The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot: Marranos
and other Secret Jews
(September
/ October 2000)
THE MEZUZAH IN THE MADONNA'S FOOT: MARRANOS AND OTHER SECRET JEWS By Trudi Alexy. Harper SanFrancisco, l993. Paperback. 306 pages.
I have to confess that I began reading this book with a degree of skepticism, given that it was yet another journey and collation of interviews done by someone who discovers late in her life that she is Jewish (see my review of Claudia Coldwell's Letter from Vienna in Outlook, October 1995). Utilizing personal accounts of informants together with her quest to discover others who had grown up deprived of their Jewish culture and traditions, Trudi Alexy guides us on some eye-opening vistas of great proportion, and suddenly you wonder if you have been living all this time with your eyes and ears shut tight. This is not only Alexy's personal quest to find her Jewish roots (she traveled extensively and met with many, including King Juan Carlos I of Spain). She reveals the efforts of Spaniards to save Jews during World War II and talks about the pain that still exists today among "secret Jews" in Spain and parts of the American Southwest.
Alexy's book is divided into five parts in which we hear the stories of Jews who escaped from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France and other countries during the war and went to Spain. Some of these Jews managed to escape before the war broke out and others were saved even from the clutches of concentration camps. Throughout, one is reminded of the bravery of the Spanish people-those who effected the rescues, as well as those Spanish citizens amongst whom the Jewish refugees found themselves. Alexy tells us that Franco turned a blind eye to the influx of Jewish refugees and that the Spanish police and members of the Catholic clergy went out of their way to help the Jews. It was her mission to go to Spain to find Jews who had fled to save their lives. The result is a compelling look at Spain-a country infamous for its antisemitism-during the war years.
Part One, "Lost and Found: A Jewish Identity," is essentially the author's story of leaving Prague in l938 as a young girl with her parents, travelling to France, converting to Catholicism in l939 and fleeing to Spain. Two years later, they leave Barcelona when their visas come through for the United States where they continue to live as practising Catholics.
Part Two, "The Rescued." These are first-hand stories as told to the author by people who were smuggled out of "Free Zone" France into Spain over the mountains. These are very moving stories of bravery and courage of Jews who lost everything-even small bags, because climbing mountains took all their energies-but still kept their faith.
Part Three, "The Rescuers." The reminiscences here are of people who seldom got paid for the dozens of times they risked their lives (many died) to save escaping Jews. Acknowledgments and medals could never sufficiently repay their deeds, which renew one's faith in humanity in the midst of human horror.
Part Four, "The Reformers," deals with changes that have taken place in Spain since the war, the choices Jews and Christians are making to reach out to one another in friendship and understanding across the four hundred-year chasm.
It is heartening to learn that there are many people of the Christian faith who genuinely wish to atone for the Spanish Church's past and find sources in Judaism from which Christianity found its beginnings. Part Five, "Secret Jews." It is in this, the final section of the book, that I found its most astonishing stories. I unashamedly cried reading "Old Friends," a story about two young doctors who work side by side in an infirmary in a small Andalusian town a few weeks after the end of the Spanish Civil War. One is an American Jew who went to Spain as a volunteer for the Republicans; the other, a Spanish Catholic. A friendship develops and for years they keep in touch until one day, almost fifty years later, the American visits his friend. It is at this meeting that the most poignant moments occur. I don't want to spoil it by telling it-you must read it for yourself.
"My Marrano Soul: Matthew's Story" is about a young genealogist and expert on the history of the Spanish Jews who claims he can trace his family back to fourteenth-century Spain. It is in this story that we discover "When a Marrano kissed the foot of the Madonna by his front door, who would have guessed that a mezuzah (a small tube containing a parchment scroll of biblical passages) was concealed in the foot?" A most creative and ingenious method of holding on to one's Jewish traditions!
Trudi Alexy is a family therapist living in Los Angeles, California. This is her first book, and it is a reading journey I warmly recommend.