Words of Shema in the Andes

It is remembered that in 1644 a Portuguese Jew who had crossed the ocean appeared in Amsterdam. He was known as Aharon Levi, and to the wider world as Antonio de Montezinos. He told of a journey through the mountains of South America, where he had met a people who knew the verse of Shema Yisrael. They told him, he said, that they came from the tribe of Reuven.

Rav Menashe listened closely. He had spent his life among Marranos who had been cut off from Torah for generations, and he knew that a Jew can hide for centuries and still carry something that cannot be erased. If Jews lived in every corner of the earth, as the Navi foretold, then perhaps the redemption was nearer than anyone had imagined.

The report grew into a conviction. In 1650 he published The Hope of Israel, in Latin and in Spanish, setting down Montezinos' account together with his own reasoning from the words of the Neviim. The book spoke to many readers, Jewish and non-Jewish, and its English edition appeared in London in 1652.

It also pointed his thoughts toward England, where Jews had not been allowed to live since 1290. If the scattering of Israel was to be complete, he reasoned, then that last gate too would have to open. In time, that thought would carry him across the sea.