The Jewish community finds a home in Mexico

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

How quaint... hope they are not hiding Mossad agents ready to blow up Parliament...

The Jewish community finds a home in Mexico

By Emily Sher
PSU College of Communications

MEXICO CITY - On the evening of the festive Jewish holiday of Purim, the rabbi's wife, Sheila Slomianski, was ever the alert hostess. Surveying her table she noticed some empty plates in front of her guests and summoned her daughters, Fayge and Miriam, to pile them high with tacos and tachina sauce, with grilled cactus, and with spicy rice.

"They're American," Slomianski said with a shrug, "They don't know any better."

The Slomianskis are part of Mexico City's 50,000-strong Jewish community -- third largest in Latin America -- thriving, diverse, multi-national, but also closely-knit and unusually self-sufficient when it comes to education and social programs.

"We're involved in politics, we're involved in business, we're involved in cultural activities, and academia, so the Jewish community is involved in everything," said Mauricio Lulka, executive director of the Comite Central of the Jewish Community for Mexico.

Yet this is also a community that, Lulka says, has the lowest rate of intermarriage in the world, and where 90 percent of the children attend religious day school. (like the polar opposite of Jew'd America Media... :wtf: ) And some see an increasing polarity in the community between the more observant and the more secular -- where a teenage girl might ask her parents to arrange a marriage for her, to the consternation of an older generation that had hoped she would choose her own mate and follow a career.

 
Immigrating for freedom (and Scamming...)

Jews in Mexico are hardly new arrivals.

Fleeing the Inquisition in Spain, Jews were said to have been among the first Europeans who arrived with Hernan Cortes and the Conquistadors in the 16th century. They did not find the religious freedom they were looking for in the New World and were forced to practice their faith in secrecy until Mexico's independence from Spain in 1820.

"When they knew about the new lands that were discovered in America they decided to come here and find their freedom. It was a tragedy because they could not find their freedom," said Monika Unikel, an expert on the history of Jews in Mexico City.

As the country became much more tolerant, and as Jews began fleeing persecution in Europe during the two world wars, Mexico was among the places they came, often in hopes of getting visas to the United States. The first to come were the Sephardic Jews, or those from countries like Turkey and Greece, while the period of Nazi domination brought the Ashkenazi Jews from Western and Central Europe.

"All of them wanted to get to the United States; that was America.  That was the magic world," Unikel said, "But there came a time when the United States closed the doors for new immigrants, so Mexico became a new option."

The result is a Mexican Jewish community that is something of a melting pot.  It includes Pearl Tabatchnik, a guest at the Slomianski party, whose Polish parents fled the Holocaust.  Tabatchnik was born in Mexico, as were her children and grandson, and Tabatchnik says she feels at home here.

"I feel a lot of gratitude toward Mexico," she said, "I was born here and they treat us very well."

It also includes Esther Schmidt, who was born in Mexico to a Hungarian mother and a Mexican-born father from a Polish background, and Sal Levy, a new arrival from Israel and an addition to Temple Beth Itzjak.

Rabbi Sergio Slomianski, Sheila's husband and leader of the Ashkenazi community, was born in Mexico but studied in both Israel and the U.S., where he met his Chicago-born wife.

Rabbi Slomianski said that compared to other Jewish communities he has seen, the Mexican community is unique in its desire to help others, especially other Jews.

"If people are sick or need money to buy clothes or housing, the community is very oriented toward helping those needy people," Slomianski said.

 

A holiday in Mexico

On a recent quiet Sunday afternoon, when millions of Mexico City residents were taking a grateful break from the traffic, congestion and pollution of their unruly metropolis, the narrow street outside the Kosher Palace market in the Polanco neighborhood was bustling and alive as men with dark beards and black hats waited in double and triple parked cars while their wives shopped inside to prepare for the Purim holiday.

Marcos Nacach, owner of the Kosher Palace, is among many Mexican Jews who have no trouble identifying as both Mexican and Jewish.

As Manischewitz wine and Mishlach Manot, or traditional Purim baskets, flew off the shelves in pre-Purim chaos, Nacach said, "The Jewish religion is a way of life but we live here, we pay taxes here, and we are involved with politics here."

Lulka said that Jews are found across Mexico's chaotic political landscape, even though they hold only two or three spots in the Mexican congress. He said his organization maintains a strong relationship with whoever is currently in power.

Along with Tribuna Israelita, an organization created to open communication between the Jewish community and the government, the committee hosts an annual presidential conference and proudly frames the letter they have received on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, from every president since Carlos Salinas in 1988.

In the most recent conference, President Felipe Calderon said, "The Jewish community is without a doubt a fundamental part of this grand country and is a clear example that unification, determination, and hard work can bring us to face each challenge and overcome adversity."

 

A separate identity

Lulka says that despite Mexican Jews' involvement in every aspect of Mexican life, they are not looking to completely assimilate with the Catholic majority.

He said that Mexico City's Jews offer many social programs ranging from welfare and anti-drug campaigns to disability aid and social activities.

This even extends to health care services, as there is a separate blood bank, donated by Jews for Jews.  Lulka explains this is for no specific health advantage except to decrease the waiting time to receive a transfusion.  Despite these programs, Lulka insists the community isn't isolated from the rest of the country.

If anything, some members of the community fear the opposite.

"There is an increasing polarity in religiousness within the Jewish community," Renee Dayán-Shabot, director of Tribuna Israelita said.

Sheila Slomianski can even see it within her own children as they have become more conservative, more observant and more traditional in their ways of thinking.

She told of her surprise when her eldest daughter, who is now 17 years old and studying in Denver, asked to have a marriage arranged for her when she returned home, as most of the friends she went away to study with have.

Both Slomianski and her husband hope that through travel and other experiences their daughters become the exception to the rule and develop careers of their own.  It is for that reason they debate where they see their children settling.

"In some ways I would prefer them to be in Mexico closer to us," Rabbi Slomianski said, "but on the other hand we're happy they are able to grow and learn and to be exposed to other people and other ways of thinking."

http://commedia.communityq.com/displayM ... jewish.php