The Birth of the International Federation of Messianic Jews
By Rabbi Haim Levi

Prologue:
In order to understand the significance of today’s Sephardic revival, one must understand ancient history and the unfulfilled prophecy of Obadiah. The history of Spanish Jews, also referred to as Sephardic Jews or Sephardim, has its genesis in Israel during the year 2935 (according to the Jewish calendar) or 826 BC when King Solomon sent a large group of Israelites (my ancestors) to the land of Tarshish (c.f. I Kings 10:22). Tarshish is the ancient biblical name for the nation that we now know as Spain and which had become known to Jews as Sepharad in Hebrew. The Jewish presence in Spain spans more than thirty centuries. For example, according to some ancient Spanish historians, even the tomb of Solomon’s famous General Adoniram was located in Murviedo, Spain.

In the year 6460 (or AD 700), Spain was invaded by Muslims (also known as the Moors). Spain then became a Sephardic-Muslim ruled nation. This Muslim rule had spanned some 700 years until the Muslims were driven out of the Iberian Peninsula by the military forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Shortly thereafter, the Catholic Church received authority from the Vatican in Rome to establish the office of the “Holy Inquisition” in an effort to force all Jews to convert to Catholicism. When this governmental policy did not effectuate Jewish conversions to Catholicism, tens of thousands of Spanish Jews in Barcelona, Toledo, and in many towns and villages across Spain were burned at the stake, tortured, killed, or expelled from Spain.

After Jews had been living in Spain for more than 2,500 years, my Jewish ancestors were expelled from Spanish soil (and their second Jewish homeland “Eretz Yisrael be Sefarad”) on the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av 1492 (4690). Five years later in 1497 (4695), Portugal expelled the remainder of the Jewish brethren living in that land. The name Sefarad comes from the Hebrew root word sefer, which means book. The term was used in the Iberian Peninsula and is also derived from the Hebrew root word Ivrit, which means Hebrew. There are many other examples of Sephardic names still found in the Spanish culture. For example, the current Spanish city named Toledo means generation in Hebrew.

My wife’s Sephardic roots

My wife’s Spanish Jewish relatives, the Sottos, Levys, Carios, and the Saltiels, were forced to move from Barcelona, Spain as a result of the expulsion edict of King Ferdinand in 1492. My wife’s ancestors then settled in the city of Salonika, Greece Her family lived in Greece until 1940, when General Kurt Waldheim of the German army commanded all Jews in Greece to be deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. Approximately 90% of all Sephardic Jews living in the Balkan nations were horrifically turned into ashes by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during the Second World War. Rachelle’s only relatives that survived the Nazi concentration camps were...(Continue reading in .pdf)