The whole world is keeping Shabbat together. Will you join in this great event and bring joy to the heart of Hashem as all His children around the world celebrate this day that Hashem has made for rest, but not a rest that can be explained or spoken about but a day that can only be experienced. Come join us. The Shabbat Project Amarillo, Texas Esnoga Bet Hashoavah. 806-670-7136. Gavriel ben David
Category Archives: Returning Israel
Revolutionary Ruling Permits Genetic Testing of Halachic Jewish Status
The Eretz Hemdah Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies in Jerusalem has recently published a collection of responsa (Bemareh Habazak pt. 9), which rule, among other things, that it is possible to determine the Jewish status of a man or a woman based on a unique genetic test, makor Rishon reported Friday. Should this ruling be embraced by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, it would provide many olim from the former Soviet Union a valid means to prove their Jewish ancestry.
“Testing the Mitochondrial genome, which is transmitted exclusively through the female germ line, makes it possible to identify relatives,” Rabbi Yosef Carmel, the Rabbinical Dean of the Eretz Hemdah, told Makor Rishon. “If it can be proven that a Jane Doe is the offspring of a Jewish mother, her own offspring would also be recognized as Jews (from birth).”
According to Rabbi Carmel, “some 40% of European Ashkenazi Jews carry a genetic mark that suggests they are the offspring of four mothers who immigrated to Europe from the Middle East a millennia ago. Chances are high, statistically speaking, that anyone able to prove that they are the offspring of those four mothers is Jewish according to halacha.”
Rabbi Carmel explained that for the purpose of validating an individual’s Jewish heritage a statistical probability is sufficient, rather than a “clear sign.” In his view, once one has been identified as Jewish with this method, they are no longer required to go through a conversion process to become Jewish.
The ruling could resolve hundreds of thousands of pending cases in which olim to Israel from the former USSR are unable to prove their Jewish ancestry and even though they are eligible for an Israeli citizenship, the Chief Rabbinate would not recognize them as Jews for the purpose of marriage, burial, giving testimony, and a variety of additional endeavors that require one to be Jewish in Israel.
Rabbi Carmel believes his ruling would absolve about 40% of Russian olim of the need to convert in order to receive recognition as Jews.
The statistical portion of the ruling was approved by Rabbi Professor Nathan Keller, a graduate of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a researcher of probabilistic combinatorics and cryptography; and the genetic research was approved by Professor Karl Skorecki, the Director of Medical and Research Development at the Rambam Health Care Campus..
Rabbi Carmel and his colleague, Rabbi Moshe Ehrenreich have been lobbying the Chief Rabbinate to accept their research and ruling. They say the initial response from the Rabbinate has been positive, but an official response is yet to be issued.
Sephardic and Crypto-Jews of New Mexico
https://www.geni.com/projects/Sephardic-and-Crypto-Jews-of-New-Mexico/18121
The Descendants of Sephardic, Anusim, Converso, and Crypto-Jews are welcome to add their Ancestors and/or their own profiles to this project.
Joseph Díaz
My grandfather Luz Ramirez Diaz was from Nueva Leon Mexico and had a very secret life. On his death bed, he asked my mother to bury him within 24 hours.
Luz is the acient name for Jerusalem and also light in Spanish. I did my uncle’s ,Yoseph Diaz DNA, because I had converted to Judaism and for some unexplained reason for all my life I never fit into religion and only after converting to Judaism did I find my way home.
My uncle supplied a key to all the questions I could never answer in my life. What are you waiting for? Return home!
Jews of New Mexico
When most people think of the the “Jews of New Mexico”, they think of German/Ashkenazi Jews coming in the Santa Fe Trail in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s and setting up mercantile stores from Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Albuquerque and all points west, south, and north. Today the descendants of these first Ashkenazi families have taken their place in NM politics, government, education etc. The first Jewish synagogue in New Mexico was built in 1885 in Las Vegas NM; one of my uncles M.A. Otero according to Henry Tobias in “A History of the Jews of New Mexico” was a financial contributor to the building project.
Crypto-Sephardic-Anusim
But unknown to many people, Jews from Spain came to New Mexico in the 1500’s because of the Spanish Inquisition and the later Mexican Inquisition; they hid their Jewish blood and ways and assimilated into the Catholic Hispanic culture. The first ones to “convert” whether forced (anusim), of necessity, or of genuine faith- we today carry the DNA, genealogies, and the stories of a Jewish ancestry and past.
