Going Latino for Shabbat

Por Shani McManus
Chicago Tribune

Mariachi music serenades interfaith synagogue service

The melodic sounds of Mariachi music, together with the aroma of Spanish cooking, greeted the more than 200 people who turned out last week for Shabbat services at Congregation L'Dor Va-Dor in Lake Worth.

The purpose of the Latino ambience was to welcome Spanish Jews and non-Jews of the community to a special, monthly Shabbat service at the shul. In keeping with the evening's objective, several Shabbat prayers were read in Spanish.

"Congregation L'Dor Va-Dor is committed to bringing people together in harmony and shalom, thus it was a thrill for us to welcome the Latino community to our Shabbat service to discuss the tremendous contributions of immigrants to our country, and to celebrate Latin culture," Rabbi Barry Silver, attorney and civil rights activist, said.

"L'Dor Va-Dor welcomes those of Latin descent or interest in Hispanic culture at all times, but especially the second Friday night of every month, when we read some of our prayers in Spanish and celebrate our diverse community," he noted.

Immigration attorney Aileen Josephs, a member of the Palm Beach County Immigrants Rights Coalition and honorary consul of Guatemala in Palm Beach County was guest speaker. Josephs also is a board member of El Sol Jupiter Resource Center.

The Shabbat service had personal meaning for Josephs. The event also was in honor on her father, Hyman Walborsky, a child of immigrants who lived more than 30 years in Latin America, and who recently died.

"My father was born and raised in the Bronx, N.Y. in 1931," Josephs told those gathered. "My grandparents left Poland before World War II. They arrived via Ellis Island, nine years apart from each other, very tired and very poor. My grandfather Israel was a tailor, involved in the labor movements. My grandmother Sara was illiterate and only spoke Yiddish. My father's life as a first generation American was not easy, yet America provided him with opportunities — which like so many immigrants, he seized."

Josephs went on to tell of her father's journey from managing a factory in Cuba, where he was jailed after the Bay of Pigs invasion, to Venezuela, where he met and married her mother, and eventually to Mexico, where he empowered hundreds of women with employment.

"My father, who grew up speaking only Yiddish to his parents, spoke to us in Spanish," said Josephs, who was born in Mexico in 1964.

She spoke of a diary given to her father by her grandfather that was lost in Cuba.

"This was the worldview I inherited, where it was possible that a diary written in Yiddish by a Jewish immigrant from Poland to America was confiscated in Cuba during a revolution alien to both my father Hyman and my grandfather, Israel," she said. "This is the world my father painted for me, with his life."

One of the highlights of the Latino Shabbat was when Silver invited all Spanish speakers to the bima to read the Spanish version of the V'ahav, a prayer from Deuteronomy that begins: and you shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

"Jews, Christians and Muslims share a belief in the power of these words," Silver said.

Other attending the special service included: attorney Jill Hanson, president of El Sol Jupiter Resource Center, named after her late husband Saul Silverman; activist and coalition member Shahid Freeman, and coalition members Radym Davis and Sister Martha Tabon.

Silver ended the evening by thanking those who attended the Shabbat service.

"We thank Aileen Josephs and the members of El Sol and others, who came to share with us the plight of the immigrant, and who shared the exciting music of the Mariachi band with our congregation," he said. "We look forward to working with them to defend the rights of all people."

For more information, contact Rabbi Barry Silver at 561-968-0688.

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