San Diego, CA (special) -- Family bonds are drawing the Jewish communities of San Diego/Tijuana and Panama City together.  Families like the Attias, Mizrachis and the Zebedes are key to the emerging relationship. 

The Mizrachis are perhaps the best known in San Diego because the late Solomon Mizrachi, many years after moving from Panama to San Diego County, helped in 1979 to establish Congregation Beth Torah, the county's first Sephardic congregation. In 1993, the congregation in Bonita was renamed as Beth Eliyahu Torah Center in honor of Mizrachi's father. In return, Mizrachi, who had been the congregation's landlord, agreed it should pay only $1 a year in rent in perpetuity as long as it remained Orthodox. 

Solomon's brother, Mo, and sister in law, Grace, now are in the process of relocating to Chula Vista in order to be closer to their sons, Raphael and Michael, who respectively operate warehouses and laundromats in Tijuana. 

Alberto Attia also is well known in San Diego because he is an accomplished sofer, a man who has been trained to write and to repair Torahs. He once was the subject of a feature article in HERITAGE after he discovered that Torah scrolls owned by Congregation Beth Tefilah (recently merged into Ohr Shalom Synagogue) and Congregation Beth Am had arrived in San Diego by separate routes but apparently had been written by the same sofer. His father-in-law, Alberto Zebede, still lives in Panama, but is a frequent visitor to Attia's growing family. Zebede said his family's saga in Panama began in 1909, when his maternal grandfather, Elias Zakay, decided to leave Jerusalem rather than to submit to what was regarded as the unfair draft law then exercised over Palestine by the Ottoman Turks. "It

Alberto Attia, right, enjoys a moment with his story-telling father-in-law, Alberto Zebede

was very well known that if a fellow goes into the army, he has only a 50-50 chance of coming back," Zebede said. 

Elias' father urged him to emigrate to the Americas, telling him: "Look, Elias, I would prefer to never see you again, never, but at least I will know that you are alive." 

Zebede said the ship stopped in other South American ports, but not until it reached Cristobal, Panama, on the Atlantic side of the yet-to-be completed Panama Canal did grandfather Zakay and two friends decide to disembark. 

"At that time, there was no passport; now way they would tell you that you can't come in. You just came off the boat and went into the country.... So, they came down and they looked around. Nightfall came; they had no money. Where would they sleep? They slept in the park, each one took a bench.  At midnight, someone touched them -- a policeman. 'You cannot sleep in the park.' 'But we have no money; we can go nowhere.' 'Come with me.' So the first night, they slept in jail. In the morning they told them, 'Okay, you can't stay here forever,' so they gave each one a gold coin and told them 'go ahead and see what you can do with this.' They started working by peddling." 

Eventually, Grandfather Zakay started a small shop in Colon on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal, which was completed in 1914. The shop "became bigger and bigger and it came to the point in 1923-24 that my grandfather became one of the leading wholesalers of goods in the city of Colon," Zebede said. 

Although there was a Reform congregation in Colon, there was no Orthodox Jewish presence. "My grandfather had the idea of trying to make the people a community. It came to the point around 1925 my grandfather brought from Israel a young rabbi named Joseph Abouganem. Descendants of this rabbi are in Panama now, his sons and grandsons. This rabbi started to organize a Shabbat praying group and my grandfather and others made up a synagogue in Colon." The congregation was called Avodat Ahim. 

When Elias' daughters, Marcella and Rebecca, became of marriageable age, Zakay went to Jerusalem to help them find husbands. Zebede said the marriage of his mother, Marcella, to his father was only the second marriage performed in Panama by Rabbi Abouganem. Zebede said that Rebecca married a man named Cohen, also brought to Panama from Jerusalem. 

"My grandfather had in his head that he wanted to have all the Jewish people in Panama to keep Sabbath and to eat kosher. So when Rabbi Abouganem came, he started slaughtering and distributing kosher food and all that. But members of the congregation were still working on the Sabbath, except my grandfather. One day my grandfather gathered everyone and said, 'now it is the time for all of us to do the right thing, which is keeping the Sabbath. I want you to keep the Sabbath, stop working on the Sabbath.'" 

As the leading wholesaler in the area, grandfather Zakay's words carried clout. "He threatened everybody," Zebede said. "He said 'anyone who is not going to comply by keeping the Sabbath, I am going to cut the credit' and he forced the people to keep the Sabbath. They lasted about five or six months and they were thriving, but as in all stories, there was one person who started working on Saturdays, saying that way he could make more money. And that broke the dam; they started working again.  But my grandfather kept a small group tight, keeping the Sabbath, observing kashrut, putting on tefillin, all of that, with the help of Rabbi Abouganem." 

Zebede said like other Jewish children in Panama at that time, his regular education was at a Catholic school supplemented by Hebrew school in the afternoons. "But Rabbi Abouganem did not have the patience to learn Spanish himself, and if he doesn't learn the language, he cannot translate. So we learned Hebrew by ear, repeating, repeating: we learned how to pray, how to read, but not to understand. Thank God, by the time of our next generation we had established a Jewish school." 