Dr. Denis Ismael Otero traces one of his several lines through his father and mothers lines to the Abraham HaLevi family of Spain. Many in New Mexico are doing DNA and genealogy studies and are coning up with the same results.
DNA Testing
If you have Jewish/Cohen DNA, Genealogy, and/or stories from your abuelos and primos- add your tree to this project
DNA Clears the Fog Over Latino Links to Judaism in New Mexico
Tests confirm what tradition and whispers have alluded to — a Sephardic community often unbeknownst to many of its members.
As a boy, Father William Sanchez sensed he was different. His Catholic family spun tops on Christmas, shunned pork and whispered of a past in medieval Spain. If anyone knew the secret, they weren’t telling, and Sanchez stopped asking.
Then three years ago, after watching a program on genealogy, Sanchez sent for a DNA kit that could help track a person’s background through genetic footprinting. He soon got a call from Bennett Greenspan, owner of the Houston-based testing company. “He said, ‘Did you know you were Jewish?’ ” Sanchez, 53, recalled. “He told me I was a Cohanim, a member of the priestly class descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses.” With the revelation that Sanchez was almost certainly one of New Mexico’s hidden or crypto-Jews, his family traditions made sense to him.
He launched a DNA project to test his relatives, along with some of the parishioners at Albuquerque’s St. Edwin’s Church, where he works. As word got out, others in the community began contacting him. So Sanchez expanded the effort to include Latinos throughout the state.
Of the 78 people tested, 30 are positive for the marker of the Cohanim, whose genetic line remains strong because they rarely married non-Jews throughout a history spanning up to 4,000 years.
Michael Hammer, a research professor at the University of Arizona and an expert on Jewish genetics, said that fewer than 1% of non-Jews possessed this marker. That fact — along with the traditions in many of these families — makes it likely that they are Jewish, he said.
“It makes their stories more consistent and believable,” Hammer said. It also explained practices that had baffled many folks here for years: the special knives used to butcher sheep in line with Jewish kosher tradition, the refusal to work on Saturdays to honor the Sabbath, the menorahs that had been hidden away. In some families, isolated rituals are all that remain of a once-vibrant religious tradition diluted by time and fears of persecution.
Norbert Sanchez, 66, recalled the “service of lights” on Friday nights in his hometown of Jareles, N.M., where some families would dine by candlelight.
“We always thought there was a Jewish background in our family, but we didn’t know for sure,” he said. “When I found out, it was like coming home for me.”
In 1492, Jews in Spain where given the choice of conversion to Catholicism or expulsion. Many fled, but others faked conversions while practicing their faith in secret. These crypto-Jews were hounded throughout the Spanish Inquisition.
“In the 1530s and 1540s, you began to see converted Jews coming to Mexico City, where some converted back to Judaism,” said Moshe Lazar, a professor of comparative literature at USC and an expert on Sephardic Jews, or those from Spain and Portugal. “The women preserved their tradition. They taught their daughters the religion. People began rediscovering their Jewishness, but remained Catholics.”
But in 1571, the Inquisition came to Mexico. Authorities were given lists to help identify crypto-Jews, Lazar said. People who didn’t eat pork, knelt imperfectly in church, rubbed water quickly off newly baptized babies or didn’t work on Saturday were suspect. If arrested, they were sometimes burned at the stake.
 Many fled to what is now northern New Mexico, and remained secretive even after the U.S. gained control of the area in 1848.
“Still, no one would come out and say: ‘I am a Jew.’ That didn’t happen until the 1970s,” said Stanley Hordes, a professor at the Latin American and Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico who is writing a book on crypto-Jews. “The first few generations kept the secret because of danger of physical harm, and later they kept it because that was just what they did. The $64,000 question is: Why the secrecy today? Why are people keeping this information from their kids and grandkids?” Some haven’t.
“I found out when I was 13,” said Keith Chaves, 47, an engineer in Albuquerque. “My great-grandmother told me that we were Sepharditos.”
The family matriarch was a repository of knowledge — and the keeper of secrets. “She kept a kosher knife rolled up in a piece of leather that she would only use for killing,” Chaves said. “And she would kill the animal by cutting its throat in one motion. She abhorred the ways others killed animals.”
Born a Catholic, Chaves now attends an Orthodox synagogue in Albuquerque. He has made four documentaries on crypto-Jews and is working on a movie about his family history.
