Blog Post

Palestine, New Mexico”: Crypto Judaism and More

Filed under Blog

Cryp­to Judaism, one’s own or oth­ers’, has inspired works in lit­er­a­ture, film, music and lit­er­a­ture. I saw and was delight­ed by a work of the­ater this week that grew out of Play­wright Richard Mon­toy­a’s explo­ration of his fam­i­ly’s poten­tial Sephardic Jew­ish roots, “Pales­tine, New Mex­i­co,” at Los Ange­les’ Mark Taper Forum. 

My delight came from the vibran­cy of the per­for­mances, warm­ing the stage with fresh expres­sions of themes famil­iar to me–peace over war and our human and spir­i­tu­al con­nect­ed­ness. The lat­ter theme is implic­it in the real­i­ty of peo­ple hav­ing to hide their ances­tral and reli­gious iden­ti­ties to sur­vive phys­i­cal­ly and, long after that need is no more, to sur­vive social­ly and psy­chi­cal­ly. “Pales­tine, New Mex­i­co” takes place beyond even this: these old needs are no longer need­ed for sur­vival; more­over, they don’t serve valid pur­pos­es in the present, and are inju­ri­ous to those main­tain­ing them. The mes­sage seems to be no more secrets if they bring us iso­la­tion and sep­a­ra­tion from each oth­er, on the per­son­al and famil­ial, as well as on the racial and glob­al levels.

In a ques­tion and answer ses­sion with the audi­ence at Sun­day’s mati­nee on Jan­u­ary 3, Mon­toya, mem­ber of the the­ater group Cul­ture Clash, spoke of his fam­i­ly’s roots in New Mex­i­co and the leg­ends about their Jew­ish ori­gins. In an inter­view in the Los Ange­les Times (Decem­ber 19, 2009), Reed John­son refers to Mon­toy­a’s weav­ing of this into his “comedic dra­ma, in which strands of Chi­cano, Jew­ish and Native Amer­i­can his­to­ry are knot­ted togeth­er in one thick, com­plex braid.” And in Nao­mi Pfef­fer­man’s inter­view in the Los Ange­les Jew­ish Jour­nal (Decem­ber 18–24, 2009), Mon­toya gives his “Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the piece”:

I’d like to try to answer some ques­tions so my chil­dren will know that their great-great-grand­fa­ther might be from Damac­scus but your great-great-grand­moth­er may have lit Shab­bat can­dles on Fri­day night. That takes the issue off the news­pa­per head­lines and the lefty blo­gos­phere so that I can take a beat and a moment and explore this ques­tion of my fam­i­ly. It just sur­pris­es me that so many peo­ple don’t want me to do that.”

Cryp­to Judaism is a sub­ject includ­ed in “The Sephardic Jews of Spain and Por­tu­gal” in accounts of the dias­po­ra after 1492 to Spain’s New World colonies. If you’re in LA or near­by, I rec­om­mend an evening or after­noon at the the­ater with “Pales­tine, New Mex­i­co.” It’s a fresh look at the phe­nom­e­non with insight and humor.

Share

One Comment