Terra Incognita - Softcover

Astaire, Libi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1495995313 ISBN 13: 9781495995316

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

Terra Incognita. For the medieval Catalan navigators the term meant an uncharted territory that inspired either fear or the thrill of adventure. But for the characters of this new novel by award-winning author Libi Astaire, "terra incognita” is a place inside the soul. It is a place drifting in the dreamy waters of an almost forgotten past; a place that is about to collide with an anxious, uncertain future. The story revolves around the Bonet family, who live in a tiny Catalan village called Sant Joan Januz. Vidal Bonet is a young businessman determined to revive his dying village by building a luxury resort. His grandfather, Miquel, is just as determined to keep the village locked away from strangers and their prying eyes. Their battle for the future of Sant Joan Januz is further complicated by the arrival of a Jewish-American graduate student from Kansas, Chaim Green, who is sure the villagers are his long-lost relatives. And, finally, there is Clara Bonet, who has reluctantly taken on the role of the family’s matriarch just when the village’s long buried secret is accidentally uncovered: They are all descendents of Anusim – Spanish Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages. Both poignant and comic, Terra Incognita is a journey of personal discovery that will resonate with anyone who has ever gone on a quest to discover their past – or who has ever lain awake at night wondering where in the world they are going.

About this title

From the Author:

An Historical Note About the Crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal
 
The year was 1917. Samuel Schwarz, a Jewish mining engineer from Poland, was on assignment in Portugal when he stumbled upon a small, isolated village called Belmonte - and a group of people with some unusual customs that were suspiciously similar to Jewish rituals. Certain that he had discovered descendents of Anusim, crypto-Jews who had hidden their Jewish origins during the Spanish Inquisition, Schwarz proudly announced to them that he was also Jewish. The villagers, who thought that they were the last Jews in the world, didn't believe him. No one who was really Jewish would dare to admit such a thing so openly. It was only when Schwarz recited the Shema Yisrael, one of the holiest prayers in the Jewish liturgy, and came to the word Ad-onoi, one of the names of G-d that the Anusim recognized, that the villagers accepted him as a fellow Jew.

Schwarz remained in Portugal, where he continued to study the Anusim. His findings were published in the 1920s in his book The Crypto-Jews of Portugal. As might be expected, his discovery made quite a stir in the Jewish world, which had previously assumed that all the Anusim had already either converted back to Judaism or assimilated into their non-Jewish surroundings.

After all, people had no reason to assume otherwise, since the history of the Anusim wasn't unknown. The tragic events of the year 1391, when most of Spain's Jewish communities were annihilated and many of the survivors were forcibly converted to Catholicism, were well documented. Court records from the Spanish Inquisition, which had mainly targeted the Anusim, had been preserved in Spanish archives. The flight of some of the Anusim to France, Italy, Flanders, Turkey, and other European countries also was well known, since the fugitives established flourishing communities wherever they were allowed to openly congregate.

When the Anusim dropped out of Jewish history during the nineteenth century, there was a ready explanation. The Spanish Inquisition came to an official end in the year 1821. The Emancipation movement in Europe made it easier for both the Anusim and the Jews to freely assimilate into European society. With nothing to stop them from either coming forward as Jews or assimilating, the Anusim, it was assumed, made their choice. Their separate communities were disbanded. The doors to their synagogues were shut. Their story was consigned to the history books. Or so people thought.

Schwarz's discovery of a community of Anusim in Belmonte did create a brief flurry of interest, but subsequent world events, including the destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust, moved the Anusim back into the shadows. It wasn't until the 1990s - a decade that saw the 500th anniversary of the Jewish Expulsion from Spain - that the story of the Anusim truly captured both the interest and the imagination of the Jewish world. University professors, researchers, and world travelers began to actively seek out Anusim communities not only in Spain and Portugal, but also in South America, Mexico and the southwestern United States. Suddenly, it seemed that everyone knew about those Shabbos candles hidden inside clay pots or cupboards. 

Yet despite the number of books, academic papers, and magazine articles that have been written about them - and the fact that a few of them, including the Anusim of Belmonte, have returned to Judaism - there is much about the modern-day descendents of the original Anusim that still remains a mystery. No one knows for sure how many of them there are. No one knows for sure where all their communities are located. But according to Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel, the Torah scholar and diplomat who was expelled from Spain in 1492 along with the rest of Spanish Jewry, one day the mystery will be solved. The Anusim will return to the Jewish people, and together we will rejoice in the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, may it come speedily and in our days.

About the Author:

Libi Astaire is an award-winning author who often writes about Jewish history. In addition to her popular Jewish Regency Mystery Series, she is the author of "The Banished Heart," a novel about Shakespeare's writing of "The Merchant of Venice"; "Terra Incognita," a novel about Spanish villagers who discover they are descended from crypto-Jews (Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages); several ebooks of retellings of Chassidic tales; and "Day Trips to Jewish History," a collection of essays about lesser known people and places in Jewish history. Her own journey has taken her from Kansas, where she grew up, to Jerusalem, where she now lives.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1495995313
• ISBN 13: 9781495995316
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 310