By
Donald H. Harrison
Tijuana, Mexico (special) -- Barry Jacobs, Washington-based assistant
director of the American Jewish Committee for international affairs, recently
spent two days getting to know Tijuana’s Jewish community and proposing
that programs be developed to strengthen the bonds between Jews in Mexico
and the United States.
Jacobs was accompanied by Gary Rotto, AJC’s San Diego regional director,
during visits
Jan. 28 and 29 to the Centro Social Israelita and the Congregacion
Hebrea de Baja
California respectively.
At the Centro, Jacobs met for lunch with Rabbi Mendel Polichenco, as
well as Centro
president, Sofia Model, and other members of the board of directors.
The following day he
had dinner with Carlos Salas-Diaz, leader of the Congregacion Hebrea
de Baja California,
and other representatives of the synagogue whose leader and most members
have
converted to Judaism. Afterwards, he attended Friday night Shabbat
services with the
Congregacion.
Jacobs, who spent 28 years with the United States Information Agency
(USIA) in Cyprus,
Greece, Israel, Venezuela, India and El Salvador before retiring from
government service,
said the Tijuana visit was part of an overall program by the AJC to
reemphasize its
international operations
.
In speeches to both Tijuana groups, Jacobs noted that the American
Jewish Committee
was founded in 1906 in New York in response to pogroms being carried
out against the
Jews by Czarist Russia. He said AJC has maintained its interest
in international affairs
ever since.
“For many years, in fact, we did have an office in Mexico City,” he
said. However, in the
middle 1980s, “the AJC went through a period of streamlining its operations
to reduce
costs. One of the things that happened was that we closed our
office in Mexico City. “
During this decade, the AJC opened an office in Berlin as part of its
reemphasis on
international affairs and “just recently, last October, signed an agreement
with the Tribuna
Israelita of Mexico City,” Jacobs said.
The Tribuna Israelita began as a newspaper for the Jewish community
but changed its
mission to become a “nice little organization that does research on
anti-Semitism and
radical organizations in Mexico,” Jacobs said. “It keeps very efficient
archives and track of
all sorts of movements.”
Jacobs said as AJC is interested in working with Jewish organizations
in Meixco City, so
too is it interested in those in Tijuana including the traditional
community based at the
Centro; the group of people who have converted to Judaism at the Congregacion
Hebrea,
and a third group: “a community, which is growing, of Jews who have
left Mexico City
because of the security situation--the danger of kidnaping.”
Asked what forms international cooperation might take, Jacobs replied
that “in Mexico City,
we have come up with a series of realistic but not overly ambitious
or expensive projects.
...The American Jewish Committee has a lot of expertise in polling,
and one of the things
that we talked about with the Mexican community is that it has been
several years since
they have done a survey either of their own community...(or) with the
larger Mexican
community.”
He said polling of the Jewish community may center on “what are their
fears and hopes and
expectations” while the general community can be surveyed to find out
what they think of
the Jewish community.
Exchanging research is another possibility, he said. "The Jewish
community in Mexico
has an interesting history, an admirable history, of social work,”
he said. “I got the paper
that one of their directors (in Mexico City) wrote. We are going
to translate it, and we are
going to put that out as a publication, send it to our chapters, so
people can take a look at
it.”
Similarly in Tijuana, he said, “we are going to look for materials which
the American Jewish
Committee has produced that they might like to take advantage of and
also the reverse,
materials that they have produced that may be of advantage to our chapters
in the United
States.”
He said the Tijuana Jewish community has much it can teach Jews in the
United States.
“They can tell us what it is like to run a pretty effective social
and cultural organization with a
very small base and nevertheless seem to be able to maintain their
facilities as well as their
social work.”
Among the AJC’s own publications are the annual Jewish Year Book, “which
has become
an authoritiative reference book,” Jacobs said. “If you want
to know the Jewish population
of Argentina, or who has died during the year, or trends in the Jewish
cinema, it is a
wonderful reference publication.”
Gracia Molina Pick, a member of AJC’s San Diego regional board, and
Suzy Norton, a
former Mexico City resident with families ties in San Diego, accompanied
Jacobs and Rotto
on the first day’s tour to the Centro.
Norton said she believes American Jews have much to learn from Jews
in Mexico, “where
the family values are so important, where education is one of the main
things, and where
assimilation rates are so much lower than we have in the States.”
She said a relationship between the San Diego and Tijuana Jewish communities
would be
mutually beneficial, recommending it start with programs bringing together
the youth of the
two cities.
Pick, endorsing such cooperation, said she admires the way the Tijuana
Jewish community
is “providing services for the community, keeping a social spirit with
the community,
bringing education for the children, having summer camps for the Jewish
community of
Tijuana.”
* * *
Every Thursday the Centro Social Israelita transforms itself into a
kosher restaurant, with
lunches of beef, chicken or fish offered at quite modest prices. Model
told Jacobs that the
kosher meat is purchased in Mexico City and “comes frozen by plane.
We pick it up and
put it in the freezer.”
He asked if it wouldn’t be simpler to purchase the kosher meat in Los
Angeles. “The
Mexican people like the Mexican cuts,” she replied. “Number one,
it is better. Number two,
it is cheaper. And number three, it is tastier.”
Preparation of the food is overseen by the new mashgiach at the Centro,
Moshe Peretz,
whose family moved when he was 3 years old from Mexico to Israel.
He returned to his
native country only eight months ago.
