Secret Synagogues



Among the diaspora of Southern Louisians is a new coon-ass friend who is also of Hebrew ancestory and, therefore, part of a much older dispersal.

At first Dave's newly-arrived in Southern Louisiana, German-Jewish ancestors, would insist that the Catholics they engaged in marriage convert to Judaism. But eventually the Christians could insist that the Jews convert.

Dave grew up Christian (Catholic/Baptist). (But there are members of his large, extended family who are Orthodox Jews.) When he visited Europe, Dave was intrigued by an ornately beautiful, private, clandestine, Catholic Chapel he saw in Amsterdam, Holland.

It was the Catholic's inquisition that had given rise to the private, secret synagogues in Europe and the Americas. Jews were given the choice of converting to Catholicism–or becoming the burning man–being burnt alive.

Of course the sincerity of their conversions was always suspect. Over 90 percent of the people murdered by the Inquisition were accused of being Judaisers - secret Jews just pretending to be Catholics. The most damning thing that could be presented to the Inquisition was evidence of a concealed, secret synagogue in the accused's home.

Holland rid itself of the tyranny of Catholicism and the Inquisition and briefly replaced it with the tyranny of Protestant Orthodoxies. That is why there were clandestine, Catholic chapels in Amsterdam.

The business-as-usual (b-a-u) of all religious orthodoxy, the b-a-u of our time is no different. We also live in a time of inquisition.

Many in Europe and the Americas have private, clandestine, sacred spaces–where they grow medicinal, shamanistic plants.

They are persecuted, their property confiscated, their lives destroyed by the new inquisition. Those who have these spaces are at the mercy of those who hold personal, psychotic resentments against them (just as it was for Judaisers during the Spanish Inquisition). Those who inform on their estranged friends, lovers, receive blood money bounties–and in most parts of this country those accused of having secret synagogues are convicted and deprived of their liberty by juries of their peers.

It is easy to condemn the inquisitions of the past.

It is the time to see, to resist, to overthrow the Inquisition of the present - and to not replace it with another.