By
Donald H. Harrison
Tijuana, Mexico (special) -- If you were to pass Tijuana's Centro Social
Israelita while
walking or driving along Avenida Cuahutemac Sur, formerly Avenida 16
de Septembre, it is
unlikely that you would give the unadorned blue and white building
more than a passing
glance, except perhaps to notice the satellite dish hovering over the
roofline.
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Only if you specifically were looking for Number 3000,
and walked up to the doorstep to find it, would you be likely to notice
a small, worn plaque identifying the premises, in Spanish, as those of
the Jewish Social Center of Baja California
The building's unspectacular frontage masks the size of the complex,
which not only includes the street-side building, but another long building
containing the sanctuary and classrooms; a tennis court, playground area,
swimming pool. |
Centro Social Israelita |
An impressive alcove features a sculpture of a man breaking the chains
of slavery. On
either side of the man are the busts of Moses the Lawgiver, and Mexican
hero Benito Juarez, the revolutionary who overthrew the Empire the French
had imposed on Mexico and who
wrote into the Mexican Constitution protections against religious bodies
dominating the
state. Good relations between men, as between nations, lead to
peace, Juarez had taught.
His words, like those of the Ten Commandments, are reproduced in the
alcove.
The Centro Social Israelita participates in both Jewish affairs and
in Tijuana's civic affairs.
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For example, it serves each year as a screening clinic
for patients who hope to go to San
Diego for free surgeries offered by Mercy Hospital and its doctors
on a weekend every September.
Patients with cleft palates, club feet and other ailments gather at
the Centro in the hope they will be among the lucky ones chosen for
the surgeries. The program not only brings together Jews and Christians,
Mexicans and Americans, but also volunteer units from the Marine
Corps, U.S. Navy, San Diego Rotary Club and the San Diego law firm of Thorsnes,
Bartolotta, McGuire & Padilla. |
Moses and Benito Juarez |
Even so, as the plain front of their building attests, the Jews of the
Centro Social Israelita do
not like to draw too much attention to themselves. Like the building
of the United
Jewish
Federation
in neighboring San Diego, no large menorah, or Star of David, or large
written
inscription advertises to the casual passerby that a major Jewish organization
is housed
within.
Dedicated in 1967, the Centro was originally planned as a scaled down
model of Mexico
City's Jewish sports center for which many of the Tijuana center's
founders held fond
memories.
Making the building a sport center also had practical reasons. San Diegan
Al Slayen recently
told HERITAGE about the time he arranged for leaders of Tijuana's Jewish
community to
tour the North County Jewish Community Center in Vista (which later
became Temple
Judea)
as they considered designs for the Centro. These leaders told him
that under Mexican law, ownership of a religious institution would revert
in 100 years to the Mexican state, while no ownership limitation was placed
on sports facilities.
The Centro is the third home of the Jewish community in Tijuana, which
organized itself in
1942 after European Jewish refugees swelled the ranks of a community
that until then had
consisted mainly of a few enterprising merchants.
The first two facilities were rentals in Tijuana's downtown, close to
the Avenida de la
Revolucion, home of the jai alai palace, tourist shops and numerous
restaurants. The Centro Social Israelita is located in an area known as
Colonia Gabilondo.
In the dining room, where one can purchase a kosher luncheon, or in
the banquet hall above
the modern sanctuary, or perhaps sitting out by the swimming pool,
one can hear from
members of the Centro the stories about how their families came to
settle in Tijuana.
Ivan Ilko, a former president of the Centro, told me he was born in
Guadalajara, where
"sometimes we didn't even have a minyan, so I was initiated into a
family that could not be
very observant." His father, who had a degree in animal husbandry from
Hungary,
immigrated to Mexico, and "he met the President of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas,
and he went
to work for him as an expert in protecting animals and in trying to
increase the quality of the
sheep, cows and horses.
"He was asked by the government to go to Europe and buy livestock for
breeding, and he
contracted a boat like Noah's Ark, and he brought a shipload of animals
from Hungary and
Czecheslovakia for the country. The President was very happy with my
father and he asked
him to go a second time."
Ilko's father was quick to accept the second assignment from Cardenas
because it gave him
the opportunity to see again at a Budapest bank a Jewish cashier who
had helped him
convert his Mexican money into Hungarian money. After meeting her on
his first trip, he
had conducted an increasingly amorous correspondence.
