Out From Hiding

Introduction This book is not your traditional history book or one based on a narrow, monolithic topic. However, the nuclear core of the book has to do with various imperative elements affecting one central theme. This theme is about today’s Sephardic Anusim who are the descendants of Spanish Jews that endured a three hundred year holocaust that so few know about. There is a degree of diversity in topic yet with one singular core theme. My quest began in the spring of 1996 because that is when my father discovered the secret of his family’s Jewish ancestry. As the baby of the family, he was the last one to find out at age 77 about his father having been given up for adoption by a military officer in the Mexican Army who happened to be a Jew. According to DNA test results he was of a Scandinavian and Uralic speaking ancestry whose forefather either married a Jewish woman or converted to Judaism many generations ago. In the process of exploring my own lineage, I discovered truths with a much longer historical record and much deeper implications. (The section following this introduction relates to the depth and diverse methods and locations of this exploratory quest.) In the process, I also discovered truths on my father’s mother’s side who are Sephardic descendants of a popular family in Monterrey, Mexico. And I also discovered facts about my mother’s father’s DNA that point directly to a Sephardic ancestry as well. Chapter four is devoted to this whole issue on DNA. The next thing that began to quickly unfold was the long standing story of my wife’s maternal Sephardic ancestry which was common knowledge among all their relatives. But it wasn’t until her brother took a DNA test when we discovered that her father had the purest and possibly more “classical” Jewish DNA than the rest of our family. In other words, his DNA results are among the most popular haplogroups among Jews around the world. The irony is that we just could never find his surname on genealogical records and his oral history was the least known to us all. His surname, Ancira, is among the least common in genealogical records. My theory was somewhat less selfish than it seemed. When I first began this journey, I was persuaded that if two of us, my wife and I, had such a peculiar ancestry like the one unfolding before our eyes, how many more were out there with similar stories? But it wasn’t until these last few months when I sensed I had gone full circle. After impassionedly investigating and traveling all across the Southwest of the United States, including Mexico and Spain; and making two trips per year to Israel for the last 14 years, I finally began to see the broader picture. The picture has become a gigantic mosaic demonstrating all forms of evidence that point to the fact that I did not lose my direction during this journey’s complexities. What seemed like ancient history dating back hundreds of years began to take shape in the form of new and undiscovered frontiers within my quest. I refer to it in this manner because this is how it seemed to me at that point in time. When I started this journey, there didn’t seem to be as much attention on this subject as we have today. Today, we have evidence that a significant number of Hispanic/Latinos happen to have deep Sephardic roots in the culture of Sephardim which I refer to as Sephardic Anusim. Some of these frontiers are ageless, specifically those documented implications in Holy Scriptures such as the Torah, the Prophets and the Jewish Talmud. Other frontiers have to do with the diversity and the extant of historical records and genealogies which corroborate the intent of this book. When I least expected it, other senderos or narrower pathways began to open up in the realms of onomastics which is the science, the art and discipline of surnames. Then the field of material evidences opened up such as those being unearthed including mezuzahs, gravestones and epigraphy on buildings and artwork. All along, the new frontier of DNA testing within the context of human ancestries began to slowly open up newer pathways. These paths are exciting because not only do they confirm a person’s true lineage but it helps find existing relatives we often do not know of. So it is that I have gone full circle in my quest to ascertain true knowledge. But this circle does not end here. In fact, this circle is yet in its infancy. I expect this knowledge will continue to increase and possibly introduce new and uncharted pathways which I shall pursue probably for the rest of my life. In the process, I would not doubt that as these circles of knowledge and truth continue to expand and intertwine into new relationships, it might all end up in the land of our forefathers which is Erez Israel. There are six major topics that accentuate the existence and nature of Sephardic Anusim, they are: history which has been documented; oral history pertaining to thirteen contributors; science as pertaining to DNA outcomes; onomastics as pertaining to the origin of names; material evidences found within the community of Sephardic Anusim; and finally, my personal observations, assessment and conclusions regarding the overall portrait which this book represents.