A LETTER FROM BRAZIL

By Sinaida Leão  

from HaLapid, Summer 2001

The following was sent to Art Benveniste's website, and is reprinted with the writer's permission. We have tried to maintain her style, while making only a few corrections to her English.

I was really very grateful to know that you are interested in learning more about the story of crypto Judaism in my family.

First, I would like to apologize for my English as probably I will commit many mistakes (English is not an official language in Brazil , but I studied it during several years). The story of my family and mainly my story is very curious -- it seems a romance but it is real. I hope sincerely that when you read this you could feel my feelings and the importance of that research to me.

My parents never talked to me in a special manner about Judaism. I learned it from films, documentaries, and from the school. However, since I was a child, those words "Jew" and "Judaism" have had a special meaning to me that I couldn't explain. I felt something in my heart that I couldn't understand, a feeling that attracted me more and more to Judaism. In fact, there was a suspicion that my family had a Jewish heritage, but no one paid very attention to that -- only me. When a child, I asked my parents for a Maguen David, and started to use it as my religious symbol, although my family was Catholic. I asked my parents and some of their Jewish friends to bring me to a synagogue, where I genuinely hoped to find the answers to all my questions about my family heritage, but they never brought me. As I often talked to my parents (I am very persistent) about that, I remember that once my mother laughed and said to my father "That girl will marry a Jew, wait and you will see."

When I was fifteen years old I was introduced to the son of a very close friend of my father. We were very shy and very similar in thoughts and in tastes, what made us simpático instantaneously one for another. In that first meeting, he said to me: "I am a Jew. What's your religion?" After some minutes of surprise, I answered that I didn't believe in what I was hearing. And I told him all of my story, showing him the Magen David." I was using. Although he said that he consider himself a Jew, he explained that officially he wasn't. Like me, during all of his life (he was 19 years old at that time) he felt himself attracted to Judaism, as his heritage was certainly Jewish and dreamed to "return" to Judaism. One side of his family is de Toledo -- they were expelled from Spain , and went to Portugal ; after that they went to Pisa , Italy and finally to Brasil. The other side is named Leone from Calabria , Italy . As I told you, at first Judaism was for me a feeling that I couldn't explain. So I started to study Hebrew and Judaism by myself and with him for five years, and to research my mother family origin, suspected to be of crypto-Jews. Next, I will tell you some information that I discover:

My mother grandparents were from Mogadouro (The villages of To and Algozinho, very near Spain ), Portugal . I only knew my grandmother because my grandfather died when my mother was a baby. My grandmother died when I was very young, three years old). So I decided to ask my relatives and mainly my mother about their story.

My grandparents said they were cousins, but in fact we don't find any relation between their families. They didn't have brothers or sisters. My great grandmother's name was Vicenta Peres and she was born in Fermoselle , Spain (again along the border between the two countries), and my great grandfather's name was Nicolau Antonio Rodrigues, born in Algozinho. When my grandmother (Maria Emilia, born April 7, 1891) was seven years old, they died, and although she said there were many relatives in the village, she was raised by the priest of the village, who taught her how to pray, as she didn't know. She said that in fact she was like a maid to the priest, and looked after the house for him. My granddfather's name was Antonio Joaquim Marcos (born March 5, 1888) and his parents' names were Seraphim do Espirito Santo Marcos and Isabel Maria Martins (both from Mogadouro, To).

My grandparents came to Brazil in 1911 and they were peddlers, who were aided by another Jews, owners of big shops. As my grandparents are dead, I started to ask other relatives. My grandmother had a cousin (in fact she was only a very close friend) and I asked her daughter what was the origin of our family in Portugal (detail: I didn't pronounce the word "Jew"). She said her brother, who liked to research those matters always said we were descended from Jews, but that their mother prohibited him to mention that. So I decided to ask to her mother about our Jewish heritage and I was very surprised at her response. She denied strongly, almost shouting, that we were not Jews, and started to describe with fear the life of the Jews in Portugal .

I also tried to ask my aunts and uncles to remember some words or sentences said by my grandparents, as they used to say many proverbs.

After studying Judaism and Hebrew for five years, and to be sure of a conscious desire (the unconscious I already had) to became formally Jewish, Flavio (the young man who became my husband) and I passed trough a serious process of conversion (we could ask for a process of "return", but it is difficult to prove it and we didn't want to wait: our Jewish feeling was stronger than everything) with two rabbbis. One of them now lives in Walnut Creek , California , R. Roberto D. Graetz. We made a shiddushin two years before our marriage, and finally we married in 1993. Today we have a nice daughter, called Hannah, two years old, and she is the main reason of that research. I think that you can understand what I mean, can't you? We belong to several Jewish associations and synagogues, and we hope we are successful in transmitting Jewish traditions to our daughter.