Contemporary Sephardic Identity in the Americas: An Interdisciplinary Approach

6. Religious Movements in Mexican Sephardism

105 Religious Movements in Mexican Sephardism Liz Hamui Halabe Throughout the twentieth century, the cultural heritage identified with the Sephardic Jewish experience in Mexico was reflected in the life of three communities that had gone through significant transformations along the four generations : the Mount Sinai Alliance (MSA) composed of Shamis, descendants of Damascus Jews; the Maguén David Community (MDC), which groups together the Halebis, whose ancestors came from Aleppo, Syria; and the Sephardic Union (SU), which unites the sons and grandsons of the Jews coming from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkan countries. Although the first two groups descended from a Musarabian population, considered indigenous to the Middle East region, the influence of Sephardic immigration of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries left a cultural imprint that allows us to define them by the term Sephardim.1 In Mexico , however, the last of these groups is distinguished by the name “Sephardic” for its Balkan origin and direct descent from Hispanic Jews. Although each community has its own singularities and has experienced different ethnic-religious movements, we may identify certain common processes 1. Margalit Bejarano applies the term, with respect to Latin America, to four groups with different geographic and cultural roots: direct descendants of Jews from the Iberic Peninsula; North African immigrants; Jews from Turkey, Greece, Rhodes, Bulgaria, and former Yugoslavia who spoke Judezmo or Ladino and were identified with Sephardi tradition; and last, Jews from oriental provinces of the Turkish-Ottoman Empire such as Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, speaking Arabic or Ladino (Bejarano 2005, 12–13). 106  Ideological Divergence that the third and fourth Jewish generations in Mexico are going through. The objective of this essay is to carry out a socio-historical reconstruction of religiosity in Sephardic communities before and after 1970, a decade characterized by an onset of ideological particularism—a movement of reevaluation of community space, as well as the reelaboration of axes by which identity is built. Community Experience Throughout the First Two Generations of Sephardic Jews in Mexico (1900–1970) The first Sephardic immigrants in modern times arrived in the country during the period known in Mexican history as the Porfiriato (1876–1910). Although the colonial period was characterized by a significant presence of Crypto-Jews, the Holy Inquisition Court managed to weaken and practically dissolve the different communities of converts established throughout the colonial territory, especially in the north of New Spain, where most of them were gathered (Gojman de Backal 1984).2 At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, the first Sephardic Jews came to Mexico mainly from Greece, Turkey, and the Balkans. Arabic-speaking Jews from Aleppo and Damascus provinces belonging to the Turkish-Ottoman Empire arrived as of 1905 (Askenazi 1982). Despite the fact that Francisco Rivas Puigcerver, a descendant of conversos, attempted to promote Mexico as the final destination for Jewish immigrants from the Turkish-Ottoman Empire through his publication, El Sábado Secreto, it is more likely that the first Sephardic Jews arrived in Mexican territory by coincidence, wishing to “make America” (El Sábado Secreto, May 15, 1889). They worked as merchants or peddlers and established themselves in large cities , mainly in the capital. The first attempts at community organization took place during the first decade of the twentieth century (Krause 1987). However , the MSA was only established in 1912, with participation of Jews from all backgrounds. Ashkenazim and Sephardim aimed to purchase land for a Jewish 2. Today, there are people who claim being descendants of converts. They confirm their Sephardi origins and aim to awaken ancestral traditions through religious conversion. Examples of these are groups in Veracruz, Monterrey, Venta Prieta in Pachuca, Hidalgo, and Vallejo, north of Mexico City. Religious Movements in Mexican Sephardism  107 cemetery. The initiative of Isaac Capón, a Sephardic Jew from Greece who was the first president of the MSA, was crucial in this process of community structure (Alianza Monte Sinaí 2001). The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 had an impact on the development of the community because of the conditions of insecurity and shortage. Some of the Jews living in Mexico at that time3 decided to leave the country for the United States or other Latin American destinations. Those who remained suffered from poverty and dearth together with the rest of the Mexican population . Furthermore, between 1914 and 1918, contact with family members from abroad was made more complicated by the...