The following was prepared and presented by Dr. Merle Friedenberg on Shabbat Parshat Vayishlach - November 20, 2010

A DRIZZLE OF HONEY:
THE LIVES AND RECIPES OF SPAIN’S SECRET JEWS
David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson

One day in the spring of 1504 Aldonza Laínez of Almazán, Spain, served up a tasty turnip and cheese casserole to the workmen in her vineyards.The workmen immediately reported her to the Spanish Inquisition as probably being a secret Jew.

In the late Middle Ages tens of thousands of Iberian Jews were converted to Catholicism, many of them under duress. Some of the converts rapidly assimilated to their new religious culture. Others, called crypto-Jews, struggled to retain as many of their religious and cultural ties to Judaism as they were able even while they were projecting Christian conformity in public. The Inquisition tried to identify these people, whom they considered dangerous heretics, to either bring them back into conformity or to punish them severely so that they would serve as cautionary examples. The Inquisition published checklists of customs that would help identify a neighbor as a secret Jew. Household habits were featured, with particular attention to holiday and Sabbath observances, including the special Jewish meals for those occasions. The converts’ servants, neighbors, and even their children were how they prepared it.

The 100 modernized recipes in A Drizzle of Honey come from specific reference to foods eaten by crypto-Jews taken from these testimonies and other sources. Each citation is placed alongside its biographical, historical, and culinary context, which form a mosaic of crypto-Jewish life—and cooking—in Spain and Portugal. Each capsule history is followed by the dish’s updated recipe. Each recipe has been developed and tasted several times in the authors’ kitchen, based on modes of preparations, ingredients, and flavorings as described in other medieval Hispanic documents.
This Iberian Sephardic cuisine combines medieval Christian and Islamic traditions in kitchens not yet familiar with the New World’s potatoes, tomatoes, corn, and peppers. The crypto-Jewish Sabbath stews and holiday dishes of lamb, beef, and fish, casseroles of eggplant, chick peas, and greens, and exotic combinations of seasonings like saffron, mace, ginger, and cinnamon will delight the adventurous palate and give insights into the foundations of modern Sephardic cuisine.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999
352 pp. Hardcover $29.95 Paperback $19.95
Hardback available only from the authors
WINNER OF
The Jewish National Book Award for Ashkenazi and Sephardic Studies
and
The International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Jane Grigson Award for Distinguished Scholarship
“May be the best historical Jewish cookbook yet written.” -- Saveur (July/August 1999)


There are no Jewish or crypto-Jewish cookbooks from the period of the Inquisition. But there are hints about Jewish cuisine and occasional recipes are scattered through a variety of medieval documents, including Inquisitional trial testimonies. The explanation has to do with the way in which the Inquisition operated.

The Edict of Grace
When the Inquisition formally entered a particular city, the first event would be the public reading to the assembled crowd an Edict of Grace. The entire populace would be in assembly. One could come forward and confess their own practices and receive leniency. But informing on anyone suspected of Judaizing was also expected. Hence people needed to be reminded what Jewish practices were.
For example, according to the Edict of Grace from Lasú Palmas, the populace was warned to report if you now or have heard of anyone who keeps the Sabbath according to the laws of Moses, or saw anyone wearing clean shirts and other new garments, and putting clean clothes on the table and clean sheets on the bed on feast days in honor of the Sabbath and using no lights from Friday evening onwards.
The Edict specifically warns against those who keep the Sabbath by cooking on Fridays “ such foods as is required for the Saturdays and on the latter eating the meat thus cooked of Fridays as is the manner of the Jews…. And upon the death of parents… eating … such things as boiled eggs, olives and other viands….”

