Angie Claudio-Rodriguez was raised Catholic but felt a “deep connection” to Judaism she never understood.

Throughout her life, family members told her different things about her heritage, said Claudio-Rodriguez, 52. Some said, “We’re Irish,” others insisted, “We’re Native Americans,” and still others said, “We’re from Mexico.”

“It didn’t make sense to me,” she said.

Things came to a head on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages to Gaza.

“October 7 was a really tough time for me,” she said in an interview from her home in Lancaster, California.

That prompted her to do a DNA test, which she ordered on Dec. 29, 2023. A month later, she learned the truth.

“My mom is not Native American at all but from different parts of Mexico,” she said. “And my dad’s mom is Jewish. I had met her but she only told us that she was Catholic. … It was a shock to me. It just was really shocking. I felt like I was lied to my entire life.”

Armed with that knowledge, Claudio-Rodriguez took an 18-week introduction to Judaism class at the American Jewish University, based in Los Angeles, and then converted to Judaism. She has visited Israel twice and is now planning to make aliyah.

Claudio-Rodriguez is among a significant number of people who learned from a DNA test that they have some Jewish heritage and then decided to convert to Judaism.

Discovering hidden Jewish heritage

“There is a dramatic global interest in discovering if people have Jewish roots,” said AJU president Jay Sanderson.

In fact, interest in Judaism has increased to such an extent that Sanderson said hundreds of students from across the country are currently enrolled in AJU’s introduction to Judaism class.

Unlike synagogues, which generally offer only in-person introductory classes – available exclusively to their members – AJU is offering its classes to anyone.

“I think the biggest thing is that you have this program online and people can access it,” said Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh, vice president and director of the university’s Mass Center. “A lot of people find out that they have Jewish heritage and they want to learn more.”

As a result, its current introductory course is being taken by many non-Jews. The university said it did not know how many non-Jews are enrolled, but noted that there are a total of 892 students in the current class. They are from every state except Wyoming and many countries, including Portugal, France, Lithuania, Malawi, Turkey and Norway.

In the last two years there has been increased interest in genetic testing in Spanish speaking countries in Latin America and Mexico, Sanderson said, and as a result, the university is offering its introduction to Judaism classes in Spanish as well. In addition, there are a large number of Iranians in Los Angeles and many are “also curious to know whether they are Jewish or not.”

“Just a couple of months ago a Spanish speaking community went through our program and they had stories about how their ancestors had come from Argentina, that their ancestors were forced converts and they wanted to go back to their roots,” Rabizadeh said.

“What we’re seeing here is people who are not Jewish, who are taking the DNA test, discovering that they have even 2% Jewish heritage, and deciding to convert to Judaism,” she added.

“This is a new phenomenon,” Sanderson said.

“Many of the non-Jews in the class convert,” he said, while many others “are interested but not necessarily ready to do a DNA test.”

DNA tests confirm a Jewish ‘feeling’

Across the country at New York City’s Central Synagogue, one of the country’s largest Reform communities, Rabbi Lisa Rubin said the Center for Exploring Judaism is not seeing the surge from DNA testing that California’s AJU is experiencing. Rubin said there was an increase in conversions right after Oct. 7, but no increase related to DNA testing.

Though the Jewish population is estimated at 16.5 million, there may be as many as 60 million people around the world with Jewish ancestry, according to AJU’s website.

Claudio-Rodriguez, a public school teacher, said none of the members of her family were aware of their family’s Jewish ancestry, and none plan to convert to Judaism.

She keeps kosher, attends Sabbath services weekly, wears a Star of David, is studying Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, and has eight children and a four-year-old grandson, she said. She does not know if his parents will raise her grandson as a Jew, but she’d  “absolutely love it” if he has a bar mitzvah, she said.

Like Claudio-Rodriguez, Joseph Martin, 66, took a DNA test. Martin, who took the test in early 2021, said he “had always felt Jewish.”

But he was raised in an “Hispanic family, and we were very, very Catholic. My mother was a devout Catholic, going to church every Sunday. I went to Catholic schools through the eighth grade. And you know, gosh, Jewish was kind of a naughty word in the household when you’re raised as a Catholic because, after all, you know the Jews killed Jesus. Those were the kind of things that you hear, you know, as a kid growing up. … I wish my mother was alive today so that she could take her DNA test and find out that she was Jewish all this time.”

