The Prophet of the Andes
An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
The remarkable true story of how one Peruvian carpenter led hundreds of Christians to Judaism, sparking a pilgrimage from the Andes to Israel and inspiring a wave of emerging Latin American Jewish communities
“If Gabriel García Márquez had written the Old Testament, it might read like Graciela Mochkofsky's staggering true account of a humble Peruvian carpenter's spiritual odyssey from a shack in the Andes, via the Amazon, to the Promised Land of Israel with a community of devoted followers." —Judith Thurman, award-winning author of Isak Dinesen
Segundo Villanueva was born in 1927 in a tiny farming village perched in the Andes; when he was seventeen, his father was murdered and Segundo was left with little more than a Bible as his inheritance. This Bible launched Segundo on a lifelong obsession to find the true message of God contained in its pages. He found himself looking for answers outside the Catholic Church, whose hierarchy and colonial roots embodied the gaping social and racial inequities of Peruvian society.
Over years of religious study, Segundo explored various Protestant sects and founded his own religious community in the Amazon jungle before discovering a version of Judaism he pieced together independently from his readings of the Old Testament. His makeshift synagogue began to draw in crowds of fervent believers, seeking a faith that truly served their needs. Then, in a series of extraordinary events, politically motivated Israeli rabbis converted the community to Orthodox Judaism and resettled them on the West Bank. Segundo’s incredible journey made him an unlikely pioneer for a new kind of Jewish faith, one that is now attracting masses of impoverished people across Latin America.
Through detailed reporting and a deep understanding of religious and cultural history, Graciela Mochkofsky documents this unprecedented and momentous chapter in the history of modern religion. This is a moving and fascinating story of faith and the search for dignity and meaning.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker contributor Mochkofsky makes her English-language debut with this immersive chronicle of an unusual search for religious authenticity in 20th-century South America. In the late 1940s, 21-year-old Peruvian mestizo Segundo Villanueva was surprised to come across a Spanish translation of the Bible in his murdered father's trunk. (In Peru's Catholic villages at the time, Mochkofsky notes, "the Bible was for priests; they alone were permitted to read it and understand it.") Once he delved into the scriptures, Villanueva became unsettled by the New Testament's abandonment of almost all the laws delineated in the Old Testament. That tension led Villanueva to found his own church, called Israel of God, in 1962 and build a settlement in the Amazon jungle, where he and his followers kept the Sabbath, observed feast days, and taught themselves Hebrew in order to read the "original" Bible. In 1989, Villanueva and nearly 70 of his followers formally converted to Judaism. Six months later, they moved to an Orthodox settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Drawing on impressive insider access, Mochkofsky documents the Peruvians' beliefs and the mixed reception they received in Israel with empathy and insight. The result is an intimate chronicle of faith and politics.
