This study of contemporary crypto-Jews—descendants of European Jews forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition—traces the group’s history of clandestinely conducting their faith and their present-day efforts to reclaim their past. Janet Liebman Jacobs masterfully combines historical and social scientific theory to fashion a brilliant analysis of hidden ancestry and the transformation of religious and ethnic identity.
Table of Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction. Crypto-Jewish Descent: An Ethnographic Study in Historical Perspective
1. Secrecy, Antisemitism, and the Dangers of Jewishness
2. Women and the Persistence of Culture: Ritual, Custom, and the Recovery of Sephardic Ancestry
3. The Self-in-Relation and the Transformation of Religious Consciousness
4. Syncretism and Faith Blending in Modern Crypto-Judaism
5. Conversion and the Rekindling of the Jewish Soul
6. Jewish Ancestry and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity
Conclusion. Ethnic Loss and the Future of Crypto-Jewish Culture
About the author
Janet Liebman Jacobs is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions (1989) and Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self (1994), and editor of Religion, Society, and Psychoanalysis: Readings in Contemporary Theory (1997).
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