The Inquisition and the Jewish People: Faith, Persecution, and Survival

Rabbi Guimarães (00:01):
The Spanish people used to call them Maranos, which means pigs. Jews. Or new Christians. You see, they were the new Christians, but they were still Jews. For the Christians, it doesn’t matter if you became a Catholic, you’re still Jewish. So that created a phenomena, a Jew that they don’t let him die. They don’t let him live, but also they don’t let him die.

David (00:24):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (00:25):
Because you see, oh, I’m a Catholic. I converted. I go to the mass every Sunday. Oh no, n, no, no, but you have Jewish blood. You’re still Jewish.You’ll never be fully Christian. So it was the Morano, the new Christian was always the Anusim. That’s how we called them in Hebrew, the forced ones. And the Inquisition was established not to persecute Jews, but to persecute those thousands that were converting and were keeping Judaism alive in their houses. Really? That was the reason I bring position.

David (01:04):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Covenant and Conflict Podcast with us today. We have a good friend, Mateos Gimares. He is a Messianic Jewish rabbi from Brazil. He and his father started this Messianic congregation years ago. It is one of the healthiest and largest Messianic communities in Brazil. They have a museum attached to it that we’re going to talk about, about the Anusim, the Sephardic Jews, and the history of the Sephardic Jewish community. But he is a dear friend of the Center for Israel, and we are just so excited that he’s here. So will you help me welcome our friend Mateos?

Rabbi Guimarães (01:45):
Thank you, David. My pleasure. It’s an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

David (01:49):
Oh, we’re so thankful that you’re here, not just today in this room, but at our church.

Rabbi Guimarães (01:54):
Yes.

David (01:55):
You have been involved at Gateway now for the past couple months that you’ve been here. Your family’s kind of getting some roots here for the next year or two. And you’re helping out with one of the Messianic Jewish denominations. Is that a fair way to say

David (02:15):
It? Yes.

David (02:16):
And the UMJC, and you’re also going to the King’s University. Yes. So there’s so many things that we can talk about, but I just want to talk about really you and your family. I want our audience to get to know you. So you tell us just a little bit about yourself, a little about your story, about your faith, and then we’ll see what the Holy Spirit wants to do from there.

Rabbi Guimarães (02:37):
Wow. Like you said, it’s a lot to cover. It is. But our lives are … Each one of us has a different story and the Lord reaches to us in different ways. So in my case, my family came partially from Italy and Portugal in the end of the 19th century. And my grandmother was Jewish from Italian background, but very secular. And when she was about 23, 25 years old, she was having problems in her marriage. So some friend invited her to a church meeting, a Baptist church meeting. And my grandmother had an experience with God, and she accepted Yeshua, Jesus. And she became a believer. But the first thing she was taught by the pastor was that, okay, you’re now no longer Jewish, you’re a Christian.

David (03:48):
Gosh. And

Rabbi Guimarães (03:49):
You have to renounce everything from the past, which includes your ancestry, your traditions, everything. And although she was secular, but she was told to just abandon everything regarding Judaism and Jewish traditions. So she became a believer and my father and his siblings were all raised in this church, but my father ended up not going to church during his teenage years.

David (04:21):
And where and when is this?

Rabbi Guimarães (04:23):
This was in our city Bel Arizona in Brazil in the early 50s.

David (04:30):
And it was a Baptist church.

Rabbi Guimarães (04:31):
It was a Baptist church. But before that, my grandfather was Catholic, but they didn’t even go to the church. But the family was going through a economic struggle. The country actually in that decade was going through economic struggle. So my father was sent to live and study at the Catholic seminary in the countryside of my state, because it was for free. And so that was the way my grandparents found to have him study and raised without spending money. So he spent like seven years in a Catholic seminary living there, but he never became a priest. He came back and married my mom. But my parents were very secular. But when my father was in this Catholic seminary, my grandmother became a believer. That was when it happened. So when my father came back, he was already going to college. He met my mom and they married and everything, but there was something missing, something missing.

(05:51):
And they told my father, he came from a Jewish background. They told him he was 13 years old when they told him about his Jewish ancestry.

David (06:02):
That was his Bar Mitzvah was your

Rabbi Guimarães (06:03):
Jewish. So he never had a Bar Mitzvah because actually, his Barmito was the knowledge that he came from. That was Jewish. But my father always missed that spirituality. He was a person with a very strong spirituality, but didn’t know where to look for. And my father never liked religion very much. So what happened was that he also faced some problems in his marriage. I was 10 years old and he was also invited to a meeting at the same Baptist church. My grandmother became a believer and he had an encounter with God. He had an encounter with Yeshua in a reckless way.

David (06:50):
God was moving at this Baptist church, even if they didn understand. Jewish identity.

Rabbi Guimarães (06:55):
I tell you, this is the whole thing. When the Gentile believers, when they bless Israel, Israel blessed them back. It’s a circle of blessings.

