Unorthodox Kin : Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

343 Pages·2017·2.23 MB·English

by  Naomi Leite

Unorthodox Kin
portuguese marranos and
the global search for belonging
Naomi Leite
university of california press
Unorthodox Kin

Unorthodox Kin
portuguese marranos and
the global search for belonging
Naomi Leite
university of california press
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university
presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing
scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its
activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic
contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit
www.ucpress.edu.
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2017 by Th e Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Leite, Naomi, 1972– author.
Title: Unorthodox kin : Portuguese Marranos and the global search for
belonging / Naomi Leite.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: lccn 2016027927 (print) | lccn 2016028590 (ebook) |
isbn 9780520285040 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520285057 (pbk. : alk.
paper) | isbn 9780520960640 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Kinship—Cross-cultural studies. | Ethnology—Philosophy. |
Portugal—Kinship. | Portugal—Religious life and customs.
Classifi cation: lcc gn487 .l45 2017 (print) | lcc gn487 (ebook) |
ddc 305.892/40469—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027927
Manufactured in the United States of America
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my teachers, all
Making sense of other people is never easy, and making sense of
how other people make sense can be very diffi cult indeed.
keith basso
Portraits of the Whiteman
For events in times or places outside our own experience, we have
nothing to go on but the stories other people tell us. Past events
exist, aft er all, only in memory, which is a form of imagination.
Th e event is real now, but once it’s then, its continuing reality is
entirely up to us, dependent on our energy and honesty.
ursula leguin
Tales fr om Earthsea
contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Translation and Terminology xv
Introduction: An Ethnography of Affi nities 1
1 Hidden Within, Imported from Without:
•
A Social Category through Time 39
2 Essentially Jewish: Body, Soul, Self 76
•
3 Outsider, In-Between: Becoming Marranos 119
•
4 “My Lost Brothers and Sisters!”: Tourism and
•
Cultural Logics of Kinship 176
5 From Ancestors to Aff ection: Making
•
Connections, Making Kin 220
Conclusion: Strangers, Kin, and the Global
Search for Belonging 261
Notes 279
References 289
Index 303

p reface and acknowledgments
Anthropologists, like everyone else, live in the fl ow of time. When we write
of the fi eld research that forms the basis of our work, it is already past. Th e
events of this book are now history; today, the people whose stories and
observations I recount might express themselves diff erently; organizations I
describe may no longer exist, or may now have a diff erent character and
emphasis; individuals who feature prominently may no longer be involved in
Marrano aff airs in the same way, if at all; several, in fact, have died. But if the
details of the story I tell are specifi c to just one time and place, the questions
explored are not. Experiences of self-discovery and (in)voluntary affi liation,
belonging and exclusion, kinship and relatedness, enchantment and wonder
are basic to human existence, though their shape may vary widely across geo-
graphical and cultural settings. How and to what extent these experiences are
molded by interaction with others, particularly as global interconnectivity
enables our closest relationships to span vast distances, is a puzzle with which
we are all faced, in one way or another, in our own lives. Th e story of
Portugal’s urban Marranos and their search for belonging off ers a glimpse of
just one among many answers.

• • •
Th e seed of this book was sown more than two decades ago, when in the span
of a few days both my maternal grandfather, Harry Fischer, and my paternal
grandmother, Nancy Leite, called independently to say they had taped a pub-
lic television broadcast I would want to see. It was Th e Last Marranos, a
documentary fi lm about a secret community of “hidden Jews” discovered in
an isolated Portuguese village, where they had lived disconnected from the
ix