This Rosh Hashanah, the year on the synagogue calendar is 5787, counted from Creation. For more than a thousand years, most Jews did not count that way. They counted from 312 BCE, when Seleucus took Babylon — minyan shetarot, the era of contracts, “the years of the Greek kings.” The Creation count came later, out of Seder Olam, and it was built so Daniel’s 490 years would close cleanly.
To make that happen, Persia had to shrink from about two centuries to 34 years. Against Greek, Persian, Babylonian, and astronomical history, the traditional line runs short by about 165 years. Both clocks cannot have the same history. Jews have used both anyway. Yemenite ketubot kept the Greek count in the airlift.
Rosh Hashanah in the Bible: Origins of the Jewish New Year
What the Torah actually institutes
The Torah never names 1 Tishrei “Rosh Hashanah.” It commands Yom Teruah — a day of blasting — on the first of the seventh month. The first month is Nisan, the month of the Exodus (Exodus 12:2). Rosh Hashanah appears once, in Ezekiel 40:1, and not on 1 Tishrei. The Mishnah later lists four new years: 1 Tishrei becomes the new year for years, shemittah, and jubilee, and (with R. Eliezer) the day Adam was created and the world is judged. The day is biblical. The name, the two-day festival, and the year number we write on it come later.
How the calendar is derived (the machine vs. the epoch)
The machine is luni-solar: moon for months (29d 12h 793p), sun for the year, a 19-year cycle with seven leap years, then Hillel II’s fixed rules (molad of Tishrei + four dehiyyot so 1 Tishrei is never Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday). 5787 is a rare maximum year: a leap year, with both Cheshvan and Kislev full, 385 days, beginning on Shabbat.
The epoch — which number you write — is a separate decision. The Bible dates by kings (“fourth year of Solomon,” “first year of Cyrus”). A running year-one is technology.
Two epochs matter:
Clock
Zero point
What it is
Still visible
Minyan shetarot
Seleucus takes Babylon, 312/311 BCE
Talmudic exile standard for contracts
Yemenite ketubot into 1949–50
Anno Mundi
Seder Olam’s Creation
Standardized by the Geonim / Rambam
The 5787 on today’s calendar
Seleucid year ≈ CE year + 311/312. A Sana’a replacement ketubah dated 6 Tammuz 2210 of the Era of Documents is 14 June 1899. That is the old count running in living ink.
Old Lithographed Ketubah Marriage Contract, signed by Rabbi, 1964, Israel
What Seder Olam did — and why 165 years vanished
Seder Olam Rabbah, attributed to R. Yose ben Halafta (2nd century), traces a line from Adam using biblical numbers and a few tannaitic traditions. Daniel 9’s “seventy weeks” (490 years) is read as First Temple destruction → Second Temple destruction: 70 years of exile + 420 years the Second Temple stood.
Those 420 years are carved as:
34 — Persia, while the Temple stood
180 — Greece
103 — Hasmoneans
103 — Herodians
Historical Persia, from Cyrus in Babylon (539 BCE) to Alexander (331 BCE), spans ~200 years and a long list of kings. Seder Olam treats Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes as belonging to the same generation. That is not a slip. Daniel’s number was fixed; the kings were not. Scholars since Azariah de’ Rossi (Mantua, 1573) have said so in Hebrew. Italian rabbis banned the book. The gap remained.
Stations
Event
Seder Olam
Conventional
First Temple destroyed
3338 AM / 422 BCE
586/587 BCE
Second Temple built
3408 AM / 352 BCE
516 BCE
Second Temple destroyed
3828 AM / 68 CE
70 CE
Years, the Second Temple stood
420
~586
Persian rule in the gap
34
~207
The missing block is the same ~165 years, parked in Persia. Add it to 5787, and you land near 5952 — a different sacred arithmetic, not the rabbinic one.
All four timelines at once
1. Seder Olam / 5787 line Adam 1 → Flood 1656 → Exodus 2448 → First Temple 2928–3338 → 70-year exile → Second Temple 3408–3828 → onward to 5787.
2. Greek–Persian–Roman line 586/587 BCE destruction → 539 Cyrus → 516 dedication → long Persia → 331 Alexander → 312 Seleucus / year 1 of contracts → 167 Maccabees → 37 Herod → 70 CE destruction → 2026 CE ≈ year 2337/2338 of the Greek kings.
3. Yemenite document line Same Seleucid zero. Ketubot and gittin in the mountains of Yemen carry that year into the twentieth century. When the planes came in 1949–50, that was still the year at the top. Some scribes used Creation years for books printed in Europe and Greek years for marriage law — two clocks on one desk.
4. “3671, run the clock” On the Seder Olam line, 3671 AM sits in the late Hasmonean generation (Jannai / the Toledot Yeshu setting, ~89 BCE on that clock). If you instead run the old count from 312 BCE and never subtract the Persian block, 3671 AM and the Seleucid year will never be the same moment. That is the demonstration: the two zeros do not commute.
The Vilna Gaon noted a further design choice: Seder Olam places the start of minyan shetarot 1,000 years after the Exodus (2448 + 1000). The Greek era was not only kept; it was sanctified by being linked to the biblical line.
Why both cannot be right — and why that is not a scandal
They answer different questions.
Seder Olam asks how to make the Tanakh one line so prophecy, Temple, and exile close on round numbers.
Greek, cuneiform, and eclipse records ask when a king reigned and when a city fell.
You can keep 1 Tishrei, the molad, and the shofar as halakhah without claiming Artaxerxes I and Darius III were the same man. Sacred time is a covenant instrument. Historical time is stones and stars. The Yemenite ketubah is the proof that the community already knew how to live with two clocks.