"He wrote her again, declaring his love, and she for some reason accepted...but
because she
was less than 18 years old (and an orphan), they wouldn't let her leave
Hungary with him,"
Ilko related. "But they authorized her to leave Hungary on a French
boat and then to be
married by the captain when the boat docked. And that was what happened"
After Ilko's parents, Alejandro and Violet, were married, Alejandro
took another government
job, serving as both a teacher of animal husbandry and as a controller
of alcohol in
Guadalajara. "My father was inspecting against the moonshiners,"
Ilko said. One night
when Ilko was 11 years old, "I remember it like yesterday, a car outside
the house came with
a machine gun, then sprayed the first story with bullets. We
were on the second floor, and it
was to scare us. We left in a hurry that night; we went to Ensenada."A
year later the family
moved to Tijuana.
Sofia Model, current president of the Centro, said her father Wolf Modelsky
came from a
large family in the area that is today Ukraine, where they prospered
as dairy farmers. "I
remember my dad telling me that they (Sofia's grandparents) would churn
up the butter, fill
up warehouses with ice in winter, and then put the butter in to get
cool...and that lasted until
the next winter."
But the farm was confiscated by the communists after the Bolshevik revolution,
and Wolf
Modelsky "used to go from one town to another and in one town he would
buy salt, and then
get on a train, go to another town, sell the salt and buy sugar; back
and forth, back and forth.
That is how he survived."
Her father also learned about the different grades of furs, and "they
gave him the waste and
from that he would make furs and sell them." When he reached
his 20's, he arranged for a
state-authorized vacation and went to Germany, and then to France,
and from there took a ship to Veracruz, Mexico. He settled in Mexico City,
later moving to Guadalajara where Sofia was
born.
The Models from the Ukraine and the Ilkos from Hungary, like many of
the Jews of
Tijuana, are Ashkenazim whose families learned to speak Spanish. Today,
many people
assume falsely that all Mexican Jews are Sephardim because they speak
Spanish.
Sephardim, indeed, made up an important part of Tijuana's Jewish community.
There was
perhaps no better example than the late Jack Swed, whose family moved
from Aleppo, Syria,
to New York when he was 10. In 1917, when he was 15, he decided to
go to Mexico to sell
bolts of cloth out of a suitcase. The trouble was he didn't speak Spanish
at the time, "so I
went to small towns and put a sign on my chest, saying 'If you need
something, look inside
my case and pay me,'" he recalled in a 1993 interview with HERITAGE.
Sometimes Swed would stretch a banner across a steet of a small town,
announcing the sale
on the items in his cart would last only 15 days. "Sometimes," he chuckled,
"business was
so good that 15 days would last 90."
In 1927, when Prohibition in the United States prompted adventurous
Americans to go south
in search of drink and fun, Swed found his way to Tijuana. Avenida
de la Revolucion was
filled with bars, backroom gaming rooms and bordellos as well as some
fine restaurants,
including Caesar's, whose continental staff invented the Caesar Salad.
Real estate was at a premium. Swed said people were asking for rents
of $800 a month even
for a tiny booth in a store. To one of those men, whose name was Mr.
Jaffe, Swed said: "I
know that you too are a Jew."
"Oh," Jaffe replied, 'Are you Jewish?"
"Yes," Swed answered. "My grandfather was a rabbi."
"Mine was too," answered Jaffe.
As a result, Swed reported, "I got the place for $400. Now mine really
was a rabbi, who was
very well-known, Rabbi Moshe Cohen of Aleppo. I don't know about Jaffe's
grandfather."
Swed's Perfume Bar occupied that small booth. An alcohol bar known as
the San Francisco
Cafe next door drew the rich and the famous. Swed added jewelry, crystal,
porcelain, and
French clothing to his inventory. Soon it became commonplace
to meet such Hollywood
stars at his store as Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Rudy Vallee. Mexican
President Miguel
Aleman was also a favorite regular customer.
Swed helped organize the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce, the Tijuana Rotary
Club and the
Masons (and later in his life would donate to the city the land on
which an elementary school
named in his honor was built.) But in those early days, there were
not enough Jews in
Tijuana to sustain a minyan. After he and his wife, Shirley, a distant
cousin, were married in
1936, they davened at San Diego's Tifereth Israel Synagogue, which
then was Orthodox but which is today Conservative.
In 1942, Tijuana's Jewish community swelled with European refugees,
and the Sweds hosted
High Holiday services at their home after borrowing a Torah from Tifereth
Israel Synagogue. Jews came from the four major cities of Baja California:
Mexicali, Ensenada, Tecate and Tijuana. About 90 persons in all attended.
