From Yahweh to Zion

by Laurent Guyénot

  In the wake of Columbus, the Marranos became the main catalysts of the new spirit of colonial expansion, from Mexico to Peru and from the Caribbean to Brazil. Beginning in 1569, the Inquisition’s courts were introduced in the Americas to hunt Judaizing Marranos, who then found a relatively mild situation in Brazil, where inquisitorial activity remained moderate until the very end of the seventeenth century. They developed in particular the cultivation of sugar cane, as explained by Nathan Wachtel: “The cultivation of sugar cane and sugar manufacturing require complex technology, abundant capital and extensive trade networks: at every successive stage of the sugar trade, the New Christians played a prominent role.”190 The Marranos of Latin America, who formed an “underground America,” would also master the cultivation and commerce of cocoa, tobacco, and coffee—all addictive products that Europeans would grow heavily dependent upon in less than a century. The Inquisition of Lima in 1636 worried about the near monopoly of Portuguese Marranos in all branches of trade: “They achieved such mastery over trade that everything, from brocade to sackcloth, and from diamonds to cumin, passed through their hands.” And the Bishop of Puebla, Juan de Palafox, wrote in 1641: “They have so much power, not only in this city but also inland, that they can threaten the security of the kingdom.”191

  No international trade escaped them, and in time of war, they traded with enemy countries equally. Naturally, said Wachtel, “the traffic of African slaves [. . .] was virtually controlled at the end of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth, by the networks of the Marrano diaspora,” all beneficiaries of asientos (exclusive contracts granted by the Crown) being Portuguese businessmen. Some were at the same time priests, like Diego Lopez de Lisboa in the first decade of the seventeenth century.192 Note that, out of a little over nine million slaves imported to the Americas between 1519 and 1867, eight million were in Brazil and the Caribbean, where the traffic was in the hands of Marranos. The conditions were much harder there than in North America; the majority of slaves died young without founding families. Jewish justification of this traffic, inspired by the Hebrew Bible, was voiced by Jacob ben Isaac Achkenazi de Janow in his Commentary on the Torah in the early seventeenth century: Blacks were descended from Ham, the youngest son of Noah, who was cursed by the Lord with these words: “Accursed be Canaan, he shall be his brothers’ meanest slave” (Genesis 9:25).193 It is fair to mention that Pope Paul III proclaimed in 1537 his bull Sublimus Dei prohibiting slavery of American Indians and all other peoples, denouncing such practices as directly inspired by “the enemy of mankind.”

  In the nineteenth century, traces of the Marranos were gradually lost. After the annexation of half of Mexico by the United States in 1848,the crypto-Jews who became US citizens, now enjoying freedom of religion (Jews had been officially banned in Mexico until then), seldom opted for a return to Judaism. They preferred Presbyterianism, a compromise that allowed them access to the Old Testament. At least until the 1960s, some families in New Mexico and Texas still kept the memory of their secret Jewish heritage.194 Surveys have revealed isolated pockets of Marranos in Brazil until the end of the twentieth century, with some of them solemnly returning to Judaism. In May 1997, on the five-hundredth anniversary of the forced conversion of the Portuguese in 1497, the first “National Congress of Marrano Jews” was held in Recife, Brazil.

  Marranos and the Church

  Many Marranos were monks or priests, and some rose to important ecclesiastical positions in the Catholic Church. The question of their sincerity is often difficult to determine. From the sixteenth century, the monastic order of Saint Jerome, and especially the Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe, were known for attracting Judaizing Marranos. One prominent friar, Hernando de Talavera, was the confessor of Isabella the Catholic. Crypto-Jews were actually suspected of becoming the confessors of Old Christians in order to learn their secrets. Fray Vicente Rocamoro, confessor to Anne-Marie (daughter of Philip III of Spain and future empress) suddenly disappeared, then reappeared in 1643 in the Jewish community of Amsterdam under the name of Isaac de Rocamora.195

  Conversely, there were unquestionably sincere converts among the Marranos, who found in Jesus the model of the Jew emancipated from Mosaic Law. St. Teresa of Avila, for example, came from a Marrano family. It was said that some of these sincere converts nonetheless brought into the Church a Jewish spirit: Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, was from a Marrano family, and many historians have noted that the Jesuit order owes much to the spirit of Jewish networking. The Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada and his assistant Diego Daza, the most cruel persecutors of the “false Christians,” were Marranos. In general, the question of sincerity is impossible to decide, as conversions may lead to virtual split personalities. We must also take into account that a Marrano could feel Christian by religion and Jewish by blood.

  A good example is Solomon Halevi, chief rabbi of Burgos, who converted in 1390 or 1391, taking the name of Pablo de Santa Maria, becoming Bishop of Burgos in 1416. His sincerity seems beyond doubt, since he spoke harshly of the Jews, whom he accused of plotting to control Spain. As a bishop, he forced them to wear a badge to distinguish them from Christians. Yet he did not hesitate to proudly display his “Levitical” heritage.

