Dr. Juan Marcos Bejarano-Gutierrez

Rabbi Juan Marcos Bejarano Gutierrez is a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas where he earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering. He studied at the Siegal College of Judaic Studies in Cleveland and received a Master of Arts Degree with Distinction in Judaic Studies.His master’s thesis focused on Jewish Identity in the Second Temple Period. He completed his doctoral studies at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago in 2015. His doctoral dissertation is titled “Complex Identities: Christian and Jewish Attitudes Towards Conversos” and was accepted in September 2015. He also studied at the American Seminary for Contemporary Judaism and received rabbinic ordination in 2011 from Yeshivat Mesilat Yesharim. Rabbi Bejarano-Gutierrez served as the assistant editor for HaLapid the quarterly publication for the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies from 2011-2012. He also served as a board member and treasurer for the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies from 2011-2013. He was also a member of the Union of Traditional Judaism. Rabbi Bejarano-Gutierrez has published various articles in HaLapid, The Journal for Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Crypto-Jews, Puntes-Theological Reflections from a Hispanic-Latino Context published by Southern Methodist University, and Academia Letters. He spoke at the Third Annual Crypto-Jewish Symposium in 2010 at Texas A&M, the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies Conference in 2010 in San Antonio, and at Southern Methodist University’s “Crypto-Judaism in the American Southwest: Hidden Religious Roots of Hispanic Peoples” in Dallas in 2010. He also spoke at the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies conference in Dallas, Texas in 2014. He also spoke at the 40th Annual Texas Hispanic Genealogical and Historical Conference in Dallas. In 2019 he spoke at the Mensa Dallas conference on Sephardic history. He is currently the director of the B'nei Anusim Center for Education. Dr. Rabbi Juan Marcos Bejarano Gutierrez is a best-selling author and several of his books have reached number one best-seller status on Amazon in the categories of the Jewish History of Religion, Kabbalah, and others as well. He is also the director of Yeshivat Meor Enaim, an online learning environment for Jewish learning. He is also the rabbi of Chavurah Zohar Yisrael, a synagogue committed to embracing and educating Bnei Anusim and Jews from all ethnic backgrounds in a traditional Jewish context and environment.