They decided to form the Magen David Jewish community and elected Swed
their president.
The next year, High Holidays were held in a former dance hall, with
a Torah presented by a
New Yorker named Buco Mayo. A Torah procession was held from Swed's
home to the site
of the services. "It was the first time in Tijuana," he recalled proudly
in that interview.
"Hundreds of people came. All the girls were dressed in white. Boys
were carrying the
Jewish flag and the Mexican flag. We marched all the way to Second
Street; it was quite a
bit of walking."
Artist and historian Elena Saad, a Mexican-born La Jolla resident was
a featured lecturer on
Tijuana's Jewish history at last year's San Diego Jewish Book Fair.
Saad recently told HERITAGE that Tijuana's proximity to the United States
always has been the magnet for Jewish settlement in Tijuana. "Everybody
who moved to Tijuana--and this is the interesting thing--they didn't want
to settle there forever," Saad said. "Their goal was to cross (into the
United States)."
But for many, obtaining a residence permit in the United States was
not possible, so they
began building a Jewish community, Saad said. Subsequent newcomers,
on finding a Jewish
community already in place in Tijuana, decided to stay and build, she
said.
Developments on the American side of the border, like the establishment
in San Diego of
huge military bases with thousands of personnel who liked to spend
money on liberty
weekends, helped to make Tijuana commercially viable. As the tourist
economy boomed,
Mexicans whom it employed also needed to buy goods and services. Jewish
families helped
to establish major department stores like Sara, Maxim and Dorian's.
In 1965, the Jews of Tijuana decided to build the Centro Social Israelita,
modeling it in
concept after the Centro Deportivo (Sports Center) in Mexico City,
which provides the social
setting for so many events for the Jews of the capital city.
Along with a tennis court and
swimming pool, and the banquet facilities, the community also decided
it needed to find
someone to serve as its religious leader.
Max Furmansky, a Polish Holocaust Survivor who had been trained as both
a cantor and as
a stage performer, taught himself Spanish and served for 18 years as
a cantor, choir master
and Hebrew school director in Buenos Aires.
Along came Yehuda Voidaslavski, a Jewish bookseller who travelled to
Spanish-speaking
communities throughout Latin America. In Tijuana, his customers told
him they were
looking for a versatile man who could be rabbi, cantor, school director,
youth director--the
works. Voidaslavski recommended Furmansky. Tijuana's Jewish leaders
sent him a
telegram advising him of their interest.
Furmansky told HERITAGE in a 1993 interview that after he received the
telegram, "I went
to the Mexican consulate in Buenos Aires, and said 'I want to know
where is Tijuana exactly'
and the lady there said, 'you know, believe me, I do not know.'"
Next he went to a travel agent and they consulted an encyclopaedia and
learned that Tijuana
then had about 200,000 people (compared to more than 1.5 million today),
had a jai alai
palace, a bull ring, dog races and horse races--and that it was on
the border with the United
States.
Furmansky spent a month visiting Tijuana on the community's invitation,
then accepted the
offer to become its religious leader. A Conservative Jew, Furmansky
initially conducted
services all in Hebrew, but eventually agreed to make them half Hebrew,
half Spanish.
The cantor also established a kosher kitchen at the Centro, though not
without resistance.
"One time we had a bar mitzvah reception for 450 people and I planned
to go to the kosher
butcher in the United States for chickens. And this lady-I won't mention
any names-came to
me and says, 'why are we going to pay double for kosher chicken?
For 450 people, it will
cost me a fortune. I want to buy regular chickens.'"
The cantor said he went to the head of the family "and I told him that
I will pay the
difference. Of course, he said, 'No,' that he would pay the difference.
And so we had a
kosher reception."
Furmansky said he also helped to develop a Jewish day school, a youth
camp, and a soccer
league for Tijuana's Jewish youth during his 13 years at the Centro.
Additionally, he said,
he was able to serve as a spokesman for the Jewish community--particularly
when it came to
clearing up common misconceptions among Mexico's overwhelmingly Catholic
majority
about Jews.
According to Sofia Model, Furmansky left the Centro at a time when many
of its members
were not at all certain that it was worth keeping open because of Mexico's
uncertain political
situation. In 1975, Mexico voted for the infamous United Nations resolution
equating
Zionism and racism (which years later was rescinded).
