(Jewish Group) Meet Angelina Muiz Huberman, a Mexican writer whose novels explore Sephardic history

[Behind the Aegis]

Meet Angelina Muñiz Huberman, a Mexican writer whose novels explore Sephardic history and crypto-Judaism

MEXICO CITY (JTA) — When Angelina Muñiz Huberman was six years old, her mother shut the main door of their apartment in Mexico City and, whispering as if under persecution, told her that she descended from Jews.

“She told me that if I ever needed to get recognized by other fellow Jews,” Huberman said, “I should make the sign of the Kohanim” — a hand gesture representing an ancient priestly blessing, made famous in a different context by a certain “Star Trek” character.

That moment sparked a keen interest in her family’s Jewish heritage, which would set her on the path to becoming one of Mexico’s best-known novelists on Jewish themes and foremost scholars on Sephardim and Crypto-Judaism — people who were forced to renounce or hide their Jewishness in the face of the Spanish Inquisition.

Last month, Huberman, 84, was inducted into Mexico’s most prestigious literary body, the Mexican Academy of Language, which was established decades after Mexican independence to protect and promote Mexican intonations and uses of Spanish.

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1. Not only Spanish but Germans

My cousin, is studying our family history from the 1800s because my great grandfather came from Germany and traveled to New Mexico and they also changed their name. Because the community of people around is what started his search.