Legend:
Text in blue =Subject connected with Judaism,
orange = Dual rites, in different religions, brown =
Bibliographical reference
from:
Feathers, angels, scales - sacred matters,
chapters
1-6: Sociological research [1994-2000 & on]
on Marrano-descendants in Belmonte, along with personal impressions [1994-2007]
of the researcher
Sara Molho (2001)
1. Rainbows
2. Angels
3. “Ave de Pena”
4. Marrano Kippur and
Passover
2.
Angels
Translated
from Hebrew by
Mark Elliott Shapiro (2007)
For the past 500 years and up to this
very day, even after most of them have converted to Judaism, the atmosphere
among the descendants of the Marranos, or crypto-Jews, in Belmonte is such that
they still anticipate the occurrence of a miracle at every moment. Their daily
routine assumes the constant presence of a whole flock of angels who, in their
view, have been sent by God to watch and protect them, in most cases because
the Marranos themselves have requested their presence.
According to the Marranos, their custom
not to emerge from their homes on Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement (since a synagogue is not
part of the Marrano way of life, the home becomes the sole place where true
communion with God can be achieved) stems from the fear that they might weary
their “guardian angel” in their sallies on such a holy day.[1] Thus, in
the first years following their conversion, they would remain in the synagogue
on Yom Kippur, or Dia Kipure in
their language, for the entire day (see below Noite Kipura); they even tried to impose on me this prohibition on
going outside. They cite this heavenly presence and its great sensitivity as
the reasons for their extreme reluctance at having strangers join them in their
ceremonies. They fear that strangers could confuse the descending angels or
even prevent the Marrano matrons from correctly performing their
ceremonies, which require total concentration on the part of both the
worshipers and the invisible entities who respond to their calls. This is the
explanation I was given concerning the secrecy surrounding their hanuccat habayit (house-warming) ceremony, for
example. Apparently, this explanation is what lay behind their initial
rejection in the late 1980s of Frederic Brenner's
request to film the Marrano ceremony of baking matzot (unleavened bread
eaten on Passover). Only after they were explicitly promised that the filming
would stop immediately if the matron felt that “she was forced to ask us
to leave” and only after they were promised that “we would not be angry” if and
when leaving the room, did they change their mind and agree to the filming.[2]
The Marranos thus customarily turn to
the “upper worlds” at every possible moment, in their daily prayers, or in the
special prayers composed for any difficulty or distressful situation they might
encounter. They do so – either directly addressing God
or appealing to his messengers, the various angels
– and sometimes, when appealing directly to such mediators, they use the second
person plural (an element that can
rarely be found in normative, rabbinic or halakhic, Judaism, where, if they are
referred to at all, the angels are spoken of in third person plural).
Nearly every event in their lives – such as, for instance, the tolling of a
church clock or the rumble of thunder – is “covered” by a special prayer. In
these two instances, the appeal is made directly to God.[3]
I know for a fact that, although they were documented in the past from oral
testimony by Marranos, some of the prayers that address a specific event have
not yet been published, because of the respect researchers like David Canelo
felt for the value that their research subjects (who were also their friends)
so deeply cherished – namely, secrecy.
Sometimes, the Marranos turn to the
angels, directly and in second person plural, addressing angels in
general:
“Anjos
benditos, profetas, patriarcas, monarcas deante do Senhor...”
“May you, most welcome angels,
prophets, patriarchs, and kings serve the Lord.[4]”
However, frequently, they will address
their private angel, namely, their guardian angel:
"Anjo da minha guarda
não te apartes de mim.
O Senhor te dê bons dias
e tu anjo mos daras a mim.
Anjo da
minha guarda,
anjo bem
aventurado,
te peco e
rogo,
que o Senhor
me livre do pecado.”
“My guardian angel,
Please do not abandon
me.
May God grant you good
days
And may you, o angel,
convey them to me.
My guardian angel,
O angel whose lot has
been blessed,
I ask you, I beseech
you,
May God deliver me from
sin.”[5]
Or:
"Anjo
da minha guarda,
anjo, estas tu por ai?
