Peruvian Jews in Israel

Peru's Jewish community has maintained a strong orientation toward Israel since at least the mid-20th century, working alongside the World Zionist Organization on youth programming and Zionist education.[1] From the 1950s onward, emigration from Peru flowed toward Israel, the United States, and Argentina, though no single authoritative count of Peru-born or Peru-origin immigrants to Israel as a whole has been published.[1]

The migration encompasses two broad populations. One consists of Jews by birth, including descendants of Ashkenazi and Sephardi immigrants who settled in Peru during the 19th and 20th centuries.[2] Another consists of converts who made aliyah after formal rabbinical conversion, including members of the B'nei Moshe and descendants of Sephardi traders in Iquitos who underwent Conservative conversion before immigrating.[3][4] Immigration tables classify arrivals by country of last residence and therefore include recent converts alongside longtime members of Peru's established Jewish community.[5]

Jewish life in Peru developed across several distinct immigrant streams. Among the most geographically remote was a community in Iquitos, the main city of the Peruvian Amazon, where Sephardi Jews — predominantly from Morocco but also from Gibraltar, Malta, Alsace, and Manchester — arrived during the rubber boom beginning around 1870.[6] These traders and commercial-house owners served an economy built on rubber extraction. Estimates of their numbers vary: the Jewish Virtual Library's Iquitos entry counts around 150 arrivals, while its separate Peru entry estimates approximately 200.[6][2] The 1912 collapse of rubber prices triggered widespread emigration; by 1949, only 17 of the original Jewish immigrants were said to remain.[2]

The descendants of those early settlers maintained Jewish traditions and a sense of Jewish identity despite generations of intermarriage and the incorporation of local Amazonian and Christian religious elements into their practice.[6] Their status was debated in Orthodox circles following a visit by a member of Israel's Rabbinate, and the characterisation of the community's identity as "Marranic" has been described as controversial.[6]

Beyond Iquitos, Peru's broader Jewish community deepened its ties with Israel during the 1960s, when increased numbers made aliyah alongside strengthened bilateral relations and expanded Keren Hayesod fundraising campaigns.[2] The 1970s brought significant disruption: a military government's effects on landowners, industry, and property accelerated emigration, with young Jews leaving to study abroad — particularly in Israel and the United States — and entire families making aliyah or relocating elsewhere in the Americas.[2]

Emigration from Peru to Israel intensified during the 1980s as economic crisis deepened and political violence spread. The terrorist campaigns of Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA created an environment of insecurity, kidnappings, and violence that pushed many Jewish families to leave.[2] By 1982, Jewish Agency figures recorded 109,865 Latin Americans living in Israel; one-third had been between 18 and 29 years old at the time of their aliyah, reflecting the youth-driven character of Latin American immigration to Israel more broadly — though no Peru-specific breakdown was provided.[7]

Aliyah from Peru declined during the 1990s. Problems in Israel and a sense of marginalization among Latin American immigrants relative to the large influx from the former Soviet Union were among the reasons given, while emigration to the United States increased.[2] During the second decade of the 21st century, about 13,000 Jews emigrated from Latin America, and more than 4,000 immigrants from the Americas were absorbed into Israel in 2020 alone — though neither figure is broken down by country.[8]

For the period from 2012 through November 2019, Population and Immigration Authority data counted 321 immigrants to Israel from Peru, without specifying how many belonged to Peru's established Jewish community.[9] A 2013 country-of-last-residence table recorded 79 immigrants from Peru in 2011 and 37 in 2012 — 116 across those two years — under the Law of Return, noting that several of the Peruvian migrants had recently converted to Judaism.[5]

One of the most remarkable chapters in the story of Peruvian Jews in Israel involves the B'nei Moshe (Children of Moses), a movement led by Segundo Villanueva among Indigenous Peruvians. In 1966, Villanueva began studying the Torah as a Christian, decided that Jewish traditions were closer to God's commandments, and taught Jewish customs to others in his community.[3] His followers progressively abandoned Catholicism and adopted Orthodox Jewish practices.[3]

On August 17, 1989, a three-rabbi beit din examined and converted 160 B'nei Moshe members.[10] On February 28, 1990, Villanueva — later known as Zerubbabel Tzidkiya — and the first group arrived in Israel and were settled at Elon Moreh in the northern West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — with many later moving to Kfar Tapuach.[10] Approximately 300 members of the movement underwent formal conversion and made aliyah during the 1990s.[3] A 2017 Israeli government advisory committee placed the B'nei Moshe among communities that sought to join the Jewish people without claiming Jewish descent, reporting that hundreds underwent group conversion and immigration to Israel in recent decades.[11]

