The Marrano Legacy: A Contemporary Crypto-Jewish Priest Reveals Secrets of His Double Life

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Summary: Review of The Marrano Legacy
Review: "The Marrano Legacy" by Trudi Alexy is one of finest books I have read lately. With 149 pages, it is a fast read. It is also a must-read for everyone who is interested in this subject. Ms Alexy explains in her Prologue what sort of story this is: "an intensely personal" one, both for her and the crypto-Jewish priest "Simon". She touches on her own life and relates it to the letters which go back and forth between her and "Simon". They are very moving letters, painful letters often, which explore intensely personal feelings. The Prologue also explains what is meant by a "crypto-Jew". The book is beautifully written and quite revealing about both Ms Alexy and "Simon" though his anonymity has been preserved. I found it moving because I am a Jewish Child Survivor of the Holocaust and, after the war (World War II) was over, still had to hide my Jewishness because my parents told me so, so it was easy for me to relate to "Simon's" situation. Hiding becomes a habit and this is true for "Simon" as well. I would - and indeed will - highly recommend this book to everyone. If anyone is not now very interested in crypto-Jews, you will certainly be after you read this book.

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Summary: The Marrano Legacy
Review: In the 1490s, Christopher Columbus left Spain to explore new worlds. Also during that period, the dark, deadly and repressive era of the Inquistion began in Spain. Thus was born the secret Crypto-Jews. Trudi Alexy's striking book takes the reader on a five hundred year old journey of discovery, regarding the mysterious Crypto-Jews, from the time of the Inquisiton, to the present. In a series of electronic mail, between Trudi Alexy and a Crypto-Jewish Catholic priest, we learn of the pressures, conflicts, deception, confusion and thoughts of living a double life. I could hardly wait to turn the page and read the sometime belated response from the hidden priest, whose life is filled with apprehension, danger and surprises. Trudi Alexy's book reads like a mystery or spy story. Her postscript is insightful and brilliant. Fascinating reading.

Rating:
Summary: The Marrano Legacy
Review: In the 1490s, Christopher Columbus left Spain to explore new worlds. Also during that period, the dark, deadly and repressive era of the Inquistion began in Spain. Thus was born the secret Crypto-Jews. Trudi Alexy's striking book takes the reader on a five hundred year old journey of discovery, regarding the mysterious Crypto-Jews, from the time of the Inquisiton, to the present. In a series of electronic mail, between Trudi Alexy and a Crypto-Jewish Catholic priest, we learn of the pressures, conflicts, deception, confusion and thoughts of living a double life. I could hardly wait to turn the page and read the sometime belated response from the hidden priest, whose life is filled with apprehension, danger and surprises. Trudi Alexy's book reads like a mystery or spy story. Her postscript is insightful and brilliant. Fascinating reading.

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Summary: an irreconcilable claim
Review: One can only wonder at the claim "'Simon,' a descendant of Spain's medieval Marranos who submitted to baptism to escape the Inquisition,..." Since only baptized Christians were subject to the Inquisition, one is hard-pressed to imagine how being baptized would constitute an "escape" from the Inquisition, itelf greatly exaggerated as the Black Legend.

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Summary: INTERNET INTRIGUE
Review: Trudi Alexy, a World War II survivor, did not discover her Jewish roots until her adulthood, her family having escaped from Prague to Fascist Spain as hastily baptized Catholics when she was a child. The account of this period of her life is wonderfully told in her previous book, THE MEZUZAH IN THE MADONNA'S FOOT: Marranos and Other Secret Jews.

Her second book, THE MARRANO LEGACY, chronicles an intriguing relationship she develops over the Internet with a mysterious Crypto-Jewish Priest. The priest, Simon, is a Spaniard who read her first book and found that it coincided with much of his own family history of hidden identify. The Marranos are secret Jews who converted to Catholicism at the time of the Spanish Inquisition, all the while keeping alive the traditions and customs, even some of the rituals of ancient Judaism! Secrecy and determination to hide all evidence of their Jewish roots continues into the present. The memory of entire Jewish communities wiped out in Spain at the time of the Inquisition and the more recent events of the Holocaust have only served to strengthen their resolve to remain concealed, and to live clandestine lives.

Still, many Jewish practices were retained. Lighting Sabbath candles on Friday night in church was one of the ploys used by these Conversos. Las Posadas, a nine-day feast when bonfires and candles are lit "to guide the Holy Family looking for shelter," coincides with the Hanukkah celebration. Keeping Kosher and the marked aversion to pork; even performing the sign of the cross could be managed by reciting a whispered Jewish prayer secretly.

The most extraordinary practice that these Conversos established was to mandate that one male member of each generation of Crypto-Jews be chosen by his family to enter a seminary and be ordained a priest so that he could provide a link between their secret world and the Church and community. To this day such priests exist. The complicated web of secrecy and double identities that underlie the existence of a Crypto-Jewish priest is the subject Alexy's new book as she chronicles her amazing correspondence with "Simon".

They begin an exchange as fragile as that of timid lovers getting to know one another in a psychological atmosphere surrounded by the constant fear with which Crypto-Jews live their daily lives. Alexy's training as a psycho-therapist no doubt gave confidence to Simon that his needs for secrecy and absolute control over the material that he would reveal would be respected. So far, so good. The correspondence however takes very unexpected turns. Not even the most gifted therapist can anticipate the infinite nuances attending each exchange. Halfway through their correspondence Alexy also discovers he is nothing like her fantasy of Simon as one of El Grecos's martyred saints with deep-set dark eyes full of pain. Simon is a live wire of energy and has most contemporary tastes. Though mired in the past, he travels, goes to bullfights, loves to ski, and enjoys foreign films on his VCR. It was his grandfather, an elder of the Marrano Community, who selected him to be a priest while at the same time teaching him to be a secret Jew. Simon's own parents whom he loves dearly do not know of this second identity!

The weight of so much baggage challenges Alexy's utomost skill, patience, and faith. It brings up a great many of her own inner conflkicts, traces from the confused path she had been forced to follow in her own youth. Their relationship grows, yet the fate of such anguished souls is prdictably riddled with complications. At various junctures she is convinced that she has frightened him away when she doesn't hear from him for months on end. Tragedy nearly ends the friendship altogether.

In tiny incremental bits we are taken on this strange beguiling journey between two marvelously intelligent people trying to make sense of revelations that inform the reader yet again of the life-shattering cost of man's inhumanity. The author's great skill for asking the right questions, her timing, and sensitivity to this unusual young man's mysterious life make this an entirely original story.