Crypto-Jewish lives were defined by secrecy to avoid vio- lence and expulsion from their Iberian communities, but these people maintained a covert connection to their cul- ture through food. Shrouded in secrecy, food remained a cultural thread within the diaspora of Jews who left Spain and its threats of execution. Sephardim dispersed around the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic to Latin Ameri- ca, which was illegal as Spain spread its discriminatory con- cept of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) and wanted to prevent conversos establishing openly Jewish communities elsewhere. In these new homes, encounters with a whole new set of ingredients redefined converso food. Something it did retain was its air of secrecy, with generations of Jews try- ing to blend into Catholic majorities, leaving it all but forgot- ten, present mostly in traditions practitioners don’t know are Jewish. But a more recent wave of people curious about their lineage is uncovering those long-buried roots, often con- necting with the formerly secret culture by way of its food.
(Approximately 160,000 chose exile, and — estimates vary wildly — between 3,000 and 300,000 refused both expul- sion and conversion, and were executed.) Of the Jews who stayed and converted, some continued to practise their re- ligion secretly, though how many is impossible to know given the necessary secrecy of it all. At first, explains Ilan Stavans, a Mexican-Jewish food historian, coercively converted Jews and Muslims were called cristianos nuevos (new Christians). The term converso eventually emerged to describe Jews who hadn’t fully re- nounced their religion or who still acknowledged their background. “ Converso became a term that, at first, was used in a derogatory way, and then those conversos appro- priated it with a sense of pride,” Stavans says. (The term marrano , meaning pig, was more widespread, and an insult with extra heft given that Jews don’t eat pork; unlike con- verso , it hasn’t been reclaimed as thoroughly.) Later on, the term crypto-Jews (from the Greek word for hidden) was coined, perhaps a more accurate reflection of these people who were forced to hide their true selves. (In Hebrew, the term is anusim , which translates to “coerced ones.”) Bordeaux-based historian, chef, and cookbook author Hélène Jawhara Piñer is of French and Spanish heritage and grew up Sephardic; she had always been interested in the relationship between food and religion and devoted her PhD to the subject. In 2016 , when embarking on that re- search, she wanted to dig up the oldest Jewish cookbook but struck out, instead finding elements of Jewish culinary practices tucked into broader works. Jawhara Piñer did find six Jewish recipes within a thirteenth-century Arabic- language Andalusian cookbook and two others gleaned from a fourteenth-century Egyptian cookbook. Many other sources for her PhD relating to Sephardic cuisine were less traditional and required some detective work to locate, not to mention being able to read Italian, Catalan, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese: “[This food] was not something that could have been shared openly, so you have to delve into sources like shopping lists, letters or po- ems, or other kinds of literature,” says Jawhara Piñer. “Be- cause of the Inquisition trials, you have to gather all those different kinds of sources to be able to understand the cu- linary history of the Sephardic Jews.” She combed through food-related writings from the Cairo Geniza, a repository that contains over 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments from all sorts of sources, dated between the sixth and nine- teenth centuries. On a twelfth-century scrap of paper, the historian spotted a shopping list written by an Andalusian woman living in Egypt, addressed to her husband and ask- ing him to buy chicken and lemon for Shabbat. However, when it came to gathering details about the food practic- es of medieval Jews, no sources were more helpful than the Inquisition documents that mentioned food: accord- ing to Jawhara Piñer, approximately 60 percent of the tri- als used food as evidence. “They unveil the real life of the crypto-Jews, from Spain, from Italy, everywhere where the court of the Inquisition settled in order to spy on converso practices,” she says.
MARKERS OF SECRECY
Given the Inquisition’s famously repressive and violent tac- tics, Jews who wanted to maintain both their religion and their homes needed to exercise extreme caution. “They obviously had to hide their practices, including their food practices,” says Jawhara Piñer. “It was so easy for people to spy on the food practices of the Jews in order to denounce them.” Despite precautions, many conversos were found out and turned in—often due to a whisper network of wom- en denouncing other women, Catholic servants in Jewish households sharing converso indications with the authori- ties. They would report being asked not to come in on Fri- day, or to use different spoons to stir pots of stew, only one of which contained pork, or describe a piece of lard (a Chris- tian home staple) kept as a decoy for guests. Jews often be- came identifiable not because of a specific dish but rather by abstention: in Spain, avoiding pork became a tell. However, a rich culinary culture continued to proliferate. Adafina—an overnight Shabbat stew of chickpeas, chard, and meat, thickened with eggplant — was already being pre- pared by Sephardic Jews in medieval Spain before the Inqui- sition, but it became a converso staple. According to Jawhara Piñer, trial documents were the first source that tied conver- sos to the stew. Foods also turned into an unspoken signifi- er between Jews, a kind of secret code that you deciphered when you saw who gathered for Saturday lunch or brought over stewed eggplant seasoned generously with garlic and olive oil, with unleavened bread on the side during Pass- over. Though eggplant—which grows easily in hot climates and arrived in Spain in the tenth century after a long trek on the Silk Road—was also eaten by Muslims, Christians stayed away from this food and associated it with Jews.
42 SUMMER 2025
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator