The Scroll and the Cross

1,000 Years of Jewish-Hispanic Literature

Ilan Stavans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136698521
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Jews and Latinos have been unlikely partners through tumultuous times. This groundbreaking, eclectic book of readings, edited by Ilan Stavans, whom The Washington Post described as "one of our foremost cultural critics, " offers a sideboard of the ups and downs of that partnership. It includes some seventy canonical authors, Jews and non-Jews alike, through whose diverse oeuvre-poetry, fiction, theater, personal and philosophical essays, correspondence, historical documents, and even kitchen recipes-the reader is able to navigate the shifting waters of history, from Spain in the tenth century to the Spanish-speaking Americas and the United States today. The Reader showcases the writings of such notable authors as Solomon ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, Miguel de Cervantes, Henry W. Longfellow, Miguel de Unamuno, Federico García Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Jacobo Timerman, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ruth Behar, and Ariel Dorfman to name only a few.

Luis de Carvajal the Younger
(Mexico, 1567-1596)
“Autobiographical Essay”

Translated from the Spanish by Martin A. Cohen

The quest of Luis de Carvajal the Younger, from his birth in Benavente, Spain, to his death at the stake of the Inquisition in Mexico, is emblematic of the pattern followed by crypto-Jews in the Americas. The one against him, in fact, is one of the most famous inquisitorial cases in the continent. Carvajal was the nephew of the governor of the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León. The uncle was the one who had brought a portion of the family to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where it was thought that the Inquisition would be less stern. In the "Autobiographical Essay," which Carvajal began in 1591 or 1592, he chronicles his awakening as a Jew that came from an environment in which only through innuendo were New Christians able to know their true ancestry. The character Joseph in the text is the narrator himself. He chooses the third person as a device to establish a sense of distance and objectivity toward the story. Carvajal was arrested for the first time in 1589, but somehow he convinced his victimizes of his innocence. The final entry of the essay is from 1594, shortly before his second and final arrest. It stands as an invaluable document of the oppression under which so-called Judaizers lived in New Spain, the name that referred to Mexico before it acquired its independence in 1810. In prison, he corresponded secretly with his mother and sister, also incarcerated, by sending them hidden messages which, unfortunately, were intercepted by his opponents and used as evidence against him. The director Arturo Ripstein loosely based his film El Santo Oficio (The Holy Office) on the essay.

[Written in] Mexico City, New Spain, [by] Joseph Lumbroso, of the Hebrew nation, a pilgrim in Occidental India, in devoted recognition of the favors and boons received from the hand of the Most High, who freed him from the gravest perils, in order that they may be known to all who believe in the Most Holy One and await the great mercies that He employs with sinners.

Awakened by the Spirit Divine, Joseph committed these to writing, along with [the story of] his life until the twenty-fifth year of his wandering, in the form of a brief history.

Before beginning he kneels on the ground before the universal God, the Lord of all mercy, and promises, with the God of truth always before him, to portray accurately everything that he writes below.

In the name of God, Adonay Sevaoth, the Lord of Hosts:

Joseph begins his life at the beginning. It should be mentioned that he was born and raised at Benavente, a city in Spain where he lived until the age of twelve or thirteen. There he began to receive instruction in the rudiments of Christianity from a relative, and he completed these studies in Medina del Campo [to which his family moved from Benavente]. There it pleased God's mercy to shed upon him the light by which he recognized His holiness. [It happened] on a special day, which we call the Day of Pardon, a holy and solemn occasion for us, [which falls] on the tenth day of the seventh month. Since God's truth is so clear and pleasant, all that his mother, his older brother, his older sister, and his cousin from that city had to do was to make mention of it to him [and he understood].

Joseph's father and his entire family emigrated to this land of New Spain, though they first planned to cross over into Italy, where all could better serve, worship, and love the true God. But God's judgments are incomprehensible and just, and the change of plans bringing them to this land must have been God's punishment for one of [his father's] sins, a punishment meted out to his children by God's justice, though not without great compassion, as we shall presently see.

Joseph [who had become] very ill [aboard ship] was removed [when the ship docked] at the port of Tampico. At the same time [another passenger] disembarked, who was best known for his fear of the Lord, our God. He was [also] a famous doctor, and, with God's guidance, he treated Joseph in Tampico until he was cured.

