The following article studies the beginnings of the cultural change that occurred in the Coro´s Sephardic community based on three events: the baptism of Isaac Curiel Suares and the baptisms of the first cousins Jacob Curiel Levy Maduro — Isaac’s nephew — and Samuel Levy Maduro Abenatar; all from the same large family group and — in our opinion — in connection with the anti-Jewish events of 1855. Located in primary sources, these baptisms are the first three markers that express the lack of cohesion and a structural weakness in the small community, which never managed to have a synagogue or a rabbi. On the basis of sociologist Erving Goffman’s concepts, the analysis starts from an anthropological and historical perspective, to interpret the actions of those men in the provincial environment where they chose to live. It is concluded that, isolated from their home community, these solitary individuals, more than defying other individuals, confronted a group: the Venezuelan, where the religious Catholic Faith prevailed. The offer of a new interpretation of the infinite, of new ways of seeking the absolute, of a new rituality to approach God, culminated in a difference that turned the differences into similarities from the conversion, and with it, the assumption of new personal and social identities. The ethical plane of the Catholic world ended up being more attractive, more coercive and more convenient than their own.
de Lima Urdaneta, B. I. (2023). Cultural change and first conversions in Coro, Venezuela: 1855. Cuadernos Judaicos, (41), pp. 93–109. https://doi.org/10.5354/0718-8749.2023.73260
