In the Peruvian highlands in the 1940s, young men would seek a vendetta if their father was murdered and the courts failed them. Therefore, it was not surprising that Segundo Villanueva, a 21-year-old carpenter, was brimming with rage when, because his mother could not bribe the judge, his father’s killers walked free four years after the murder. But he chanced upon something that changed his life – and many soul-searching years later, that of hundreds of his followers. It was a Bible in Spanish, which he found in his father’s trunk.

Finding the Bible was a shock: in mestizo Catholic homes in those times, it was considered an act of arrogance, even a heresy, to own a Bible. Only priests were meant to have the Bible or know what it said. Ordinary folks could only have it read to them by priests – in Latin. But having found a Bible he could understand, Villanueva threw himself into reading it. Overcome by awe-inspiring emotion, he connected strongly to the Old Testament, began to question his native Catholic faith, and over the years, Christianity itself.

Thus begins Graciela Mochkofsky’s remarkable book, The Prophet of the Andes: An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land. Villanueva eventually embraced Judaism, his soul resonating to the story of Jehovah ordering his people to escape their exile in Babylon and return to Jerusalem. He was moved by the passage: “This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit.” Almost four decades later, he himself led hundreds of Peruvian Christians to Judaism and a pilgrimage to Israel, and sparked waves of aliya by aspiring Jews from Latin America. Significantly, the Jewish name he took was Zerubbabel Tzidkiya, the first name after the leader of the first Jews returning from captivity in Babylon, and the last name after the last king of Judah, who was taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar II.

The book took more than 15 years to research and write. Mochkofsky, a native of Argentina and a professor of journalism at the City University of New York, travelled extensively, including to the house in Rodacocha, where Villanueva was raised as a boy, and communities in Israel’s West Bank, where he lived since 1990, and the Mount of Olives, where he was buried in 2008. She was unable to meet him or speak to him (because he was wracked by dementia). But the book is based on in-depth interviews with Villanueva’s family and followers. Mochkofsky has painstakingly worked to glean the facts from the fables that have inevitably grown around his epic life.

Villanueva’s initial problems with Christianity weren’t deeply theological. The Bible he read was opposed to “graven images,” so he wondered why were idols and saints worshipped in the Catholic churches he went to? The Bible spoke of the Sabbath, so why did priests say Sunday was the holy day? The Bible spoke of the people of G-d as Israel, but the Church did not. He found the four Gospels confusing and contrary to the Old Testament. Was Jesus indeed the Messiah? Such questions vexed him. 

But he wasn’t one to give up the search for a new life and purpose. He married and raised a family, but continued to study the Bible in depth, drawing to his carpentry workshop some committed followers. He gave up on Catholicism, but was confounded by all Christian sects – Pentecostals, Assemblies of God, Methodists, Nazarenes, Presbyterians, and Evangelists. For some time, Villanueva’s group found sanctuary in the Seventh-Day Adventist Reform Movement, which observed Sabbath on Saturday, followed strict dietary rules, and was socially conservative. But they tried the patience of the ministers and pastors, wanting to know how the Holy Trinity could be reconciled with G-d being the one and only one and were forced to leave.

In 1962, Villanueva founded his own church – Israel of G-d – interpreting ‘Israel’ as not just the blood descendants of Israel but also Gentiles in the plan of salvation based on Jesus’s sacrifice. His church combined Adventist rites, worship during Israelite feast days, and rest and Bible study on the Sabbath. But the struggle to find bearings as a church continued. With his followers, he moved into the Amazon forests, founding a colony called Hebron, far from man and closer to G-d. Villanueva plunged deeper into study, travelling from Hebron to Lima to find and read all the Bibles he could, discovering the many names of G-d: ‘tender’ in some versions, ‘merciful’, ‘honored’, or ‘feared’ in others. It was at this point he resolved to read the Bible in Hebrew and required all his followers to memorize the Hebrew alphabet.

In this he was helped by Rabbi Abraham Benhamu, of the Sephardic Jewish Charitable Society in Lima, who gave him a dictionary and a book on Jewish traditions. He became convinced that Judaism was the answer he and his followers had sought. But the Hebron community split in a disagreement over whether circumcision was necessary in the flesh or to be seen as symbolic, and of the soul. Villanueva, his brother, cousin, and faithful followers left Hebron and started observing Jewish customs. Wrapping teffelin, they approached Rabbi Benhamu about getting circumcised. But Villanueva’s insistent questions on whether Jesus was really the Messiah made the rabbi suspect Villanueva might be nursing messianic delusions. He sent the would-be Jews on their way.

Nevertheless, Villanueva continued to study Judaism and ancient Christianity in earnest, learning about the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. and the Roman prohibition against conversion to Judaism. For self-preservation, the Jews renounced proselytization and adhered to stricter laws. And the Talmud – the book of oral Jewish law – became a dividing wall between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. What struck him most, however, was that none of the prophets had said that the Messiah would come twice, first to fail and then to triumph. He reasoned, therefore, that Jesus was not the Messiah; the Old Testament was G-d’s only message; and that he and his followers would have to wait for deliverance.

Keeping the faith brought a reward in 1980. Israel sponsored a Bible contest in all countries where it had embassies. Victor Chico, one of Villanueva’s followers, won the prize: a trip to Israel. After travelling to the Jewish homeland, he brought the dream of living there to his community in Peru. Things began to move faster after Rabbi Guillermo Bronstein arrived in Peru in 1985 to lead a Conservative synagogue. After meeting Chico, Bronstein welcomed him and his community and offered to convert them, but Villanueva politely declined since he wanted an Orthodox conversion.

The group, meanwhile, started calling themselves Bnei Moshe, or Children of Moses, and began to build a synagogue in Lima while waiting to be accepted as Jews by Israel. In 1986, Eliyahu Avichail, the Israeli founder of Amishav, an organization dedicated to bringing Jews from the lost tribes to the land of their forefathers, heard about the Bnei Moshe and visited them in Peru. Convinced of their devotion, he decided to help them reach Israel and took their case to the chief rabbinate in Israel. The chief rabbi, after careful consideration, reasoned that the Bnei Moshe didn’t claim Jewish ancestry or crypto-Jewish lineage, so conversion would be required. A panel of three rabbis – a beit din – was sent to convert them.

At last, in 1990, the Bnei Moshe arrived in the Promised Land, making the Elon Moreh and Kfar Tapuach communities on the West Bank their home. Villanueva’s son, now a rabbi, is convinced of their descent from crypto-Jews. There have since been two aliyas from Peru, and there are now 60 Jewish congregations in Latin America. Mochkofsky keeps alive her interest in their stories. But the most fascinating story is that of the man who started it all, with an obsessive spiritual quest spurred by the loss of his father and finding the Father.