O Senhor te dê boas tardes
e tu anjo das-mas a mim.
Anjos que o Senhor me deu
para a minha
guia
e para a
minha companhia…”
“My guardian angel,
O angel, are you there?
May God grant you good
evenings,
And may you, o angel,
convey them to me.
O angel, whom God has
granted me
To guide me
And to serve as my
companion....”[6]
Sometimes, the appeal is made to “celebrity-angels,”
whose fame and special functions are praised by everyone, such as the holy Angel
Raphael, a much beloved angel among the Marranos, who became aware of his
unique talents through the apocryphal Tobit, or Book of Tobias:
“Anjo S.
Rafael bendito, que assistes ao meo Senhor,
peco-te anjo
bendito, sendo omeo advogado,
faze-me esse
favor, sendo o meo amparo fiel,
para pedires e rogares ao grande Deus de Israel,
que me
guarde a mim e todas as minhas pressas e nececssidades…”
“Holy, blessed Angel
Raphael, you who stand before God,
I beseech[7]
you, o blessed angel, be my advocate,
Give me a good omen,
and be my faithful shield,
So that you may beseech
from and implore the great God of Israel
To guard me and my
person and see to all my day-to-day needs....”[8]
In the eyes of the descendants of the
crypto-Jews of Belmonte, anticipating the appearance of the seraphim and
cherubim that populate their beautiful prayers - is completely realistic,
and their existence is an unquestionable fact. Their conversion in the early
1990s did not change this attitude.[9] In any case,
I myself heard with my own ears the phrase “seraphim and cherubim” in
the secret prayers to which I was made privy by the elderly Marrano matrons
who had not converted to Judaism. This happened in the home of Maria-Fernanda
Rodrigo, during the preparation of the “holy, blessed wicks” for the memorial
candles lit on the eve of Yom Kippur ( just
before “Noite Kipura” in their language). A similar, but by no means identical,
prayer has been documented by Schwarz:
“…Anjos, archanjos, serafis, cherubins,
patriarchas, monarchas…”
“…O angels, ministering angels, cherubim,
patriarchs, kings....”[10]
This was not the prayer
that I heard while the wicks were being prepared. However, in all the prayers that
various scholars have heard at various times from the mouths of matrons,
there is always a hierarchy of celestial and earthly entities.
The clandestine, lengthy domestic
ceremony I witnessed with the Rabino's wife in
Maria-Fernanda's home on two occasions – in
1994 and 1995 respectively – was also attended by her sister Anna and
her nieces, all of whom are Marranos who have not converted to Judaism, as well
as by Maria-Fernanda's daughter, Beilinha, with whom we are already acquainted
(in chapter 1). Although Beilinha had converted, she came to help her mother
prepare the sanctified wicks, in accordance with Marrano tradition. The
ceremony is performed only by women; in the course of the ceremony, the men
(except for the very elderly or the ill) were supposed to protect us by
standing guard outside.
-
You can show these photographs (there are many such illustrative
photographs in this and other chapters – S.M.), if you wish, but only in
This ceremony of preparing the wicks precedes
by several days the holy day of Yom Kippur,[11]
although each family holds it at a different time. The most important of these
prayers is recited 73 times for each wick, and the number of wicks
corresponds to the number of family members – those who are still living and
the deceased who should be memorialized. The reason for the lengthiness of the
ceremony is this abundance of prayers. There are also brief prayers each of
which is customarily recited three, five or seven times.[12] When
repeating the short prayers each of which they traditionally recite three to
seven times, the women would bend their fingers in the counting process. A
different method is employed when the prayer is recited the maximum number of
times, that is, 73. For that level of counting, preliminary preparations
are required and they entail the placing of two small bowls on the table. One
of them contains a large amount of chickpeas, each of which is noisily dropped
into the second bowl each time the prayer is recited, for a total of 73
times. The Marrano women explain that 73
is the number of God's names, as is stated in
their prayers. However, in normative Judaism, the accepted number of God's
names is 72.[13]
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Counting
process where fingers are used, 1995 |
Counting
process where chickpeas are used, 1994 |
In the same prayer that the women
customarily recited the maximum number of times, that is 73, the seraphim
and cherubim were included in the opening text, in a hierarchy descending
from God himself, only a very few of whose names – including Adonai – were mentioned, the only Hebrew
word that clearly survived among the Marranos. As both the Rabino’s wife and I recalled, immediately after the reference
to God himself, there was a reference to the Angel Raphael, whose full
name was mentioned, followed by the reference to the cherubim and seraphim. From
the various levels of angels to the various levels of mortals: further down in
this hierarchy were the prophets, who headed the list of the mortals
(and were not excluded this time). Following them, in descending order,
were the other mortals: patriarchs, kings, etc.
