Elin
10-04-2007, 11:18 AM
By Yair Sheleg
Until he was 15, Juan Mejia was secure in his Catholic identity. He grew up in Bogota, Colombia, in an upper-middle class family. His father was a doctor, his mother a sculptor, and he attended a Catholic school in the city. "From an early age, I had a religious soul," he recalls. As a child he dreamed of one day being a monk or a priest. But the Christmas celebration when he was 15 turned his world upside down. During the family's holiday gathering, one of his uncles started telling ethnic jokes about blacks, Indians - and Jews. Suddenly, his grandfather hushed the uncle and told the stunned relatives that his own grandfather had been Jewish. He told the family that he had been born in a large ranch in the north of the country, near Medellin, "and once or twice a day the men in the family would go down to the cellar and pray there with towels on their heads" - apparently a reference to Jewish prayer shawls.
When he discussed the incident with friends, Juan discovered that many of their families had similar stories. The most prominent link between them was their surnames, which were of Jewish origin (in Juan's case, Mejia is the Spanish transliteration of the Hebrew word mashiach, messiah). "We suddenly noticed the origin of our names - Spinoza, Acosta, Erdozo. One friend, whose last name was Spinoza,said his grandmother had insisted that their family not eat meat with dairy products, but that she had claimed it was to prevent indigestion."
From here it did not take long to realize that his parents and relatives were anusim, descendants of marranos - Spanish and Portuguese Jews who converted to Christianity under the pressure of the Inquisition, continued to observe Jewish customs in secret, and were expelled from their home countries. Some went to South America. After the jarring discovery of his identity, Mejia's journey to Judaism was a slow one. At first he chose a secular lifestyle, and studied philosophy. He says that in his studies he felt he was learning about the world, but did not actually know it, and so he decided to travel to Europe. A friend with an Israeli stepfather offered to go with him, on the condition that they stop in Israel first.
An anti-mystical experience
The visit, in 1998, ended Mejia's identity crisis. "From the very first moment I felt a deep connection to the country - to the language, the food, the religion," he says. "I did not even want to get near Jerusalem, because it seemed like a place that was too holy and I didn't want to be disappointed. But a week and a half before we left, my friend pressured me to visit. At first we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but aside from thinking that it was a beautiful place, I felt nothing there. I went to the Temple Mount and to the Dome of the Rock, and there, too, the experience was limited to aesthetic appreciation. And then we went to the Western Wall, where I actually had an anti-mystical experience. If in a mystical experience people suddenly feel like some presence is filling them from inside, at the Western Wall I felt a sense of missed opportunity, and anger at my family - for 500 years their ancestors had preserved Jewish tradition, and then in the last generation they had broken with it. I felt that I needed to fix things, to make a tikkun [Jewish concept of correction or reform], and to convert."
The two continued to Europe as planned, but Mejia's interest in Judaism did not abate. Everywhere he went, he focused on the history of the local Jewish community. When he returned to Colombia he began studying Judaism, with the intention of converting. At first he went to the Orthodox Jews, but they turned him away; he believes they did so not only because of their strict observance of Jewish law, but also out of racism. "The Orthodox Jews in Colombia have adopted a colonialist lifestyle, and they are uncomfortable with the natives, who seem 'Indian' to them," he claims. The Conservative Jews also refused to convert him, but at least allowed him to study Judaism with them.
In the meantime, Mejia completed his bachelor's degree in philosophy and decided to move to Jerusalem to study Jewish thought at the Hebrew University. This was at the height of the second Intifada, when terror attacks were frequent. Not surprisingly, he met with strong opposition from his family. "You want to study Judaism, fine; but why risk your life for it?" they said. He insisted, came to Jerusalem and, in addition to his academic studies he attended "every possible yeshiva in town: Chabad, Aish Hatorah, Ohr Somayach. They never even asked if I was Jewish. To them, I was just another university student, and they were happy to bring me closer to Judaism."
Eventually he told his story to the rabbis, and they recommended that he convert. His chosen path of studies seemed to point to an Orthodox conversion, but he continued to hesitate. "In terms of observing religious precepts, I am Orthodox. But in terms of theology and my views on gender equality, I'm closer to the Conservatives. In the end, what convinced me to choose a Conservative conversion was the Orthodox attack on Conservative Judaism and the threat that I would not be allowed to marry in Israel if I underwent a Conservative conversion. This actually only made me more determined."
The Conservative rabbi he approached for advice recommended that he convert abroad, since under Israel's complex legal situation, the state can recognize non-Orthodox conversion only when it takes place abroad. Mejia converted in New York and returned to the Conservative yeshiva in Israel to study Torah. There he met the woman he would later marry, Abby Jacobson, an American Jew from Florida and a fellow yeshiva student.