One night, while Joseph and his older brother were sleeping in a small shed housing certain wares that they had brought from Castile, the Lord lashed the port with a hurricane. Its strong and terrible winds uprooted trees and razed most of the buildings to the ground. The building in which Joseph and his brother were sleeping began to shake. The violent wind ripped some of the beams from the roof with such terrible fury that Joseph and his brother instinctively huddled in fear under the delusive protection of their bedclothes. At length, realizing that the collapse of the building was imminent, they arose, drenched and wind-lashed, [and groped their way to the door]. But the wind blew so strongly against the door that, try as they might, they could not open it until God permitted them to pry it partially open by pulling it in the opposite direction. They opened it enough to leave the building before it tumbled to the ground. [In this way] the Holy One came forth in the sight of men to free them from death. Blessed be His most holy name. They went to recuperate in the home of their parents [who] feared that they were dead. On hearing their voices, their loving father received them with tears, thanking and praising the Lord a thousand times.

Shortly thereafter Joseph accompanied his father to Mexico City, leaving his mother, five sisters, and two brothers domiciled—or rather, disconsolately exiled—in Panuco, for they lived in penury in this mosquito-infested and heat-plagued town. When God took his father from this life, Joseph returned to Panuco.

Here God provided him with a Holy Bible, which a priest sold him for six pesos. He read it assiduously in that forsaken land and came to learn many divine mysteries.

One day he came to the seventeenth chapter of [the Book of] Genesis, where the Lord commands our holy father, Abraham, to circumcise himself. The words which say "The soul which is uncircumcised shall be blotted out from the Book of the Living" caught Joseph's eye and struck his heart with terror. Without delay and with the inspiration of the Most High and His good angel, he got up, put the Bible down without even stopping to close it, left the hall in his house where he had been reading, took a pair of blunted and worn shears and went to the ravine at the Panuco River. Burning with desire to fulfill this holy sacrament, without which one cannot be inscribed in the Book of Life, he placed its seal upon his flesh. The shears worked so well that he cut off nearly the entire prepuce and left only a little flesh. Yet, despite this imperfection, Joseph had no reason to doubt that our Lord would accept his intention. This can be inferred from the Second Book of Chronicles, in the chapter where [Solomon] the wise king of Israel, speaks of his saintly father David's worthy desire, fulfilled by Solomon, to build a temple to the Lord. On the day of its holy dedication, Solomon praised the excellence of the Lord and said that though His supreme Majesty had, through revelation and Nathan's message, forbidden David to build the holy Temple, He accepted David's good intention in place of the deed.

It is worth noting that once Joseph received the seal of this holy sacrament upon his flesh, it served as a bulwark against lust and an aid to chastity. Prior to this he had been a weak sinner, who often merited the stroke of death which the Lord God sent upon a son of our patriarch Judah and his consort Tamar for committing the same sin. [Now] God's mercy was upon him, and, with the holy sacrament of circumcision, he was henceforth delivered from [the perversity of ] this sin. The Lord helped him so much that, though he kept looking [for trouble,] like a sick man who always longs for the forbidden, and occasions were not lacking in which he could offend God, it seems that God's hand removed the dangers, because of His boundless mercy. Let us therefore give our thanks to God, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever.

A year after his circumcision [Joseph had a strange adventure]. He [had] accompanied a wretched, blind uncle of his, who was governor, in the name of the king of Spain, of the province called the New Kingdom of León, to some mines recently discovered within that province. He carried with him a small book containing a transcription of the Fourth Book of Ezra, the holy and pure priest and prophet. Joseph's devoted reading of this book had been one of the chief inspirations for his conversion. [And now,] since he did not have the Holy Bible with him in that land of savage Chichimecs, the reading of this book absorbed his leisure hours.

One [September] day—it was the seventh month [according to the Jewish calendar]—his packhorse broke away. Joseph, carrying only harquebus, sword, and dagger, took a brawny horse and pursued it. Two leagues out of town, the horse tired. It was in the midst of a dangerous area; several soldiers had been killed by the Chichimecs there, even near [Spaniards'] houses. When the horse tired and refused to budge, Joseph left its saddle at the foot of a tree, [put fresh priming in the pan,] slid the cover forward, shouldered the gun and started to town on foot.