David (07:10):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (07:11):
So I see this. So my father became a believer and my mom, and when he became a believer, David, back in 1987, I was 10 years old, all that Jewishness that was being hidden, it came out and my father could not explain. And he was talking to my grandmother and wanting to know more about her history. And so-

David (07:38):
Was your grandmother exploring her Jewish identity or was she very much just like, “Oh, that’s done

Rabbi Guimarães (07:45):
Now.” Christian. She was quite young when she became a believer. And when my father became a believer, she was not really that … I mean, she was always interested in things about Israel, but not to that degree as my father was. So my father actually helped her

David (08:05):
To

Rabbi Guimarães (08:05):
Rediscover all of our Jewish heritage and everything. And so let’s fast forward. We became all believers, my brothers and I, I had a born again experience when I was 11, so did my brothers. Was

David (08:25):
It at this Baptist church?

Rabbi Guimarães (08:26):
No, different Baptist church, but still Baptist. StillBaptist.

David (08:29):
Hey, they’re rolling over in Brazil.

Rabbi Guimarães (08:31):
We should love the Baptist

David (08:31):
Now. We should love the

Rabbi Guimarães (08:32):
Baptist. So where I met my wife, I met my wife at this wonderful Baptist church.

David (08:38):
They’re batting a thousand almost.

Rabbi Guimarães (08:41):
And so we were in this Baptist church in my City Bellow and the senior pastor from the church organized the church to Israel. First time the church was going to have a trip to Israel. And back on those days, it was not very common, early ’90s. And he knew that my father had some Jewish ancestry, somebody told him. So he invited my father to go. My father said, “No, no, I have no interest in visiting Israel.” And the pastor asked, “But why not? ” He said, “Well, it’s just sand and stones. I can see sand and stones here in my country. I don’t have to spend $3,000 to see the azer.” That was the kind of attachment my father had with Israel and everything, although having this Jewish heritage and everything. But what happened was that he was convinced to go, not only by the pastor, but by the Holy Spirit.

(09:39):
And during the trip, he saw a magazine. Somebody left a Newsweek magazine on the front seat of the plane. It was a 14 hour flight, so you have time to do a lot of things. So it was this Newsweek magazines my father started to read and there was an article about Massanic Jews in Jerusalem.

(10:01):
And my father was shocked and he was angry. I’m kind

David (10:04):
Of shocked Newsweek would have an article like that.

Rabbi Guimarães (10:06):
News week, what the article was, can Jews be for Jesus? And they were reporting about a march that Massanic Jews did in Jerusalem back in 1992 or something like that. And there were pictures of David Stern of Blessed Memory and Martha Stern and Joseph Shulam and other leaders from Jerusalem. And my father was like outraged. How come? They’re all Christians. Either you’re Jewish or you’re Christian. You can’t be both. Now you see the irony here. Same thing that my grandmother was taught. He was repeating now to himself. And he decided to look for that person in the article and convince him that this whole Massanic Judaism doesn’t have any meaning on it. And it was Joseph Shulam, this leader from Israel, very dear friend to this day, but he met with Joseph Shulam and that meeting changed the course of our lives

(11:07):
Because the first thing he heard was from this leader, Joseph Shulam, he said, “How can you stop being Jewish by believing that another Jew is the son of God?” On the contrary, now you are a complete Jew. Now you can fulfill the mission that God gave to our Father Abraham. You can be a lie to the nations. You can be a blessing to the nations of the earth. So that began our journey in Messianic Judaism. And Joseph Shulam introduced us to many of the leaders in the land, like Avi Mizrahi who was here a couple of weeks ago, Athan Shishkov from Haifa, Avi from Tel Aviv, also all the ministries, the <unknown> in Tel Aviv. And so it was a shocking for us to know that there was such a thing as Messianic Jodi.

David (12:01):
The world that you’re getting

Rabbi Guimarães (12:02):
Exposed to. All the world and began in Israel. We didn’t know anything about United States or Europe in Israel. So that was the beginning of it. And in 1996, my father started a ministry called Teaching from Zion, dedicated to help Christian leaders to understand the Jewish roots of our faith and presenting to them Messianic Judaism.

David (12:29):
In Brazil?

Rabbi Guimarães (12:29):
In Brazil, because it was completely new and unaware of. And in 1997, we established the congregation. My father decided to start a congregation to have other Jewish believers worship together with freedom to express our heritage, Jewish heritage, praying in Hebrew and Yeshua centered, but keeping some of our traditions. So that was the beginning. And my part in this story was that I was going to university. I was about to graduate in mechanical engineering and I felt lost. I went through an identity crisis, terrible, terrible. And I was involved in the church, in the local Baptist church, but I felt something was missing. I wanted to find myself.

David (13:28):
This is before the congregation

Rabbi Guimarães (13:30):
Started? Yeah. Actually, the same year the congregation started one year after, I think. But I told my father, I need to do something. I need to know who I am. I need to know what God wants from me.

David (13:44):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (13:46):
I know it’s not to be a mechanical engineer. That I knew for sure. But I wanted to know what other option I had. So my father said, “You know what? You want to know who you are? You have to go where everything began. Go to Israel. We know people there now. We know leaders there. You go there, you spend some time

David (14:05):
There.”

Rabbi Guimarães (14:06):
And I went and that trip changed my life forever.

