Are Tamales Kosher for Passover?

I am currently in the process of converting from Catholicism to Judaism, and this is the first Passover where I am attempting to refrain from eating chametz — leavened bread and the five forbidden grains of wheat, rye, barley, oats and spelt. Strictly observant Jews will buy special other special food items for the week: vinegar, yogurt, ketchup, cake mix. But I’m going to start small and modest. If I can go a week without chametz, I’ll consider that a win.

I’m also Mexican American, and in an effort to impart my heritage onto my children, I cook a lot of traditional Mexican foods. This in and of itself is a fraught undertaking. I am half-Mexican, and a part of me always feels a little bit like a fraud, like someone putting on airs, like someone trying to prove a point. I make mole from scratch. I make chicken tamales using the recipe my aunt got from my abuelita before she passed. I cook elaborate dinners for friends with tamarind agua fresca and fresh cotija cheese that I drove across town to buy. Converting to Judaism feels a little like taking yet another step away from my Mexican-ness, leaving half of my blood thousands of miles away in Tamaulipas, especially as much of Mexican culture is deeply entwined with Catholicism. I worry, Can these two parts of me coexist?

I did a deep dive into my family’s ancestry a few years ago, as part of some research I was doing for my second novel. My Scandinavian mother’s side was a dead end, but my Mexican father’s side, to my great surprise, unspooled back for centuries across Mexico, Spain and beyond. I discovered that those Spanish and Mexican ancestors were actually Jews who’d fled Spain during the Inquisition, only to find themselves once again under the fire of the Catholic Church in Mexico. One ancestor was even written up by a parish priest for riding a horse while wearing silk and jewels, privileges apparently not accorded to those whose families had converted under fear of death.

It turns out that many Jews settled in what are now the Mexican states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas. Unwanted in Spain, they traveled to these dangerous and remote areas, where their influence is still felt in a regional affinity for cabrito, or kid goat, and buñuelos, which began as a Sephardic treat for Hanukkah. When I told my elderly and devoutly Catholic aunt that our Spanish ancestors were persecuted Jews, she laughed a little — and then told me I must be mistaken.

I only decided to convert last fall, although I’ve been living as a common-law Jew for many years. My husband is Jewish and so are my children. I light the candles every Friday night. I fast on Yom Kippur. I know most of the words to Ma’oz Tzur. People have asked me why now, why Judaism? I give some vague answer about how I have spiritual questions and no answers, and how I’m hoping to gain answers, or at least learn the language to ask better questions. But the actual reason I’m converting is much more complicated and mysterious, even to me.

My decision to convert didn’t come all at once. I’ve had five years to absorb the realization about my ancestors, and over time it’s colored my understanding of my family and my heritage, and given a personal shine to the bitter legacies of anti-Semitism and the colonization of Latin America. Perhaps over these past five years my path to Judaism has been quietly growing in whispers and echoes, the ghosts of my predecessors murmuring blessings in Hebrew over me while I sleep. When I spoke to my rabbi last fall — when I was still just asking the question, What if I did this? — I asked him what would happen to my soul in the process.

Perhaps over these past five years my path to Judaism has been quietly growing in whispers and echoes.

“We would say that your soul has always been Jewish,” he said. “We believe that converts have always been Jewish, and that their souls are only now finding their way back.” It’s a beautiful thought, and given my family’s history, it’s one that I find compelling.

As I embark on my first Passover as someone on the cusp of conversion, someone whose soul is slowly finding its way back, I get to decide for myself what my new life as a Mexican-Jewish woman will look like. And I get to decide which laws of kashrut I will follow. I want to know: Are tamales kosher for Passover? What about hominy-laden pozole? And can you make charoset from tamarind paste? The Sephardic tradition says that I must abstain from leavened bread, but that I can eat rice, beans, corn and chickpeas. The Ashkenazic tradition… not so much. Are tamales kosher for Passover? Eh, as I understand, it depends on who you ask. For this year, my first time around, reaching my fingers towards the rest of my life where my Mexican and Jewish lives will lie side by side, I’ll say, Sure.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James’s debut novel, “Mona at Sea,” comes out June 30, 2021.