  After Halevi’s death in 1435, his son Alonso Cartagena succeeded him as bishop of Burgos. A prolific writer like his father, he strove to mitigate the breach between the Old and New Testaments: “The strength of the Gospel is in the Law, and the foundation of the Law is the principle of the Gospel.” The result, for Cartagena, was that the conversion of Jews to Christianity is not really a conversion, but simply a deeper understanding of their historical role: a converted Jew was a better Christian because he did not really convert but rather deepened his faith, while the Gentiles first had to get rid of their false pagan beliefs in coming to Christ. Alonso held Jewishness superior from the racial perspective: it was because of their superior genetic heritage that Jews were chosen, not only to give birth to Christ, but to be a natural aristocracy of humanity. The Jews embodied Israel in flesh and spirit at the same time; it was really the Jews, in a way, who were the “Old Christians.”196

  About 270 years after Nicholas Donin had persuaded the pope to take action against the Talmud, another converted Jew, Joseph Pfefferkorn, embarked on a similar crusade. A native of Moravia who had converted (“withdrawn from the filthy and pestilential mire of the Jews”) in 1504 with his family, he abandoned the practice of usury and took the name of Johannes. He traveled through the German-speaking countries to preach conversion to the Jews, and wrote several books, including The Mirror of the Jews and The Enemy of the Jews, to “prevent the damage which the mangy dogs [Jews] do to Christian power in both the spiritual and worldly sphere.” He denounced, for example, the way Jews were ruining farmers through usury and expropriation of their lands, their efforts to morally corrupt Christians, and the revolutionary spirit of the Jews, who “pray for revenge against the whole Christian Church and especially against the Roman Empire, so that it should be broken and destroyed.” Supported by the Dominicans and the Franciscans, Pfefferkorn received from Emperor Maximilian I the right to confiscate Jewish books, examine them, and destroy those deemed hostile to the Christian faith. But a Jewish delegation successfully argued that the subject should first be discussed by a committee.

  Johannes Reuchlin, the greatest humanist scholar of his time after Erasmus, defended the Jews.197 Reuchlin immersed himself in Jewish writings and published in 1506 De rudimentis Hebraicis, the first Hebrew grammar by a non-Jew. He was interested in Kabbalah, which he combined with Neoplatonic magic in his book De verbo mirifico (The Magic Word). Kabbalah is an outgrowth of Talmudism particularly popular in Marrano circles. Its founding text, the Zohar (Book of Splendor), presents itself as having been written in the second century CE by Simeon bar Yochai Rabbi, hidden in a cave, and fortuitously rediscovered in the thirteenth century by Moses de Leon in a market of Spain. Needless t
o say, academic research ascribes authorship to Moses de Leon himself; the book’s antiquity is factitious. The basic principle of Kabbalah is the sacralization of the Hebrew language: since it is the language of God, by which God created the world, it follows that the knowledge of sacred words and their numeric meanings (associated with angelic powers) grants a demiurgic power to the kabbalist.

  Reuchlin defended the Talmud and Kabbalah before the emperor, against the Dominicans. He considered these Jewish books “the speech and the most sacred words of God.” His erudition, aided by the corruption of certain officials, managed to overturn the imperial order to destroy Jewish books. The debate continued for more than a decade in the universities, motivating many books in both camps. In 1517, Reuchlin published De arte caballistica, dedicated to Pope Leo X. In 1533, Cornelius Agrippa, inspired by Reuchlin, published De occulta philosophia. Thus did kabbalistic occult inspiration take root in the Christian West. Humanist thinkers, opposed to the Christian foundations of their society, sided with Reuchlin and campaigned against the Dominicans. They counted among their ranks such Marranos as Fernando de Rojas, author of the famous Celestine (1499). Pope Leo X (1513–1521) took the side of Reuchlin, who dedicated his De arte caballistica to him in 1517. Leo X, whose real name was Giovanni Médici, came from the powerful Florentine family of the Medici, a “race of usurers” according to Machiavelli, owners of the most important bank in Europe, founded in 1397.198 The Medicis were closely linked to the Abravanel clan, and favored the immigration into Tuscany of Jews from Spain and the Balkans. Leo X made the papacy hated by his immoderate use of indulgences to fill the coffers of the Vatican.

  Let us take a brief detour to discuss the Kabbalah, emphasizing its role in the birth of Zionism, through prophecies of the return of the Jews to Palestine, notably in the Zohar. Though the Kabbalah was born in Spain in the thirteenth century and spread, under a veil of secrecy, in Italy and Germany in the fourteenth century, it was at the end of the fifteenth century that it became an important part of Judaism, especially among crypto-Jews, who found in its occult dimension a resonance with their own hidden condition. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 triggered a great craze for Kabbalah, while accentuating its double messianic-apocalyptic dimension.199

  The Marranos found themselves better placed than the unconverted Jews to influence the Church with regard to kabbalistic prophecies. Thus, Solomon Molcho (1500–1532), born in Portugal to a Marrano family, rose to the post of royal secretary in the High Court of Justice, met the Pope, and tried to convince him to form an army of Marranos and attack the Ottoman Empire in order to liberate Palestine for the Jews. According to historian Youssef Hindi, Molcho “was the first to have concretely established Zionism’s political strategy towards Christians, with the aim of using them to bring the Jews back to the Holy Land [. . .] persuading them to embrace Jewish messianic designs as their own.”200

