Author Archives: JA Benson

About JA Benson

Joanna entered the world as a BYU baby. Continuing family tradition, she graduated BYU with a degree in Elementary Education and taught for several years. Growing up in Salt Lake County, her favorite childhood hobbies were visiting cemeteries and eavesdropping on adult conversations. Her ancestral DNA is multi-ethnic and she is Mormon pioneer stock on every familial line. Joanna resides in the Southeastern USA with her five children ranging in age from 8 to 24. Her husband passed away in 2009. She is an avid reader and a student of history. Her current intellectual obsession is Sephardic Jewish history, influence and genealogy. She served as a board member for her local chapter of Families with Children from China. She is the author of “DNA Mormons?” Summer Sunstone 2007 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/04/dna-mormons/ and “Becoming Hong Mei`s Mother” in the Winter Sunstone 2009 http://theredbrickstore.com/sunstone/becoming-hong-meis-mother/.

Rising Out of Obscurity: Sephardic Jews and the LDS Connection

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Last summer I had the honor of speaking at Sunstone Symposium along with my research partner Marylee Mitchum. Our topic was on Sephardic Jews. I would like to share with you, dear friends, important information  with exciting new research that is currently being done in genealogy and Sephardic Studies. In the upcoming weeks, I will reveal the information we shared at Sunstone. I will teach you the knowledge to search for and possible locate hidden Sephardic Jews in your heritage. Lets get started.

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Rabbi Yeshuah of Nazareth

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This week in Elder Benson’s email home to us he related an interesting account he had with an Assistant Minister of a church in Houston.

Forever ago the Elders who were in our area before us helped a woman who had locked her keys in her car. We switched companions for a day and the District Leader, who was one of those Elders, and I went out to talk with people on the street. We bumped into the woman with the car keys problem. We asked if we could visit her. She said yes. Later my companion and I arrived at the appointed time and she wasn’t there, but her husband David was.  He said if I could answer his question correctly he would listen to us. The question was, “If Jesus had wanted to be a priest could he have become one?” I answered, “no, because Jesus was not a Levite”. He let us in.

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