Israel is a small country with a huge doorstep, where Jews who have traveled long distances or emerged from closed societies could be welcomed. Now there is also a place for welcoming those who traveled over time to reach a land and a faith their ancestors lost.

The emergence of Belmonte’s Jews after 500 years in hiding was nothing short of miraculous (see story page 18). And yet, compared to the stories of other Crypto-Jews, those in Belmonte may have had it easy. They never lost their way and they never lost their sense of community. And when they were ready to return the rabbis came to them.

Most descendants of the Jews forcibly converted in Spain and Portugal—and now scattered throughout the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world—have preserved only bits and pieces of Jewish observance and identity. The few with a desire to learn or return typically belong to families that want to keep their Jewish selves hidden. They also tend to live in places remote from Jewish resources, or near small mainstream Jewish communities in which a sympathetic figure is often hard to find. There are countries in Latin America in which Orthodox rabbis do not perform conversions, yet some Crypto-Jews fear a non-Orthodox conversion is tantamount to trading one form of rejection for another.

Two years ago a special light was put in the window of the Jewish homeland, a beacon to those looking to find their way home. Eliyahu Birnbaum, a Uruguayan-born rabbi, and his sabra wife, Renana, launched a Spanish-language ulpan aimed at teaching Judaism and Hebrew to prospective converts.

Not all the students are descended from Crypto-Jews, though they add an element hard to find at other conversion courses. “We attract three kinds of people,” says the 41-year-old Birnbaum, a broad smile parting the waves of his gray beard. “We have those who are marrying Jews and intend to convert, those with no personal connection to other Jews who are motivated to convert and descendants of anousim.”

Birnbaum’s ulpan is located in Efrat, a religious community 15 minutes south of Jerusalem founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. Though Efrat has a reputation as an American enclave, the Ohr Torah Stone Ulpan de Estudio de Judaism y Conversión adds a multicultural flavor. “Conversion is so important for the Jewish people,” says Riskin. “We need to show that we can handle it with sensitivity.”

On a hot day in May the students gather in the community room of Efrat’s Yeshiva Tichon for their afternoon class. They are from Spain and Chile, Brazil and Venezuela, Colombia and Peru. There is a rough order to the class, but at any given time it seems two or three activities are taking place. While most are concentrating on the lesson—on this day they discuss Shabbat, tefilin and the tradition of naming converts—some are pulled out for counseling, job interviews or private discussions with the teachers. Visitors to the class find it impossible to simply observe; the atmosphere is too inclusive to remain aloof.

“We have a familial ulpan,” says Renana Birnbaum, the first woman to direct an Orthodox ulpan in Israel. “We wanted to have an ulpan open to everyone, and to make them feel welcome once they were here. We find families for the students to spend Shabbat with, we help them find jobs, we go with them to the beit din [when they convert] and we stay in touch with them afterward.” Between periods of teaching and shepherding students in and out of class, she also makes sure the snack trays and glasses are full, fulfilling the second title her husband gives to her, “la mama de todos los participantes.”

If his ancestors had made a different choice, Rodrigo Carneiro da Cunha might have grown up in New York. The 22-year-old with wire-rimmed glasses and sidecurls made his way to Efrat from Recife, in northeastern Brazil. When the Dutch captured Recife from the Portuguese in the seventeenth century, Crypto-Jews in the colony returned to open Jewish practice. Dutch Recife had the first synagogue in the New World and brought over the first rabbi. When the Portuguese drove the Dutch out in 1654, the Jews scattered. One group of 23 wound up in New Amsterdam, founders of what would become the world’s largest Jewish community.

More than 300 years later Carneiro, descended from Jews who stayed and slipped back into hiding, decided it was his destiny to return. “At first my parents didn’t like the idea, but when my mother saw I was serious she became interested, too, and started buying me books on Judaism and Jewish history,” he says. “I studied with a rabbi from Lubavitch in Recife, but I decided to come to Israel so I could have a conversion that could never be challenged.”

On this day, however, Carneiro’s presence is being challenged. Not yet converted and therefore not yet eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return, he is in Israel on a tourist visa about to expire. “Today is a sad day,” Renana Birnbaum announces to the class, “because Rodrigo may have to leave the country.” The class treats it as a family crisis. Birnbaum says Carneiro should be able to leave for a brief period and then come back with a new visa, and they may still be able to get him an extension without his having to leave. One classmate suggests he make the most of the situation and visit Egypt. Others suggest that the Birnbaums can find an observant family for him to stay with in Paris. But Carneiro doesn’t want to focus yet on the time he will have to spend outside of the country he struggled to reach. “I want to finish my conversion, get a good job, marry an Orthodox girl and live here,” he says.

Manuel Sorá Pascual, 41, an airline agent from the Spanish island of Ibiza, has similar plans. “I want to find the right wife here,” he says, “but she has to be a Sefardi, someone who understands my experience.”

The most persistent questioner in the class, Pascual takes extensive notes and also writes in the margins of his Shulkhan Arukh (The Code of Jewish Law). “We had Jewish traditions in my family,” he says, his blond hair tucked into a large multicolored kippa, “but I’m the only one in my family who wants to return. When I was a boy I knew I was Spanish and Jewish, but I didn’t understand how I could be both at the same time.”

Much of the class is presided over by Yisrael Diament, who teaches and also engages the students in debates over points of law and tradition. When he discusses the tradition of naming converts “ben or bat Avraham Avinu,” the children of our forefather Abraham, rather than after their own parents, a wave of discomfort sweeps the table. “The mark of a convert never ends,” someone moans. Diament speaks not only of the symbolic rebirth of the convert but explains the historic context for the tradition, coming from a time when conversion usually meant a total break with the past, and suggesting it needn’t be taken literally. “I feel closer to my parents than ever,” says Elisha Salas, a Chilean with no known Jewish ancestry, as if to support Diament’s point. When Claudia Kottler, a Brazilian student, asks why she has to be “bat Avraham Avinu” when she has a Jewish father, Diament pronounces himself stumped.

Of the many descended from converted Jews, only a remnant have any knowledge, and only a fraction of that remnant is trying to make its way back. But in Efrat the ember is igniting. There is now a waiting list for the ulpan. One of the students from last year’s class succeeded, after much struggle, in extracting a “certificate of return” from the Chief Rabbinate—a matter of pride among some anousim who want their Jewish roots recognized—instead of the standard certificate of his conversion.

After 500 years of hiding, perhaps just knowing who you are is a miracle. “All the students who study here have come a long way,” says Rabbi Birnbaum. “They know who they are and why they have come.”

(Printed with permission from Alan Tigay -Hadassah Magazine)

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