Through his genealogy research Martin learned that his family is from a large Sephardic family in Guadalajara, Mexico, he said, and that “they have always been Portuguese Jews.”

“You have to recall that during the Inquisition the only way to stay in Spain and Portugal was to convert to Catholicism or leave,” he said in an interview from Lompoc, California, where he lives with his wife Neona Lotz.

“If you were discovered practicing Judaism, you were burned at the stake. In order to convert, you had to have a sponsor, and the sponsor could have been your employer. … And the employer’s last name was Santiago and you took on his name in order to convert to Catholicism. So Santiana is my family name. That’s the Jewish side of my family,” he said. “Who really knows what our Hebrew last name might have been? I’ve never been able to find that through all my research.”

Although he had dated Jewish women, Martin married someone who was Catholic. Now divorced, he went online to meet someone, he said. “The first thing I noticed in one of the profiles was that she was Jewish. I said I’ve got to meet this woman. We’ve been together for 11 years.”

When he learned four years ago that DNA results revealed he is 2% Jewish, he told his wife that he planned to convert to Judaism. She replied, “The Jewish soul always returns.”

The post DNA test kits spark a surge of online conversions to Judaism in the U.S. appeared first on The Forward.

Terrorists stand during the funeral of two Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunmen who were killed in an Israeli raid, in Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank on May 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist group is reportedly expanding its military presence in Syria, a move that could put the Syrian government in violation of US conditions for restoring full diplomatic ties and lifting additional economic sanctions. 

According to Israeli public broadcaster Kan News, PIJ has expanded its military wing — the al-Quds Brigades — within Syria in recent weeks, notably increasing activity in Palestinian refugee camps near Damascus, apparently with the full knowledge of the Syrian government.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is said to have appointed an envoy to oversee PIJ’s activities in the country, responsible for facilitating communications between the Palestinian terrorist group and the government, Kan reported.

However, a government security source denied such accusations, saying there is “no intention to allow military operations against Israel,” which borders Syria.

PIJ also denied reports of intensified activity in Syria, saying they are entirely fabricated and intended to provoke hostility against the Palestinian people and their refugee camps

Following the United States’ recent statements that it does not support Israeli airstrikes in Syria, the embattled Middle Eastern country could now provide a particularly convenient base for PIJ, allowing the group to expand its operations with less risk of Israeli retaliation.

Under the Trump administration, Washington has lifted sanctions on the Syrian government to support the country’s reconstruction efforts and pushed for Damascus to normalize relations with Israel. Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump hosted Sharaa for the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to Washington, DC, vowing to help Syria as the war-ravaged country struggles to come out of decades of international isolation.

To pave the way for the full restoration of US diplomatic relations, deeper economic ties, and the lifting of additional economic sanctions, Washington has set five conditions for the Syrian government, including deporting Palestinian militants, joining the Abraham Accords with Israel, and expelling foreign terrorists.

The government must also help prevent an Islamic State (ISIS) resurgence and take responsibility for detention facilities holding ISIS fighters, supporters, and their families in the northeast.

If the Syrian government is aware of the reported PIJ activity, it risks jeopardizing its relationship with Washington by effectively endorsing the operations of a designated foreign terrorist organization — in open defiance of a key condition for improving bilateral ties.

As Damascus seeks to restore international credibility and strengthen its standing on the global stage, Israeli officials have remained highly cautious of Syria’s new leadership.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has previously described the current Syrian regime as “a jihadist Islamist terror group from Idlib that took Damascus by force.”

He has even warned senior European officials that Hamas and PIJ were operating in Syria to create an additional front against Israel

“We will not compromise the security on our border. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are acting in Syria to create another front against Israel there,” the top Israeli diplomat said earlier this year.

According to Hebrew media reports, Defense Minister Israel Katz warned lawmakers in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, this week that armed groups operating inside Syria, including the Yemen-based Houthis, are considering launching attacks on the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria.

Hamas, PIJ, and the Houthis are all backed by Iran, which provides the internationally designated terrorist groups with arms and funding.

