![]() If people noticed that their neighbors or friends placed clean linen on their tables on Fridays, soaked meat in water to remove the blood, or fasted on the Fast of Queen Esther, they were to expose the heretics at once. Once the authorities caught wind of this, Jacobs narrates, they drafted the Edicts of Grace (Edictos de gracia), documents that listed a wide array of “Judaizing” activities that citizens were expected to report to combat heresy. Although many conversos converted in the eyes of the church, they continued practicing their faith in hidden ways, such as making “fake” sausage out of chicken to avoid suspicion and clandestinely praying over Shabbat candles in closets. A Crypto-Jew was any European Jew forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition. I recalled a book I read in March: “ Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews” by Janet L. Then it clicked: as a Sephardic Jew whose ancestors were kicked out of Spain, this felt all too similar to a period of our history I usually prefer not to think about. It felt like a raid, like they had been tipped off that I was hiding contraband in my room. I knew the RA was just doing her job, but she threw herself into my room like a bloodhound with heat vision - as if she already knew what she was looking for. In the wake of what happened, I began to wonder why I felt so terrorized. My room suddenly felt barren and the walls seemed grayer than before. They stand symmetrically in my arched window, and even on days when I don’t light them, they illuminate the room in anticipation of the coming Friday. I would never have expected myself to get so emotional over my candles, but only once they were sequestered did I realize that they’re the central balance point of my living space. The stream of tears continued as I wrote. ![]() “And while I don’t expect fire codes to accommodate that, I can’t do without them.” “Lighting candles is the most important part of Sabbath,” I wrote to the resident supervisor. Number two, I’m not going to use electric candles, because, well, it just doesn’t do it for me. I anticipated this rigidity from the start: Number one, I wrote, I’m not going to pray outside, because Shabbat is to be practiced inside the home. The college suggested that I spray vinegar and orange oil around my room (because that would make for a lovely smell, of course.) From this previous experience I recalled that they’d sooner opt for a quick fix, usually a burden that the student bears, than take action themselves. During my freshman year, my room became infested with termites. This wasn’t my first clash with residence authority. Even in my condition, I still managed to spring into emergency email mode and compose my grievance. The candles disappeared with her and, almost as a physical reflex, I began to sob. She told me I could take it up with her supervisor, and that was the end of it. She wouldn’t seriously kidnap my candles on Erev Shabbat, would she? I snapped into defense mode at once and asked for a religious exemption. I looked at her, puzzled, and even almost laughed before I remembered that my college forbids them open flames are a fire hazard. ![]() Different shades of pink, one stubbier than the other, resting in my beautifully hand-painted wooden candlesticks. “I’m going to have to take these,” one of them said, holding my Shabbat candles in her hands. I was relaxed, even browsing my phone as they did it- I believed my place was clean, but I was wrong. ![]() My RAs stormed in, peering in my fridge and around my room for anything the college deems questionable.
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