Message #117298

[Bianca]

Miguel Bensús is standing at the grave of his great-grandfather Abrahams Bensús Benamú. “Even though there is a Jewish cemetery, which is now culturally protected as Peruvian national heritage, we never had a synagogue. And nobody has an explanation for it”, says community chairman Abramovitz.

“Not until the 1940’s and 50’s descendants of Jewish immigrants began to refer to their roots. Initiated by Victor Ederig, a new congregation formed in the 1960’s and people started to gather for service: in Ederig’s tavern “La Sirena“. We owe it to Don Victor that we still have a community today“, Abramovitz points out.

“Iquitos was a world all by itself”, says Rabbi Guillermo Bronstein who lives in the Peruvian capital of Lima. The Rabbi of the conservative “Asociación Judía de Beneficencia y Culto de 1870” visited the Jews in Iquitos for the first time in 1991.

Afterwards a new stage began for the Jewish descendants. “About 30 to 40 families lived there at the time, some with their great-grandparents, grandparents, nephews and cousins, up to 15 family members scattered throughout the wide jungle”, the Rabbi recounts. “I suggested a conversion to Judaism, provided that their descent from at least one Jewish parent was traceable.”