Discovering Jewish Roots - by Angel & Dorice Monegro

In 2006 a journey began to discover our Jewish Roots in Yeshua.  Angel & Dorice Monegro discovered through an Israeli women that we have Jewish roots...at a gathering Hanna began to question our ancestry last names and informed us that we are Sephardic of Spanish ancestry.  Hanna continued to share with us the information that lead to an investigation and research regarding our Jewish heritage....One of the biggest resources to our investigation is the website sephardim.com which lists all the Spanish Jews in the grand unveiling by the Roman Catholic church from the year of 1998.  The archives of the Vatican unveiled all the Jews that were assimilated to the Catholic religion.  I was stunned at such a discovery.  According to Jewish tradition, if your mother is Jewish then so are the children.   My husband's surname from his mother's side is Ortiz.  He was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.   My surname on my mother's side is Hernandez.  I found out that the ez ending of the surname indicates, "son of" in Hebrew.  I was astounded at this information which was given to me by Rabbi Levine of Beth Chofesh.  When I showed him my mothers birth certificate he stated, yes this is documented proof of my Jewish ancestry.   I was both happy and sad at the same time because I feel that if my parents have known they would have enjoyed much of the rich Jewish traditions.   We now observe our Jewish heritage with joy!

Great information for research is sephardim.com and wikipedia.org  on  Latin American Jews.
We are Shalom Partners with Jewish Voice International with Rabbi Jonathan Bernis and hope to one day join them at their outreach festivals and medial clinics to reach the Jews of Ethiopia, India, Argentina and abroad.

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