* * * 
Grace Mizrachi says there is a saying in Panama that, "if you drink water from the Chagres River, you will come back to Panama." Apparently, the Chagres affects unborn babies as well. Grace was conceived in Panama but was born in Manchester, England. She remained there until 1937, when war seemed to be threatening in Europe. A half-brother who lived in Cali, Colombia, persuaded the 17-year-old Grace and her family to resettle in South America, far from the tension of Europe. 

"I was in Colombia when Pearl Harbor was bombed," Mizrachi recalled. Along with a girlfriend, she was attending her first bullfight. They were repulsed by the carnage. "I said to her, 'you are yellow' and she said to me, 'you are white.' But the others said we couldn't leave the bullring until the President (of Colombia) leaves. I said, 'You know what? I have to go to the bathroom.' My friend said: 'So do I' and we left. And then we saw the newsboys outside, calling out the headline in the paper: 'Pearl Harbor Bombed!'" 

Her parents were on an extended visit to New York, and Mizrachi rushed to join them there rather than be alone during the war. On an earlier visit, she had met Mo Mizrachi, a Panamanian Jew who had the same last name but was not a relation. When she got back to New York, they were married. They subsequently opened a textile business in Panama City, on the Pacific side of the canal. 

During World War II "my auntie had a house on the beach," Grace Mizrachi recalled. "She rented out apartments, including one to this man. At night she used to hear Morse code -- peep, peep; peep-peep-peep. She had this friend in the American embassy, and she told him and sure enough this man was the one who could see the boats coming through (the Panama Canal) and he used to send Morse code to the German submarines and they sank the boats." 

Ruth Wizel, a friend of Grace Mizrachi's, was born in Panama to Jewish refugee parents, who had left nazi Germany prior to Kristallnacht. At first refugees were placed in a camp near the airport near Panama City, but eventually they were permitted to settle. Wizel (formerly Ruth David) remembers attending the Pan American School -- which enrolled American students from the Canal Zone as well as Panamanian students--up to the time she was 15 years old. 

"That is why I speak English," she told me during my recent trip to Panama City. "As soon as they started the Jewish school, my mother decided to send me there. I was in the first graduating class of the Jewish School (Alberto Einstein Institute) in 1962." 

* * * 
After World War II, the Jewish community began to relocate from Colon to Panama City, about 50 miles across the Isthmus. Because of its deep water port--and many docks -- Colon remained a center of trade. A free zone was established. Regular commuter flights were set up between Colon, where many Jews worked, and Panama City, where many lived. 

Although Rabbi Abouganem was serving the Sephardic community in Colon, a Sephardic rabbi was needed for the growing community in Panama City. Relatively few Jews who left Rabbi Abouganem's congregation in Colon considered joining Panama City's oldest congregation, Kol Shearith Israel, because it was Reform. Zebede said a delegation was sent to Jerusalem to find a rabbi. 

They went to a well-known yeshiva headed by Rabbi Ezra Attia. "He had a group of young gentlemen who were studying to become rabbis, and he chose Rabbi Sion Levy -- he chose him -- told him 'you are going.' " No one argued with Rabbi Attia who was a well-known teacher of rabbis. One of his students and a classmate or Levy's Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, today is the spiritual leader of the Shas party in Israel. 

Zebede quoted Attia as telling Levy: "They have a congregation that is increasing: you have to go!" Levy, today the chief rabbi of Panama, arrived in May of 1951. Today, Shevet Ahim Synagogue is a grand building, with a seat capacity for 1,200 people.  But when Levy arrived, "the present synagogue was in a wooden building without rabbis who knew about religion," Zebede said. "The Ark was even pointing in the wrong way, people were praying to the west instead of the east. When the rabbi came in and saw this he said 'no, this is wrong.' 

Levy was further dismayed the first Friday evening he led a Shabbat service. "Only the old men went to the synagogue; he didn't see young boys there," Zebede said. Then one of the fellows, an old man, got up and turned on the lights. The rabbi said, "Wait a minute! What are you doing!?" The man said, "What do you mean? I am putting on the lights!" They didn't know about religion (in Orthodox belief, turning on electricity violates prohibitions against work on Shabbat.) The rabbi said that night he wept. 

Zebede, a natural-born storyteller, let that image sink in for a while, before continuing: "The only thing is, thank God, Rabbi Sion Levy has a strength, a tenacity. Whatever he gets in his head to do, which he knows is right, is done. So about three years later, they tore down the wooden building and made a new building. It had been made larger since." 

"And one of the things that made Panama very famous is the fact that Rabbi Sion Levy taught everybody the importance of tzedakah  and donating the money to Israel to the yeshivot. Last week, I heard there were 13 or 14 shlochim (emissaries) there to raise money. They know that Panama is a good place. And they don't collect just $26 or $40; they collect thousands of dollars, thank God." 