Other edicts also include:
•     or they have purified the meat they are to eat by bleeding it in water;
•     or have cut the throats of cattle or birds they are eating, uttering certain words and covering the blood with earth;
•     or have eaten meat in Lent and on other days forbidden by Holy Mother Church;
•     or have fasted the great fast, going barefooted that day
•     or if parents placing their hands on the heads of their children without making the sign of the cross or saying anything but, “Be blessed by God and by me;’
•     or they bless the table in the Jewish way …
•     or if any woman keeps forty days after childbirth without entering a church
•     or if they circumcise their children
•     or give them Jewish names
•     or if after baptism they wash the place where the oil and chrism was put;
•     or if anyone on his deathbed is turned to the wall to die, and when he is dead is washed with hot water, his hair shaved from all parts of his body;
•     or if anyone had declared the law of Moses to be a good as that of our Lord Jesus Christ …

Equating food and religion emerged as a way of isolating conversos and their descendants, as articulated by Andres Bernaldez, a contemporary chronicler-priest, “…the [conversos] never abandoned their habits of Jewish eating, their stews, their onions and garlic fried in oil, and their meat cooked in oil instead of pork fat…”
The cooking practices described by Bernaldez were common to the entire Mediterranean basin, then as now, with the notable exception of Spain where more pork was consumed.  It is tempting, but incorrect, to speculate that the habit of eating large amounts of pork, a habit that has persisted, came from a direct attempt to force 1000s of conversos into “Christian” practices, or to isolate them as false Christians. The central industry of medieval Spain was wool; it might have made more sense to favor lamb.
Many Inquisition statements resemble those from the servant girl Francisca who reported in the 1490s that her mistress, Maria Alvarez ordered her to pick out the vein and trim off all the fat with her thumbnail. Or the 1621 report by a family member that Isabel Núñez cooked the Jewish way, koshering her meat and avoiding pork and that for Passover she made her own matzah.
The recipes in the trials do not resemble those of modern cook books. They tend merely to list ingredients, and sometimes give a sketchy indication about how a particular dish might be prepared.  Often they refer to seasonal greens. Rarely do they mention  specific spices, for these dishes were understood both by the trial deponents and their audience to be part of a tradition of Iberian cooking that blended Jewish, Christian, and Muslim elements that, because it was common to everyone, did not need to be particularized in detail.
The testimony only points to what was different about the allegedly Jewish recipes.

Cookbooks catered to the nobility. However, the recipes used for this luncheon were from the pens (via David Gitlitz, A Drizzle of Honey) of the Inquisition scribes who recorded the confessions and the allegations of the servants and neighbors and family members who testified against those accused of Judaizing. They were ordinary people not the rich and famous.  The recipes are gathered from trials which ranged from 1450-1677. Some are from those who witnessed the expulsion while others had only a vague idea of their ancestral traditions.
One dish meals were the norm in medieval society. Sabbath meals generally kept warm by holding in an iron pot on a banked fire. A late 15th century memorandum about crypto customs describing the day old stew gives it historical rationale." Ani, which means hot food, was usually made with fat meat, chickpeas, lima beans, green beans, hard boiled eggs and any other vegetables. It was cooked all night on Friday, because on Saturday the Jews could not cook food. That dish was kept mannah [sic] from one day to the next and all that mannah [sic] turned to worms except that which they cooked on Friday for Saturday, and that did not turn to worms. Because of that Jews made ani on Friday for  the Sabbath"
The Sabbath dish was called by different names in the different regions of Iberia. The converso Juan Sanchez Exach was accused of "ceremonially eating a Sabbath dish called hamyn.” This was sometimes made of chickpeas and spinach or chard and was also called trasnochado. In Segovia in the 1480s the dish was called a caliente. The family of Diego Enriquez was denounced for making an adafina on Fridays that consisted of meat with parsley, onion, chard, and mint. Joan Sachez  - Granada 1582- described how in his master's house they used to make a  "Jewish" dish called boronia.

Brazilian Olla Amarella
Brazil, far from the Portuguese Inquisition, was very attractive to conversos, some of whom probably were able to continue to practice Judaism. In 1502 a consortium was granted to conversos to exploit Brazil wood. Moreover, the newly established sugar industry kept a wave of entrepreneurial settlers flocking to Brazil. In addition, viewing the rigors of the colonies as a kind of purgatory that would encourage sinners to return to a decent life, the Portuguese Inquisition frequently exiled minor offenders to the colonies for a specified period.
By the late sixteenth century there were about ten thousand settlers of European stock, of whom two thousand were conversos. The sugar mill towns, engenhos, were often administered or owned by the descendents of the conversos. The Church found it scandalous that some of these people Judaized openly, even maintaining semi-clandestine synagogues. Old Christians resented the conversos position as part of the elite, dealing with old Christians as equals. By the end of the century a highly intensive atmosphere had built up. About 200 accused conversos were indicted for Judaizing and returned to Portugal to face an Inquisitorial trial. Forty people were convicted.