If one desires, lunch may be accompanied with kosher wine, produced
at vineyards in the
nearby Guadalupe Valley under Mexico’s Domecq label. Rabbi Polichenco
provides
guidance for production of the kosher varietals, which are sold at
the Centro at $6.50 per
bottle, except for sweet wine for the kiddush which sells for
only $4.50.
There were other changes at the Centro credited to Polichenco, who is
the first shaliach of
the Chabad movement to be authorized to work in Tijuana.
He took the AJC delegation to a mikvah now under construction at the
Centro. It will be
accessed through the locker room where women change their clothes to
use the swimming
pool or tennis courts.
The rabbi also showed them improvements in the sanctuary including the
new stained glass
windows and other fixtures.
Segal told the AJC delegation that under Jewish community auspices a
group of doctors
has organized to advise visitors who come to Tijuana in search of medical
services or
pharmaceuticals about where they can go to get the right kind of service
and not be
overcharged.
The next day, over a pre-Shabbat fish dinner at La Escondida Restaurant,
Zalema
Chavira-Irgoyen, Olga Cardoso-Carboney and Cesar Reynoso Cardoso, all
born to Roman
Catholic families, told why they had decided to convert to Judaism.
“Zulema is a name that was given to me when I was born,” Chavira-Irgoyen
said. “It means
‘shalom.’ My father’s name was Israel. This is why I think that
perhaps our family orginally
was Jewish because our names were Jewish.”
Another thing, she said, after a nephew told her about the Congregacion
Hebrea de Baja
California, “when I used to hear the Shm’a, I used to cry and I would
say ‘why do I cry?’; but
I would cry, and after a few years (attending services) I decided I
should become one.”
As a Jew, she said, she feels able to come closer to God. “I
wasn’t a very good Catholic,”
she added. “I didn’t understand it. They never taught me.”
Cardoso-Carboney said whenever her family would discuss international
affairs --
particularly the situation in the Middle East -- she used to always
take the side of the
Israelis. “My uncle told me I am a Jew, and when I said ‘why,’
he told me ‘because you
have Jewish blood in your body and that is why you defend the Jewish
people.’”
She learned that Cardoso is a well-known name among Sephardic Jews.
It was the first time she thought about the possibility she might be
from a Converso family.
But there was another clue, she said. “We have a ring--my daughter
has it now--the ring of
Elijah. When I married, my uncle gave the ring, and I had it,
but now my daughter has it.”
“It is inscribed with Hebrew,” Salas-Diaz explained.
Along with her son, Cesar, who is becoming a lawyer, Cardoso-Carboney
converted a few
years ago. Their teacher, Salas-Diaz, brought them to the Conservative
movement’s
University of Judaism in Los Angeles where as part of their conversion
each was examined
by a beth din, and went to the mikvah.
When dinner conversation turned to the concerns of Jews in Mexico, Salas-Diaz
said they,
like many other Mexicans, have gone through a great ordeal as a result
of the recent
devaluation of the peso. “I know of families who lost large quantities
of money,” he said.
“Some people had all their investments in pesos and their debts in
dollars, so this almost
made them the most poor of all people.” He said he has been advising
his congregants to
open bank accounts in the United States as soon as possible to protect
themselves against
further devaluations.
As hard as it is along the border, he said, it is even worse in the
interior. “They aren’t able
to plant any seed because they have to purchase seed from the United
States and the cost
is extremely high,” Salas-Diaz said. “The chemicals to fertilize
and to fumigate come from
the United States, so they have to pay dollars. Everyone hurts.”
Devaluation-spurred migration northward is adding to the number of impoverished
people in
Tijuana. Congregacion Hebrea has a dining room from which it
distributes food parcels
and clothing to the poor. Now, Salas-Diaz said, “we have decided
to begin enhancing this
program a little more, to the point where we can serve chicken soup
with torillas, beans,
chili, hot sauce.
“We have done it so far on a scale that has not satisfied us as members
of the Jewish
community and does not supply the need and demand of these poor people,”
he said. “I
imagine very soon we will increase this type of service to the poor.
“We do not preach in any shape or form to the people because they are
hungry,” he added.
“Our purpose is to feed them. And if they need some clothing,
we are also prepared to give
them some blankets and so forth.”
Salas-Diaz said it is not only in Mexico where Conversos and Crypto-Jews
are hungering to
learn more about their parental religion.
“I was 27 years living in the United States, many in Los Angeles, and
I know quite a few
descendants and crypto-Jews there,” he said. “They are not affiliated.
Most of them come
from Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey...and they do exactly what
they did in Mexico,
stay away from the congregations.”
The 8 p.m. Friday night service, for which men wore their tallitim ,
was conducted almost
entirely in Spanish, with the congregation and Salas-Diaz reading translated
prayers from
the siddur together. About the only Hebrew recited was the shm’a,
although at the oneg
Shabbat following the service, the hamotzi blessing over the
bread was recited in full and
the first part of the kiddush over the wine also was said.
Although there was no mehitza in the sanctuary, men and women
sat separately during the
service, then rejoined as families at the oneg. After hamotzi
, Salas-Diaz distributed the
bread, one piece at a time, to the congregants who waited for their
portions with unfolded
paper napkins in their cupped hands.
Each visitor received a personal “Shabbat Shalom” greeting and a warm
handshake from
each of the congregants. A large array of kosher baked goods
(purchased from Lang’s
Bakery in San Diego), as well as lox, bagel and cream cheese tempted
congregants to
remain at the oneg for a couple hours.
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