Albuquerque, founded by Spanish colonists in 1706, seems an unusual place for Jewish immigrants to settle. Yet long before New Mexico statehood in 1912, Jewish settlers had made their homes in the high desert town, located on the banks of the Rio Grande River. Initially, business opportunities lured German Jews to the Santa Fe Trail; during the expansive railroad days of the 1880s, Jewish citizens were poised to take on leadership roles in business, government, and community life. Henry Jaffa, a Jewish merchant and acquaintance of Wyatt Earp, served as Albuquerques first mayor. From launching businesses along Central Avenue, to establishing the Indian Trading Room at the famed Alvarado Hotel and founding trading posts, Route 66 tourist establishments, and the Sandia Tram, Jewish businesspeople partnered with their neighbors to boost Albuquerques already plentiful assets. Along the way, community members built Jewish organizationsa Bnai Brith chapter, Congregation Albert, and Congregation Bnai Israelthat made their mark upon the larger Albuquerque community.

Albuquerque, founded by Spanish colonists in 1706, seems an unusual place for Jewish immigrants to settle. Yet long before New Mexico statehood in 1912, Jewish settlers had made their homes in the high desert town, located on the banks of the Rio Grande River. Initially, business opportunities lured German Jews to the Santa Fe Trail; during the expansive railroad days of the 1880s, Jewish citizens were poised to take on leadership roles in business, government, and community life. Henry Jaffa, a Jewish merchant and acquaintance of Wyatt Earp, served as Albuquerque's first mayor. From launching businesses along Central Avenue, to establishing the Indian Trading Room at the famed Alvarado Hotel and founding trading posts, Route 66 tourist establishments, and the Sandia Tram, Jewish businesspeople partnered with their neighbors to boost Albuquerque's already plentiful assets. Along the way, community members built Jewish organizations--a B'nai B'rith chapter, Congregation Albert, and Congregation B'nai Israel--that made their mark upon the larger Albuquerque community.

Ch. I (pp. 7-21) traces the Jewish presence in the state of New Mexico to the Spanish period when the region was colonized, between 1598-1680. Persecuted by the Inquisition in colonial Mexico in the 1590s and 1640s, many Portuguese Conversos fled north to New Leon and New Mexico to seek refuge. States that, until recently, many New Mexican Hispanics have been unaware that they observe Jewish traditions. Some have complained of being called "killers of Christ". The present Jewish population is composed mainly of descendants of German Jews who emigrated after 1846-48. In New Mexico there were almost no manifestations of antisemitism, apart from sporadic attacks against Jews (e.g. in 1867) in the press, which showed that personal politics or Jewish economic prominence could elicit latent antisemitism. In 1982 a controversy broke out about the use of the swastika and Nazi-like uniforms in the State University's yearbook, and in 1967 Reies Tijerina, a Christian fundamentalist, accused Jews of having stripped the Hispanics of their ancestral lands.

In 1981, while working as New Mexico State Historian, Stanley M. Hordes began to hear stories of Hispanos who lit candles on Friday night and abstained from eating pork. Puzzling over the matter, Hordes realized that these practices might very well have been passed down through the centuries from early crypto-Jewish settlers in New Spain. After extensive research and hundreds of interviews, Hordes concluded that there was, in New Mexico and the Southwest, a Sephardic legacy derived from the converso community of Spanish Jews. In To the End of the Earth, Hordes explores the remarkable story of crypto-Jews and the tenuous preservation of Jewish rituals and traditions in Mexico and New Mexico over the past five hundred years. He follows the crypto-Jews from their Jewish origins in medieval Spain and Portugal to their efforts to escape persecution by migrating to the New World and settling in the far reaches of the northern Mexican frontier. Drawing on individual biographies (including those of colonial officials accused of secretly practicing Judaism), family histories, Inquisition records, letters, and other primary sources, Hordes provides a richly detailed account of the economic, social and religious lives of crypto-Jews during the colonial period and after the annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1846. While the American government offered more religious freedom than had the Spanish colonial rulers, cultural assimilation into Anglo-American society weakened many elements of the crypto-Jewish tradition. Hordes concludes with a discussion of the reemergence of crypto-Jewish culture and the reclamation of Jewish ancestry within the Hispano community in the late twentieth century. He examines the publicity surrounding the rediscovery of the crypto-Jewish community and explores the challenges inherent in a study that attempts to reconstruct the history of a people who tried to leave no documentary record.

Tobias explores the cultural and political influence of the New Mexico Jewish community since the Second World War.