Source: The Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/religion/6522162.html
At an East Galveston beach, Mari Barkhausen is waist-deep in the cool, brown water. After repeating Hebrew blessings, she is immersed once, twice. When she emerges from the water a third time, she is a Jew.
She hugs her rabbi, looking to the shoreline at her husband and two sons who are waiting for their mikveh, the ritual immersion for Jewish converts.
“Mazel tov, everyone,” declares Rabbi Stuart Federow. “This day begins the rest of your education. Jewish learning never stops.”
Barkhausen’s journey began decades ago as she watched her maternal grandmother’s peculiar ways. Her Mexican-American abuela would light candles on Fridays and draw the curtains before sundown, cover mirrors at home when a relative died and examine eggs for blood spots.
No one questioned her ways, and no explanation was ever offered to little Mari or her siblings.
Years later, Barkhausen would realize those customs were not one woman’s idiosyncrasies. They were Jewish customs.
Lighting of candles marked the beginning of the Sabbath. Many cover mirrors when someone dies to avoid concentrating on their grief-stricken appearances. And the Old Testament teaches that life is in the blood.
Grandma did all these things, Barkhausen remembered. But Grandma wasn’t Jewish. She was Catholic.
Crypto Jews: a history
Like an increasing number of Latinos, Barkhausen believes her ancestors were Crypto Jews — people who outwardly professed another religion but kept Jewish tradition in secrecy.
Scholars have paid attention to the phenomenon for decades, but the public interest has skyrocketed more recently.
Houston’s Family Tree DNA now answers about 20 queries weekly from Hispanics about Jewish ancestry, founder Bennett Greenspan said. And Jewishgen.com, the leading Web site for Jewish genealogy, has seen the number of people searching online databases surge from 1 million to 9 million over the past 10 years.