David (14:11):
How long were you there?

Rabbi Guimarães (14:12):
I was there for one year, almost one year. I helped in the congregation in Jerusalem, Joseph Schultz congregation, but also all the congregations as well.

(14:22):
And God gave me a purpose. I knew what I had to do. And during this time in Israel, back in 1998, Joseph Shulam received a group of Americans and Russians, not Russians, Ukrainians, to invite him to speak in a school in Ukraine. And it happened to be that I was around when this group came and I was listening to the conversation and I thought, “This is amazing.” These Americans sponsoring a Messianic Jewish school in Ukraine, this is fantastic. And when they entered the meeting, I remember I saw Joseph and said, “You need to go. You need to go because this thing is amazing. And if you need an assistant, I can go with you. ” So I invited myself and so Joseph said, “Okay, if you want to go, you have to meet the leader of the school.” So I met Wayne Wilkes. Wayne was in this trip with this viontex and I said, “Can I go?

(15:30):
” And Wayne said, “Sure, I’ll not be there, but you’re welcome to go and meet the students.” So that was the beginning of our involvement with the whole, not only Missionic Jewish ministry in the United States, but also with churches that love Israel.

David (15:46):
A

Rabbi Guimarães (15:47):
Whole nother world. And Wayne, through Dr. Wilkes, he introduced us to the leaders of the Messianic Jewish Movement in the States that it was also a shock because it was much more developed than the movement in Israel. And we only knew about the movement in Israel. When we first came here, Wayne brought us here, we were in shock because there was organizations and everything very structured and organized and they had schools, so it was many congregations and huge congregations. So it opened up another world for us. And I think this networking, God was giving us such a blessing to have this network of brothers and leaders and friends, and they all helped. Leaders from Israel, they all visited our congregation, most of them. Most of the Messianic rabbis, especially from the UMJC, they also visited our synagogue. Wayne, we started the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute in Brazil in our congregation.

(17:00):
So for 10 years, David, Wayne was sending leaders from the Messianic movement and from churches, pastors that love Israel, they were also invited to come.

David (17:10):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (17:10):
So that’s our background. That’s part of our DNA.

David (17:14):
Yeah. On to this day, Wayne will say, if there’s a Messianic Jewish synagogue, congregation or leader in Brazil or Latin America, you most likely got trained in Bella.

Rabbi Guimarães (17:27):
We were the first ones. There was no such a thing as a Messianic Jewish school. So we were the first ones back in 2000, July of 2000, we started the school, actually 2001. 2000, we were here. Wayne brought us here to introduce us to the leaders here. So 2001, we had the school and it functioned until 2011.

David (17:48):
And

Rabbi Guimarães (17:50):
This was crucial for our identity as a Messianic synagogue that was 100% of committed to take Eshua to our own people and 100% Yeshua centered. I don’t get tired of saying that because for me, that’s the most important thing because you’ll never be able to compete in Orthodoxy with the various movements of Orthodox Judaism that they are. So the thing is not to be more Orthodox to make the Jewish person more comfortable. The thing is to have the Holy Spirit to use whatever we have that God gave our people with life.

David (18:39):
Yeah. This is a tension that you’re pressing on in the Messianic Jewish world, which is we want to be seen as an authentic form of Judaism, hence the term Messianic Judaism and not Hebrew Christian or something. It’s like, no, we are a form of Judaism, but the tension is, do we have to quiet the Yeshua part to be accepted as a form of Judaism because many of the Orthodox community, the minute you throw in Yeshua or Jesus, you’re no longer Jewish.

(19:15):
And so I think a lot of congregations exist somewhere on the spectrum of ones that are maybe to the outsider look just like a church and you wouldn’t even be able to tell that there’s a Jewish identity all the way into the other end of the spectrum where you might think that you’re an Orthodox synagogue because we don’t hear anything about Yeshua, it’s the liturgy, it’s the traditions and everything in between. So you’re kind of pressing on that tension. What have you seen over the past 25 years in the Messianic Jewish space? Where should the Messianic congregation land? Is it just right in the middle, the tension straddling both or have we kind of gotten too far to one end of the spectrum?

Rabbi Guimarães (20:01):
Well, I think it has to do with the calling of the leader. The calling of the leader, because the leader has the vision, he has the vision from God. According to that vision, he will mold and adapt the reality where that vision could bring fruits. So in case of our synagogue, we begun with the basic liturgy. Like you said, we operate in two worlds, so you need to find your balance. So in our case, since the beginning, my father had this heart, not only to reach out for other Jews, but also to believers, to Christians.

David (20:51):
Yeah. To Gentile believers.

Rabbi Guimarães (20:53):
To Gentile believers. So we built our identity as to make it possible for any Christian Gentile believer to attend and participate in our services.

David (21:07):
And not feel like a fish out of water.

Rabbi Guimarães (21:09):
Not feel like a fish over the water or anything. He will be able to participate, to sing, and to give the blessings. And we use instruments, we have a very life worship using our liturgy, using the prayers that our forefathers created, the rabbis created. So we use that, but with a little touch of the Holy Spirit to give it a life. And so, and we also, you blend in a little culture. We’re aspartic Jews. We’re from Brazil, so we have to blend in a little rhythm.