In addition to such political turmoil, historian Saad noted, there also
was economic turmoil,
with some incidents of people burning effigies of Jews in the streets
at this time.
A layman from Israel, David Schatz, led services for a while, and Sofia
Model became head
of the Centro's religious committee. Soon she found herself immersed
in various religious
issues for which she had no training. She spent many hours on the telephone
with her son
Eric Segal, then a student at Yeshiva University, seeking advice on
various points of ritual.
One year in this period Segal assisted Dr. Louis Katz, a La Jolla optometrist,
in leading High
Holiday services at the Centro.
On another occasion, a fire, assumed to have been of electrical causes,
resulted in the
synagogue's sefrei Torahs being destroyed. The irreparably damaged
Torah scrolls were
taken across the border to the Home of Peace Cemetery in San Diego
for burial. Orthodox,
Conservative and Reform rabbis all turned out for the sad occasion.
However, Model said, somehow Rabbi David Waicsman, an Orthodox rabbi
in Mexico City,
heard otherwise. He called up to tell Model he understood that the
holy Torahs had not been
buried in accordance with Jewish law. Model said she did not argue
with the rabbi, but
instead told him to telephone various people who attended the ceremony,
to find out for
himself whether the halacha (Jewish law) had been observed.
Waicsman subsequently telephoned back to apologize; Model said. Halacha
had in
fact been observed. Model said she told the rabbi she could not accept
his apology because
she considered him much higher than she. But, she added quickly,
he did owe her a
favor.
What favor? The rabbi asked warily.
He must come to Tijuana one week and teach at the Centro for several
days before returning
to Mexico City. The rabbi agreed, and after he held several days of
classes there, the board
of directors there gave him a contract with their signatures on it.
All he had to do was add
his signature and the job would be his, they told him.
Waicsman returned to Mexico City, where his contract at another synagogue
was about to
run out. Perhaps, he said, in a telephone call to Model, he would indeed
sign that
contract.
Model said she had wanted a rabbi to take over the religious duties
of the Centro, and gladly
would have hired one from any of the major movements. Fate brought
Waicsman.
When Waicsman took the position, it was not without its controversy.
The Jews of the
Centro Social Israelita--some of whom are intermarried--had grown comfortable
with
Conservative-style services. Now there would be a mehitzah
dividing men from
women "There were a lot of problems," Model said. "It wasn't what we
had previously, but
he came and continued" from about 1985 to 1991, she said.
After he left, there was a succession of lay leaders as well as rabbinical
students sent by Chabad to the Tijuana community's aid. One of the
students was Rabbi Mendel Polichenco, the
present spiritual leader at the Centro. Having grown up in Argentina,
Polikchenco was an
ideal candidate to conduct services in Hebrew and Spanish at the Centro
during his summer
vacation.
The community pressed Polichenco to finish his rabbinical studies early
so he could work
full time. He went to Israel to do just that. Later he married Dina,
and had a son, Abraham,
so the community has not just a rabbi, but a rabbinical family, as
well as some Chassidic
students. It also has in Yosef Romano, a shochet who provides the community
with kosher
chickens.
Shabbat and holiday services attract a steady stream of visitors not
only from Chabad
congregations in San Diego but from non-Orthodox congregations as well.
Those who think that because the rabbi is from Chabad that women at
the Centro only
wear sheidels and modest clothes forget that the building still functions
as a sports center.
It is therefore not uncommon to see the rabbi at study inside, and to
look out a window of the
Centro to see men and women in swim suits enjoying the sun.
The congregation withstood such crises as turbulence over Orthodoxy
versus Conservatism, fears about the congregation's ability to support
itself in light of migrations to San Diego, and a
split between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews that led to the establishment
in Bonita of the
Sephardic Congregation Beth Torah (now called Beth Eliyahu Torah Center).
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There is a spirit of renewed pride at the Centro Social
Israelita. Last year, Jose Chacra, the Centro's administrator and artist
in residence, was commissioned by Gregorio Goldstein, a past Centro president
and a top level executive for the Dorian's chain of department stores,
to create 12 stained glass windows to surround the Centro's modern sanctuary.
Now, there is talk about expanding the Centro's kosher dining facility,
so that Jews will consider it a place to go for business lunches and other
non-religious occasions. |
Sanctuary at the Centro |
"I want this to be a place where people can come and eat," said a clearly
determined Model.
"A place where we have all the services that people might need. I want
it to be fully
functioning." |