Secret Sabbath

Based on over three decades of firsthand interviews spanning four continents, The Secret Sabbath explores the personal and emotional aspects of the crypto-Jewish experience around the world—from Spain and Portugal to the Americas and beyond.

The Iberian Peninsula was a cruel place for Jews in the early modern age. In 1492, more than a hundred thousand Spanish Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism on pain of expulsion. In many cases, these “New Christians” did not mix with Old Christians and preserved an awareness of their origins over subsequent generations. Here and there, families or small communities continued to practice some aspects of Judaism in secret up until modern times.

The New World was inundated with secret Jews seeking a new life in the Americas. Although the Inquisition followed the conversos across the Atlantic, it was still much easier to practice crypto-Judaism in the New World than in the old. The descendants of the forced converts flourished, often preserving the “old ways” in secret. Many remember their grandparents admonishing them that pork was “unclean,” that blood sausage was bad for one’s health, or that an egg with a drop of blood in it is a “bad” egg. Some were told explicitly by their relatives about their crypto-Jewish heritage; others have cherished unconfirmed suspicions. Schulamith C. Halevy travels across the world to reveal the dramatic lives of these incredible people as she accompanies them in their search for—and discovery of—their roots.

The Secret Sabbath explores the manifold expressions of crypto-Jewish heritage today, in Spain, in Portugal, and all across the Americas, opening a hidden window into this fascinating, clandestine chapter of the modern Judaeo-Christian experience.