Virtual event with Edgar Mendez is scheduled for April 17
Edgar Mendez of Neiva, Colombia, is a Jew by choice, a former Catholic priest and at one time a high-ranking official in his diocese.
Therein lies a great story, which he’ll tell the evening of April 17 after virtual Havdalah services with Temple Israel of Greater Kansas City.
Mendez has attended Temple Israel’s virtual Shabbat services since they began at the start of the pandemic, but his connection to the congregation’s Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn goes back well before that. Cukierkorn officiated at Mendez’s conversion, as he has for hundreds of Latin Americans through Brit Braja (covenant of blessing), a virtual congregation Cukierkorn founded in 2008.
Born in Brazil, Cukierkorn’s rabbinical thesis was on Latin American crypto-Jews — descendants of Jews who hid their religion during the Spanish Inquisition. Spanish- and Portuguese-speakers who feel drawn to Judaism have sought him out to study online and to connect with others who feel the same calling.
“Synagogues in Latin America are very closed,” Cukierkorn explained. “Their members are descendants of Holocaust survivors, and they don’t like to let new members in.”
Those people who reach out to him “have already been rejected and humiliated, so I tend to believe they are sincere in their wish to become Jews.”
Although the rabbi travels to a few cities each year to perform conversions in person, most of his connections with members of Brit Braja are via the internet. “I am their rebbe in the old-world sense of it. We have conversations about religious issues and anything else.They really care what the rabbi thinks.”
Cukierkorn has high praise for Mendez, who has a law degree and has run a school in Colombia. The Brit Braja leadership group in Mexico includes only one non-Mexican member: Mendez. “Everyone respects him,” Cukierkorn said. “He walks on water.”
Temple Israel’s Havdalah service will begin at 7 p.m. April 17, on Zoom. Anyone interested in hearing Mendez’s story can contact Rabbi Cukierkorn at or 913-940-1011 to get the meeting’s entry codes.