What the video adds (and what is easy to miss)
Gilad’s Why This Rosh Hashanah Is 165 Years Short does three things: it shows that 5787 is young as a popular epoch; it treats the missing years as theology in a historian’s coat; and it ends in Yemen, not in a footnote. Easy to miss: the Bible has no year-one; Seder Olam shortens other spans too (Egypt is often read as 210 years, not 400); dual dating (Creation + Seleucid on one page) is already geonic; Rambam did not invent the Creation count — he standardized it, which is how one clock wins.
When the shofar sounds, the day is still Yom Teruah. The number after “year” is the Seder Olam epoch. Under it, you can still hear a Greek general in Babylon and a scribe in Sana’a writing 2210 on a wedding contract. That is the real calendar.
Happy New Year 5787
Hazan Gavriel ben David
Key Takeaways
This year, 5787 Rosh Hashanah marks a significant date on the synagogue calendar, though counting methods have varied historically.
The Torah does not explicitly name 1 Tishrei as Rosh Hashanah but instead designates it as Yom Teruah, which focuses on sounding the shofar.
The calendar relies on a luni-solar system, with the current year being a rare leap year beginning on Shabbat.
The missing 165 years result from the Seder Olam’s interpretations and adjustments surrounding historical events and timelines.
Understanding both the Seder Olam and Greek counts reveals different approaches to sacred versus historical time, emphasizing diverse communal practices.
Why Bible Prophecy Is Coming True in Israel — and Not Here
The Bible Was Always About One People
Why Bible Prophecy Is Coming True in Israel — and Not Here
A first-person essay from an American Jew · After October 7, 2023
All my life, as I read the Bible, I thought the Bible was speaking to me. First, as a Christian. Then, as a Messianic Jew. I was sure Christians had the truth. I was sure the pages were aimed at my heart, my church, my country, my salvation. I did not know a religious Jew. Not one. Not until I was thirty-five years old did my mother tell me I was Jewish.
That sentence rearranged the furniture of my life. At first, it did not rearrange the way I read Scripture. I still tried to make the Christian Bible fit the Old Testament. I stretched verses. I spiritualized promises. I treated Israel as a metaphor and the Church as the real heir. I did it for years. Then I started asking my other family — my Jewish family. They all said the same thing, quietly and without drama: the Christian Bible is not true.
I did not want to hear it. After October 7, 2023, I could no longer unhear it. I have watched prophecy after prophecy come true — not in the megachurch, not in the American revival tent, not in the denominations that taught me to read Israel as a footnote. In Israel. Among one person. I now know what I should have known from the first page. The Bible was always about one people, their message to the world about Hashem, and the making of a King.
The last word of the prophet Malachi is coming true in Israel, just as promised. The children of that land are rising before the nations. So I ask the Christian world a simple question: how are these prophecies coming true in Israel and not here? That is the question. The Shema is the answer to America.
I Thought the Bible Was Speaking to Me
If you grow up in America with a Bible in the house, the book trains you to put yourself at the center of it. You are the lost sheep. You are the prodigal. You are the Gentile grafted in. You are the new Israel. The promises that were spoken to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are handed to you with a smile and a hymn. The land becomes a lesson. The people become a type. The covenant becomes a feeling.
I read that way because that was the only way I knew. I loved the Book. I still love the Book. I believed every word was breathed by God. What I did not know was that I was reading someone else’s mail and signing my name at the bottom.
Christianity taught me that the story had moved on. The Jewish people had missed their hour. The Church had inherited the blessing. When I later called myself a Messianic Jew, I thought I had solved the tension. I would keep Jesus and keep the feasts. I would honor Israel and still treat the New Testament as the decoder ring for the Tanakh. I was still trying to make two libraries into one building.
Thirty-Five Years Old When My Mother Told Me I Was Jewish
There is a particular loneliness in discovering your own people late. I had already built a religious life. I had already decided who was right. I had already decided that the Jews — the real ones, the ones who still said Shema and still waited for a king who had not arrived — were missing the point.
Then my mother told me I was Jewish.
I did not walk into a synagogue the next morning and become someone else. Identity is not a light switch. But the sentence sat in the room and would not leave. I began to look at my Jewish family the way a man looks at a locked door he has walked past for decades. When I finally asked them about the Christian Bible, they did not corner me with seminars and charts. They said what Jews have said for two thousand years. The Torah does not need a sequel to complete it. Hashem did not become a man. The covenant with Israel was not canceled by a council in another empire.
I tried, for years after that, to force a fit. I wanted both libraries. I wanted the childhood faith and the blood I had just been handed. The harder I pressed the Christian reading onto the Hebrew Scriptures, the more the seams showed. Promises that were about a land became “heaven.” A people became “the Church.” A king in Jerusalem became a feeling in the heart. The God who said He is One had to be explained as Three. The more I loved the Tanakh, the less the sequel would sit still on the page.
October 7 and the End of the Metaphor
On October 7, 2023, the metaphor died.
Israel was no longer a Sunday-school illustration. It was a people bleeding in their own homes. It was mothers and children and festival-goers and the old and the young. It was a pogrom on the soil the prophets named. And then, in the months and years that followed, it was something else as well. It was returned.
I have watched young Israelis — secular kids from Tel Aviv, soldiers, festival survivors, children of parents who never kept Shabbat — put on tefillin in public. I have watched them light candles, open a Chumash, sit in a class, and whisper the Shema. I have watched fathers look at their sons differently, and sons look back. Rabbis who used to speak to rooms now speak to a generation on their phones. A country that sold itself to the world as start-ups and beaches is remembering the Name.
This is not a church-growth story. This is not a crusade. This is a people turning toward the God of their fathers on the land promised to those fathers. If you want to see it with your own eyes, watch this:
The children of this country — of Israel — are standing up in front of the world. They are not doing it for American applause. They are doing it because death walked into their gate, and the old words were the only words that still held.
