TALK: THE FIRST PRACTICING JEW in NORTH AMERICA,
and HIS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY

Presented by David Gitlitz

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 5 PM

MX$90 (M) MX$130 (NM)

The First Practicing Jew in North America, and his Dysfunctional Family... His name was Gabriel de Castellanos, and he came to Mexico in 1534, just 13 years after the Spaniards took Tenochtitlán. Although there were some conversos (i.e., from formerly Jewish families) among the conquistadors, we know almost nothing about their religious identity or practices. Gabriel is the first practicing crypto-Jew who has left enough of a paper trail that we know him and his strong-minded family intimately (including one son who did some business in Oaxaca). His biography is worthy of a movie script.
David Gitlitz worked for a number of universities in the US, Latin America, and Europe as a professor (literature, history, anthropology) and an administrator (program director, department chair, dean, academic vice president). His writing, some of it in conjunction with his late wife Linda Davidson, has been on topics of Spanish culture and literature, pilgrimages and holy places, Spanish-Jewish interrelations, and Renaissance cuisine. His first trip to Oaxaca was in 1960 (!), and he's been living full time in Santa Cruz Etla now for five years and considers it his home for the duration.

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