Ocasio Cortez Jewish Heritage

Democratic congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has claimed that she is descended from Sephardic Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism.

Ocasio-Cortez, who was elected last month to the US House of Representatives for New York State’s 14th congressional district, told supporters at a Hannukah party organized by the left-wing Jews for Racial and Economic Justice that she has Jewish heritage.

“A very, very long time ago – generations and generations ago – my family consisted of Sephardic Jews,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

And while Ocasio-Cortez may not have attempted to affiliate, her desire to proclaim her heritage may also mirror a larger phenomenon inside the Jewish community—the phenomenon of individuals whose Jewishness was little more than ascription who, today, explore new ways of affiliation, even if not in any religious context—an event called “disassimiliation” by sociologists. Ocasio-Cortez, who has identified as Catholic, hardly claimed to be a practicing Jew. Her understanding of her ancestry came from ‘‘doing a lot of family trees in the last couple of years,’’ she. Ocasio-Cortez reveals Jewish heritage for Hanukkah. Longview ISD middle school students write original cookbook, proceeds benefit East Texas Food Bank. Ocasio-Cortez reveals Jewish heritage for Hanukkah. Mercer Debate team wins prestigious tournament for the first time in program history.

“The story goes, during the Spanish Inquisition, so many people were forced to convert on the exterior to Catholicism, but on the interior continued to practice their faith and continued to be who they were, even though they were pressured to not be that on the outside world.”

Her family later fled to Puerto Rico to escape persecution, Ocasio-Cortez said.

Following the expulsion of non-Christians from Spain in 1492, thousands of Sephardic Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism. Many continued to practice Judaism in secret even after ostensibly converting to Catholicism.

Many of these secret Jews, dubbed the “Anusim” (‘Coerced Ones’), emigrated to the Western Hemisphere, settling in colonies across what would become Latin America.

According to Reconectar, an NGO which helps descendants of Anusim reconnect with their Jewish heritage, there are at least 14 to 15 million self-identified ‘Bnei Anusim’ (descendants of Anusim), with as many as 100 million descendants worldwide of Iberian Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism.

“Given the birthrate over the years, studies have estimated the number of descendants of these Jews at anywhere from 100 million to 150 million and even some who claim there are as many as 200 million around the world descended from Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” Reconectar President Ashley Perry told Arutz Sheva.

According to the Beit Hatfutsot (Diaspora Museum) in Tel Aviv, Cortez, Ocasio-Cortez’s mother’s maiden name, was a Jewish family name.

Last month, Ocasio-Cortez drew criticism after she compared Jewish Holocaust refugees to members of the so-called ‘migrant caravan’ from Central America seeking to enter the United States.

“Asking to be considered a refugee & applying for status isn’t a crime,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez.

“It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany. It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rwanda.
It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America.”

(December 11, 2018 / JNS) At a time when DNA tests are a national craze, as well as source of political controversy, we shouldn’t be surprised about claims of Jewish identity from anyone. But when they come from someone as controversial as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the expressions of joy and dismay about her possible connection to the tribe were predictably partisan and downright foolish.

The incoming member of Congress from Queens, N.Y., made headlines when she told those in attendance at a synagogue Hanukkah party in her district over the weekend that “a very, very long time ago, generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardic Jews.”

As she explained, the people of her native Puerto Rico are descendants of many different strains of immigrants, including those Jews who fled Spain in the 15th century. Within her family’s collective memory is some sense of having been descended at least partly from such Jews.

Those who already liked the young Democratic Socialist, who has become the rock star of her party, were thrilled that she could be claimed as part of the family. On the other hand, Jews who dislike her leftist politics were disgusted. It was a rerun of what happened when House Speaker Paul Ryan found out that his DNA was 3 percent Ashkenazi Jewish during historian Henry Louis Gates’s “Finding Your Roots” PBS TV program. Liberal Jews responded to that item with nasty partisan abuse, as well as declarations that he wasn’t wanted. Ocasio-Cortez’s detractors were quick to use the same sort of invective.

But those who accused her of attempting to steal Jewish identity weren’t being fair. This is unlike the antics of fellow Democrat Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who attempted to back up her claims of Native American identity with a DNA test that showed that, at best, she was 1/64th descended from either the Cherokee or Delaware tribes. Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t pretending to be Jewish or trying to show that DNA was identity, let alone to justify using it for personal advancement as the senator allegedly did when she claimed to be the first “woman of color” to be named a professor at Harvard Law School.

Attacks on her for mentioning her Catholic family’s memories of their partial Jewish past were inappropriate. We know that 20 centuries of post-exile persecution has resulted in many branches falling away from the Jewish ancestral tree, so her story is hardly uncommon. It is also a heartening sign of the times that prominent non-Jews are proud about their Jewish roots, rather than—as would have been the case in the not-so-distant past—feel shame about it.

The tenuous connections between her family, or that of Ryan and any long-lost Jewish ancestors, are merely intellectual curiosities. Still, two aspects of the issue are worth some comment.

One is the danger that someone with some claims to Jewish identity will use it selectively in order to justify taking a stand against Israel. Over the decades, we’ve seen that happen with a number of writers or politicians who have few ties to their Jewish heritage, yet trot it out as a credential that enables them to express anger, embarrassment or outrage about the conflict in the Middle East. The “not in my name” meme in which Jews who know next to nothing about Israel and its geopolitical dilemmas seek to disassociate themselves from Israelis fighting for their lives is despicable. If Ocasio-Cortez were ever to use such a rhetorical device to justify siding with her close allies—incoming House Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib—who are supporters of the anti-Semitic BDS movement that seeks Israel’s destruction, that would be outrageous.

Yet there’s another more serious argument to be addressed. It’s the theme sounded in the Forward after the latest Ocasio-Cortez story broke—that the Socialist politician is actually more authentically Jewish because of her politics than conservative or Zionist Jews.

Part of this mindset is the notion that modern American political liberalism and Judaism are interchangeable. It’s more than just an old joke to say that many American Jews conceive of their faith as more or less the Democratic Party platform with holidays thrown in. While it’s an insult to Judaism to conceive of it as nothing more than an elaborate theological justification for partisan politics, it’s also true that many American Jews see their faith as determining their votes. In that sense, there are Jews who see American Jewish conservatives or supporters of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as representing a point of view that is alien to their conception of what it means to be Jewish.

More troubling is the idea that a loose sense of identity in which a multicultural frame of reference about the world—as opposed to a strictly Jewish one—is more representative of the way young Jews think today. Given the demographic implosion of non-Orthodox Jews in the United States, it is hardly surprising that some Jews think this way, but the consequences in terms of a decline in a sense of Jewish peoplehood are obvious and serious. If we begin to worship inclusion and diversity to the point where Jewish parochialism and nationalism, even in its most benign forms, are rejected as illiberal, then we will be part of a community that stands for nothing and is incapable of sustaining itself.

The real tragedy is that too many young Jews see Jewish observance or Zionism as antithetical to their progressive political views. If we get to the point where Ocasio-Cortez’s sensibilities about Israel or those of others on the left who might falsely regard Zionism as a form of racism because it contradicts their intersectional beliefs are accepted as legitimate Jewish perspectives, that will be a disaster. If such views are seen as more authentically Jewish than that of a typical Israeli or an affiliated Jew, then we will have arrived at a point where Jewish identity in this country for all too many of us will be nothing more than a meaningless percentage on a DNA test.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS — Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.

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