Until he was 15, Juan Mejia was secure in his Catholic identity. He grew up in Bogota, Colombia, in an upper-middle class family. His father was a doctor, his mother a sculptor, and he attended a Catholic school in the city. "From an early age, I had a religious soul," he recalls. As a child he dreamed of one day being a monk or a priest. But the Christmas celebration when he was 15 turned his world upside down. During the family's holiday gathering, one of his uncles started telling ethnic jokes about blacks, Indians - and Jews. Suddenly, his grandfather hushed the uncle and told the stunned relatives that his own grandfather had been Jewish. He told the family that he had been born in a large ranch in the north of the country, near Medellin, "and once or twice a day the men in the family would go down to the cellar and pray there with towels on their heads" - apparently a reference to Jewish prayer shawls.
When he discussed the incident with friends, Juan discovered that many of their families had similar stories. The most prominent link between them was their surnames, which were of Jewish origin (in Juan's case, Mejia is the Spanish transliteration of the Hebrew word mashiach, messiah). "We suddenly noticed the origin of our names - Spinoza, Acosta, Erdozo. One friend, whose last name was Spinoza,said his grandmother had insisted that their family not eat meat with dairy products, but that she had claimed it was to prevent indigestion."
From here it did not take long to realize that his parents and relatives were anusim, descendants of marranos - Spanish and Portuguese Jews who converted to Christianity under the pressure of the Inquisition, continued to observe Jewish customs in secret, and were expelled from their home countries. Some went to South America. After the jarring discovery of his identity, Mejia's journey to Judaism was a slow one. At first he chose a secular lifestyle, and studied philosophy. He says that in his studies he felt he was learning about the world, but did not actually know it, and so he decided to travel to Europe. A friend with an Israeli stepfather offered to go with him, on the condition that they stop in Israel first.
An anti-mystical experience
The visit, in 1998, ended Mejia's identity crisis. "From the very first moment I felt a deep connection to the country - to the language, the food, the religion," he says. "I did not even want to get near Jerusalem, because it seemed like a place that was too holy and I didn't want to be disappointed. But a week and a half before we left, my friend pressured me to visit. At first we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but aside from thinking that it was a beautiful place, I felt nothing there. I went to the Temple Mount and to the Dome of the Rock, and there, too, the experience was limited to aesthetic appreciation. And then we went to the Western Wall, where I actually had an anti-mystical experience. If in a mystical experience people suddenly feel like some presence is filling them from inside, at the Western Wall I felt a sense of missed opportunity, and anger at my family - for 500 years their ancestors had preserved Jewish tradition, and then in the last generation they had broken with it. I felt that I needed to fix things, to make a tikkun [Jewish concept of correction or reform], and to convert."
The two continued to Europe as planned, but Mejia's interest in Judaism did not abate. Everywhere he went, he focused on the history of the local Jewish community. When he returned to Colombia he began studying Judaism, with the intention of converting. At first he went to the Orthodox Jews, but they turned him away; he believes they did so not only because of their strict observance of Jewish law, but also out of racism. "The Orthodox Jews in Colombia have adopted a colonialist lifestyle, and they are uncomfortable with the natives, who seem 'Indian' to them," he claims. The Conservative Jews also refused to convert him, but at least allowed him to study Judaism with them.
In the meantime, Mejia completed his bachelor's degree in philosophy and decided to move to Jerusalem to study Jewish thought at the Hebrew University. This was at the height of the second Intifada, when terror attacks were frequent. Not surprisingly, he met with strong opposition from his family. "You want to study Judaism, fine; but why risk your life for it?" they said. He insisted, came to Jerusalem and, in addition to his academic studies he attended "every possible yeshiva in town: Chabad, Aish Hatorah, Ohr Somayach. They never even asked if I was Jewish. To them, I was just another university student, and they were happy to bring me closer to Judaism."
Eventually he told his story to the rabbis, and they recommended that he convert. His chosen path of studies seemed to point to an Orthodox conversion, but he continued to hesitate. "In terms of observing religious precepts, I am Orthodox. But in terms of theology and my views on gender equality, I'm closer to the Conservatives. In the end, what convinced me to choose a Conservative conversion was the Orthodox attack on Conservative Judaism and the threat that I would not be allowed to marry in Israel if I underwent a Conservative conversion. This actually only made me more determined."
The Conservative rabbi he approached for advice recommended that he convert abroad, since under Israel's complex legal situation, the state can recognize non-Orthodox conversion only when it takes place abroad. Mejia converted in New York and returned to the Conservative yeshiva in Israel to study Torah. There he met the woman he would later marry, Abby Jacobson, an American Jew from Florida and a fellow yeshiva student.