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| Total population | |
|---|---|
| c. 2,500 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Peru | 1,600 prospective converts[1] |
 Israeli-occupied West Bank | 900 (est.)[1] |
| Languages | |
| Spanish,Modern Hebrew,Quechua | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Mestizos,Amerindians,Quechua people,Indigenous peoples of Peru | |
TheB'nai Moshe (Hebrew:בני משה, "Children ofMoses"), also known asInca Jews, are a small group of several hundredconverts to Judaism originally from the city ofTrujillo,Peru, to the north of the capital cityLima. Judaism moved to the south intoArequipa and to other populated cities likePiura.
Most B'nai Moshe now live inLima andTrujillo. And some B'nai Moshe are inIsrael andWest Bank, mostly inKfar Tapuach andElon Moreh, along withYemenite Jews,Russian Jews and others.[2]
WhileInca Jews is not the community's official designation, it is popular outside the community and is derived from the fact that they can trace descent from Peru's indigenousAmerindian people, although mostly in the form ofmestizos (persons of mixedSpanish, Amerindian descent, andSpanish Jewish ancestors) and the association of that country's native population with theIncas.[2]
The community was founded in 1966 by a local man of Trujillo named Segundo Villanueva, who began studying Judaism at the age of twelve in 1939, while living in the city ofCajamarca. Villanueva founded a religious group called Israel de Dios ("Israel of God") that followed Jewish practices as described in the Hebrew Bible.[2] In 1967, Villanueva took 19 families of his movement to settle in the Peruvian Amazon nearIquitos, forming a settlement called Hebrón. In 1970, Villanueva and his brother Álvaro visited Lima to meet with the Jewish community there. The only Jewish leader who agreed to meet with them was Rabbi Abraham ben Hamu of the Sephardic synagogue. He gave them books and arranged for a Jewish physician to circumcise the brothers and the other men of Israel de Dios. In 1971, the majority of the community returned to Trujillo, with a few families remaining in the Amazon and Álvaro moving to Lima to establish a new congregation there.[2]
In 1980, Villanueva met with the Israeli embassy in Lima. Through the embassy, he met David Liss, an Israeli engineer who lobbied for rabbis to come to Peru and formally convert them. One of these, Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, was the founder ofAmishav, an organization dedicated to finding lost and displaced Jews and reconnecting them to Judaism.[2]
In 1985, Villanueva made contact with theLubavitcher Rebbe, who sent Rabbi Myron Zuber to Peru to help with theirformal conversions. In 1988, Zuber arrived in Peru and aided the converts in matters such as how to properly observekashrut andShabbat.
As a result of the Lima community's continuing reluctance, it was eventually decided that the B'nai Moshe could not reach their full potential in Peru, and decided that they makealiyah (emigration) toIsrael once converted. In 1989, Rabbi Avichail and Rabbi Mordechai Oriah, head of the Haifa religious court, flew to Peru, where they joined Lima Rabbi Jacob Krauss to form aBeit Din to convert the community. The rabbis converted about 60 people from the Trujillo community at theMoche River, and another 15 from the Lima community in the Pacific Ocean.[2] The Beit Din initially performed formal conversions for about 300 members of the community in 1991, almost all of whom emigrated to Israel, who were followed by an additional 200 several years later.[citation needed] A community of around 30 B'nai Moshe moved toLima at the same time. Another 84 were formally converted in 2001.[citation needed]Currently, B'nai Moshe has been a large local community in Peru, one of the fastest growing Jewish communities in the world.
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