Jewish "again": DNA unlocks secrets in New Mexico By David Kelly Los Angeles Times ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - As a boy, the Rev. William Sanchez sensed he was different. His Catholic family spun tops on Christmas, shunned pork and whispered of a past in medieval Spain. If anyone knew the secret, they weren't telling, and Sanchez stopped asking. Three years ago, after watching a program on genealogy, Sanchez sent for a DNA kit that could help track a person's background through genetic footprinting. He soon got a call from Bennett Greenspan, owner of the Houston-based testing company. "He said, 'Did you know you were Jewish?' " Sanchez, 53, recalled. "He told me I was a Cohanim, a member of the priestly class descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses." With the revelation that Sanchez was almost certainly one of New Mexico's hidden, or crypto-Jews, his family traditions made sense to him. He began a DNA project to test his relatives, along with some parishioners at Albuquerque's St. Edwin's Church, where he works. As word got out, others in the community began contacting him. So Sanchez expanded the effort to include Hispanics throughout the state. Of the 78 people tested, 30 are positive for the marker of the Cohanim, whose genetic line remains strong because they rarely married non-Jews throughout a history spanning up to 4,000 years. Michael Hammer, a research professor at the University of Arizona and an expert on Jewish genetics, said that fewer than 1 percent of non-Jews possessed this marker. That fact - along with the traditions in many of these families - makes it likely that they are Jewish, he said. It also explained practices that had baffled many folks in Albuquerque for years: the special knives used to butcher sheep in line with Jewish kosher tradition, the refusal to work on Saturdays to honor the Sabbath, the menorahs that had been hidden away. Spanish Inquisition's role In some families, isolated rituals are all that remain of a once-vibrant religious tradition diluted by time and fears of persecution. Norbert Sanchez, 66, recalled the "service of lights" on Friday nights in his hometown of Jarales, N.M., where some families would dine by candlelight. "We always thought there was a Jewish background in our family, but we didn't know for sure," he said. "When I found out, it was like coming home for me." In 1492, Jews in Spain were given the choice of conversion to Catholicism or expulsion. Many fled, but others faked conversions while practicing their faith in secret. These crypto-Jews were hounded throughout the Spanish Inquisition. "In the 1530s and 1540s, you began to see converted Jews coming to Mexico City, where some converted back to Judaism," said Moshe Lazar, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Southern California and an expert on Sephardic Jews, or those from Spain and Portugal. "The women preserved their tradition. They taught their daughters the religion. People began rediscovering their Jewishness, but remained Catholics." But in 1571, the Inquisition came to Mexico. Authorities were given lists to help identify crypto-Jews, Lazar said. People who didn't eat pork, knelt imperfectly in church, rubbed water quickly off newly baptized babies or didn't work on Saturday were suspect. If arrested, they were sometimes burned at the stake. For the rest of the article: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=200211121 6&zsection_id=268448413&slug=heritage07&date=20041207 or http://shorl.com/dastegyrybreta