  The controversy of Reuchlin led to an unquestionable victory of Judaism over Christianity, and it was the starting point of the Reformation. According to Heinrich Graetz, “We can boldly assert that the war for and against the Talmud aroused German consciousness, and created a public opinion, without which the Reformation, like many other efforts, would have died in the hour of birth, or, perhaps, would never have been born at all.”201 Luther took the side of Reuchlin, joining the ranks of his continued struggle by writing Sola Scriptura, the pillar of his Reformation, and promoting the study of Hebrew. Most disciples of Reuchlin became Lutherans. Luther was initially very friendly toward Jews, publishing in 1523 a pamphlet titled That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew. In it he blamed “the popes, bishops, sophists, and monks—the crude asses’ heads” for being unable to convert the Jews: “If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian.” Hoping to do better, he wrote: “The Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord. Therefore, if one is to boast of flesh and blood, the Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are.” But after much disappointment, Luther had second thoughts. In On the Jews and Their Lies, written a few years before his death, he deemed them so corrupted by deadly sins as to be almost unredeemable, and especially resented their economic prosperity: “They are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury.” Luther recognized, in particular, the evil influence of the book of Esther, “which so well fits their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous greed and hope.”202

  Luther’s turning against the Jews was also a turning against the spirit of the Old Testament, whose deleterious influence Luther had seen in the peasant revolt led by Thomas Muntzer, with whom he disengaged. Speaking to members of the Allstedt alliance in April 1525, Muntzer exhorted them to massacre: “Do not be merciful, even though Esau offers you good words [Genesis 33:4]. Pay no heed to the lamentations of the godless. They will bid you in a friendly manner, cry and plead like children. Do not let yourselves be merciful, as God commanded through Moses [Deuteronomy 7:1–5].” In 1538 Luther wrote a polemic charge Against the Sabbatarians, those Christians who insisted upon following the Old Testament command to worship on the Sabbath, and whom Luther suspected to be infiltrated by Jews.203

  Since its appearance, the Protestant Reformation has been seen by Catholics as effecting a return to Judaism under the influence of Jews and Marranos. Its contempt for saints and destruction of the Marian cult, in particular, are an indirect attack against Christ. If the Jews shunned the Reformation, this was not the case for crypto-Jews, who saw it as a way to leave the Church and gain easier access to the Hebrew Bible. The role of the Marranos was particularly important in the Calvinist movement, which not only brought back the God of the Old Testament, but also condoned moneymaking and usury. During his lifetime, Calvin was already suspected of having Marrano origin. His name, spelled Jehan Cauvin, plausibly derives from Cauin, a French version of Coen. Calvin wrote commentaries on the entire Old Testament and perfectly mastered Hebrew, which he learned from rabbis. He heaped praise on the Jewish people: pure knowledge of God comes from them, as did the Messiah. His obsession with the law, and his belief that idolatry should be eradicated by military force, have their roots in the Old Testament, as does his obsession with purity. Calvin writes in his commentary on Psalm 119: “Where did Our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles draw their doctrine, if not Moses? And when we peel off all the layers, we find that the Gospel is simply an exhibition of what Moses had already said.” The Covenant of God with the Jewish people is irrevocable because “no promise of God can be undone.” The new covenant is indistinguishable from the first: “The covenant made with the ancient Fathers, in its substance and truth, is so similar to ours, that we can call them one. The only difference is the order in which they were given.”

  According to the famous thesis of Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), the Calvinists were the main architects of global capitalism. Werner Sombart opposed him, in The Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911), with the thesis that this role must be credited to the Jews. The history of Marranism, of which neither Weber nor Sombart had sufficient knowledge, reconciles both theses, since Calvinism is, in its origin and spirit, a form of crypto-Judaism.

  Assimilation or Dissimulation?

  Crypto-Judaism as a form of resistance to exile and discrimination should logically have disappeared with the European reforms culminating in the Emancipation of the Jews in the second half of the eighteenth century. These reforms, which put an end to discrimination against Jews, began shortly before the French Revolution. They supported the aspiration of the Jews of Europe to participate in the European Enlightenment (Haskalah), following the example of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786). By a decree of May 30, 1806, shortly after his coronation, Napoleon convened a meeting in Paris of representatives
of the Jews of France, Italy, and Holland, and posed them twelve questions to test the compatibility of Jewish worship with French citizenship. In appearance, the operation was successful: the “Reform Judaism” that took shape shortly thereafter was defined as a religion alongside Catholicism or Protestantism. This assimilationist strategy offered an illusion to the Gentiles for about a century, but generated strong resistance within the Jewish community: by assimilating and becoming just another religion in a world won over to humanism, was Judaism not making itself vulnerable to the same forces of disintegration that were undermining Christianity? And above all, did not assimilation make inevitable the spread of mixed marriages that eventually could lead to the disappearance of the Jewish community?