Night fell on the hilly and pathless terrain before he could determine where he was. He was not a little afraid that some barbarous Indian might chance by and with a single arrow take his life. He was a defenseless target, though he clung for defense to the hope of God's mercy.

Joseph had not breakfasted that day, and though he was not bothered by hunger, he had become terribly thirsty from traveling on foot in the heat of the day without a drop of water. Frenzied with thirst, he had taken his dagger and cut some leaves of the prickly pear, called nopal in the Indian language. Since they are naturally moist, they soothed him for a while, but he was so insatiably thirsty that [he took too many] and his mouth and tongue were sore for a week.

Night thus enveloped him. Lost, hungry, thirsty and defenseless in the land of the hostile Chichimecs, he not unnaturally began to fear a horrible death.

By this time he was missed in the town, and his uncle had sent a soldier to a small settlement a half league away to see if he had gone there. When the soldier returned and said no, everyone, especially his uncle, was alarmed, for they feared that he had been killed by [their] enemies. They immediately sent out a search party, composed of a captain and ten men divided into two groups, each with a trumpet and each moving in a different direction. Those who remained in the town, where Joseph was greatly loved, tried to be of help to him in every possible way. One man, who went to string a lantern on a tall tree in the town, fell and broke his legs. It was a gratuitous gesture of affection, for the terrain was so mountainous that the lantern could not be seen [where Joseph was].

Since, as has been said, Joseph was so terrified and anguished, he committed himself to God with heart and soul. As the darkness thickened, his despair and his cries increased. [Then] he heard the blasts of a trumpet echoing loudly through that entire craggy valley. When he realized by this signal that they were looking for him, he fell to the ground and worshipped and thanked the Lord God. Then he got up buoyantly, listened for the sounds, and began to walk in their direction. Soon he heard the trumpet of the second group, but he continued toward the sound of the first trumpet until he could hear his friends talking. Joyously he called to them and they answered. They halted their horses and dismounted, surrounding him and embracing him repeatedly. They put him on a sprightly horse and shot their guns to signal their success. Not long thereafter the entire party assembled and returned to town to an equally joyous reception from the men who had remained behind with Joseph's uncle. Let us give thanks to the Lord of the universe, for He is good, for His mercy with men endures forever. As Saint David said, He is the one who restores to the right path those who have gone astray. He says that when [the children of Israel] lost their way in the wilderness and could not find the road to their dwelling place, and were in addition afflicted with hunger and thirst to the point of death, they cried to the Lord in their distress, and He heard them: He showed them the road and led them to safety. Let us give thanks to Adonai for His goodness and for the miracles He performs for the children of men.

Joseph remained in that region for two years, after leaving his family in the exile of Panuco. His mother and sisters were clad in mourning and [his brothers were] garbed in sadness at the death of their father, who, as has already been said, had died a short while before.

During their father's lifetime, their blind uncle had been introducing his sisters to refined soldiers and officers in an attempt to help them marry well. But their father, who greatly feared the Lord, had opposed such matches and heeded the Lord's most holy commandment prohibiting them. [Now their uncle,] recognizing that as orphans their marital prospects were diminished, [tried all the harder even] before they had removed their mourning garb. The girls endured such poverty that they went about shabby and barefoot a good part of the time. [Yet] they led a chaste and secluded life and virtuously helped their mother.

One day when their minds were far from marriage, they suddenly heard clarions and trumpets at their door. The reason was that the two men whom the Lord had designated as husbands for the orphans, both fearers of the Lord and part of His people, were now arriving. They were rich and prosperous, well dressed and wearing golden chains around their necks. Spurred to come for this good deed by the Lord of Heaven, they had come the seventy leagues separating Panuco from Mexico City expressly to marry the girls and to bring clothes and other gifts to them and their mother. They returned to Mexico City after the wedding, which was celebrated with delight by family and friends. As they congratulated the fortunate mother, many Gentile women, marveling at what had happened, said to her: "What good prayer did you utter [to bring all of this about]?" Like the saintly Sarah, she [answered humbly and] said: "God's mercy is hardly proportional to man's merits, which are always few or none." To the grooms they gave a similar compliment, declaring that they had come to pluck roses from amidst the thorns—roses, indeed, not so much for their beauty, which was slight, as for the virtue and chastity which the Lord had given them. A few days later they all left for Mexico City together, praising the Lord with much joy and gladness: "Orphano tu eris adiutor" ["You have been the helper of the fatherless"], says [David to God in a Psalm] and in another "Pupillum et viduam suscipiet" ["He upholds the fatherless and the widow"]. Blessed be the Protector of orphans forever.