David (21:51):
Right

Rabbi Guimarães (21:51):
Now we are recording our Shabbat services being recorded.

David (21:55):
Oh,

Rabbi Guimarães (21:55):
Cool. So people will be able to see the styles that we have. And like I said, it’s to reach the balance to operate in your vision. And our vision is to be like Gateway. It’s to propagate, to speak about the one new man. And this is very important. Although you have a calling to your Messianic Jewish synagogue, you have to be Jewish. You have to have a core prayers that you have to do, but at the same time, it’s not enough to have only Jews. That’s my understanding. I think a Missanic synagogue with only Jews, it’s not complete as well. I think you need the element from the nations that completes, that gives life, that gives a different fullness.

David (22:45):
And that’s what we say on the opposite side. As a church of predominantly Gentiles, I’ve often given the analogy if you went to a church and it was all guys, you’d say, “Is this a men’s ministry or a church?” Where’s the other

(23:01):
Distinction? Where are the women? You guys know about women, right? You’d kind of be confused in the same way what you’re saying is with if the Messiah synagogue is only Jewish or in our case, if the church is only Gentile, then we are missing something. And I know that that’s hard for certain cities that don’t have as many Jewish people as Dallas, so it’s not even about a percentage. You have to be fifty fifty. That’s not realistic. But even if you don’t have a lot of Jewish people in your city, having the understanding, the theology and the connection to the Jewish community, because you got Paul writing in Corinth to a group of predominantly, if not all Gentiles, but he’s like, “Hey, let’s get the offering because we need an offering for Jerusalem.” So they’re still connected to Jerusalem. They’re still connected Jew Gentile, even if it’s not a city thriving with the Jewish community.

Rabbi Guimarães (23:52):
Yes. And he suffered to maintain that connection. He suffered from both sides. And then we moved into Rome

David (23:58):
And we were like, “Well, we’ll forget about that. ” So another tension that you touched on, which I’d love you to speak into is what I think a lot of Gentile Christians are unaware of is the cultures within Judaism, Mizrahi, Saphardim, Sephardic, Ashkenazi, which we’re the most familiar with is the kind of Eastern European form of Judaism. So how does that play a role in a Messianic synagogue and really just in the body of Messiah? Because I think we can look at just the Ashkenazi tradition and say, “That’s Jewish.” But if you were to experience Sephardic or Mizraki, you might think, “Wow, this looks different.” And it kind of shatters our expectation of what we thought a true form of Judaism was. So is that a very real tension or is it something that is easy once you’re kind of in the culture?

Rabbi Guimarães (24:55):
I think it was worse. In the past, it was worse. But since the establishment of the state of Israel, I think there is a global effort from Jewish communities to standardized, to make a more concise and unity, but you’ll still find differences in some of the prayers, some of the melodies. Do

David (25:20):
You think that was a mistake, like uniformity

Rabbi Guimarães (25:24):
Or

David (25:24):
Was a way to bring us together?

Rabbi Guimarães (25:26):
I think was a way to bring-

David (25:28):
The Jewish community.

Rabbi Guimarães (25:28):
The Jewish community together when they were, in the first decades of the state of Israel, I think was important to minimize those differences, cultural differences.

David (25:37):
Yeah. One being, let’s bring Hebrew back as the

Rabbi Guimarães (25:40):
Language. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because you see, if you go, there are differences, but they’re not really that much. You see, the Asphardic Jews, the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, they were very influential from the, let’s say seventh century to the 15th century in the whole Jewish community worldwide, they were like educating Oriental Jews, Misrahim Jews. They were sending them book prayers and teaching them about traditions. And I used to say that the golden era of Judaism was not during the days of the temple in Jerusalem, it was during the days in Spain. They flourished there, our culture, our knowledge, our sages, the time where they produced the most materials, commentaries, and it was during in Spain. And so they were responsible for teaching a lot of communities worldwide and impacting also the Ashkenazi world. So I think that we have this differences, but I believe that we need to work on that because it’s normal in Judaism to have diversity.

(27:04):
How they used to say, you have two Jews, you have five different opinions. So we’re a strong people, I mean, a strong willed people. So it’s difficult to lead us, but that same thing that might be our weakness is also our strength. So we need to accommodate those differences. But in our synagogue, for instance, we use some Ashkenazi prayers, we use some of the Spardik melodies

(27:36):
Because we try to mix a little of everything, not to establish a separating wall, you see, but I think it’s all very interesting to learn, but again, I think where we heading towards, it’s a kind of united form of Judaism, respecting some specific cultural aspects. I think they need to be preserved, but for instance, there are some synagogues, far the synagogues that still do some of their prayers in Portuguese. Like the first synagogue of United States, the first congregation of the United States, which was founded in 1654.

David (28:23):
First synagogue ever?

