Welcome Yitzhak Saban to the SHJ family! Yitzhak has recently adopted Judaism and shares his journey to finding Humanistic Judaism below.
I am Yitzhak Saban and I want to share my testimony about my adoption to Humanistic Judaism.
My history begins in 1470. My family was forced to hide who they were. In 1391, we suffered the assaults on the Jewish quarters throughout Castile, when Christians, incited by irrational hatred, carried out an unprecedented massacre that began in Seville and spread across all of Sefarad.
Cordoba Synagogue
This event led to the forced conversions of thousands of Jews in Spain to Christianity. Despite this, my family preserved their customs and beliefs in private—especially in Córdoba, a city where the Tribunal of the Inquisition, established in 1482, was particularly severe. My ancestor—though distant in time, still close in memory—witnessed how her father was judged and prosecuted by the Inquisition in 1486 for secretly preserving Jewish practices. He was executed and burned at the stake, because an imposed faith could never replace what they truly were in their hearts and minds. No one could erase their awareness of belonging to the people of Israel or their longing for Jerusalem.
But this journey began even earlier, with the arrival of an Ashkenazi maternal lineage—H1aj1—from France in the early 14th century. Our grandmother reached the south of the Iberian Peninsula, where her bloodline merged with Hispano-Jewish families. From France to Córdoba, from Córdoba to La Puente de Don Gonzalo (ca. 1500), from there to Cómpeta in 1573, then to Casarabonela in 1750, to Vélez-Málaga in 1920, and finally to Málaga in 1950—this entire path was marked by a matriarch who had been forcibly converted but was Jewish by origin. The grandmother of our most distant documented ancestor was María García, born in Córdoba in 1485, a Jewish woman who was forced to convert. In fact, her father, García Fernández, was the one prosecuted by the Inquisition in the Auto-da-fé of 1486. My family learned to navigate the margins and write their own story, initially linked to the silk trade and manufacture—part of a Jewish legacy stretching back six centuries.
This maternal lineage has survived through time, right up to the present day—a legacy my mother transmitted to me through certain Kashrut practices and the quiet family celebration of Shabbat, even though we didn’t know what we were observing at the time. I only discovered the meaning through genealogical research and documentation, as well as through the confirmation of the Ashkenazi Jewish mitochondrial haplogroup H1aj1 and my autosomal DNA matches, which clearly reflect Jewish ancestry. That discovery marked the beginning of my personal and family search.
I am proud of the legacy my grandmothers left me. I am Jewish by lineage, by conviction, and now adopted by Humanistic Judaism. I want to express my gratitude for the opportunity the Society for Humanistic Judaism has given me to return to who I am, a recognition of an identity that has always been latent in my blood and in my heart. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Shalom.
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