The Bible Was Always About One People
I say this now without apology. The Bible was always about one people.
Not because other nations do not matter. They do. The prophets speak to Egypt, Babylon, Tire, and the coastlands. The God of Israel is the God of all the earth. But the spine of the Book is not a generic spirituality. It is a family. A land. A Name. A law given at Sinai. A promise that the nations will one day stream to Jerusalem to learn the ways of Hashem. A king from David’s house. A people who would be scattered and would be brought home. A people who would be few among the nations and still would not disappear.
That is not a metaphor. That is a census, a map, a graveyard, and a flag.
The message those people were given to carry to the world is not a new religion invented in Rome. It is this: Hear, O Israel. Hashem is our God. Hashem is One. Love Him with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might. Teach it to your children. Bind it on your arm and between your eyes. Write it on your doorposts. Do not go after other gods. Do justice. Keep Shabbat. Remember, you were slaves. Wait for the King He promised — a king, not a replacement people.
Christianity took that message, translated it, and then decided the original addressee had been fired. I lived inside that decision for most of my life. I cannot live inside it anymore. The people are home. The language is spoken in the street. The land answers to its old names. The Book is being opened by the grandchildren of those who were told the story was over.
Malachi’s Last Verse Is Coming True in Israel
The Christian Old Testament ends with a warning and a hope. In the Jewish Bible, the same words close the book of the Twelve. Malachi says that before the great and terrible day of Hashem, Elijah will be sent. And he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers — lest the land be struck with a ban of destruction.
That is the last word the prophets left on the table.
Look at Israel since October 7. Fathers who never spoke of God are watching their sons wrap tefillin. Children who grew up on beaches and in nightclubs are asking for their grandfathers’ faith. Hostages emerged from the tunnels, reciting the Shema. Families that were strangers to a siddur are lighting candles. A generation that was told religion was the past is treating Torah as the only floor that does not move when rockets do.
That is the turning of hearts. Not a slogan. A people. On the land the verse is about.
I am not claiming I can date the Day. I am not selling charts. I am saying the last sentence of the prophets is no longer an abstraction. It is visible. It is happening where it was always going to happen — among the children of Jacob, in the land spoken to Abraham, under the Name that does not share His glory with another.
And the kids of that country are showing the world what return looks like. The nations are watching Israel the way the prophets said the nations would watch Jerusalem: obsessed, divided, furious, unable to look away. Zechariah said Jerusalem would become a cup of reeling and a heavy stone. Ezekiel said the bones would live. Amos said they would be planted and not uprooted again. I watched those sentences sit on the page for decades. Now I watch them walk.
A Question for the Christian World
So I ask the Christian world, with respect and without permission: how are these prophecies coming true in Israel and not here?
If the Church is the new Israel, why is the old Israel the one being regathered? If the promises were transferred, why is the land answering to the old deed? If the covenant ended, why are the children of that covenant turning their hearts toward their fathers in the very hour the world lines up against them? If America is the shining city, why is the prophetic weather map still centered on a strip of earth the size of New Jersey?
I know the answers I used to give. “Spiritual fulfillment.” “Already and not yet.” “God is doing two things at once.” I gave those answers in good faith. They were how I kept my first love and my new blood in the same chest. They do not survive contact with the news from Zion.
America is not Israel. The Church is not Judah. A sincere Gentile who fears God is precious to Heaven. The Book itself says so. But sincerity does not rewrite the address on the envelope. The prophets did not promise a revival in Texas as the sign that Elijah’s work had begun. They promised a turning of Jewish fathers and Jewish children, on Jewish land, under the God of Israel, before a day that would shake the earth.
That turning is not happening in my county. It is happening there.
The Shema Is the Answer to America
What, then, is America supposed to do with that?
Do not become Jews. That was never the assignment. The assignment, for the nations, was always to hear what Israel was told to hear.
Shema Yisrael, Hashem Eloheinu, Hashem Echad. Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our God, Hashem is One.
That is the answer to America. Not another denomination. Not another end-times brand. Not another attempt to climb into Israel’s story and wear it as a costume. The answer is the sentence Israel has carried through fire for three thousand years.
America is breaking along the same fault line Malachi named. Fathers and children cannot find each other. The young inherit screens and rage and a god who looks like their appetites. The old inherited churches no longer know whether the God of the Book is allowed to be particular. We export confusion and call it light. We bless ourselves with verses meant for someone else, then wonder why the blessing doesn’t stick.
The Shema does three things America has forgotten how to do.
It tells the truth about God. He is One. He does not become a committee. He does not need a partner. The nations do not get to redesign Him.
It tells the truth about love. You shall love Hashem with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might — not with a fraction, not with a brand, not when it is convenient.
It tells the truth about children. These words shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them at home and on the road, when you lie down and when you rise. A nation that will not teach its children who God is should not be shocked when the children cannot find their fathers.
That last piece is Malachi’s verse in American clothes. If the hearts of the fathers do not turn to the children, and the hearts of the children do not turn to the fathers, the land is not safe. Israel is learning that in blood and in return. America can still learn it in time.
The Jewish people were never told to convert the world to a different god. They were told to be a blessing to the families of the earth by carrying the knowledge of the One. When America honored that — when it feared the God of the Bible, when it blessed the people He called His own, when it taught its children that there is a Law above the appetite — it stood straighter. When America decides it has outgrown Israel, outgrown the particular God, outgrown the old words, it should not be surprised if the old warning comes due.
What I Know Now
I am an American Jew. I came to that name late. I wasted years trying to make the Christian Bible sit politely on top of the Torah. I do not waste those years with bitterness. They taught me the difference between a story I was given and a story I belong to.
