The Prophet of the Andes

Born in 1927 in a tiny farming village perched in the Andes, Segundo Villaneuva was seventeen when his father was murdered. Left with little more than a Bible as his inheritance, he entered on a lifelong obsession to find the true message of God contained in its pages. Looking for answers outside the Catholic Church, whose hierarchy and colonial roots embodied the gaping social and racial inequities of Peruvian society, he discovered a version of Judaism he pieced together independently from his readings of the Old Testament. His makeshift synagogue drew in crowds seeking a faith that truly served their needs. Mochkofsky documents how, when politically motivated Israeli rabbis converted the community to Orthodox Judaism and resettled them on the West Bank, Villaneuva became an unlikely pioneer for a new kind of Jewish faith. -- adapted from jacket