The news of all this reached Joseph in the battle [-scarred] land he spoke of, [where] his life [was] in great danger because the savage and hostile Chichimecs around him were many and the soldiers with him few. His eyes welled with tears of joy as he thanked the Most High for the good news. As soon as he heard it, he resolved to go to Mexico City at the first opportunity. When the soldiers and the mayor of the town heard of his intentions, they were greatly disturbed and said that if he went away the whole area would be depopulated.

But since His strength surpasses human power, God provided miraculous circumstances for Joseph to leave. The inhabitants of the region, as is usual for battle zones, relied on imports of provisions. [They now] found themselves in dire need of supplies and [were happy that there was] a lull in the fighting and that they had silver to trade. Relying first on God's help [they entrusted Joseph with the mission].

It seemed on the day that Joseph left that the Most High had extricated him from the confinement of [hopeless] chains. And so it was, for in a few short days the Chichimecs flayed and then killed the mayor, in whose house he had stayed. Doubtless Joseph would have met a [similar] end had the Lord, in His loving-kindness, not freed him and removed him from that town. Exalted be His Holy Name forever.

Joseph arrived safely in Mexico City with God's help. He received his mother's blessing and saw his orphaned sisters protected by God. When he had seen them last, they were wearing tattered skirts; now, in their husband's homes, he saw them clad in silk and velvet and bedecked with golden jewels. [And his sisters' husbands] divided the rest of the family between them and gave them shelter. May they be sheltered by the Lord, and may His most Holy Name be extolled alone forever and ever.

But because of their heavy expenditures for the weddings and their subsequent support of so many people, Joseph's brothers-in-law were at the brink of ruin in less than a year. But they never rejected their in-laws. [Yet] as was proper, Joseph and his older brother wished to earn a living for their poor mother and unmarried sisters. The realization that they were poor and without resources grieved them greatly. Despite their outwardly respectable appearance, their necessities were so great that when his brothers-in-law and their wives left for Tasco, Joseph had to take a job as a merchant's bookkeeper in order to make both ends meet. With God's kindness, things soon improved a little.

When Joseph and his older brother were in Mexico City they heard of an old Hebrew cripple who had been bedridden for thirteen years with suffering and its attendant problems. [They went to visit him.] To demonstrate that everyone should love works of charity, God abundantly rewarded their visit, for the cripple presented them with a book which the good Licentiate Morales, who was mentioned earlier, had left for his consolation. Licentiate Morales had kept this cripple in his house for many days and tried to cure him, but when he saw the impossibility of a physical cure, he prepared a book to serve as a salve for his spiritual health. In it, he included a Spanish translation of the holy [Book of] Deuteronomy in the Law of the Most High and also an anthology of a thousand beautiful selections in verse, culled [and translated] from the rich garden of Sacred Writ. [Joseph and his brother proceeded] to make a copy.

One day Joseph and his brother were reading together the chapter containing the curses of the most holy Law when they saw how those true and holy prophecies had been carried out to the letter [among their people] and realized that their way of life was removed from the true path. As they clutched the book of the Law of the Lord they began to lament like a compassionate mother over the dead body of her beloved son.