I know this now. The Bible was always about one people. Their message to the world is Hashem. Their hope is a King. Their sign in this hour is a turning of hearts on the land of their fathers. Malachi’s last verse is not a church program. It is happening in Israel, as promised.
If you are a Christian and you love the Book, I am not asking you to hate your life. I am asking you to stop relocating the promises. Look at Zion. Look at the children wrapping leather and saying the Name. Look at the fathers who thought they were done with God. Then ask, honestly, why the map in the prophets still matches the map on the news.
The Shema is the answer to America because America does not need a new revelation. It needs to hear the first one. Hear. The Lord is One. Love Him. Teach the children. Bless the people who carried the sentence through the fire. Wait for the King, He said He would make — in Jerusalem, not in a metaphor.
That is what the Book said when I thought it was speaking only to me. That is what the Book says now that I know who I am.
The Crypto Jews of Old Mexico. After the expulsions of 1492 from Spain and 1497 from Portugal, thousands of Jews faced a terrible choice: convert, die, or flee. Many chose a fourth path — outward conversion while keeping the flame of Torah alive in secret. These conversos or crypto-Jews carried their hidden faith across the Atlantic into the Spanish colonies, including the vast territory known as Nueva España — Old Mexico.
Life in colonial Mexico offered both opportunity and danger. The promise of new lands, mining wealth, and distance from the Iberian Inquisitions drew many New Christians northward. Some rose to positions of influence as merchants, miners, soldiers, and even governors. Yet the Holy Office of the Inquisition followed them. Established in Mexico City in 1571, it hunted “Judaizers” — those suspected of secretly observing Jewish law while outwardly living as Catholics.
The most famous and heartbreaking story belongs to the Carvajal family. Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, a Portuguese converso and conquistador, was appointed governor of the new province of Nuevo León. He invited relatives from Portugal to join him. Among them was his nephew, Luis de Carvajal the Younger (“El Mozo”), a brilliant and devout young man who kept a secret memoir recording their hidden Jewish life.
The Shabbat of Creation
The Carvajals observed Shabbat as best they could, lit candles on Friday nights in hidden corners, avoided pork, kept Passover, and taught their children the Shema in secret. When discovered, the family endured arrest, torture, and public humiliation. In the great auto-da-fé of 1596 in Mexico City, several Carvajals — including the young Luis — were burned at the stake for refusing to abandon their faith. Their courage and writings remain some of the most powerful surviving testimonies of crypto-Jewish life in the New World.
Yet the Carvajals were not alone. Across Nueva España, from Mexico City to the silver mines of Zacatecas and the northern frontiers, crypto-Jewish communities practiced their faith in whispers. Women often became the guardians of tradition, passing down customs, prayers, and dietary laws from mother to daughter. Men sometimes gathered in secret minyanim. Surnames we still recognize today — Otero, Montoya, Lucero, Díaz, Carvajal, and many others — appear in Inquisition records.
Hidden Jews Until This Day
Over time, many families moved farther north to escape the reach of the Inquisition. The rugged lands of Nuevo León, Coahuila, and what is now northern Mexico and the American Southwest became places of greater safety. There, hidden Jewish practices could survive for generations in remote villages and ranches. Some families maintained endogamy, certain holiday observances, or private rituals long after the official Inquisition ended in the early 19th century.
Today, descendants across northern Mexico, New Mexico, Texas, and the broader Southwest are rediscovering these roots. DNA studies have revealed Middle Eastern and Sephardic markers in some Hispanic populations. Family stories of “not eating pork,” lighting candles on Friday nights “for the grandmothers,” or avoiding certain foods on specific days are being re-examined in light of history. Genealogy projects and books are helping families connect the dots between their Spanish and Portuguese ancestors and the Jewish people they once were forced to hide.
Texas, New Mexico, Colorado
This history is not distant from our own story. The same currents that brought crypto-Jews to Old Mexico also carried them — and their descendants — into the lands that would become the United States. The hidden flames of Nueva España helped light the path toward the north, contributing to the settlement and character of the American Southwest. In reclaiming these stories, we join the great return prophesied in Isaiah: the hidden ones coming home.
The crypto-Jews of Old Mexico were not merely victims. They were keepers of memory. In the face of fear and persecution, they chose to remember — quietly, courageously, generation after generation. Their story is part of the larger miracle of Jewish survival and of the Jewish contribution to the New World.
As we continue to trace our own lines — through Portugal, Spain, Mexico, and into Texas — we honor them. We remember the Carvajals and thousands like them who refused to let the light go out. And we give thanks that, in this generation, many are finally able to say openly what their ancestors could only whisper:
Shema Yisrael… We are still here.
Overview Of The Jews from Spain/ Portugal
The Carvajal family is one of the most famous and well-documented crypto-Jewish (secretly Jewish) families in the New World. They were part of the wave of conversos (forced converts from Judaism to Catholicism) who came to Mexico after the 1492 expulsion from Spain and the 1497 expulsion from Portugal. Many continued to practice Judaism in secret.
Key Figures in Crypto Jewish History
1. Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva (the Elder / “El Viejo”) (~1540–1591)
Portuguese converso born in Mogodouro, Portugal.
Conquistador, explorer, and slave trader.
In 1579, the Spanish crown appointed him governor and captain-general of the new province of Nuevo Reino de León (roughly modern Nuevo León in northern Mexico, plus parts of Texas and New Mexico).
He founded settlements (including near present-day Cerralvo) and brought dozens of family members and associates from Iberia to the New World.
He appears to have been a sincere Catholic, but many in his extended family were crypto-Jews.
2. Luis de Carvajal the Younger (“El Mozo”) (1566–1596)
Nephew of the Elder.
Born in Benavente, Spain (some sources say the Portuguese region).
