PARIS-Sometimes there are family treasures that unlock the dramas of generations, revealing stories far larger than ever imagined.
I am looking for such a prize, the missing bronze menorah that my great aunt Luz stored in a commode in the cramped bedroom of her garden apartment in San Jose, Costa Rica. I picture it as an ancient object, gold and flecked green, touched by many hands. Maybe its markings offer clues to the secret lives of the Carvajals, my Catholic family. They hid their identity as Sephardic Jews who left Spain during the Inquisition.
I want to know what the relationship is between this object and generations of my family. I can picture the room where it once lived, remember the volume of the tiny space, the light from the window. I wonder what it witnessed?
Perhaps others have felt the same way about personal treasures . In the end, I would like to know if such discoveries resolve family mysteries. I think of an article I wrote earlier this year about the descendants of victims on the Titanic who cherish a gold watch engraved with the name of Mary Mangan and the hands frozen forever at 2:20 am when the ship went down in the frigid waters in 1912.
My own quest is based in part on the Spanish government's announcement last month of new immigration reform. Five hundred and twenty years after the start of the Inquisition, Spain offered an invitation to descendants of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors fled the Iberian Peninsula, forced to choose between exile or conversion to Christianity to live in Spain or its colonies. The process, as it turns out, may be more complicated than it seems si nce descendants must be able to offer proof of existing ties to a Jewish community that can be certified by a Jewish organization in Madrid.
To gain this certification descendants must also offer other proof such as genealogical evidence dating back generations to Spain, traditional Sephardic family names, information about customs such as speaking Ladino. I had already gathered much of the information while writing a book about my family's concealed legacy. But the menorah still eludes me.
“She never gave me any clear explanation of what it signified and I don't know what happened to it,†Javier, the grandson of Aunt Luz, wrote to me last year in an email from Costa Rica. He recalled that she did tell him about how we were descended from Sephardic Jews through my great-grandfather, Alberto Carvajal, and also through the family of his wife, Albertina Peres.
He suggested contacting another cousin, Mario, which I did when Spain offered its invitation fo r citizenship. Mario promised to email photos and quickly made phone calls to other Central American relatives.
But no one remembered the menorah. And they advised turning back to the first cousin who had told me about it in the first place. “I'll keep you informed,'' Mario wrote to me when he couldn't turn up anything. “It seems that there's now another mystery in the Sephardic origins of the Carvajals.â€
The writer is seeking a family treasure, a bronze menorah, that she hopes will unlock the drama of generations. Can discovering or retrieving such an object resolve family mysteries? Tell us your stories. Has your family lost, and then found, a treasured object?
