Hidalgo's lost tribe

Image:Courtesy Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Comunidad Ashkenazi de México.

A rare, undated photograph of members of the tiny Venta Prieta Jewish Community posed in front of their synagogue.

The Indian Jews' darker skin color might have been partially responsible for their rejection,says Dolores Sloan, former editor of HaLapid, the journal of the California-based Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, which studies the history of Iberian Crypto-Jews.

Among some established, fair-skinned Jewish communities, "There's a kind of racism against these dark people," Sloan says. "Why are they coming in? Are they going to improve themselves economically by being Jews? Are they going improve their social status by being Jews?"

What exactly defines a Jew is under debate. While the people of Venta Prieta have built a synagogue and observe Jewish holidays, some reports suggest they've struggled in recent years with their Jewish identity. Rabbi Samuel Lerer, who spent several years leading congregations in the United States, moved to Mexico City and worked with the Venta Prieta Jews until he retired in 1999. He also converted Mexican Jews in Veracruz, as documented in the 2006 movie Ocho Candelas. After Lerer's retirement, the Venta Prieta Jewish community eventually split in two, with some moving toward an Orthodox faith while the rest remained conservative. Little more information exists about how the community lives now.

At around 4 pm on a Thursday, a breeze swept through Venta Prieta's empty streets. Laundry fluttered on rooftops. Locked doors guarded brightly painted homes. At the end of Benito Juárez Street, across from a pharmacy, blue walls shielded any glimpse of the synagogue, known as Templo Negev. Two sets of metal doors were both locked.

Neighbors claimed they didn't know anything about the place. One elderly woman confirmed the temple's location, but cautioned that she didn't believe any of the people who went there were Jewish. After I knocked on several doors in the neighborhood, an older gentleman and his wife agreed to take me to the temple the next day.

The next morning, just after 11 am, we sat inside the temple's large, airy community center and waited. Colorful paper masks on the walls dangled streamers, left over from that week's Purim festival. Letters spelling out the word "Feliz" hung crookedly on one wall. A U-shaped table lay prepped and ready for the next day's seudah shlishit, or final Sabbath meal, each place setting comprising one pink plastic fork, a square styrofoam plate, a papernapkin.

The women would eat here; the men, on the other side of a wooden partition.

Just before 11:30, Elizabeth Téllez arrived, president of the Comunidad Mexicana Israelita el Neguev Venta Prieta.

A handsome, elegant woman dressed entirely in brown, she kept her hair covered by a brown knit cap. Téllez regarded me with a mixture of skepticism and kindness before saying that she was sorry, the community no longer gave interviews. They'd done so in the past and it had come back to hurt them, because people wrote things that weren't true. 

Even truthful stories hadn't done much to help the Jewish families of Venta Prieta, she said.

"A lot of people have taken advantage of the community, when in reality they don't know us,"Téllez said, adding that she's heard stories of people not affiliated with the temple trying to raise money for Venta Prieta. "We don't need any promotion. Mexico and Israel, they accept us."

Téllez said that a rabbi traveled from Mexico City to lead their services each Friday and Saturday and that a few Venta Prieta families had moved to Israel. Other facts she would allow to appear in print: The temple, a stone structure with a Star of David etched into the window, was their third. Families paid for it and the recreation hall with their own money. About 150 Jewish people lived in Venta Prieta, Téllez said.

She showed me a black-and-white photo of the congregation, dated 1938, before politely ending the conversation.

"This is how we've always lived," she said, "and this is how we're always going to live."

Lesley Tellez is a freelance writer in Mexico City. Visit her blog atlesleytellez.wordpress.com.