Israel ultimately halted this stream of immigration in 2006, amid concerns that some applicants were motivated more by economic opportunity than by observant Jewish life.[10] As of 2005, approximately 100 B'nei Moshe members remained in Peru; that year, the Jerusalem-based organisation Shavei Israel sent a teacher to help the remaining community prepare for conversion with the stated goal of enabling further aliyah.[3]

The descendants of Iquitos's 19th-century Sephardi traders followed a separate and lengthy path toward aliyah. Jewish Agency officials assisted interested community members whose individual cases qualified under the Law of Return.[6] A 2013 report said that a small group made aliyah in the 1990s and that another followed several years later, with both groups undergoing Conservative conversion before immigrating. It also reported that 250 community members had undergone a Conservative conversion process and that about 100 had recently asked the Jewish Agency to help them immigrate, while the Interior Ministry sought further clarification about the conversions.[4]

Later rabbinical visits reportedly included a beit din following a qualified mohel's visit in 2002, another beit din that evaluated around 180 candidates from Iquitos and nearby areas over three days in December 2004, and a further beit din in 2011.[12] A 2016 report cited Rabbi Andrew Sacks as saying that Israel's Interior Ministry had recognised Iquitos as a Jewish community whose members were eligible for aliyah after a lengthy process, and put the number who had left for Israel at approximately 150, with most Iquitos immigrants settled in Ramla.[12] Community leaders estimated that since the early 2000s, 80% of the group had left for Israel — though this figure was a leadership estimate rather than a documented count.[6]

By 2016, the community in Iquitos itself had dwindled to roughly 70 people, and the pace of aliyah had, in Sacks's words, "slowed to a trickle," with young people's desire to leave driven by limited professional and social opportunities.[12] The process was not without legal complications: a dispute arose over two sisters from Pucallpa who had converted in Iquitos in 2011 and arrived in Israel by February 2014. The Interior Ministry argued that Pucallpa was not a recognised community at the time of their conversion and refused to recognise them, prompting a legal-aid organisation to petition the Supreme Court on their behalf.[12]

Immigration from Peru to Israel has continued into the 21st century, with Peru appearing among the roughly 30 countries from which 1,500 young immigrants arrived in Israel between early March and the end of August 2020, the period coinciding with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.[13] In June 2020, a special charter flight organised by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews brought 37 members of Peru's Jewish community to Israel; the decision to leave was linked to high COVID-19 infection levels, strict lockdowns, flight restrictions, and civil unrest amid food and medical shortages.[14] Peru's Jewish community at that time was described as numbering about 2,000 people, with most living in Lima.[14] In 2022, Peru was listed among the countries of origin for a group of 84 new immigrants from South America who arrived in Israel with support from the same organisation, though the number specifically from Peru was not specified.[15]

The relationship between Israel and Peru has also sustained a flow of Israeli businesspeople in the other direction. Several hundred Israeli businesspeople were reported to be living or doing business in Peru, mainly in Lima's Jewish neighbourhoods, and Israel–Peru business ties have been traced in part to the warm connections maintained by Peruvian-born immigrants who settled in Israel.[16] Lima's one Jewish school offered Hebrew instruction, and Israeli parents in the city enrolled their children there to preserve the language and their connection with Israel.[16]

Several aspects of Peruvian Jewish immigration to Israel rest on contested or unverified claims. The Jewish status of Iquitos descendants was debated in Orthodox circles, and Israeli authorities did not apply uniform standards across communities. Rabbi Andrew Sacks said Iquitos was recognised as a Jewish community whose members were eligible for aliyah, while converts from Pucallpa faced Interior Ministry challenges that led to Supreme Court litigation.[12] A 2013 report noted that the Interior Ministry was seeking further clarification about some conversions associated with the Iquitos community at the time of its publication.[4]

Group labels in the source material are also used inconsistently. One Ynet account identifies the Inca Jews of Trujillo as calling themselves B'nei Moshe, while a Times of Israel account lists B'nei Moshe and Inca Jews as separate groups that arrived in Israel in distinct waves.[17][10] These differing usages reflect the complexity of categorising communities whose religious identities developed outside established Jewish institutions and whose relationship to both Judaism and Israeli immigration law required case-by-case evaluation.

Numerical claims about Iquitos aliyah should be treated with care: the reported 80% departure figure is a community-leaders' estimate with no specified base population, and the various conversion and immigration figures cited at different points — approximately 150 people who left for Israel, around 180 candidates evaluated in 2004, and 250 people said to have undergone a conversion process — refer to distinct processes and should not be treated as interchangeable totals.[6][12][4]