“you Are Truly The God Of Abraham, Isaac, And Jacob”: How A Terminal Cancer Diagnosis Led A Brazilian Heiress To Israel

Tania Koenig didn’t know she had Jewish heritage until she was a teenager. Growing up in a prominent Catholic family in Brazil, she watched her grandfather’s name displayed across church walls, saw the ritual hand-washing before meals, and heard constant talk about Israel. But she had no idea what it all meant.

It wasn’t until she was 17, lying in a hospital bed after three surgeries with doctors giving her three months to live, that everything changed.

In a recent conversation on Biblical Money, Rabbi Rami Goldberg’s podcast exploring faith, finance, and business, Koenig shared the remarkable story of how a supernatural healing transformed not just her health but her entire approach to business, wealth, and supporting Israel.

A Noble Family’s Hidden Heritage

Koenig’s grandfather was a governor, exporting coffee, diamonds, and gold in 1930s Brazil. The family owned land given to them by the King of Portugal, and they maintained all the trappings of nobility and Catholic devotion. But there were peculiarities. The insistence on washing hands in a specific sink before meals. The constant references to Israel’s founding in 1948. A fascination with the Jewish state that didn’t quite fit their Catholic identity.

“They always were talking about Israel, about the birth of Israel in 48, and everything was, you know, Israel is amazing and we have to go to Israel,” Koenig recalled. “I did not really understand because I was very small.”

Years later, she would discover her family’s Marrano heritage, Jews who had publicly converted to Catholicism while secretly maintaining Jewish practices for generations.

The Night Everything Changed

At 17, rebellious and rejecting the Catholicism she’d been raised with, Koenig received devastating news: she had cancer, with metastasis throughout her body. She was given only three months to live. Her uncle, a prominent doctor who owned the hospital and headed the state health department, brought specialists from New York. Nothing worked.

The night before her fourth surgery, alone in her hospital room, Koenig began reading the Bible and singing Psalms of David. “Suddenly I looked at the ceiling and I saw a torch of light,” she said. “Two arms took me off the bed. The room was full of light. I could hear angels singing.”

When the experience ended, she found herself standing beside her bed with one overwhelming certainty: “You are truly the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Her parents thought the cancer had reached her brain. But on Monday, when surgeons operated, they found nothing. No trace of cancer remained. Forty-six years later, after extensive medical research in Rotterdam where she later lived, doctors confirmed it: the cancer had completely disappeared. She’s lived without a thyroid ever since, something physicians still marvel at.

Faith Meets Business

That healing launched Koenig into a new life. She became an evangelical Christian, devoted herself to studying Scripture, and fell deeply in love with Israel. But she also inherited her grandfather’s entrepreneurial spirit.

Moving to Holland, she built multiple businesses over 33 years. She started with real estate, buying properties at auction, restoring them, and selling or renting them. Then she moved into biofuels, drawing on her family’s experience with ethanol and sugar cane in Brazil.

The breakthrough came with crambe abyssinica, a plant from the mustard family with a tiny seed that produces a specific fatty acid needed for plastics, lubricants, and cosmetics. Koenig leased land across Europe, Africa, and Brazil, eventually farming 220,000 acres, planting between food crop seasons and selling oil to multinationals.

“I believe that the Lord is the one that gives you the strength, the power to create wealth,” she said. “If you are faithful to Him, He does that.”

But her approach went beyond prayer. When Dutch and European banks wouldn’t back her first major oil sale to a multinational, she walked into Barclays in England with nothing but audacity. “I said, ‘You have to help me in this because if you help me, look how much we’re going to make money,'” she recalled. “I did it on faith.”

Her philosophy: “When you are on your knees, everything depends on God. But when you stand up, everything depends on you. Faith in action will produce something, but faith without action is dead.”

Sowing Into Israel

From the beginning of her business success in the 1990s, Israel was the first place Koenig gave. She’s adamant about the biblical principle: “If you bless Israel, you are blessed. If you curse Israel, you are cursed.”

Today, her priorities are clear. “This land was given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” she said. “That’s a covenant land. You cannot divide the covenant land.” She and her husband Bill have protested in front of European and American governments, advocating for Israel’s right to its biblical heartland. They support widows, orphans, and infrastructure projects across the country.

For Koenig, there’s no separation between spiritual obedience and business success. The tithe belongs to God. Offerings follow biblical patterns. And the blessing returns. “He destroys the devourer,” she said, referring to Malachi’s promise about tithing. “When you bless Israel, the blessing comes back to you.”

The Secret of Intimacy

When Rabbi Goldberg asked about her giving strategy, Koenig pointed to King David. “King David has been an inspiration in my life. He had an intimacy with the Lord that I envy, that I wanted. Talking to Him and asking Him and having relationship with Him.”

That intimacy, forged in a hospital room 46 years ago when she experienced the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, continues to guide every business decision, every charitable gift, every stand she takes for Israel.

I was talking to somebody in Jerusalem two days ago,” Koenig said near the end of the interview. “He’s a Jewish captain. And he said, ‘Many people, it’s because of ignorance. They don’t read the Bible. They don’t know anything about Israel.’ When you get to know the word of the Lord, the word of God, of the God of Israel, it’s impossible that you don’t fall in love with Israel.”

For Tania Koenig, that love began in a noble Catholic family’s hidden Jewish rituals, was sealed in a miraculous healing, and has shaped a lifetime of entrepreneurial success and unwavering support for the Jewish state.

Watch the full episode here.

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