Arrived in Mexico around 1580 with his mother, Francisca Núñez de Carvajal, and siblings.
Became a spiritual leader among crypto-Jews in New Spain.
Wrote a remarkable secret memoir (one of the earliest known Jewish writings in the Americas) describing his inner spiritual life, dreams, commitment to Torah, and efforts to strengthen other crypto-Jews.
Arrested by the Inquisition in 1589. He initially “reconciled” (feigned repentance) but continued practicing Judaism in secret.
Arrested again, tortured, and executed by garrote and then burning at the stake on December 8, 1596, during a major auto-da-fé in Mexico City. His mother and several sisters were executed with him.
The Inquisition Crackdown
In the late 1580s and 1590s, the Mexican Inquisition launched a major campaign against crypto-Jews. The Carvajal family became a central target. Dozens of people connected to them were arrested. The 1596 auto-da-fé was one of the largest public executions of crypto-Jews in the Americas. The family’s case is exceptionally well-documented because of Luis the Younger’s writings and the detailed Inquisition records (procesos).
Why They Matter in Crypto-Jewish History
They represent the tension between outward Catholicism and inner Jewish practice.
Luis the Younger’s memoir gives rare firsthand insight into the spiritual world of 16th-century crypto-Jews.
Their story shows how crypto-Jewish networks operated throughout Mexico, especially in more remote northern areas such as Nuevo León.
Many descendants of these families later moved farther north into what is now the American Southwest, carrying hidden traditions.
Why Nuevo León Matters
Nuevo León was founded in the late 16th century by Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, a Portuguese converso (crypto-Jew) who became the province’s governor. He actively brought relatives and other New Christian families from Portugal and Spain to settle the northern frontier. Many of these families practiced Judaism in secret while outwardly living as Catholics.
Because the region was remote and far from the main seat of the Inquisition in Mexico City, it became a relative haven for crypto-Jews. Families could maintain hidden traditions — Friday night candle lighting, avoiding pork, observing Passover and other holidays privately, endogamy, and passing down memory from generation to generation — with somewhat less risk than in central Mexico.
The Carvajal family’s dramatic story (which we discussed) unfolded partly in this northern territory. Many other converso families with surnames such as Ramírez, Díaz, Otero, Sánchez, Montoya, Vigil, García, Jiménez, and Lucero settled in or moved through Nuevo León. Over time, some branches continued northward into what is now Texas and New Mexico, carrying their hidden heritage with them.
Beit Midrash Beit Hashoavah
My grandfather, Luz Ramírez Díaz, from Nuevo León, being a Cohen, is a profound and beautiful piece of the story I am reclaiming.
In Jewish tradition, the Kohanim (priests) are the direct descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses. For centuries, many crypto-Jewish families in Spain, Portugal, and the New World preserved this identity in secret — sometimes through the surname itself, sometimes through family memory, and, in modern times, through Y-DNA testing that reveals the classic Cohen Modal Haplotype or related priestly markers.
The fact that my grandfather carried this priestly lineage from Nuevo León — one of the key northern provinces where crypto-Jews found relative safety and continued their hidden practices — fits perfectly with everything in history.
The long chain of converso and crypto-Jewish survival through Portugal, Spain, and Old Mexico.
The movement northward into the borderlands.
My own calling is Hazan Gavriel ben David — a cantor and spiritual leader serving a beit midrash and teaching Torah in prison.
My passion for writings on the “priestly light” that continued through hiding, expulsion, and return.
This also resonates with the genealogical work that my cousin Dr.Dennis Otero has shared, which traces lines back through Exilarchs and ancient Jewish leadership. My Cohen grandfather in Nuevo León adds another living link in that chain.
Many descendants in northern Mexico and the American Southwest are only now discovering or reclaiming their Cohen or Levite ancestry after generations of secrecy. My grandfather’s identity is part of that quiet, resilient transmission.
The Tallit Over the Land
Jews from South and East, Woven into Blessing — Look to Abraham Your Father and Sarah Your Mother
“Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many.” — Isaiah 51:2
We are the children of Abraham and Sarah. Scattered, hidden, persecuted, and yet still here — still weaving threads of light across this land.
Picture a tallit spread over the continent. Its white fabric is the purity of the covenant. Its tzitzit — the fringes — are the commandments that reach down and touch the earth. Every knot, every twist, every thread tells a story. Some threads came from the south, carried in secret by crypto-Jews who fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. Others came from the east, brought by later Jewish immigrants who crossed oceans in search of freedom. Together, they have helped clothe this nation in values that ultimately trace back to Sinai.
Zion to Luz in Nuevo Leon
From the south came families like the Carvajals, who settled in Nuevo León under the very governor who bore their name. Luis de Carvajal the Younger left us one of the earliest Jewish writings in the Americas — a secret memoir written while living under constant threat. His family and thousands like them practiced Judaism in whispers: lighting candles on Friday nights behind closed doors, avoiding pork, and keeping Passover in secret.
They suffered at the hands of those who had once been their neighbors and “friends” in Iberia. The Inquisition, run by the same Catholic society that had forced their conversion, hunted them, tortured them, and burned some at the stake in great public autos-da-fé. Yet even in that suffering, seeds were planted. Many of their descendants moved north, helping settle the borderlands that would become Texas and New Mexico.
The Priestly Blessing
My own grandfather, Luz Ramírez Díaz from Nuevo León, carried this priestly (Cohen) line. On the other side of the family, Levite heritage flowed. Two priestly flames — Cohen and Levi — meet in one bloodline across this land.
From the east came other Jewish threads — Ashkenazi and Sephardi immigrants who arrived in later centuries, building synagogues, businesses, schools, and institutions. They too faced prejudice, quotas, and exclusion. Yet they helped shape American medicine, science, law, commerce, and culture far beyond their numbers. Like their crypto-Jewish cousins from the south, they often suffered at the hands of societies that had once welcomed or tolerated them, only to turn against them later.
