University of California Press Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging

How are local understandings of identity, relatedness, and belonging transformed in a global era? How does international tourism affect possibilities for who one can become?   In urban Portugal today, hundreds of individuals trace their ancestry to 15th century Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism, and many now seek to rejoin the Jewish people as a whole. For the most part, however, these self-titled Marranos (“hidden Jews”) lack any direct experience of Jews or Judaism, and Portugal's tiny, tightly knit Jewish community offers no clear path of entry. According to Jewish law, to be recognized as a Jew one must be born to a Jewish mother or pursue religious conversion, an anathema to those who feel their ancestors' Judaism was cruelly stolen from them. After centuries of familial Catholicism, and having been refused inclusion locally, how will these self-declared ancestral Jews find belonging among “the Jewish family,” writ large? How, that is, can people rejected as strangers face-to-face become members of a global imagined community - not only rhetorically, but experientially?   Leite addresses this question through intimate portraits of the lives and experiences of a network of urban Marranos who sought contact with foreign Jewish tourists and outreach workers as a means of gaining educational and moral support in their quest. Exploring mutual imaginings and direct encounters between Marranos, Portuguese Jews, and foreign Jewish visitors,  Unorthodox Kin deftly tracks how visions of self and kin evolve over time and across social spaces, ending in an unexpected path to belonging. In the process, the analysis weaves together a diverse set of current anthropological themes, from intersubjectivity to international tourism, class structures to the construction of identity, cultural logics of relatedness to transcultural communication.    A compelling evocation of how ideas of ancestry shape the present, how feelings of kinship arise among far-flung strangers, and how some find mystical connection in a world said to be disenchanted,  Unorthodox Kin will appeal to a wide audience interested in anthropology, sociology, Jewish studies, and religious studies. Its accessible, narrative-driven style makes it especially well suited for introductory and advanced courses in general cultural anthropology, ethnography, theories of identity and social categorization, and the study of globalization, kinship, tourism, and religion.     Review "Unorthodox kin is at once the story of specific people and a community, of the history of a people and a country, and of the intricacies of recovering, acknowledging, and re-creating individual and group identity. Simultaneously, it is a story of spiritual life and daily practicalities, of intimacy and acknowledged tourism, a personal narrative and a finely tuned anthropological study."-- "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute" "An incredibly thoughtful piece of scholarship innovatively charting new pathways for tourism scholarship and raising important questions about the meaning of belonging in our globalized world."-- "EuropeNow" (6/4/2018 12:00:00 AM) "Like any indispensable ethnography, the book exceeds the specific topic, time, and geography of its long-term field research to address broader, all-important questions of social categorization, belonging, affinity, self, and identity... A valuable resource for students of anthropology, sociology, and religious studies.... Summing Up: Highly recommended."-- "CHOICE" From the Inside Flap "This book is a gem. Just as Malinowski produced ethnography of a single group that nevertheless spoke to universal problems of human existence, so too Leite&;s book speaks to profound contemporary problems of group identity, of how peoples with different interests conceive of others and themselves, and how they interact. Unorthodox Kin is written f