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Message from the President

Kathleen J. Alcalá

From HaLapid, Fall 2009

I am pleased and a little scared to be the new president of the Society for Crypto Judaic Studies. Stanley Hordes is a hard act to follow, but after ten years as a member, it is only fair that I do my part.

Most of us are still floating a few inches above the ground after the nineteenth annual conference, which was held in Denver, Colorado this year. The presenters included David Gitlitz, who researched and wrote Secrecy and Deceit – the Religion of the Crypto-Jews, Gabriela BÖhm, who presented her documentary The Longing: The Forgotten Jews of South America, and Corinne Brown, a Denver journalist who is writing a novel on the crypto-Jews of New Mexico. Sonya Loya curated a fabulous show of visual artists funded by the Sosin Foundation, and Ron Duncan Hart and Gloria Abella Ballen brought us books, books and more books. They flew off the table and into people’s book bags. So heartening for a writer!

Our newsletter, HaLapid, is joined this year by a sister publication, the Journal of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Crypto Jews (JOSPIC-J), edited by Abe Lavender of Florida International University. This greatly expands the scope of our interests beyond the Southwest and crypto-Jews of primarily Iberian ancestry.

Now more than ever, the society looks forward to the new: new members, new technologies and new stories. The writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin understood that a story is just a vessel for conveying information in a form that we will understand and remember. It can be a book, a plate, a movie or a talk with good friends.

We hope that you will join us for all of those at the next conference in San Antonio, Texas, August 1 – 3. Please bring us your stories.

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