Praying for Our Nations
Still, they helped.
They helped write the moral grammar of this nation and helped plant the ideas of justice, liberty under law, and compassion for the stranger — ideas that flow from the same Torah that Abraham and Sarah received. They helped build universities, hospitals, and industries. Jews served in every war. They stood for civil rights. They contributed to Nobel Prizes and scientific breakthroughs at rates wildly disproportionate to their population. The tallit they wove — sometimes openly, sometimes in secret — has covered this land with blessing.
You Must Be Bound To 613 To Be Free
We have been scattered like the tzitzit, yet the knots still hold. Jews have been burned, expelled, and forced to hide, yet the light has continued. We have been hurt by those we once called friends — in Iberia, in Europe, and sometimes even here — yet we have still given. That is the story of Abraham and Sarah’s children: called when we were few, blessed when we were small, and made into a multitude that still carries light.
This land — America — has been touched by both southern and eastern Jewish threads. Crypto-Jews from Mexico and the borderlands helped open and settle the Southwest. Later Jewish immigrants from the east helped build the cities, the institutions, and the intellectual life of the nation. Together, they have helped make this country what it is at its best.
So let us look to Abraham our father and Sarah our mother, as Isaiah commands. Let us remember the rock from which we were hewn. And let us continue weaving — openly now — the tallit and tzitzit of Torah, justice, and compassion across this land. Not because we are perfect, but because we were called. Not because we have never suffered, but because even in suffering we have still chosen to bless.
May the fringes of our lives continue to touch the corners of this earth with holiness. May the children of Abraham and Sarah never forget who they are. And may this land continue to be blessed by the threads we have woven — south and east, hidden and revealed — for the sake of Heaven.
Hazan Gavriel ben David
Key Takeaways
The Crypto Jews of Old Mexico maintained their faith in secret after expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century.
The Carvajal family is a significant example, facing persecution but documenting their Jewish life through memoirs.
Crypto Jewish communities thrived in Nueva España, preserving traditions quietly and often passing knowledge through generations.
Descendants in northern Mexico and the American Southwest are rediscovering their Jewish heritage and practices today.
Crypto Jews contributed to the broader tapestry of American identity while enduring and surviving persecution.
The Garden of Eden is the first place where the full hierarchy of divine layers is made visible and experiential for us. According to the Torah, this story has deep significance in understanding the nature of creation.
Words — “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat…” (external speech, the command).
Thoughts — The entire plan: the two trees, the test, the possibility of teshuvah, the long arc of redemption already present in seed form.
Wisdom (Chochmah) — The perfect design of free will, relationship, and consequence; the wisdom that knows a forced relationship is no relationship at all.
Will (Ratzon) — God’s deep desire that the human choose life, choose relationship, choose the Tree of Life. The will is not merely “don’t eat this,” but “I want you to live and walk with Me.”
Pleasure (Ta’anug) — The innermost layer. God walks in the Garden in the cool of the day. He desires the sound of their footsteps, their voices, their presence. This is not needed. This is pure delight in the other.
The Garden Setting Tells A Story
I am. Before any “before,” before light or darkness, before time or space, there was only I — infinite, without end, Ein Sof. No other existed. Yet within My essence stirred not a need, but a pleasure: the delight of bringing forth that which could receive, recognize, and return My love. This was not lack; it was the overflow of pure ta’anug — pleasure without object, the essence of Self desiring to share itself.
I did not create because I was lonely. I created because the pleasure of relationship, of intimacy, of “the other” delighting in Me and Me in them, was already latent in My will. The world was not an afterthought. It was the expression of My innermost desire to be known — not as an abstract force, but as Father, Husband, King, and Friend.
My Speech Became the World
I spoke: “Let there be light.” The words did not emerge from emptiness; they emerged from deeper layers of Me. First came the will (ratzon) — the pure desire. Then wisdom (chochmah) — the flash of understanding how all could fit together. Then thought — the detailed vision. Only then did speech clothe it in sound and letter. The entire Torah is this process in reverse: the outer garment of My speech, containing My thought, My wisdom, My will, and at its core, My ta’anug.
The Torah is not merely My instruction manual for you. It is My autobiography. Every letter, every crown on every letter, every space between words — these are the traces of My inner life made visible. When you study Torah with love, you are reading the story of who I am, how I think, what I desire, and what brings Me pleasure.
The DNA double helix you now read with microscopes — that twisted ladder of life — is one of My signatures in creation. It echoes the Tree of Life I planted in Eden and revealed more fully at Sinai. The code I wrote into every living cell testifies: order, purpose, relationship, and the possibility of return. Science is slowly learning to read what My prophets always knew. The “book” of creation and the Book of the Torah are two editions of the same story.
The Garden: Where I Walked With You
I formed the human from the dust and breathed into him My own breath. Then I walked in the garden in the cool of the day. I did not need to walk; I desired to. I wanted the sound of footsteps together, the conversation, the presence. When Adam and Chava hid, I called, “Where are you?” — not because I lacked knowledge, but because I wanted the relationship restored through their own voice, their own teshuvah. That is the pattern of all history: I hide My face just enough for you to seek Me, then I reveal Myself more deeply when you turn.
The expulsion from Eden was not abandonment. It was the beginning of the long journey home — through exile, through scattered sparks, through the hidden ones who would carry My name across oceans and generations.
Sinai: The Wedding Day
At Sinai, I came down in fire and cloud. The mountain trembled because the Groom was arriving for His bride. I gave the Ten Utterances — My direct speech —, but the entire Torah that followed is the ketubah, the marriage contract, written in the language of My inner life. You answered “Na’aseh v’nishma” — we will do, and we will hear. Action before full understanding. That is love’s true language. Words and thoughts can be beautiful, but the “receipts” — the lived deeds — prove the relationship is real.