A few days later, after leaving their mother and sisters with their in-laws in Tasco, Joseph and his brother returned to Mexico City, yearning for the Lord like earth for water. Joseph's brother, who had ardently desired for some time to circumcise himself, carried out his wish during the solemn Passover season. Inspired by God, the brothers went to a barber on one Passover day and rented a razor. Joseph's brother took it, fell on his knees and began to cut off his foreskin, but wounded himself severely. At first the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Criteria
• Introduction: In the Chameleon's Path
• Further Readings
• Chronology
• Samuel Hanagid (Spain, 993-1056) "Short Prayer in Time of Battle" [poem]
• Solomon ben Gabirol (Spain, 1021/22-c. 1055) Fragments of "Night Storm" [poem]
• Moisés ben Ezra (Spain, c. 1055-c.1135) "The Two Sons" [poem]
• Yehuda Halevi (Spain, before 1075-after 1141) "My Heart Is in the East" [poem]
• Benjamin of Tudela (Spain, twelfth century) "Jerusalem" [travelogue]
• Yehuda ben Tibbon (Spain, 1120-1190) "On Books and on Writing" [testament]
• Maimonides (Spain, 1135-1204) Fragment of "Epistle to the Jews of Morocco" [letter]
• Fragment of the Guide of the Perplexed [philosophical treatise]
• Gonzalo de Berceo (Spain, c. 1190-after 1265) "The Jews of Toledo" [poem]
• Nahmanides (Spain, 1195-1270) Fragment of Disputation of Barcelona [debate]
• Alfonso X the Wise (Spain, 1221-1284) "Concerning the Jews: Las siete partidas" [legal document]
• Moisés de León (Spain, d. 1305) Fragment of The Zohar [mystical treatise]
• Kings Ferdinand and Isabella (Spain, 1492) Edict of 1492 [document]
• Fray Luis de Léon (Spain, 1528-1591) "Serene Night" [poem]
• Luis de Carvajal the Younger (Mexico, 1567-1596) "Autobiographical Essay" [memoir]
• Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (Spain, 1580-1645) "To a Nose" [poem]
• Miguel Leví de Barrios (Spain, 1635-1701) "One Well-Founded Faith" [poem]
• Miguel de Unamuno (Spain, 1864-1936) "Canción del sefardita" [poem]
• Rubén Darío (Nicaragua, 1867-1916) "Israel" [poem]
• Alberto Gerchunoff (Argentina, 1884-1950) "A Jewish Gaucho" [memoir]
• Américo Castro (Spain, 1885-1972) "The Spanish Jews" [essay]
• Samuel Eichelbaum (Argentina, 1894-1967) "The Good Harvest" [story]
• Federico García Lorca (Spain, 1898-1936) "Jewish Cemetery" [poem]
• Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina, 1899-1986) "The Secret Miracle" [story]
• Pinkhes Berniker (Belarus-Cuba-U.S., 1908-1956) "Jesús" [story]
• Julio Cortázar (Argentina, 1914-1984) "Press Clippings" [story]
• Jacobo Timerman (Argentina, 1923-1999) Fragment of Prisoner without a Name [memoir]
• Salomón Isacovici (Romania-Ecuador, 1924-1998) Fragment of Man of Ashes [memoir]
• Marshall T. Meyer (U.S.-Argentina, 1928-1993) "Thoughts on Latin America" [sermon]
• Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru, 1936-) Fragment of The Storyteller [fiction]
• Angelina Muníz-Huberman (Mexico, 1936-) Fragment of The Merchant of Tudela [fiction]
• Rosa Nissán (Mexico, 1939-) Fragment of Like a Bride [novel]
• Alicia Freilich (Venezuela, 1939-) "Recollections of a Criolla Zionist" [memoir]
• Homero Aridjis (Mexico, 1940-) "Sepharad, 1492" [poem]
• Ariel Dorfman (Chile-U.S., 1942-) Fragment of Heading South, Looking North [memoir]
• Isaac Goldemberg (Peru-U.S., 1945-) "The Jew's Imprecise Sonnet" [poem]
• Tino Villanueva (Mexico-U.S., 1945-) "At the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C." [poem]
• Alcina Lubitch Domecq (Guatemala-Israel, 1953-) "Résumé Raisonné" [memoir]
• Marjorie Agosín (Chile-U.S., 1955-) Fragment of "Dear Anne Frank" [poem]
• Ruth Behar (Cuba-U.S., 1956-) "The Hebrew Cemetery of Guabanacoa" [poem]
• Ilan Stavans (Mexico-U.S., 1961-) Fragment of On Borrowed Words [memoir]
• Permissions
• Index by Theme