The Marrano Legacy: A Contemporary Crypto-Jewish Priest Reveals Secrets of His Double Life - Hardcover

Alexy, Trudi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082633055X ISBN 13: 9780826330550

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, 2003

Synopsis

The Marrano Legacy chronicles the astounding, intensely personal correspondence between two strangers from different countries who shared the unusual experience of discovering in their teens that they were Jews: "Simon," a descendant of Spain's medieval Marranos who submitted to baptism to escape the Inquisition, and Trudi Alexy who survived the Holocaust when her family fled from Prague to Paris and hid in Fascist Spain as hastily baptized Catholics.

Fifty years later, when she set out to recapture her lost Jewish identity, she discovered a spiritual kinship with the medieval Marranos who, though they were forced to hide their Jewishness, held to their ancient traditions in secret.

Simon has lived the hazardous life of a Crypto-Jewish Catholic priest, providing protection to a large community of secret Jews living as Catholics in a Latin American country. In their correspondence, Alexy shares her own inner conflicts as she struggles to understand why Simon continues to live in constant danger of discovery by both Catholics and mainstream Jews, wrestling with doubts and coping with personal tragedies that almost cause him to abandon his faith in God and his Jewish identity.

"Trudi Alexy has written a spellbinding book revealing the clandestine lives of people of our times who were coerced to hide their identities. This is not a work of fiction. The characters presented are real persons encountered by the author and they include confessional letters that instruct us about the gain and losses of self-revelation."-Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, author of For Those Who Can't Believe

About this title

From the Publisher:

Through correspondence with the author, a Crypto- Jewish Catholic priest who provides protection to Jews living as Catholics in Latin America reveals the struggles with his hidden self and the burden of secrecy in his true identity.

About the Author:

Trudi Alexy, 1927-2004, was also the author of The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot: Marranos and Other Secret Jews. Searching for her own Jewish identity, Alexy researched, wrote, and lectured on hidden Jews in many countries.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 082633055X
• ISBN 13: 9780826330550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160