Rabbi Guimarães (28:24):
First synagogue in the United States. Wow. 1654. It was founded by Brazilian Jews, Brazilian Portuguese Jews that came from Recife in the Northeast and flat and they arrived in New Amsterdam that became New York and they founded this congregation called Shiarit Israel, the remnant of Israel from Isaiah 11. And until today, you visit the synagogue, it’s not the same building, but it’s the same congregation, so they sing some of the praise in Portuguese. They adapt a lot of the liturgy to be more equal to all other congregations, but they still keep their identity, but not very distinguished. So it would not be awkward to some other Jew from other cultural background to participate.

David (29:12):
That’s amazing. I want you to talk about Sephardic history because one of the things that I think you guys are most well known for in the Jewish world is this museum of the Anusim essentially, and correct me if I’m wrong, because I almost see it kind of like the Holocaust for the Sephardic Jewish community.

Rabbi Guimarães (29:33):
You’re right.

David (29:33):
Because when you think about the Holocaust and the show of the Jewish people, we think and we picture Ashkenazi. Those are the photos that were given in high school. It’s that Ashkenazi Northern European Jewish community. Not that the Sephardic community wasn’t affected in the Holocaust. I’d love to hear some history on how were they affected, but you essentially had your own Holocaust with The Inquisition, which as I’ve talked to lots of Christians, we’re very uneducated on the Inquisition. When I talk to Christians about the Inquisition, they’re kind of like, “I’ve heard the word. Remind me again what happened in the Inquisition.” So can you help us just ground us in the history of the Sephardic Jewish movement, Holocaust, Inquisition? Obviously Inquisition happened first, then Holocaust. And so I don’t know if many of the Sephardics were even in Europe during that time.

Rabbi Guimarães (30:29):
Well, like you said, during the Second World War and even a little before, Jews were being persecuted in Europe, but when the persecution increased, they looked for Jews in Turkey, in Greece, and they were all Sphardic Jews. So thousands, maybe close to a million of the Spherdic community also suffered in the Holocaust. But before the Holocaust, like you said, we had our own Holocaust in the Iberian peninsula, this time orchestrated by the Catholic church.

David (31:09):
So start the golden age that you were talking about.

Rabbi Guimarães (31:12):
The golden age

David (31:12):
Started- What year was that?

Rabbi Guimarães (31:14):
They were Jews in Spain and Portugal, in the region that we know today as Spain and Portugal, part of France, there were Jews there since the time of the Romans.

David (31:24):
That was Paul’s whole mission, right? It’s Spain. Exactly.

Rabbi Guimarães (31:26):
Exactly. He mentioned Spain. So there were communities in Spain, but they were not quite developed. In the eighth century, when the Arabs took control of the Iberian Peninsula, they invited the Jews to be stewards of the Arabic rulers. And that introduced the Jewish community of Spain and Portugal to a whole new world because the Arabics were very literate in philosophy. They were studying Greek philosophy. They were studying astronomy, navigation. So they were very developed in terms of science and philosophy. So the Jews had contact with that kind of material. And then you have Ibenezra, you have Maimonides, Jews that were exposed to that wisdom that the Arabics brought to Europe and to the Hiberian peninsula.

David (32:26):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (32:27):
And so Jews flourished during this time. But then in the 12th century, you have the Crusades, but we also have the Reconquista. They reconquered, the Christians reconquered the peninsula.

David (32:41):
Okay.

Rabbi Guimarães (32:41):
So at the beginning, Jews were welcome to stay. The Arabics were Muslims were expelled, but the Christians invited the Jews to stay. Why? Because when they got to Spain and Portugal, the Christians, the kings, Christian kings, they found a very developed society with libraries. You had the library from Cordoba in Spain. It was the biggest in the world with all kinds of materials of books from all levels of science, but it was all in Arabic. And no Christians didn’t speak Arabic. So the kings, the Christian kings, in order to have access to that knowledge, they invited the Jews to be the translators. Wow. Is

David (33:30):
It 12th century?

Rabbi Guimarães (33:31):
That’s 12th century, 13th century during the reconquista, the reconquering of Spain and Portugal. So that was the beginning of the Renaissance. So the Spanish Jews, they were responsible for bringing Europe out of the dark ages.

David (33:47):
Wow.

Rabbi Guimarães (33:48):
They were the ones that introduced Europe to philosophy, to art, what was being produced in Spain on philosophy, on mathematics and science. That’s why the Spaniards were able to navigate and sail all over the world with the Portuguese because they had that knowledge that the Jews preserved when the Arabs left. Wow. So the Jews were the finance advisors of the kings. They were the administrators. They were the mathematicians. They were the physicians. They were the bankers. They created the banking system in Spain. And that situation, David, towards the beginning of the 14th century, started to really bother the church because they were the Catholic church.

David (34:47):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (34:49):
They were really bordered by having that many influence on the hands of the Jews.

David (34:55):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (34:55):
And they were really integrated. There were no secular Jews in Jewish Spain, David. This concept didn’t exist.

David (35:04):
Yeah, that was later in the enlightenment.