“When I found out about my roots, I went to the library and my world opened up. I started peeling what turned out to be a 500-year-old onion,” he said. “I have reclaimed my life. I live a Jewish life now. I think my great-grandmother told me because she expected me to do something fruitful with the information.” Others have sought the truth on their own.
Elisea Garcia was raised by a strong-willed grandmother with strange habits. “We would have a big dinner on Friday night with candles,” said Garcia, 66, who is awaiting the results of a DNA test done on her son to see if he has the Cohanim marker, which is found only in the Y chromosome. “She would butcher the animals then examine them inside out for any sign of impurity. On Saturday we weren’t even allowed to wash our hair.”
When her grandmother died, Garcia found a silver menorah hidden in her room. “I’m a curious person, but my uncle told me not to dig into things because they weren’t important,” she said.
Garcia, a Catholic, attends both synagogue and church . “It makes me aware of the whole concept of God,” she said. Greenspan, whose Family Tree DNA does the testing for Sanchez’s project, said there had been a surge of interest in genealogy among Latinos looking for Jewish connections.
“We believe a fairly high percentage of first families [arriving] in New Mexico were nominally Catholic, but their secret religion was Judaism,” he said. “We are finding between 10% and 15% of men living in New Mexico or south Texas or northern Mexico have a Y chromosome that tracks back to the Middle East.”
They are not all Cohanim, and there’s a slight chance some could be of African Muslim descent. But Greenspan said the DNA of the men is typical of Jews from the eastern Mediterranean.
Test participants scrape cells from the inside of their cheeks and mail samples to Greenspan, who has them analyzed by researchers at the University of Arizona. The process takes about a month, with costs ranging from $100 to $350 depending on the detail requested. Women, who do not possess the Y chromosome, must have a male relative take the test in order to participate.
Since discovering his past, Father Sanchez — who wears a Star of David around his neck — has traveled throughout the state giving talks on the history and genealogy of New Mexico. He also runs the Nuevo Mexico DNA Project and website that tells how people can take part.
Sanchez describes his Jewish history as “a beautiful thing” complementing, not conflicting with, his priestly life.
“I have always known I was Jewish; I can’t explain it, but it was woven into who I was,” he said.
After Mass one recent morning, a group of parishioners filed out of St. Edwin’s. None had a problem with their priest’s dueling religious traditions.
“He has taken us back to our roots,” Robert Montoya said. And Theresa Villagas smiled. “We are all children of God,” she said. “I think this just adds richness to our lives.” Source
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Links
Glossary:
Sephardic – Sepharad
“Sepharad” is the Biblical name for Spain as found in Obadiah 1:20 The exiles of this army, the sons of Israel, will have the Canaanites’ land as far as Zarephthah, while the exiles from Jerusalem now in Sepharad will have the cities of the Negeb.
Crypto-Jew –
A Jewish person who is catholic (or Moslem, etc.) outwardly but practices his Jewish faith in a hidden manner.
Anusim –
A “forced one”, someone who is forced into following the prevailing religion. Benai Anusim are the children/descendants of the original Anusim.
Converso –
A Jewish “convert” to the catholic faith through force, expediency, or genuine faith.
Marrano –
Literally a swine/pig, but also unclean or impure, Conversos were called “marranos” because they ate pig and other unclean meats.
Bibliography for “Jews of New Mexico
(Please add relevant publications)
- To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico, Stanley M. Hordes, Published 2005, Columbia University Press, New York
- A History of the Jews in New Mexico, Henry J. Tobias, Publisher: University of New Mexico Press (June 1, 1992) ISBN-10: 0826313906, ISBN-13: 978-0826313904
Do We Think Anymore?
Who do we serve? Do we serve Hashem or do we serve our selves? I love to ask questions and to argue to find the truth in life. Too often people are just going through life with no meaning or purpose. This was the question, Adam and Ḥawwāh had to ask and to determine for all of their future children. What is the meaning of life?
Sephardic Law 1: Who is Sephardic?
Sephardic Law 1: Who is Sephardic?
A Jew disproves the Black Hebrew Israelites
Why are Jews So Obsessed with Details?
Published on Aug 27, 2017
Why are Orthodox Jews so obsessed with itsy-bitsy details? Is this really what G-d wants from us? In this short video, Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen gives us an important insight into the purpose of our doing the mitzvot.
Returning to Judah.
