Santa Fe's Jewish Roots
Over the last four centuries, many different groups – whether defined as ethnic, national, religious, tribal or other labels – have contributed to making Santa Fe a unique and diverse place. Two of those groups had Jewish roots: Sephardic Jews (originally from Spain) in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Ashkenazic Jews (originally from Germany and Eastern Europe) in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The results of my research are available in a history walking tour of Santa Fe's Jewish Roots, offered by the non-profit New Mexico Friends of History. Walk by and through major buildings, mansions, and historic sites on a photogenic one-and-a-quarter-mile route. Learn about notable individuals who tried making new lives in the New World, and how they, in turn, helped shape that world.
In-person Lecture: SANTA FE’S JEWISH ROOTS
December 2, 2026 @ 1:00 PM
Also available on-line
Context: Diversity and Diaspora
Diversity helped create Santa Fe, helped make it distinct and helps it be strong and resilient today. Some of us were taught that diversity is a melting pot, with each identity melted down to some grey, undifferentiated gelatinous mass. That’s not diversity, certainly not here.
Here, diversity is a tapestry. A tapestry is made of many threads of different colors. But that alone doesn’t make a tapestry; if all the threads go the same direction, you don’t have a tapestry, you have a pile of threads on the floor. In a tapestry, those threads run in different directions, crossing over and under and around each other. That’s what creates a strong, beautiful tapestry.
Some of those threads contributing to Santa Fe's diversity ended up here because of diasporas.
Three Diasporas, Three Threads
People from these Sephardic roots came with the Spanish, and included Jewish converts to Catholicism, called conversos; a subset of conversos who were preserving some form of their Judaism, called crypto-Jews; and descendants of conversos who were hiding or even unaware of their roots. Those who were aware of those roots often remained covert and came searching for a place to survive.
The Ashkenazic Jews came from Germany and Poland 200 years later with the United States’ occupation of New Mexico. They were openly Jewish and searching primarily for new opportunities and freedom from oppression, still open to returning home or moving on. These poor, young immigrants built commercial empires that helped create the modern Santa Fe.
A new wave of Jewish merchants arrived, beginning in the early 1880s but becoming more significant after the turn of the century and Statehood in 1912. This wave included both German Jews who had been in the US quite a while including some US-born children of immigrants; and immigrants from eastern Europe, especially Russian-controlled areas of Poland and Lithuania (a separate diaspora started after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II). These merchants and their families formed the core of present-day Santa Fe's Jewish community, including founding Santa Fe's first (and still largest) Jewish congregation, now known as Temple Beth Shalom.
Want to know more?
Key books:
- Herz, Cary. New Mexico’s Crypto-Jews: Image and Memory. University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
- Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth: A history of the crypto-jews of New Mexico. Columbia University Press, 2005.
- Horgan, Paul. Lamy of Santa Fe. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.
- Jaehn, Tomas. Jewish Pioneers of New Mexico. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2003.
- Levine, Frances. Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition. University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.
- Martinez-Davila, Roger; L. Josef Diaz; and Ron D. Hart. Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, the Inquisition and New World Identities. University of New Mexico Press, 2016.
- Pugach, Noel H. and Melzer, Richard, ed. Pioneer Jewish Families in New Mexico. New Mexico Jewish Historical Society, 2018.
- Rabin, Shari. Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America. New York University Press, 2017.
- Tobias, Henry J. A History of the Jews in New Mexico. University of New Mexico Press, 1990.
Some of these books can be found at on-line or in person at the great Museum of New Mexico Foundation shops.
Wonderful resources can be found through the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society, including some of these books and great videos. NMJHS has been a valuable resource in this research.
Learn about New Mexico history, including the Jewish roots, with a visit to the New Mexico History Museum.
The New Mexico History Museum has provided invaluable support for this research, including the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA) including use of the photos, above; and the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library.
Contact me: nadlerhistory@gmail.com