* * * 
In the postwar era, Grace and Mo Mizrachi built a large wholesale clothing business as well as a family. 

Sephardic custom is to name the firstborn son after the paternal grandfather, the first born daughter after the paternal grandmother; the secondborn son after the maternal grandfather and the secondborn daughter after the maternal grandmother. Unlike Ashkenazim, the Sephardim do not have a restriction against naming a person after someone still living. 

Grace Mizrachi's husband is called "Mo" by everyone, perhaps to avoid confusion with his two first cousins who also are named Moises Mizrachi, all after their common grandfather. One cousin served as Panama's ambassador to Israel from 1900 to 1993. The other Moises Mizrachi is a member of the Panama Canal Commission, which oversees operation of the international waterway. 

With a family of four boys (Elias, Haim, Raphael and Michael), Grace Mizrachi began fundraising to establish the Einstein school. 

People would say "Don't tell anyone I gave it, just give it," she recalled. "We all worked hard for it; it was something we wanted, needed. My husband had this old aunt, may she rest in peace, and she worked very hard. She worked to bring up her family. She used to work in the store, and she was going back to Israel to stay in an old-age home and pass her last years there. She said "Grace, I am going to give you $1,000 for the school." I told her I am going to make a classroom in her son's name. Getting $1,000 from Miriam Levy was like $5,000 from anyone else, and I made a room for her.  I collected the rest from other members of the family. We got the rabbi and the plaque, and she left there happy." 

Mizrachi recalled that the name of one of her husband's stores was prompted by one of the coups d'etat for which Panama and other Latin American countries were famous. A certain dictator had to be forced out of the palace, and when the news was broadcast the announcer said, "Here is a flash." 

"My husband said that is a good name: we are going to call the store: 'Flash.'" Another of the stores was named for her -- Casa Grace. 

Having helped to start a Cub Scout unit at the Alberto Einstein School, Grace Mizrachi said she was called upon by a salesman whose son also was in the Scouts. 

"He says, 'Grace I have some samples from France I want you to see -- you are going to sell them, I know you will. Nobody sells them in Panama. He sold me two French laces. They were $8 and I could sell them for $25. I thought that would be too expensive but I had to send him a telegram. 'Send more quickly by air mail!' The next couple of days, a salesman from New York came, and I asked if he had white satin. I sold it at $2.50 and the stuff used to blow out of the store." 

Soon Casa Grace became known as a special place for brides, Mizrachi said. "We had everything for the bride but the groom." 

* * * 
Alberto Attia, born in Panama in 1955, was a distant cousin of the famous rabbi who ordered Rabbi Sion Levy to lead the Panamanian Jewish community. But although the family belonged to Shevet Ahim synagogue, they personally were not very observant--at least not then. 

However, after the Attia family moved to San Diego, they began attending services at Chabad of San Diego. Eventually, family members took classes with Rabbi Moishe Leider and became increasingly observant. Attia, who had been trained as an urban planner, decided to embark on a new career: that of a sofer. His religious training took him to Israel, Mexico City and New York. 

At the yeshiva he attended in New York was Chaim Levy, son of the rabbi in Panama City. Knowing that Attia was looking for a bride, young Levy invited Mazal Zebede to a dinner function at which they could meet. She also was a student at a religious institution in New York. 

With a chuckle, Zebede recalled receiving a telephone call afterward from his daughter. "Poppy," he quoted her saying, "I met somebody and I like him." "Yes, who is he?" he recalled replying. "Alberto Attia." "Who is his father?" "Isaac Attia." 

"When I heard Isaac Attia, I got nervous," Zebede said. When they were in Panama, they were not religious. We knew them since they were kids. So I said "Forget it! No more..." I fought with her every two or three nights when she would call. "Poppy, I like him." "Forget it." Finally, my daughter said, "Wait a minute. I met Alberto at Chaim's house -- the rabbi's son's house. He can vouch for him." I go speak to the rabbi. He says, "Let me find out. Come tomorrow." he talks to his son; the son says that Albert is a great guy and that everything is okay. Then the rabbi calls me and gives me a dressing down. "You are crazy.  What is wrong with you? Your daughter is lucky to find a guy like this.  He goes to the yeshiva." "But Rabbi," I say, "in Panama, they weren't --" he says: 'This is gone. They are religious now.' So I called her and said, 'Okay, Mazal, go ahead!'" 

As Zebede told this story, Attia sat on the sofa in his living room grinning from ear to ear. "I'll tell you something else," he told his father-in-law. "My mother told me that your mother dressed me up for the brit milah (circumcision ceremony) and for the pidyon ha-ben  (ceremony to redeem the firstborn). 

And you were one of the guys who was religious and still single who came.  My mother still remembers that you said to her: "Great things will come out of this young man.  He will see happiness later on." 

Now it was Zebede's turn to grin.