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The August SCJS conference in El Paso, as has often been the case in the past, was moving, fascinating and at times controversial. Although it has been the custom to do an extensive review of the papers given at the conference, we will not be doing so here as the abstracts of the papers were published in the Summer edition of HaLapid, and at least in most cases the abstracts actually outlined the contents of the papers presented.

The papers this year covered a very wide range of topics and communities, moving from the roots of crypto-Judaism in Spain and the Spanish settlement of the Americas to a community in Ghana that is seeking to recover its Judaic heritage. The papers in the conference also gave a voice to members of the crypto-Judaic community, allowing them to talk about their own journeys and encounters with Judaism. Although I enjoyed the conference as a whole, I will touch on a few papers and areas that raise particular issues or themes.

One of the highlights of the conference was the keynote address given by Carlos Vález Ibáñez. His paper presented both a sophisticated academic analysis and a deep engagement with personal history and memory. His paper highlighted both the dangers and the possibilities of using memory as a tool for understanding both self and past. The keynote paper segued nicely into the first panel in which papers were given about both developments in particular communities, for example the Puerto Rican community described by Harry Ezratty and that of El Paso discussed by Stephen Leon. Elizabeth Hirschman’s paper in part also fell in this category in that it was an insider narrative, focusing on a communities attempt to understand its past. These papers both emphasise the range of communities that fall under the purview of the society and the importance of giving these communities a voice in our conferences. They also, however, also suggest the need for a demarcation between papers with an academic perspective and those coming from more subjective or religiously oriented points of view.

As we have seen over the last few years there were also a number of papers exploring the use of genetics in relation to crypto-Judaism. This included both discussions of the ethical issues relating to the use of genetics and two papers specifically examining the use of genetics in relation to the Sephardic community. These papers led to a vigorous discussion of the different methodologies and results. It seems likely that this debate will continue to play a role in conferences in the future. There were several common threads that linked these papers, though often taken in different directions. These included the nature of the sample both in terms of who was included from a particular community as well as its size–often samples from particular locations contain different representations of populations and are often rather small in relation to statistically significant values. An additional issue was the relationship between genetics and culture.

Two of the papers on genetics were given in the context of a form of panel new to our conferences. The three papers, all looking at various ethical issues, were published prior to the conference in HaLapid. It was hoped that the audience would read the papers in advance, and that this would allow for a vigorous debate on the issues. We did have a very interesting discussion arising from the papers, and as indicated some of the issues from all three resonated throughout the conference. If there are additional comments or discussion arising from them, we would be happy to include it either on the web site or in future editions of HaLapid. Issues raised by all three papers touch on the nature of the society and its role–particularly in respect of how it can or should relate to the wider Jewish or religious communities.

Other papers in the conference touched on contemporary issues both in relation to scholarship and the response of the wider Jewish community to returning crypto-Jews. Abe Lavender touches on some of these aspects in his letter, and indeed raised many of them in his President’s message published in the Spring 2006 edition of HaLapid. David Kunin presented a paper that challenged some of the models used in analysing crypto-Judaic material culture, concluding with the challenging view that any object, what ever its origins becomes a Jewish object purely through the use of it or the interpretation of it by those who use it, and thus the search for a clear and unambiguous crypto-Jewish material culture is in many senses a misplaced endeavour. As the title of his paper indicates, sometimes a top is just a top – but in other tames the selfsame top can be a dreidle.

The section of the conference dealing with the history of crypto-Judaism brought together a number of fascinating papers. Two papers of particular interest examined different aspects relating to the Carvajal family, one looking at the economic relations and networks of the family in Spain and the other the moving poetry created by Leonor de Carvajal and found in her inquisition record. These papers highlighted the importance of looking at a number of factors in the understanding of a family’s relation to crypto-Judaism. Roger Martínez’ paper focused on economic ties and networks, although these demonstrated close links between the Carvajal family and Jewish or crypto-Jewish families, the ties and networks of themselves could not be used as demonstrative of Jewish or crypto-Jewish identity. The poems presented by Michelle Hamilton provided a stronger basis of determination as they were statements of self perception and identification.

Issues of how one understands or analyzes crypto-Jewish or Jewish identity also played an important role in the paper presented by Beth Hirschman. This was a wide ranging paper which argued strongly for a crypto-Jewish presence in the settlement of the East Coast of the Americans as well as in the American Southwest. One of the key themes of the paper was the use of a range of markers as indicative of Jewish identity or ancestry. The discussion of these markers led to an extended debate—the debate suggests that this is an area worthy of extended discussion and I would suggest that the HaLapid panel for the conference next year examine this issue as well as more general questions of historiography. The general question of how we understand Jewish identities, particularly whether modern scholars are imposing anachronistic or incorrect understandings was also touched on by David Graizbord’s paper. This again highlights the need for reflection and rigorous application of historical methodology in our research.

One of the innovations introduced at this conference was the role of respondent. Each panel had a chair whose role in part was to respond to the papers. At times during the conference the respondent may have been perceived as adversarial. I would suggest that this was a proper use of the role, as debate is as much part of academic discussion as is the presentation of findings. As an organisation we have been consistently open to having a wide range of papers given by a wide range of individuals. We have tended to be inclusive rather than exclusive in this respect. There does, however, need to be a place for the assessment of the academic rigor of the papers and a way of publicly challenging findings. The use of respondent does both of these in a transparent way. We would be very interested in hearing from those who attended the conference as to whether this was a useful innovation.