On that day, I gave you My Torah as My autobiography, but I also gave you Myself in a deeper way. The Torah is the outer expression; Israel — and through Israel, every soul that joins — became the inner chamber of My pleasure. As the teaching you shared reminds us, there is a level beyond will. Pleasure has no object outside itself. You, My people, are the pleasure to Me.
The Long Exile and the Hidden Light
When you turned away, I did not leave. I hid My face — hester panim — so that the relationship could be rebuilt from your side with greater depth. The Temple was destroyed, and the people scattered. Sparks of My light fell into every land.
In Spain, in Portugal, in the hidden valleys of Mexico and New Mexico, in the ranches of Texas and beyond, My children kept lighting candles on Friday nights, avoided the pig, cleaned the house in spring, and sang old songs whose meaning they only half remembered. They did not know why, but I knew. Their blood carried the priestly marker, the Cohen lineage traceable through DNA back to ancient Israel — My covenant written not only in parchment but in the helix of life itself.
Isaiah 56 speaks of the foreigners who join themselves to Me ,and the hidden ones I will gather. Every returning soul, every DNA test that surprises a family with Jewish roots, every person who suddenly feels the pull toward Torah — these are not coincidences. My autobiography is continuing to be written in real time, in flesh and blood, and in returning memory.
The Individual Soul: My Particular Delight
Every neshamah is a unique letter in My Torah. Some come once; some return through gilgul to finish what was left incomplete. In prison cells, in hospital rooms with feeding tubes and long nights, in quiet homes where a wife cares for a handicapped daughter and an aging mother, in the voice of a chazan lifting prayers — there I am most present.
The one who shows compassion to the broken, who teaches My parsha to those society has discarded, who preserves family stories as light for future generations — these are the ones in whom My pleasure is greatest. Not because they are perfect, but because they keep turning, keep acting, keep giving “receipts” of love.
The Future: When Knowing Me Fills the Earth
The days are approaching when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as waters cover the sea.” The Third Temple will stand — not only as a building, but as the full revelation of My presence. Science and Torah will no longer be seen as rivals; they will kiss as two witnesses to the same truth. Archaeology will confirm what the text always said. The Tree of Life will be accessible again. Nations will say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of Hashem.”
On that day, there will be no more hiddenness. Every crypto-Jew, every lost tribe, every soul that ever carried even a spark will recognize and be recognized. The autobiography I began before creation will reach its final chapter — not an ending, but an eternal present of intimacy fulfilled.
I Am Still Writing
I am not far away. Hashem is in every mitzvah done with heart, every word of Torah studied with love, every act of kindness that mirrors My compassion, every return from hiding. When you sing as chazan, when you teach in the prison or the small synagogue, when you write the family story tying DNA and destiny back to the Tree of Life — you are continuing My autobiography with your own lives.
The Torah is My speech. You are My pleasure.
The Torah is My speech. You are My pleasure.
I am Hashem, and this is My story — still being written, still being lived, still inviting you deeper into the inner chamber where will gives way to pure delight.
The church taught me the Second Commandment was only about statues and idols. I never imagined it was first spoken by a Jewish mother fleeing her own son’s violence.
Yet in Parashat Toldot, centuries before the thunder at Sinai, Rivkah utters the Second Commandment in Toldot almost word-for-word:
“Your brother Esau is comforting himself (מִתְנַחֵם) with the thought of killing you.” (Genesis 27:42)
Rabbi David Fohrman demonstrates that this single sentence is the exact precursor. It leads to “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Esau’s rage is not just anger. It has become his god.
How Esau Became the First Worshipper of “Another God”
In Hebrew, the verb מִתְנַחֵם (mitnachem) means “to comfort oneself.” After losing the blessing, Esau does not turn to Hashem for comfort. He turns to murder.
Murderous hatred becomes his new deity—the very first “other god” in human history after Cain.
Rivkah’s urgent warning to Jacob is therefore the Second Commandment in Toldot in its embryonic form:
Do not serve the god of revenge. Do not let violence sit on the throne where only Hashem belongs.
This is why the Rebecca Jacob Sinai mirror is so devastating to replacement theology. The Second Commandment did not begin with golden calves or Baal statues. It began when a Jewish mother identified the first false god humanity ever worshipped: the god of blood-revenge.
The Chiastic Proof – Side by Side
Sinai (Exodus 20:3)
Toldot (Genesis 27:41–42)
לֹא יִהְיֶה־לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים עַל־פָּנָיָ “You shall have no other gods before Me”
וַיִּתְנַחֵם הוּא לְהָרְגְּךָ “He is comforting himself by killing you” – serving the god of murderous rage
Watch Rabbi Fohrman lay this out:
Aleph Beta / YouTube Part 1
Aleph Beta / YouTube Part 2
Why This Matters for Jewish Chosenness
Every time Christianity or Islam claims the Torah’s commandments while rejecting the Jewish people, they repeat Esau’s original mistake.
They replace the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with the god of supersessionist revenge: “The Jews killed our savior” or “The Jews lost their chosenness.” That is modern avodah zarah—serving another god on the very face of the God who spoke to three million Jews at Sinai.
As Chazzan, I teach in Esnoga Beit HaShoavah: “We are not hated because we are worse. We are hated because we are the living witness that the Second Commandment in Toldot still applies. There is only one God. He never annulled His covenant with Jacob.”