Rabbi Guimarães (35:06):
That was … Yeah, exactly. They were all fully integrated in society and fully Jews. They were happy. They enjoyed life. And you see some of the poetry they wrote during these days. It’s wonderful. They write about God and they also write about women and wine and the deceptions of life. They were- Proverbs, song of songs. Exactly. They were so integrated. They were living their lives to the fullest. But when the church saw that they had much influence, also with the monarchs, they were the counselors of the monarchs. So the church started to incite some of the local priests. This is very much a mirror of the Holocaust. It’s the same. They started to incite local priests who speak, to twist theology, twist some of the teachings of Paul in Jesus, to turn Christians against the Jews,

David (36:01):
To

Rabbi Guimarães (36:01):
Tell that the Jews can’t have that kind of influence because they are still under a curse because they kill Christ. So that’s what they were teaching. And that was the beginning of this mobs, kind of a program, but before, these mobs, the riots, and they used to go into a synagogue and get everybody out and transform into a church. So that happened in 1392, 1391, 1392 in Spain were terrible years. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, they were forced to convert to Catholicism in order to stay alive, to survive. But that gave birth to another phenomena. They thought they were getting rid of the Jews, but actually they created another problem. Those Jews that were converted to Catholicism out of convenience because they were doctors, they were rich people. They didn’t want to lose everything. So they became Christians, Catholics for convenience, but they kept their Judaism.

David (37:10):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (37:11):
That’s what the Spanish people used to call them Maranos, which means pigs.

David (37:17):
Jews.

Rabbi Guimarães (37:18):
Or new Christians. You see, they were the new Christians, but they were still Jews.

David (37:25):
For

Rabbi Guimarães (37:25):
The Christians, it doesn’t matter if you became a Catholic. You’re still Jewish. So that created a phenomena, a Jew that they don’t let him die. They don’t let him live, but also they don’t let him die.

David (37:36):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (37:36):
Because you see,” Oh, I’m a Catholic. I convoter. I go to the mass every Sunday. Oh, no, no, no. But you have Jewish blood. You’re still Jewish.You’ll never be fully Christian. “So it was the Morano, the new Christian was always the Anusim, that’s how we called them in Hebrew, the forced ones. And the Inquisition was established not to persecute Jews, but to persecute those thousands that were converting and were keeping Judaism alive in their houses.

David (38:06):
Really?

Rabbi Guimarães (38:06):
That was the reason of the Inquisition. And

David (38:08):
Was this an official document or something

Rabbi Guimarães (38:10):
That gave? Established in Spain in 1478. And

David (38:15):
It gave permission for the- The

Rabbi Guimarães (38:16):
King Ferdinand and Isabella gave permission to the very famous priest called Torkemada, Tomaja Torkemada, a terrible person. It’s a Haman from the- Spirit of

David (38:29):
Haman.

Rabbi Guimarães (38:30):
Spirit of Haman from the 15th century, 16th century. So he was the one that convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to establish the Inquisition in Spain, 1478, even before the Kings. But when the Kings came to power with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabel, the kingdoms of Castille and Aragon united, and then they were watching these Moranos, these new Christians, they had so much influence over the kings and the cities and the finances in Spain. They were not even Jews anymore. They were Jews, but they all converted to Catholicism. So in order to persecute them and to take all of their influence, they established the Inquisition.

David (39:18):
And the Inquisition gave the church legal power to what?

Rabbi Guimarães (39:23):
Legal power to

David (39:24):
Confiscate

Rabbi Guimarães (39:25):
Everything you have. It was just necessary one denociation, anonymous denociation for the church to go and arrest you for interrogation. And by arresting you, they had the right to confiscate all of your-

David (39:39):
Property. …

Rabbi Guimarães (39:39):
Property and everything.

David (39:41):
Geez.

Rabbi Guimarães (39:41):
So they wanted to erase all influence that the Jews had in Spain. That was the purpose of the Inquisition.

David (39:49):
And many of the Jews in Spain ended up leaving to Portugal, correct?

Rabbi Guimarães (39:53):
When Ferdinand and Isabella allowed Torkemada, this priest to make them … Turkemada made them sign the edit of expulsion in 1492. So in 1492, they gave the Jews the option, or either you convert or you have to leave Spain.

David (40:14):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (40:14):
What happened? They say that from all Spanish jury, 200,000 died in the persecutions beginning in the 14th century.

David (40:24):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (40:25):
Pagroms and everything. Pogroms and everything. 200,000 died. 200,000 converted to Catholicism and 200,000 left, especially in 1492. But most of them, because Spain, it’s on the border with Portugal, they just crossed the border. So 120,000 Jews in 1492 crossed the border to Portugal. And they became very influential in Portugal. They became like … They were Jews in Portugal already, but when this Spanish jury arrived, these Moranos, they were all new Christians. They flourished. They printed the first Bible in Lisbon. The first Hebrew Bible that was printed was in Lisbon

David (41:12):
In

Rabbi Guimarães (41:12):
1482. Wow. But later they convinced the King of Portugal to also establish an Inquisition in Portugal. So in 1536, he made it official, the Inquisition. But in Portugal was different. And that’s why, as you mentioned, we have in Brazil a museum of the history of the Inquisition.

