The Mezuzah in the Madonna’s Foot by Trudi Alexy

While this is not a book club blog, I just had to let you readers know that there is a book out there by the above title disclosing riveting stories of very, very “secret Jews.” In many cases, they were known to each other only by false, misleading, or confusing names, such as the ‘titular talisman’ or by specific clues, like including a Jewish object like a mezuzah in a painting of a Madonna.

The descendants of these secret Jews, the Marranos, are still with us today. These are harrowing firsthand stories of survivors and their rescuers which vividly reveal the secret history of the Jews who found asylum from Hitler’s Final Solution under Franco’s Fascist Regime.

There are times when there is more to something than meets the eye, but there was a time in history when a mezuzah was not meant to be seen by one.