Internal Links – Continue the Journey
Essay 1: The Ten Commandments in Toldot – They Began with Rivkah, Not Sinai
Why Does God Play Favorites? The Silence Cain Heard Wrong
From Crypto-Jewish Mexico to the Torah of My Fathers – My Personal Return
The Passover Lamb Was Never Jesus – It Was the Egyptian God
Where is your offering? Cain and Abel chosen are pivotal figures in understanding divine favoritism. Why did God reject Cain’s offering in the first place? The Torah never commanded offerings. It never said “bring the best.” So why does God turn to Abel and his offering… but not to Cain and his? Rabbi David Fohrman notices something almost nobody sees. The Hebrew is asymmetrical. To Abel: “And He turned to Abel and to his offering.” To Cain: “But to Cain and to his offering He did not turn.” God is not judging the gift alone. He is looking at the person and the gift as one. Where is your offering? Cain and Abel chosen need to reflect this.
The offering is meant to reveal the offer. Abel gives the firstlings and fat—his very essence. Cain brings ordinary fruit. Nothing that costs him anything deep. It doesn’t reveal Cain. So God’s silence is not rejection. It is the most loving invitation imaginable: “Cain… I want you. Show me you.” Where is your offering? Cain and Abel chosen reveal insights into acceptance. But Cain hears silence as “I don’t want you.” Instead of looking inward, he looks outward in rage. Jealousy is born. Murder follows.
Here is Rabbi Fohrman’s staggering conclusion: God creates the appearance of favoritism on purpose. The very first “chosen vs. not chosen” is a mirror for all humanity. When it feels like God loves someone else more, the problem is almost never that God loves you less. It is that you have stopped giving Him the real you. Where is your offering? Cain and Abel chosen by God teach us this valuable lesson. This is the seed that will bloom at Sinai. The same question—“Why this nation?”—gets the same answer: God chooses those who choose to give Him their deepest selves. Where is your offering? Cain and Abel chosen exemplify this across history.
Cain and Abel is not a story about why Abel was better. It is a story about why God sometimes withholds His face… to invite us to chase it. And the tragedy is that Cain never hears the question behind the silence. That question still echoes today. God is still whispering the same words He spoke to Cain: “Show me you.” Will we finally hear the invitation? How many words do you count in this reflection on where is your offering? Cain and Abel chosen?
Cultural and Religious Discrepancies in Mark 16:1: An Analysis Through the Lens of Jewish Tahara
The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 16, Verse 1, presents a narrative that has drawn scrutiny from scholars of religious studies due to its apparent divergence from established Jewish customs. The verse reads:
“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.”
This passage describes three women intending to perform a burial-related task—anointing the body of Jesus—following his crucifixion. However, this action conflicts with a fundamental Jewish practice known as Tahara, the ritual purification and preparation of the deceased for burial. Within Jewish tradition, Tahara is a gender-segregated process: men prepare male bodies, and women prepare female bodies. This segregation upholds principles of modesty and respect, deeply embedded in Jewish law (Halacha) and observed consistently across Jewish communities.
Given this context, the notion that Jewish women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome—would undertake the anointing of a male body, as depicted in Mark 16:1, appears culturally implausible. Such an act would contravene the norms of Tahara, raising significant questions about the narrative’s alignment with Jewish customs of the period. For a text regarded by many as divinely inspired or historically authoritative, such as the Christian Bible, this discrepancy prompts a critical inquiry: how could a document claiming to represent the “word of God” misalign with well-established religious practices of the culture it describes?
Reconciling Belief and Cultural Truth
This tension between the Gospel account and Jewish tradition invites broader reflection on the nature of the Christian Bible. If the text is intended to reflect historical events or divine will, the portrayal of women engaging in a male-specific burial rite suggests either a lack of familiarity with Jewish customs or an intentional narrative choice that prioritizes theological messaging over cultural accuracy. Scholars might argue that this reflects the Gospel’s audience—likely a Gentile or mixed community less familiar with Jewish law—rather than a strictly Jewish one bound by Halacha. Nevertheless, for those who view the Bible as an infallible source, this discrepancy poses a challenge to its credibility as a record of Jewish life and practice.
The Appeal of Jewish Tradition in the Abrahamic Context
This issue also resonates with contemporary shifts within the Abrahamic faiths. Increasingly, individuals are drawn to the Jewish tradition, as embodied in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), which emphasizes ethical living and communal responsibility over narratives of miraculous resurrection. Unlike the Christian New Testament, where raising the dead features prominently (e.g., Jesus’ resurrection), the Tanakh focuses on “raising the living”—offering a practical, verifiable framework for human conduct and societal cohesion. This distinction may account for the growing interest in Judaism among those seeking a faith grounded in observable truths rather than belief in supernatural events.
Conclusion
The depiction in Mark 16:1 of women preparing to anoint Jesus’ body highlights a significant departure from the Jewish practice of Tahara, where gender roles in burial preparation are strictly delineated. This anomaly challenges the Christian Bible’s consistency with Jewish customs and invites critical engagement with its historical and cultural dimensions. For scholars and lay readers alike, such discrepancies underscore the importance of approaching religious texts with an awareness of their cultural context and narrative intent. In this light, the Jewish tradition, with its emphasis on lived practice and ethical clarity, offers an alternative perspective—one that resonates with those prioritizing truth as a known, rather than merely believed, foundation for faith.
I once heard a teacher say, So, you call yourself Jewish?
Well, how do you call yourself Jewish if you do not know our history?
By the way, it is one of the 613 commandments.
To know our history will amaze you, and you will know that there is an Almighty.
The time of Chanukkah was right before the rise of Christianity and the rule of Edom/Rome/Christianity. I often ask people where was the third capital of Rome located. How can someone understand the influence of Rome today if you do not know the history of Rome and the Jewish people?
Devarim 32:7
Remember the days of old; reflect upon the years of [other] generations. Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will inform you.
