{"id":4202,"date":"2025-06-04T11:29:40","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T15:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=4202"},"modified":"2025-06-04T11:29:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T15:29:42","slug":"your-introduction-to-the-crypto-jews-of-the-american-southwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2025\/06\/your-introduction-to-the-crypto-jews-of-the-american-southwest\/","title":{"rendered":"Your introduction to the Crypto-Jews of the American Southwest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some readers are thrown by a reference in my latest story<\/a> to the protagonist, home inspector and minor-TV celebrity Sadie Espinoza, who describes getting bullied in high school, noting that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Jewish Espinozas weren\u2019t remotely \u201cwetbacks.\u201d They weren\u2019t even \u201cimmigrants\u201d: they\u2019d been in New Mexico\u2014where her dad and his brother grew up\u2014since before it was \u201cNew Mexico.\u201d The only thing calling her \u201cwetback\u201d did was make it clear how stupid those girls were, like a house cat strutting around thinking it caught a snake when all it had was a shitty old lizard tail.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Some folks are confused because they had an American public school primary education east of the Mississippi (as I did), and thus don\u2019t know that Santa Fe is the oldest state capitol in the US, having been establish 150 years before the country was founded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A much greater portion of readers are confused because they think of all Jews as European shtetl folk who came here in the late 19th and early 20th C (as mine did), and thus know nothing about the extremely long history of Jews in the New World (short version: we\u2019ve always been here, and you\u2019ve never liked us<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, if you\u2019re curious about any of this, the graphic novel El Illuminado<\/a><\/em> is a good introduction to Crypto-Jews and the impact the Inquisition had on world Jewry. Maybe more importantly, it\u2019s really fair in how it illustrates the divisions and discomforts within and among Jews of different traditions\/colors\/descents, as well as the way that even established, assimilated, respected, modern, \u201cWhite\u201d Jews often find themselves alienated no matter where they try to stand or sit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some readers are thrown by a reference in my latest story to the protagonist, home inspector and minor-TV celebrity Sadie Espinoza, who describes getting bullied in high school, noting that: Jewish Espinozas weren\u2019t remotely \u201cwetbacks.\u201d They weren\u2019t even \u201cimmigrants\u201d: they\u2019d been in New Mexico\u2014where her dad and his brother grew up\u2014since before it was \u201cNew … Continue reading “Your introduction to the Crypto-Jews of the American Southwest”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[1120,83,856,904,572,1121,25],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/a2mi.social\/@dave0\/114625805092296313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4204,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202\/revisions\/4204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}