Unfortunately, while listening to the
prayers, I was unable to write them down. As noted above, in an unusual
gesture, I had been given permission to take pictures of the two ceremonies,
and, content to do that and no more, I did not want to make things any harder
for the Marranos, who were troubled to the point of despair by the presence of
strangers who interfered with the Marranos' flock of angels, and perhaps with
another flock of transparent “tiny souls” in whose existence they believed.[14]
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Different
stages in the ceremony of |
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A few days after the ceremony in 1995,
the Rabino, his wife and I tried, together with
Beilinha, to reconstruct the prayers each of which was recited the maximum
number of times (73). These are the prayers that she recited yearly throughout her
life in her mother's home. However, in comparison with what the Rabino's wife and I had heard repeatedly in 1994 and
1995, and despite her willingness to help, the memory of Maria-Fernanda's
daughter – who herself was, as noted above, a middle-aged woman – proved very
faulty. What she recalled and what her husband Ricardo recorded in writing
before our eyes (see below) did not reflect what we had both
heard with our own ears! For his part, the husband was unable to help us in the
reconstruction work, because, of course, his function had always been to
protect the women worshipers by being on guard outside. In 1994, he did
so as he sat, with such seeming innocence, in the coffee shop located on the
ground floor, while, in 1995, he did so from his factory and by means of a
cellular phone, an innovation that had just reached Belmonte. The failed
attempt to reconstruct this beautiful, moving prayer immediately brought home
to me both the problems involved in the transfer of a purely oral tradition and
the important function of recitations conducted over and over so many
times. The much-repeated recitations are intended to ensure that the daughters
will remember over the years the text of the long and/or particularly important
prayers recited in their mother's home. The number of repeated recitations for
the shorter prayers could, of course, be smaller without any fear that the
daughters' memory might betray them.
Document:
The (relatively unsuccessful) attempt to reconstruct, in
Ricardo
Vaz-Nunes’ handwriting, the prayer recited by his wife Beilinha
In light of all the above, I felt as if
sometimes dozens of angels were clustered around me, as I walked through the streets
of the Judaria; they were transparent, of course, but they certainly existed.
Let us assume that the guardian angels of my friends were very near to
my person, so much so that I sometimes feared that I would step on their toes
by accident. It is thus not surprising that, in this Marrano atmosphere, I
could imagine that, in their ardent desire to respond to any urgent request
from Belmonte, the angels did not require any Jacob's Ladder or any other
biblical/heavenly means of transportation; they could simply slide down from
the heavens straight into our world riding atop ... the colors of the rainbow,
just like the trained firefighters (bombeiros), whose presence is so prominent,
and so audible, in rural regions like Belmonte (if in Portugal the firefighters
slide down the fire-station poles, as in American films.) What is certain is
that rainbows are readily available in Belmonte's skies. In any event, it seems
to me that their frequency and the confidence that they will appear sometimes
exceeds the expectations regarding the arrival of the rural buses that travel
between the various villages and which we, mortals who have not yet learned how
to fly, require in order to get around. And we can all be grateful that the bus
service has recently improved considerably.
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In
the past, it was customary |
© All rights reserved to Sara Molho,
2001
Publication of this
article is permitted, but without changes,
and with the stipulation that full mention is made of the source: