David Martin Gitlitz

In this thoroughly researched work, David M. Gitlitz traces the lives and fortunes of three clusters of sixteenth-century crypto-Jews in Mexico's silver mining towns. Previous studies of sixteenth-century Mexican crypto-Jews focus on the merchant community centered in Mexico City, but here Gitlitz looks beyond Mexico's major population center to explore how clandestine religious communities were established in the reales, the hinterland mining camps, and how they differed from those of the capital in their struggles to retain their Jewish identity in a world dominated economically by silver and religiously by the Catholic Church. In Living in Silverado Gitlitz paints an unusually vivid portrait of the lives of Mexico's early settlers. Unlike traditional scholarship that has focused mainly on macro issues of the silver boom, Gitlitz closely analyzes the complex workings of the haciendas that mined and refined silver, and in doing so he provides a wonderfully detailed sense of the daily experiences of Mexico's early secret Jews.

Secret Jews in the Silver Mining Towns of Colonial Mexico

Living in Silverado

Linda Kay Davidson

Nationalistic meccas, shrines to popular culture, and sacred traditions for the world's religions from Animism to Zoroastrianism are all examined in two accessible and comprehensive volumes. * More than 500 A–Z entries ranging from the Alamo and Bamiyan to tourism and visual arts * Photographs including worshipers at the Western Wall, pyramids in Egypt, and the Montserrat monastery in Spain illuminate the coverage * Maps including the Hajj, Jerusalem, the journeys of Saint Paul, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre * Includes two appendixes: pilgrimage sites by country and pilgrimage sites by religion, a complete bibiliography, and a thorough index

From the Ganges to Graceland : an Encyclopedia

Pilgrimage

Frederick A. De Armas

José A. Madrigal

Critical Perspectives on Calderón de la Barca

Secrecy and Deceit documents the religious customs of the Iberian Jews who converted to Catholicism, largely under duress, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although many of the converts quickly melded into the Catholic mainstream, thousands of others and their descendents strove to preserve their Jewish culture despite the efforts of the Inquisition to suppress them. The book details crypto-Jewish culture in Spain, Portugal, and their American colonies, principally Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The author uses Inquisition records, chronicles, rabbinical rulings, letters, eyewitness accounts, religious books, and other historical documents to give the most thorough and accurate picture of crypto-Jews ever cataloged. This book raises questions about living outside a Jewish community and what happens to religions of approximation.

David Martin Gitlitz

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