Dr. Ronnie Perelis Awarded NEH Grant for Translation of Luis de Carvajal Manuscript

Yeshiva Univetsity News 

Dr. Ronnie Perelis, Chief Rabbi Dr. Isaac Abraham and Jelena (Rachel) Alcalay Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies and director of the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs at Yeshiva University, received a $299,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to translate two early modern Jewish texts by Luis Carvajal and Yoseph Ha-Kohen. Dr. Perelis was awarded the grant with his collaborator, Dr. Flora Cassen, associate professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies and of History at Washington University. 

Drs. Perelis and Cassen will create a two-volume translation with the intent to bridge Jewish, colonial, Latin American and European studies.  Dr. Perelis will focus on the religious anthology of Joseph Lumbroso, a 16th-century Mexican Crypto-Jewish poet and religious thinker, otherwise known as Luis de Carvajal, the younger. The anthology is a spiritual diary that shows how a converso (someone forcibly converted to Christianity), reconstructed Jewish beliefs and traditions in Mexico. In 1596, Carvajal, his mother and sisters were killed for secretly practicing Judaism. The anthology was stored in the Mexican National Archive with other foundational texts of Mexican history and remained there until its mysterious theft in 1932. 

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