Israel has consistently vowed to prevent the Syrian government from deploying forces in the country’s southern region, along its northeastern border.

Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander who until recently was sanctioned by the US as a foreign terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head, became Syria’s transitional president earlier this year after leading a rebel campaign that ousted long-time Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, whose brutal and authoritarian Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.

The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al Qaeda affiliate.

Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state. 

The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.

Now, Israel and Syria are reportedly in the final stages of months-long negotiations over a security agreement that could establish a joint Israeli, Syrian, and US presence at key strategic locations.

Jerusalem and Damascus have agreed to form a joint Israeli-Syrian–American security committee to oversee developments along their shared border and uphold the terms of a proposed deal.

Al-Sharaa told The Washington Post earlier this month that his government has expelled Iranian and Hezbollah forces from Syria and is ready for a new phase of ties with the United States. However, Syria’s reported knowledge of PIJ activity may be a hurdle as talks between Washington, Damascus, and Jerusalem proceed.

Earlier this year, tensions escalated after heavy fighting broke out in Sweida between local Druze fighters and Syrian regime forces amid reports of atrocities against civilians.

At the time, Israel launched an airstrike campaign to protect the Druze, which officials described as a warning to the country’s new leadership over threats to the minority group. The Druze, an Arab minority who practice a religion originally derived from Islam, live in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. In Israel, many serve in the military and police, including during the war in Gaza.

Jerusalem has pledged to defend the Druze community in Syria with military force if they come under threat — motivated in part by appeals from Israel’s own Druze minority.

But the Syrian government has accused Israel of fueling instability and interfering in its internal affairs, while the new leadership insists it is focused on unifying the country after 14 years of conflict, which began with Assad violently cracking down on anti-government protests in 2011.

Smoke rises from a building after strikes at Syria’s defense ministry in Damascus, Syria, July 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

According to a recent article in Aish:

On November 11, 2025, Dr. Samar Maqusi, a researcher at the University College London (UCL) proudly stated that in 1838 a group of Jews kidnapped and murdered a priest in Damascus and used his blood in order to make special pancakes for their Feast of the Tabernacles (Sukkot). She added that for Jewish people the blood used in their pancakes must be from a gentile. She asserted that a group of Jews admitted to murdering this priest in order to use his blood in their food.

Her lecture was hosted by UCL’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) titled “The Birth of Zionism.”

The Damascus Affair of 1840 (not 1838) was an infamous blood libel that became international news and led to one of the first instances in which Jewish communities around the world worked together to demand justice for another Jewish community.

The Damascus blood libel is recognized as one of the turning points of modern Jewish history, when Jews around the world realized the importance of uniting to advocate for each other.

The Blood Libel

On February 5, 1840, Father Thomas, an Italian Friar of the Capuchin Order who lived in Damascus, disappeared with his Muslim servant Ibrahim Amara.

They were assumed murdered, possibly by businessmen with whom Thomas had had shady dealings, or by a Muslim who was infuriated by an insult to Islam that Father Thomas had uttered.

But the Jews were to bear the blame, as the Capuchin friars began spreading rumors that the Jews had murdered the two men to use their blood for Passover. This led to one of history’s most famous blood libels, the Damascus Blood Libel, better known as the Damascus Affair of 1840.

Damascus was then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Since the Ottoman Empire was weak, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, primarily ruled over both Egypt and Syria as quasi-independent principalities, with just nominal subordination to the Ottoman Empire. France also retained some measure of control in Syria, as the French had maintained a presence in the region since the time of the Crusades. The Catholics of Syria, including Father Thomas, were officially under French protection.

Due to the French jurisdiction over this case, the French consul, Ulysse de Ratti-Menton, known for his anti-Jewish views, presided over the investigation.

Along with the governor-general, Sharif Pasha, he conducted a short investigation, and a barber named Shlomo Negrin, among others, was arbitrarily arrested and tortured.

They managed to extort a “confession” from Negrin that the monk had been killed in the house of David Harari by seven Jews. The men whom he named were arrested and tortured. Two of the detained men died, one converted to Islam to be spared, and the statements made under torture by the others were considered adequate as an admission of guilt.

