"And the Lord your G-d will bring back your captivity and have compassion upon you. He will return and gather you (from among the nations)..." - Deuteronomy 30: 3 -5
"And it shall come to pass on that day, that...you shall be gathered one by one, O children of Israel." - Isaiah 27:12
One of the promises of the final Redemption is the ingathering of the exiles, when the Jewish people will be gathered one by one from the four corners of the world...
THE WASHINGTON POST
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The congregation in Bello gathers round the synagogue’s Torah, a
120-year-old scroll written in Amsterdam and obtained by the community five
years ago. A kosher bakery has also opened in the town, and kosher meat arrives
from a butcher in the capital, Bogota. There is a Hebrew preschool, which operates
every afternoon. Paul Smith / For The Washington Post
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“It was like our souls had memory...It awakened in us a desire to learn more — who were we? Where were we from? - Juan Carlos Villegas, Bello community leader
By Juan Forero,November 24, 2012
BELLO, Colombia — They were committed evangelicals, devoted to Jesus Christ.
But what some here called a spark, an inescapable
pull of their ancestors, led them in a different direction, to Judaism. There
were the grandparents who wouldn’t eat pork, the fragments of a Jewish tongue
from medieval Spain that spiced up the language, and puzzling family rituals
such as the lighting of candles on Friday nights.
So, after a spiritual journey that began a decade
ago, dozens of families that had once belonged to a fire-and-brimstone church
became Jews, converting with the help of rabbis from Miami and Jerusalem.
Though unusual in one of the most Catholic of nations, the small community in
Bello joined a worldwide movement in which the descendants of Jews forced from
Spain more than 500 years ago are discovering and embracing their Jewish
heritage.
They have emerged in places as divergent as the American Southwest, Brazil and even
India. In these mostly remote outposts, the so-called Anusim or Marranos, Jews
from Spain who fled the Inquisition and converted to
Christianity, had found refuge.
“There’s a real awakening that’s taking place,”
said Michael Freund, who directs Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based group that
helps new Jewish communities such as Bello’s. “The Jewish spark was never
quenched, and these Anusim are really fulfilling the dreams of their ancestors
in that they are taking back the Jewish identity that was so brutally stolen
from their forefathers.”
This northwest state of Antioquia, with its high
purple mountains, picturesque pueblos and fervent, almost mystical Catholicism,
is surely one of the most unusual corners of the world for such Jewish
stirrings.
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| Bello, Colombia |
For the families of Bello, the journey to Judaism
began after the minister of a 3,000-member evangelical church, the Center for
Integral Family Therapy, visited Israel in 1998 and 2003 and began to feel the
pull of Judaism.
Juan Carlos Villegas, who has taken on the Hebrew
name Elad, then told his flock that he planned to convert. Dozens joined him.
“These people had the capacity to say, yes, I’m
open to finding the roots of my family,” said Villegas, 36, speaking in the
community’s synagogue, a white-washed, two-story building on a street of
rowhouses.
Villegas and the others said they felt history
coursing through their veins as they explored the past and put together pieces
of a puzzle that pointed to a Jewish ancestry.
“It was like our souls had memory,” he said. “It
awakened in us a desire to learn more — who were we? Where were we from? Where
are the roots of our families?”
Historical record
With a void in the historical record, it’s hard
to say for sure how the past unfolded for the converted Jews who arrived here
centuries ago, establishing themselves as merchants and traders. But there is
evidence that they played an important role in the founding of towns here and
that their numbers were significant, which is largely unknown to most
Colombians.
At the University of Antioquia, geneticist
Gabriel Bedoya and his team of scientists found in a 2000 study that 14 percent
of the men in Antioquia are genetically related to the Kohanim, a priestly Jewish
cast that is traced back three millennia to Moses’s brother, Aaron.
But Bedoya wants to conduct a more extensive
study, he said, explaining that there is likely to be more genetic evidence to
show that an even larger percentage of residents have Jewish ancestry.
