Descendant of Sephardic Jews returns home

By David Leyva

NATIONAL CITY, California– D-A-V-I-D L-E-Y-V-A, that is how I learned to spell my name and last name.  What I did not know was where these came from.  I am the 7^th in a long line of men in my family named David Leyva, a family fact of which I was not entirely aware until I was in high school.  But this fact was just a small bit of information in the book I was beginning to open, a book of my family history and the origin of this history, not just in Mexico, but in Spain, and not just in Spain, but all the way to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, a very long way back in time, to the land of a small country now reborn, Israel.

While in class in high school one day, our English teacher Mrs. Rosenbach assigned us the study of a religion.  I really wanted to study Buddhism, Shintoism or Hinduism, something I thought was “cool,” but my teacher pulled me aside and assigned me Judaism.  “Why?” I asked her, to which she replied with another question “aren’t you Jewish? This will be easy for you.” This was not the first time I had heard this question, I had heard it a couple of times before.  In fact I had heard it be said that some older folks in my family were, or are Jewish.  But this was all old stuff to me, and at that current time not of much interest.  To me these were older relatives I did not really know who spoke funny Spanish which I would later learn was actually Ladino or at least fragments of it.  So I accepted my assignment with the resignation of a child who was expecting an awesome Play Station for his birthday and instead got a book; a book I would not appreciate immediately but would end up loving as time passed.

So my journey began.  I grew up primarily around Catholic family members, the vast majority of my family is Catholic, or belongs to some form of Christianity.  A few others like my immediate family did not really practice any religion, and held on to some Jewish traditions with little knowledge of these.   Despite this, we still joined our Catholic family members in mass and other events.  The little, tiny bit of Judaism that survived, did so mainly in a few practices and stories surrounding the oldest amongst my relatives.  One or two solitary candles lit on a Friday evening before sundown, a few phrases and a word here and there in what seemed to me as mispronounced Spanish; Ladino, a Yad that rested on top of grandma’s shelf that I never got to see but was often remembered by my mother, and my name and last name passed down to me by my father under the orders of his father and grandfather years before I was born.  Judaism or what had been Judaism in my family was practically lost, a fading memory, seemingly the victim of a successful inquisition, but one with a very strong voice searching for a pair of willing ears.  I first entered a synagogue in the year 2004, Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California. I went to do my English Class’ assignment and little else, or so I thought.

In the years after my assignment I kept returning to Temple Beth Shalom sporadically, something kept calling me back. At the same time I began the rather large endeavor of researching my family tree.  The more I dug into the past, the more I found a link to Judaism on both sides of my family.  This connection became abundantly clear one day in the late winter of 2008 while studying abroad in Spain in the University of Antonio de Nebrija.  Led by the information given to me by my supervisor Mrs. Marcia Ledezma-Macias during my college years at San Diego State University, who was herself a Sephardic Jew, I looked in different libraries in Spain for both my paternal and maternal surnames.  What I found were records that pointed to these surnames’ origins within the Jewish communities of northern central Spain, who had been expelled during the mid-18^th century or so and continually relocated thereafter, from mainland Spain to the Balearic Islands, to the Caribbean and all the way to Mexico.  Not only did I find my maternal and paternal surnames there, I found the surnames of many other relatives amongst these records.  About two years later I would find all of these surnames in the Royal Spanish Registry for eligibility for Spanish citizenship through Sephardic ancestry.  Mrs. Ledezma-Macias would be a major contributor to my knowledge about my ancestry as she continually provided me reading material about Judeo-Spanish culture and history. She continues to be my teacher today and a great friend.

After my semester in Spain I paused in my study, however, having found so much information and feeling more inspired to learn, I decided to return to Beth Shalom more often and start studying there, by now it was late 2012, about four years after returning from Spain.  I took a while to return because I was graduating from my Bachelor’s and starting my Master’s program, but as soon as all my academic duties were settled I started frequenting the Synagogue. One night I visited Beth Shalom with the intent of asking the Rabbi there for guidance in my study of Judaism. As I went through the door I found one of my best friends from college, Alejandro Jair, who had graduated a few years before me. I did not know he attended Beth Shalom as I had not been there in a while.  Alejandro Jair, had been the Synagogue’s secretary and was a very good friend of Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel.  Alejandro Jair would give me my first crash course in Judaism and Rabbi Samuel would be my teacher from then on.  From that night onward I began an intense study of Judaism with Rabbi Samuel.  I began learning Hebrew, learning and re-learning service prayers and re-introducing Judaism to my family.  Eventually, after Alejandro Jair moved to Washington State to attend medical school I would take the position of secretary at the Synagogue and continue my Study with Rabbi Samuel, a study I continue still today and one which is a short time away from culminating, but not ending, in my Bar Mitzvah.

I never expected to find so much of a link to a Jewish ancestry; I was fascinated when I did so. During my time in Spain I visited the Synagogue in Toledo, Spain’s medieval capital and could not help but think that maybe, just maybe, an ancestor of mine might have set foot there years before my parents and me.  Today, I am finishing my studies for an adult Bar Mitzvah, I can read Hebrew, although I do not speak it yet, and I have begun to learn more Ladino.  I have begun to teach my family about their almost lost heritage, and they have come along for the journey very enthusiastically.  My younger brother even sends me a text or two in Hebrew sometimes and we celebrate Shabbat and Havdalah on weekends.  Others in my family have begun to show an interest as well, that same something that called me seems to call them too, calling us to return home to our ancestors’ open arms.

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David Leyva is a freelance writer and a teacher of English as a Second Language at the Continuing Education Center,  Mid City Campus in San Diego, California.  He also teaches multiple subjects to refugee children at a center for unaccompanied minors in San Diego.

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