Tag: Holocaust

Mazel Tov!

A few years ago, I took one of those internet quizzes that pinpoints your real religion, based on your actual beliefs and not the lip service that you espouse. Like all internet quizzes, I’m sure it was of dubious validity and reliability, and it probably had a questionable theological basis on top of that.

Still, I couldn’t argue with the result, which said that I was, in reality, a Reform Jew. By the way, the religion of my childhood, Roman Catholicism, ranked around twenty-eighth or so on my personal scale, which sounded about right (but I’ll refrain from picking on Catholicism just now).

These days, I consider myself more of secular Buddhist agnostic. But the Jewish angle isn’t that far off.

I’m not sure why I relate to Judaism. It’s not like I had a lot of Jewish friends growing up. My neighborhood was primarily Hispanic (and therefore, incredibly Catholic) while my home state is overwhelmingly Midwestern white (mostly Protestant). So not a lot of Goldbergs and Silvermans appeared on the scene.

Perhaps I picked it up when I lived in New York City, where Jewish culture is everywhere. Within just a few years of arriving in NYC, I was ordering bagels with lox and talking about people’s chutzpah and obsessing about death. So maybe that’s why I came up Jewish on the test.

But I think there’s a larger issue. It seems that Hispanics and Jews have always gotten along pretty well. Perhaps both groups know what it’s like to pass for white, but not really. Maybe our mutual focus on family lines up nicely. Or perhaps we just admire each culture’s long history of suffering.

Regardless, I was intrigued to read about a group of Hasidim Jews in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. A small but thriving population traces its ancestry to Spain and Latin America, and as such, members of this group consider themselves Hispanics.

Spare me your jokes about Juan Epstein, the NYC Puerto Rican Jew from “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

There’s a man in Crown Heights with a real-life cross-cultural headspinner of a name, Moshe Nunez, and he says that “There are a lot of Latin American Jews here…. Many non-Jewish Latinos are surprised to see Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn who speak Spanish and carry on their Hispanic traditions.”

I suppose that would be an attention-getting sight. But still, I’m not really shocked that some people would adopt both cultures. The overlap goes back decades.

For example, when my mother moved to America, back in the 1960s, her first job was helping out an old Jewish woman on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The woman was a Holocaust survivor, and she brought that horrific period to life for my mother by rolling up her sleeve and showing the number branded into her arm. This simple display provided quite the education for a young woman from Latin America.

The old woman was very kind to my mother, and she introduced her to the opera and nice restaurants and the finer things in life. According to my mother, the old woman was adamant that bigotry against any group was evil. She said that anyone who would discriminate against a Latino would bash Jews as well.

In the old woman’s mind, we’re all one and the same.


Starting on a Upbeat Note

In honor of the new year – and the beginning of what so many people are convinced is a modern Era of Good Feelings – I’m going to unleash a positive story on you. It strays a bit from my focus on the Hispanic experience in America, but Mexicans are involved and it’s uplifting and everything, so I thought we could afford it.

Here’s the story.

It was the early days of World War II (for readers of the Millenial generation, that was the one with the Germans). A Mexican diplomat named Gilberto Bosques Saldívar was stationed in France.

In his position, Bosques Saldívar issued visas to refugees to help them escape persecution. He did more than this, however, and at great personal risk. He also provided the refugees with housing and chartered ships that would take them to Latin America.

Bosques Saldívar saved an estimated 40,000 Jews and other refugees from the concentration camps. There is some speculation that his efforts lead to the establishment of whole Jewish communities that endure to this day in parts of Latin America.

For his trouble, the Nazis arrested Bosques Saldívar and his family, holding them for about a year. The Mexican government won his release, and he returned to his country to continue a long diplomatic career.

His efforts earned him recognition as “the Mexican Schindler,” which sounds like the punchline to a joke about Hispanics and/or Jews but is actually quite the compliment. The guy lived to be 103 (!). But unfortunately, his work has only been recognized posthumously.

Recently, the Anti-Defamation League presented his heirs with an award on his behalf. The organization said Bosques Saldívar was “a shining example of human decency, moral courage and conviction, and his actions highlight the less well-known initiatives of Latin Americans who helped to save Jews during the Holocaust.”

It goes to show that, regardless of where you live and what your background is and what others may think of you, a Latino just may be your best bet for help.

Happy New Year.


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