There is other evidence of a Jewish past here,
including documentation compiled by historians and the homespun stories passed
down from generation to generation.
Seeking discretion in forbidding mountains, the
converted Jewish families here adopted surnames, many of them from the heavily
Catholic Basque country of Spain, said Enrique Serrano, a professor at Bogota’s
Rosario University who has studied colonial-era Spanish records. Names such as
Uribe and Echeverry, Botero and Restrepo, were “bought,” Serrano said, along
with certificates that instantly gave the converts a Catholic family history.
They also took on a form of Catholicism that was
greatly ostentatious, he said, with each family in each town ensuring that at
least one son became a priest.
Clues in customs
Still, families couldn’t fully let go of the
past, said Memo Anjel, a professor at the Pontifical Bolivarian University in
Medellin. He said Antioquia, more than other regions, is filled with towns with
biblical names or those that come from the Holy Land, such as Belen and Jerico.
Anjel said there is also a proliferation of given names that are unusual in
other parts of Colombia.
“They are people who call themselves Catholic but
have names like Isaac, Ruben, Moises, Israel, Gabriel,” Anjel said. “And then
there are also the women’s names — Ruth, Lia, Clara, Martha, Rebecca.”
There are also tantalizing clues in the customs
found in the countryside.
The light ponchos worn by farmers, which feature
four untied corners that appear like tassels, are nearly indistinguishable from
the prayer shawls worn by observant Jewish men.
Some of the haciendas feature conspicuous baths in patios, which scholars say
may have first been designed as mikvahs for ritual cleansings.
The residents of old homes have also discovered
mezuzas. These are tiny scrolls inscribed with verses, which are put in cases
that are attached to doorways, as is common in the homes of Jews the world
over.
The converts here in Bello also speak of the
unassuming rituals of older family members that they now believe demonstrate a
Jewish heritage.
Before I converted, when I began to study Judaism
and Jewish traditions, I began to notice those things in my family,” said Ezra
Rodriguez, 33, as his son, Yoetzel, 4, scampered about an apartment decorated
with pictures of Orthodox Jews praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
His grandfather always covered his head, even in
church, saying that not doing so showed disrespect. Rodriguez also said his
grandparents wore their finest clothing on Saturday, not Sunday.
And he recalled how as a boy he’d laugh at his
grandfather’s given name — Luis Maria, which honors the Virgin Mary.
“He would come in close and say in a whisper, ‘We
had to give ourselves such names,’ ” Rodriguez recounted.
Despite the belief that they have Jewish roots,
the Bello community had to formally convert, with a rabbi from Miami, Moshe Ohana,
arriving to officiate. The men underwent ritual circumcision, and the whole
community began a long process of intense instruction.
The group now has a 120-year-old Torah, which
Villegas said was written in Amsterdam. A kosher bakery opened, and kosher meat
arrives from a butcher in the capital, Bogota. There is a Hebrew preschool,
which operates every afternoon.
And the synagogue, which segregates men from
women as is common for Orthodox Jews, is filled daily with the sounds of Hebrew
songs and prayers.
“It’s about showing dedication, lots of
dedication, to study the prayers, learn to read Hebrew,¨said Meyer Sanchez, 37.
“You have to sacrifice other things, like time with your wife, time with your
family, and other things you may like, video games and music.”
Among the most fervent leaders in the community
is Shlomo Cano, 34, a supervisor in a motorcycle assembly plant.
Cano, whose name had been Rene, said his
metamorphosis began little by little. A musician, he began to play Jewish music
when his band had been invited to play for Medellin’s established Jewish
community. He also went to Israel.
He has since delved into the Talmud and is fast
expanding his Hebrew vocabulary to recite Hebrew prayers and sing Hebrew songs.
Cano keeps kosher — he and his wife, Galit, run
the community’s kosher bakery — and his family prays daily at the synagogue.
“You’re Jewish because you want to be Jewish,
because you feel it, because you love it,” he said. “Now I can’t live without
it.”
