Abstract
Esther is the patron-saint for crypto-Jews and conversos in the early modern period. A biblical secret Jewish queen who lived as a minority in Persia ; she only reveals her identity in order to save her coreligionists at great personal risk. In the introduction I discuss a Sephardic approach to analyzing the eight early modern Esther retellings in this book. This includes developing a new understanding of national and religious identity. I review the historical background and major debates regarding the religiosity and shifting identity of conversos. I also establish the parameters for the gendered approach of my analysis and specifically discuss the different versions of the Book of Esther referred to throughout the manuscript.
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Notes
- 1.
For the Portuguese Community in Amsterdam called the nação portuguesa [Portuguese Nation] , Portugal is also referred to as a third layer in the web of homelands. Upon the politics of freedom of movement between the two countries in the Iberian Peninsula in the 1580s, many families sought economic opportunities and moved between the two countries. Many Jews of Portuguese origin have Spanish descent as well.
- 2.
I follow Homi Bhabha in the use of the term hybrid that in my analysis means the in-between, liminal spaces. I also employ the theoretical construct of the converso in order to explore this third space. In accord with Marjorie Garber , “The ‘third’ is that which questions binary thinking and introduces crisis” (11).
- 3.
I will use the term conversos [converted] throughout this book. This term is interchangeable with New Christians .
- 4.
Inquisition manuscripts refer to those conversos suspected and brought to trial for being false converts and labeled judaizantes or judaizers.
- 5.
Although there are many source texts for this biblical story and versions in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew I base my analysis on the biblical source text, the Biblia Ladinada (Escorial I. J. 3). This text that would have been written by Jewish translators and translated from the Hebrew Scriptures word for word by scholars in fourteenth century Spain. It is based upon a no longer extant fourteenth century manuscript. According to this edition’s editor Moshe Lazar, this version can be considered an ancestor of the Biblia de Ferrara (iix) which I will also use as it was written by and for conversos in the diaspora and published in 1552 in Ferrara.
- 6.
See David Niremberg Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages.
- 7.
Roth shows that on the Jewish holiday of Passover, baptized Jews would go to their Jewish neighbors for unleavened bread.
- 8.
Anusim is the Hebrew word for crypto-Jew and many Spanish scholars opt for this terminology. Many other Spanish scholars use the term converso.
- 9.
Auto-de-fé or ‘act-of-faith’ was the public ritual of penitence performed by the Inquisition to punish those found and tried as apostates or heretics of the Catholic faith.
- 10.
Conversos were also referred to as or judeoconversos .
- 11.
There have been many translations of the biblical Book of Esther. The surviving Hebrew manuscripts do not contain some of the information found in the Greek text. Jews and Protestants follow the Hebrew manuscript whereas Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians accept them as part of the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books. As I study the impact of the Book of Esther in an Iberian context that is both Jewish and Catholic, both of the versions are relevant to this discussion (Winn Leith 707–708).
- 12.
I use the term ‘normative’ to refer to Jewish communities that were officially allowed religious freedom of worship such as communities located in Ferrara, Italy and Amsterdam .
- 13.
Moriscos refers to the converted Muslim population of Spain. They were made to convert to Christianity much like the Jews in the early sixteenth-century.
- 14.
Alonso de Cartagena in his Defensorium unitatis christianae defends conversos . He describes the converso as the novus homo or the New Man, and rationalizes the conversion of the Jew to Catholicism as continuity. According to Bruce Rosenstock , Cartagena develops a converso theology where “the belief in Christ transcends” ethnic and “blood line divisions” (2).
- 15.
Many scholars have discredited the use of the term “marrano” to describe crypto-Jews due to its anti-Semitic connotations given that in Spanish “marrano” means swine or pig.
- 16.
Jonathan Israel elaborates “Jewish observance moved to ritual syncretism [as] Catholic environments deeply penetrated group consciousness” (108).
- 17.
This number that documents the Jewish population before the expulsion does not include conversos .
- 18.
The term ladino refers to the Spanish language that was spoken at the time of the expulsion by Jews that then changed over time in the diaspora. The Spanish spoken by these Sephardic Jews was modified by the new countries and contexts in which they found themselves. Many times ladino developed in isolation and thus preserved many aspects of early modern and medieval Spanish linguistics. Many scholars and linguists today reflect that in contemporary ladino one can imagine the sounds of medieval Spanish.
- 19.
I am borrowing a Queer Theory terminology of “passing” which is getting by under a dominant identity while carrying a secret identity. For the Queer community, this would be a gay sexual orientation that is not visible until revealed by the subject. This concept functions in a similar fashion for the Jewish community, whereas Judaism is a minority religious affiliation that can be hidden and later revealed by the individual. Scholars including Barbara Fuchs in Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of Identity, uses this concept to help underline minority and othered elements of Spanish society. Similarly, Matthew D. Stroud employs uses a Queer Theory approach in his book Plot Twists and Critical Turns: Queer Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Theater.
- 20.
Caroline Bynum Walker shows that women’s bodies were in themselves identified with ordinary food through lactation and the body of Christ (30).
- 21.
Elizabeth Teresa Howe points out that Vives ’s books were distributed and read in New Spain ; readers include famous figures such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
- 22.
According to Mary Joan Winn Leith it was only accepted into the cannon of biblical texts in the third or fourth centuries BCE (707).
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Colbert Cairns, E. (2017). Introduction. In: Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57867-5_1
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