To Strengthen Judah. 2 Chronicles 11:17
I would like to submit this letter as a written record of my testimony concerning my return to Judaism. In 2001 September 11, 2001, I Gavriel ben David had a bat kol that instructed me to live as a Jew.
My ardent background consisted of first being raised in a Baptist church by my great-grandmother on my father’s side by Pennsylvania Upchurch and I later became an Altar Boy at the age of seven years of age at St. Martin’s Catholic Church where I served as an altar boy for 11 years. While in the military I had changed my faith to non-denominational and contemplated myself no longer a Catholic. In 1988 I was baptized at Buchanan Baptist Church and attended there for several months. Because of a doctrinal discrepancy, I immediately left and started going to a non-denominational church from 1988 to 2001, Trinity Fellowship Church in Amarillo Texas.
On September 11, 2001, an incredible change happened in my life, I was called to live as a Jew. I knew nothing of Judaism or what it meant to be Jewish, but I begin my pursuit to as- certain what it meant to be Jewish. One of the things I knew was Jews did not eat pork, and so, I immediately stopped eating and removed all foods from my diet that was declared unclean and was prohibited by the Bible. I also knew that Jews did not celebrate Christmas and in 2001, I stop celebrating Christmas.At that time in my life, things were very difficult within my family because of my wife, Christian herself, did not agree with my termination of Christmas.
This was a very difficult time for me in my life when I felt very alone and alienated from the world. In my prayers, I asked God, if I were crazy and was I doing what he wanted me to do. The very first Shabbat I celebrated was Parsha Miektz. The story of Joseph recognizing his brothers overwhelmed my heart, and I could not consummate reading the story because of the tears that flowed from eyes. I asked my wife to keep Shabbat with me that day, and it was then that my wife’s heart was touched and she began to see that I was very sincere and determined to do what God had asked me to do.
It was not long after this that while my daughter was in the hospital and the question still on my mind about me imagining all these things happening in my life and questioning my own sanity that I discovered a book while out getting a gift for my daughter. Mixed among books on music again God spoke to me and there was a book called my Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy by David Klinghoffer “The Lord Will Gather Me In” as I began to read the book my heart was touched and I had received my answer; I was doing what God wanted me to do.
It was in March of 2002 that I began preparing for Passover when my mother asked me about what I was doing. I informed her that I was preparing for Passover, and this was how Jews prepared by cleaning all the drawers in the kitchen and behind the furniture and re- moving the leaven from the house. My mother, with a strange look on her face, told me that every year about this time her mother had all the children remove everything out of the house and clean it. She said jokingly, “I thought she was punishing us.” I pondered what my mother had said about my grandmother and her doing the same thing that I was now doing.
Several weeks had passed since that incident with my mother, and we invited her to celebrate Shabbat with us. My mother joined us for Shabbat and my wife prepared herself to light the candles by covering her head with a scarf and began to light the candles. Lisa and I then called our three children to kneel before us so that we could bless them as we welcomed the Shabbat, and it was then that my mother began to cry. Lisa and I were confused and did not know why my mother was crying. I asked my mother, “What is wrong”? And her words change my life forever. My mother said to me,“Thank you, Junior, and I asked her,“thank me for what”? And my mother answered, “for letting me know whom I am” she said,“ I knew we weren’t Catholic, we did not do Catholic things.” My mother told me that every Friday night her mother would close the curtains and light candles and bless the kids, and she never knew why her mother did those things.
Since September 11, 2001, I have been trying to find proof of my Jewishness and at this time I have no legitimate proof outside my DNA and the testimony of my uncle’s and aunt and my mother Lorina Diaz concerning these traditions of lighting candles on Friday night and, also, the lighting of the Hanukkah candles. I do have relatives that have said we are Jewish through oral tradition. Also, I have a fourth cousin that is a Cohen with a family genealogy and history. I am writing this letter as a record of the Jewish people and to my own family of the journey that I have been on for these 15 years of my life. On January 12, 2017, I received the results of my uncle Yosef Diaz’s DNA test and I discovered that he was a Cohen match by the Jewish DNA group FamilyTree.com. This would make my grandfather Luz Diaz a Cohen and confirm the oral tradition of my family and our history.
I am convinced in my heart and my soul bears witness that I am connected to a land called Israel and to the Jewish people. My grandfather was Luz Ramirez Diaz and this is my uncle’s DNA.
Sincerely yours,
Gavriel Ben David.