poland
from Spain.

“It showed that part of them
were forced to convert and had
to go to Brazil,” Treatman said.

The uncovering of one’s Jewish
backstory, particularly finding
out about having crypto-Jewish
ancestors, has become more
common in the age of accessible
DNA testing, Treatman said.

Companies such as Family Tree
DNA can look more specifically
at Sephardic roots.

Treatman describes herself as
“the other side of the mirror.”
While so many other members
from the groups are raised
Catholic and are just now trying
to learn more about their Jewish
roots, Treatman has always
known she was Jewish (Her
father was an Israeli diplomat).

After almost a decade of
networking in these groups,
she’s been able to assist scores of
people in finding texts, resources
and community members to
connect these crypto-Jewish
descendants back to Judaism.

Philadelphia Jews are no
strangers to helping descen-
dants of crypto-Jews, also called
Conversos, Bnei Anusim or
Marranos — the Spanish word for
“pig,” which Treatman finds an
unfit terminology for the group.

Congregation Mikveh
Israel, the oldest synagogue in
Philadelphia, was founded by
Spanish and Portuguese Jews by
way of a Sephardic synagogue in
Amsterdam. In the 1920s, it was the first
Sephardic synagogue to respond
to the requests of the Portuguese
Marranos Committee, “for funds
to be expended in reclaiming
to Judaism more than 14,000
Marranos, who have been living
in Portugal, openly as Christians
and secretly as Jews for over four
centuries,” wrote Mikveh Israel
religious leader Leon H. Elmalah
in an Oct. 31, 1926 letter.

The appeal was made in
partnership with the Sephardic
Community of London, the
Anglo Jewish Association and
the Alliance Israelite, the letter
explained. The donation made
by Mikveh Israel would be
worth $50,000 today, Mikveh
Israel Rabbi Albert Gabbai said.

“Since we are a Spanish and
Portuguese synagogue, and we
trace our ancestry to the Jews
who escaped — because we are
a congregation that follows this
tradition started by these Jews,
it was a natural address for us to
help them out,” Gabbai said.

Gabbai visited
the Portuguese Jewish community,
which now numbers between
50 and 100, in 2017, decades
after it received a Jewish educa-
tion from Israeli rabbis sent to
teach about Jewish holidays.

The trip was heartening,
Gabbai said, as he was able to see
what Mikveh Israel’s assistance
90 years prior was able to do. But
misconceptions around Jews in
the area persist, he said.

On the trip, Gabbai witnessed
a tourist at a church — erected in
the place of an old synagogue —
who asked what had happened to
the Jews who left the synagogue.

“The guide said, ‘We invited
them to leave the country,’”
Gabbai said.

The continued stigma reaffirms
Treatman’s work, she said. It has
also driven the work of a friend of
Treatman’s, whom she met in one
crypto-Jewish Facebook event:
Keith Chavez, an Albuquerque,
New Mexico, native who found
out he was Jewish at age 13.

“My great-grandmother was
dying. She was bedridden for a
The gravestone of Keith Chavez’s
father with a Star of David at the
top. Chavez was raised attending a
Catholic church with his father.

Ronit Treatman found out about
Jewish family members who lived
in Spain after a 2012 DNA test.

length of time before she passed
away, and she wanted to talk to
me, my brother and my cousin,”
Chavez said. “So she called
us together. She said, ‘Somos
Sefarditos.’ We are Sefarditos.”
In hindsight, Chavez’s Jewish
background made sense to him,
despite attending a Catholic
church with his father growing
up. While most every Catholic
woman in New Mexico would
sweep dust out their front doors,
his great-grandmother used a
dustpan, as sweeping outside
one’s door violated the laws of
a mezuzah (though the family
never had mezuzahs on their
doorposts). She insisted upon
having her meat for weekend
meals sourced and prepared in
a way that resembled kosher law.

Chavez’s story resembles
those of many other crypto-
Jewish descendants, but he still
considers himself different.

So many other people with
crypto-Jewish backgrounds have
staunchly denied their family
backgrounds, instead favoring
their Catholic upbringings.

If they do choose to pursue
learning more about Judaism,
they can face scrutiny from some
Jewish leaders who don’t consider
crypto-Jewish descendants to be
valid Jews without conversion.

Now an adjunct history and
anthropology professor at the
University of New Mexico, Chavez
has taught about the presence of
crypto-Jewish descendants in the
Southwest U.S. and their own
Inquisition, which only ended in
the 19th century.

Like Treatman, Chavez is the
administrator of a handful of
crypto-Jewish Facebook groups.

Facebook has helped change
the landscape for crypto-Jewish
descendants looking to connect,
Chavez said, though these connec-
tions remain fewer than he hopes.

At one point, he helped a
Finnish woman, who just found
out about her Jewish ancestry,
connect with a rabbi in Helsinki.

The rabbi eventually led her
through the conversion process.

“That I felt good about,”
Chavez said. “Because she came
home.” l
Photo by Keith Chavez
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