David (41:33):
Because Portugal was in some ways worse because didn’t they- It was worse. … just tried to kill the Jews. They didn’t really want them to-

Rabbi Guimarães (41:39):
They forced them to convert and they … It was forced conversions. In Spain-

David (41:45):
It was an option versus a forced conversion.

Rabbi Guimarães (41:48):
In Spain, they were marginalizing you and treating you bad until you decide to convert on yourself, something like that.

David (41:56):
Yeah. They were trying to pressure you.

Rabbi Guimarães (41:57):
Pressure you, but they were not like movements to force you to convert. No, no, it’s not in Spain because Spain expelled them, right? But Portugal, when they received all this amount of Jews from Spain, the king realized this is good for the country. These are all doctors and physicians and the commerce people, so we should keep them.

David (42:21):
So he doesn’t want to expel them. He wants to convert.

Rabbi Guimarães (42:23):
He didn’t want to expel them because he wants to marry the prince daughter of the monarchs in Spain, you see? So, but the Torkemada, the same bishop made a demand. “Okay, I will only allow the wedding of the King of Portugal with the princess of Spain if you expel the Jews. There should be no Jews in Portugal for this wedding to take place. “Jews. So he said,” Oh yeah, that’s what you want. Okay, I’ll give you what you want. “So in one day, he forcibly converted all the Jews in Portugal. He assembled them all in Lisbon. He had hundreds of priests to sprinkle water on them and they were baptized while they were standing and all of a sudden he informed the Pope,” Okay, there are no Jews in Portugal anymore. Everybody’s a Catholic.

David (43:15):
“Jeez.

Rabbi Guimarães (43:16):
That’s what he did in 1497. And he closed the borders. He didn’t allow the Jews to leave and he forcefully converted all of them and established the Inquisition 40 years later. And so what happens? These new Christians, they need to escape. So most of them went to Brazil. Most of them went to Brazil. And in Brazil for 40 years, they had freedom of religion. So they went back to Judaism.

David (43:48):
And Portugal, wasn’t Portugal bloodier than Spain? Didn’t they kill more Jewish people in Portugal than Spain?

Rabbi Guimarães (43:56):
Well, I think in Spain, they were more violent towards the Jews, but in Portugal, the Inquisition was more strict. They were really into … They want to eliminate a betrayal of Judaism’s

David (44:13):
Jewish.

Rabbi Guimarães (44:14):
From Christianity. The thing is that if you read some of the archives and the Portuguese kept everything. In Spain, it’s kind of difficult to find all documents that you need to research about that. But in Portugal, they kept all the rec, all the Inquisition trials, everything is written and kept there. So you can study about the situation and you read some of the trials, you can see that the goal was to erase all kind of Jewish Christianity. There was one priest that used this expression. We can’t have any kind of Jewish Christianity in the church. Because many of them, David, they were what we would call today, Messianic Jews.

David (44:53):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (44:54):
You see, they were Jews. They were forced to convert. They were introduced to the New Testament that they didn’t have before. So when they started to read about Jesus, they couldn’t find anything Christian in the New Testament. They find a Jew that was circumcised in the eighth day that was presented in the temple that spoke

David (45:14):
To Abraham.

Rabbi Guimarães (45:15):
Son of Abram, son of David, spoke as a rabbi, discussed as a Jew, argument as a Jew. And there are no Catholics in the New Test. They found no Catholics in the New Testament. They only found one baptist in the New Testament, but he was not Catholic.

David (45:33):
He

Rabbi Guimarães (45:33):
Was Jewish too. He was Jewish too. So they became interested in that. Again, they were against the religion, but they were not against … Most of them were not against the Shuah himself or his message. This guy was a revolutionary, they thought, but the Inquisition came to, no, no, it’s not possible. There are no Jewishness in the New Testament. There are no Jewishness in the Christian faith. You cannot have both. So they were persecuted. And then we started, my father started in 2012, a museum dedicated to tell this part of history that is not told about the Inquisition, what they did in mostly in Portugal and Brazil because that’s what- We

David (46:19):
Have the records.

Rabbi Guimarães (46:20):
We have the records. So you visit the museum, you’ll see Dr. Wilkes was there, Pastor Nick was there, and we gathered books and materials for over a decade, and we have artifacts, original artifacts from those new Christians that they used to hide in Spain and Portugal. And we have a Tori scroll that is survivor of a mob in Toledo in Spain, 400 years old. We have it on display there in our museum because I think it has to do with the restoration of Israel because the thing is that there’s descendants, lots of them are wanting to have to learn more about their ancestry.

David (47:13):
There’s descendants of the

Rabbi Guimarães (47:14):
Inquisition. Of the Jews that were persecuted during the Inquisition and their believers in Jesus and they found out about their great-grandfather or great-great-great-grandfather that was killed because it was Jewish and it was killed by an Equisition. A lot of them feel that they need to restore their identity, but in Yeshua.

