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"Identity, family, and community unite three autobiographical texts by New World Crypto-Jews, or descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in 17th-century Iberia and Spanish America. Ronnie Perelis presents the fascinating stories of three men who were caught within the matrix of inquisitorial persecution, expanding global trade, and the network of Crypto-Jewish activity. Each text, translated here for the first time, reflects the unique experiences of the author and illuminates their shared, deeply rooted attachment to Iberian culture, their Atlantic peregrinations, and their hunger for spiritual enlightenment. Through these writings, Perelis focuses on the social history of transatlantic travel, the economies of trade that linked Europe to the Americas, and the physical and spiritual journeys that injected broader religious and cultural concerns into this complex historical moment"-- 1. Audience and archive: text, context, and the literary construction of experience -- 2. "Hermanos en el senor": spiritual and social fraternity and paternity in Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo's spiritual autobiography (Mexico 1595) -- 3. A prophetic matrix: motherhood, sorority and a re-imagined sagrada familia -- 4. Writing his way into the Jewish people: faith, blood and community in Manuel Cardoso de Macedo's Vida del Buenaventurado Abraham Pelengrino -- 5. "All of us are brothers": race, faith and the limits of brotherhood in the relacion of Antonio de Montezinos, Alias Aharon Halevi (1644). Blood and Dreams looks at three autobiographical texts written by individuals caught within the matrix of inquisitorial persecution, expanding global trade and crypto-Jewish activity in the early modern period. Luis de Carvajal, el mozo (1567-1596), also known as Joseph Lumbroso moved from Spain to Mexico when he was a teenager in 1580 and began writing his spiritual autobiography after his first inquisitorial trial in 1589. The Portuguese merchant Antonio de Montezinos (1604-1647), recounts his life-changing encounter with the lost tribe of Reuben living in the northern Andes. His account dates to 1644 but was only published in 1650 as part of Menasseh ben Israel's treatise on the fate of the Lost Tribes, Mikveh Israel/ Esperanza de Israel. Manuel Cardoso de Macedo (1585-1652) was an Azorean Old Christian who first embraced Calvinism before leaving Christianity behind and converting to Judaism. He wrote his spiritual autobiography, La Vida del buenaventurado Abraham Pelengrino Guer while living as a Jew in Amsterdam at some point after the 1620's
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