Bones that were discovered in a sewer were “identified” as those of the monk and buried in a funeral on March 2nd, which increased the anger against the Jews. The inscription on the monk’s tombstone stated that this was the grave of a saint tortured by the Jews.

After the “funeral,” attacks began against the Jews, and Sharif Pasha had to move hundreds of soldiers to protect the Jewish quarter.

The focus of the “investigation” was now on the servant, Ibrahim Amara. More torture extracted the “confession” that he had been murdered by Jews, among them members of the prominent Farhi and Picciotto families, and the authorities sought to arrest them.

Knowing the torture that they would be subjected to, some of the accused tried to hide or escape. Rabbi Yaakov Antebi, accused of having received a bottle of the blood of Thomas, was arrested and tortured, yet he held strong under the torture and would not confess to anything.

More bones were found, and the investigators claimed they were the remains of Ibrahim Amara. However, the physician in Damascus, Dr. Lograso, did not believe they were human bones and, considering the pressure on him, requested that the bones be sent to Europe for examination. Ratti-Menton refused and instead announced that based on the confessions of the accused and the remains found of the victims, the guilt of the Jews in the double murder was proven beyond a doubt.

One of the Jews who was arrested during the second round of accusations was Isaac Levi Picciotto, an Austrian citizen and thus under the protection of the Austrian consul. Initially, he was also subject to torture, but on March 8th, there was a sudden turnabout.

The Austrian vice-consul, Caspar Giovanni Merlato, a personal friend of Picciotto, demanded that Picciotto be returned to Austrian jurisdiction and that the investigation be carried out at the Austrian consulate.

With Merlato’s involvement, things changed dramatically. Picciotto proved he was in a different place the evening of the murder, and a Christian corroborated this. Picciotto now moved from the defensive to the offensive and began accusing officials of instigating this blood libel, carrying out investigations under torture, and openly accusing Ratti-Menton of murder.

He demanded that the Austrian authorities carry out the investigation. As torture methods were seen as unjust, cruel, and backward by Western countries, his accusations put Ratti-Menton and his aides on the defensive.

The Blood Libel Spreads

The predictable result of the accusations was that the Jews of Damascus and other parts of Syria began to suffer from antisemitic mobs. Synagogues were destroyed and looted, cemeteries were desecrated, and Jews were attacked all over the country.

News of the atrocities spread throughout the Jewish world, causing waves of shock and anger at what was going on in Syria.

The first Jewish attempt to intervene in the tragic situation came via a petition initiated by Israel Bak addressed to Muhammad Ali, as he was the governor of Syria. At the same time, the Austrian Consul General in Egypt, Anton Laurin, received a report from the Austrian consul in Damascus. Recognizing the tremendous injustice, Laurin became very involved in the case, and he began by using his influence to petition Muhammad Ali to stop the torture methods used by the investigators.

Muhammad Ali agreed, and instructions were issued accordingly to Damascus by express courier. As a result, the use of torture came to an end on April 25, 1840, which caused a new round of riots in Damascus.

The accusation of murder and blood libel remained, and the investigation against the Jews continued, albeit without torture. Now, Austrian Consul General Laurin attempted to influence the French Consul General in Egypt to order his subordinate, Ratti-Menton, to stop the libel, but this effort was unsuccessful.

At this point, Laurin went against all procedures and decided to send the information he received from Damascus to Baron James de Rothschild, the honorary Austrian consul in Paris.

Baron Rothschild appealed to the French government to stop the injustice, but when his appeals were ignored, he chose to turn to the media and publish the report in newspapers worldwide, creating public pressure to halt this travesty of justice.

His brother in Vienna, Solomon Rothschild, worked alongside him and used his influence to speak to Chancellor Klemens von Metternich about the situation. Metternich ultimately supported his consul, Laurin, since the negative publicity for France, archenemy of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was to his benefit. The British also chose to support the Jews in fighting the libel, and the British Consul General of England in Egypt expressed those policies.

As a result of the advocacy, a message was sent to Damascus on May 3, 1840, ordering protection for the Jews from the violence of Muslim and Christian mobs.

Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA from 2007 – 2020. He is a popular speaker and has written for numerous publications. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org. A version of this article was first published at: https://aish.com/the-damascus-affair/