Story of Columbian Jews

Colombian Jews, who would've thought?

Not at all surprised to find Jews in Columbia as anywhere in the world.  To be spread out across the globe seems to be our fate, but this story I find particularly interesting.

I am not one to just accept that somehow it is in the soul of these people to rediscover a lost/stolen heritage. But who knows the whole story?

Colombian evangelical Christians convert to Judaism, embracing hidden past

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.

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.
FULL STORY