A more tolerant atmosphere ensued when the Dutch captured Recife in 1630.  As was the custom in Amsterdam, limited freedom of worship was allowed. Many Judaizers began to practice more openly. For the next 24 years many more European Jews came to seek their fortunes in the Dutch occupied New World. When the Portuguese regained control in 1654 some Jews fled but some attempted to stay in Brazil as crypto Jews and were able to wait out the end of the Inquisition.
Branca Dias lived with her husband, Diego Fernandes, and their daughters in the sugar factory town of Camarigibi near Olinda, in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. It was rumored that when the pressures of the Inquisition heighted the family fled Portugal. By the time the Portuguese Inquisition’s board of inquiry reached Pernambuco, Branca Dias and her husband were no longer living. Their descendents, however, fell under suspicion as the servants testified in great detail about the older couple’s Judaizing practices. Witnesses alleged that Branca used to place a small statute of a bull’s head on her bed as a kind of saint, and also that she habitually beat a crucifix and in church spoke disparagingly of the consecrated host.
A special yellow colored dish made from grains, meat, oil, onions, and spices was reportedly a favorite among Brazilian conversos. Witnesses claimed that the preparation of the meal, in particularly the frying of onions in oil before adding them to the meat was the Jewish way of cooking.

Catalina de Teva's Cazuela de Berenjenas Rellenas
Catalina de Teva was identified as a Judaizer in testimony given in the 1511 and 1513 trials of her friend Maria González, the wife of Pedro de Villarreal. Maria herself provided a good deal of information about the group of her friends who used together to spend the Sabbath together in one or another of their houses. Frequently the group included Catalina de Teva, Ximon de la Çarça’s aunt Marinade Herrera, the spice dealer Diego Alvarez’s wife Gracia de Teva, and the tax farmer Fernando de Alvarez’s wife Leonor.  
The Çarça’s black slave had complained to Maria that her mistress would not let her do the family wash on Saturday and sometimes used to send her out to the vineyards for the day so that she would not see what the Çarças were doing at home.
Marina de Herrera used to read Jewish prayers from a little book which she hid when Maria came in.
Leonor Alvarez used to deck herself out for the Sabbath with a clean shirt and head scarf and a festival sash. One day Maria González found her plucking her eyebrows. When Maria said she looked like a queen or as if it were a festival Sunday, Leonor haughtily retorted that “women who had given birth to sons had the right to dress up.
Maria testified that on one Sabbath afternoon in 1509 she had visited the home of Ximon de la Çarça  where she found his wife, Catalina de Teva, with her usual group all dressed in their best clothes, relaxing and enjoying themselves and eating this eggplant casserole, which had been prepared the day before. Although the fruit cited in this reference seems to have been eaten as a snack, contemporary references suggest that fresh fruits in season were also added to vegetable casseroles.

The Cota Wedding Berenjena con Acelguilla
Late 15th century conversos were so fond of eggplant that the satirical literature of the day is filled with pointed references to this predilection. Typical is the burlesque poem by Rodrigo Cota about a converso wedding at which the guests were served eggplant.
The courts that grouped around fifteenth century Castilian kings included a number of poets and court fools who entertained the monarch, the nobility, and each other with scurrilous satiric poetry that insulted women, the handicapped, conversos, and other marginalized members of society, often using some topical event, a boar hunt, a dance, a wedding – as a pretext for poking fun at people who were well known at court. Many of the poets and fools themselves were conversos, and everyone in that milieu knew enough about Jewish customs to understand the burlesque allusions to Jewish practice.
This is part of a 65 stanza poem that mocked conversos who attended the wedding of the grandson of Diego Arias Dávila, the notorious converso finance minister of King Enrique IV of Castile, to a girl related to the family of Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza. Rodrigo Cota, who was not invited to the wedding, decided to make his pique public with this poem.

At this Jewish wedding party
Bristly pig was not consumed;
Not one single scale less fish
went down the gullet of the groom;
Instead, an eggplant casserole
With saffron and Swiss chard;
And whoever swore by “Jesus””
From the meatball pot was barred.