David (47:38):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (47:39):
So I think the museum fulfills not only a historical, a justice that needs to be done historically, but also prophetically, if God has any plans to restore this part of Israel, so information is necessary. People need to be able to find what happened to their ancestors, who were they, what happened to them. And

David (48:07):
From what I’ve heard about the museum, not just from the Messianic community, but even from the Orthodox community, it is such a beacon to the broader Jewish community because it’s the artifacts and the history and the documentation that even Orthodox people have shown up saying, how are you guys Messianic? It’s so Jewish. The history, it’s so valuable, it’s needed. And so it’s really being a light to the Jewish community and to the nations.

Rabbi Guimarães (48:42):
It is. I think it serves a prophetic calling as well, not only a historical piece of information, which is necessary, but also a prophetic, very important

David (48:53):
Aspect. Well, I know this is not going to be the last time that you’re on the podcast, but I know that we’re running low on time. I’d love for you to end with just, as we kind of tie a bow on, you’ve walked us through the history of the Inquisition and the Anoseem and this persecution of the Jewish community for flourishing that starts recalling Nazi history and the Holocaust that they’re in the banks and they’re influential and they’re greedy and that’s happening in then Spain and Portugal as well, but there’s now echoes of that in America. Why are there so many Jewish politicians? How come only 2% of the American population has a much larger percent of Jewish representation in government and business and they own Hollywood? And I’m hearing the same kind of message in America, which I think for years we would have thought that’s never going to happen in America because we have biblical values or we have so many Jewish people.

(50:00):
I mean, roughly speaking, half of the Jewish people in the world are in America. It’s something like eight million, eight million, eight million in Israel, eight million in America. So what does that mean for you right now? When you look at the state of America and the rise of antisemitism or just anti-Jewish theology or anti-Jewish sentiment, as someone who has studied this extensively, what’s going on in your head and your heart right now and what can you give us as predominantly Gentile believers? What do we do in this time?

Rabbi Guimarães (50:38):
Well, I think we have to go back to the beginning because people that know about their past, they know who they are and they know where they’re heading to. So different from Brazil, America was founded not as a democratic republic, it was founded as a covenantal society. The society was founded, the nation was founded under a covenant and the values of this covenant is the Bible. They were all believers, the founding fathers of this country. They were all believers. They all believed in God and they had the Bible at their source for freedom and democracy and so forth. So I think that once we go back to those values, we’re able to shield ourselves against this threats that we see going on today. And I think it’s very important that not only people in general, but especially the church in America, to go back to the beginnings, because Israel is part of the DNA of the church.

(51:59):
So when the church goes back and restore that part of its identity, which is biblical and apostolical, it will enable the church to face these kind of threats. And like you said, it’s starting all over again. The stories that you mentioned are the same blood libels that we hear in Spain in the Middle Ages. It’s the same kind of the protocols of the elders of Zion from Germany, 70, 80 years ago. It’s the same thing because it’s the same spirit.

(52:39):
And if in those days, if back in World War II, if the church in Europe had analyzed their history and their connection with the people of Israel, they would probably had tried to oppose in a more pushback in a more effective way. There were pastors that did try to do that and they were-

David (53:05):
But they were few and far

Rabbi Guimarães (53:05):
Between. … arrested. Yeah.

David (53:06):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (53:07):
But I think that’s what I think should happen. We need to go back to our-

David (53:12):
We need to get back our Jewish

Rabbi Guimarães (53:14):
Foundation. Jewish foundation of our faith.

David (53:16):
Because I would say it’s the Jewish foundation because even if we just label it as the Bible, I would argue that both the Nazis and the Catholic church in Spain and Portugal, they had the Bible. They felt like they were doing the biblical thing, converting everyone to Christianity. And so it wasn’t just the biblical foundation, it was the Jewish foundation of the Bible, understanding where they fit in the story of Israel.

Rabbi Guimarães (53:47):
Exactly. They rewrote the narrative.

David (53:50):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (53:51):
The text was the same, but the narrative, they completely changed

David (53:55):
It

Rabbi Guimarães (53:56):
Like Marcion and Valentine and some of the church fighters they try to do to disconnect the God of Israel- To its Jewishness. … to the Jewishness and to the Bible and with Jesus. So I think you’re right. It’s to start to value again and to rediscover the Jewishness of the faith.

David (54:16):
And

Rabbi Guimarães (54:16):
It’s not about Judaise in the church. No. It’s about going back to the origin.

David (54:23):
Yeah, our roots, which is so cool that you have this museum to help people go back to their roots. Exactly. And that’s what we need in the church as well. It’s like you said, not to Judaize the church and put the star of David up and act more Jewish. I’m a Gentile. I don’t need to act more Jewish, but I do need to understand my history because my spiritual ancestry is I’m adopted into this family. It doesn’t mean I become Jewish, but I am adopted in this family and now my new spiritual ancestors are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They’re Jewish.

Rabbi Guimarães (54:54):
That’s the original narrative.

David (54:55):
Yeah.

Rabbi Guimarães (54:56):
That’s the original narrative.

David (54:57):
Yeah. So thank you for spending time with us. Can’t wait to have you back and get some more wisdom and knowledge. It will be my pleasure. Absolutely. That’s all we have for today. We’ll see you next time on the Covenant and Conflict Podcast. We love you.