Synagogue

As promised, this post is about my experiences at the only synagogue in Cochabamba. The national referendum stuff will come in another post very soon.
Estimations of the Jewish population in Bolivia center around 1,000. There were once many more Jews here, especially right after WWII, but most have migrated to countries with larger Jewish populations, such as neighboring Argentina. Also, Evo Morales’s election in 2005 sparked a wave of Jewish emigration. This was not due to any anti-Semitism that I can perceive, but rather because the Jews on the whole are whiter, richer, and more conservative than the overall population. This means they are more likely to disapprove of the indigenous, socialist president and to have the means to leave the country. It should be noted that the Morales government recognizes Palestine and not Israel as a sovereign nation; however, I’ll repeat that I see no signs of anti-Semitism here, just a general lack of understanding and awareness of Judaism.

Luckily, I am in one of the two cities in Bolivia with a non-negligible Jewish community. La Paz has a JCC and a Chabad; Cochabamba has a synagogue that does only Friday night services and Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. Rachel and I were connected to this synagogue through a friend of the program who knows a congregation member (if you’re reading this, thanks Jim!)

In fact, that member’s name is Ronny, and describing him would be a good place to start. Ronny is a 50-ish, bald headed, smiley, German-Israeli man who keeps that synagogue afloat. There is no rabbi, so Ronny leads the service every Friday night; I recognize most of his tunes. He leads the service in jeans and doesn’t count women toward the minyan. That’s a weird combination for me. I think of (non-ultraorthodox) Israelis as progressive, but then again I don’t know if it’s Ronny’s decision, nor do I know the strength of his Israeli roots. My only hint is that he carries the classic throaty accent on his R’s.

The synagogue, founded in 1947, is almost in the very center of the city. From the outside there are few indications that the building is a synagogue (maybe a couple Stars of David), but the inside is fantastically beautiful. The sanctuary feels old, grand, and spacious. It’s not wide, but very tall and deep from front to back. Ebony and ivory dominate the color scheme. Black pews extend backward cathedral-style from the bimah. Black, wooden, bleacher-style benches run down the left and right sides. It looks like the old, classy sanctuaries I remember from the children’s books in the Beth El library. I’m debating whether or not to subtly snap a picture.

The congregation is very old and very white. Many trace their roots to Germany and Poland, and several have lived in the U.S. That’s cool, because I can trace my roots to Germany and Poland, and I have lived in the U.S. Many of the congregants look like they could be my family members. Unfortunately, there are very few kids in line to replace the older congregants. Let’s just say that I’m lucky to be in Cochabamba now and not in 20 years.

I have been to two services, and a few moments stick out in my memory. One not-so-great one was when I realized that men and women sat separately. Actually, Rachel realized it; she was by necessity paying close attention and noticed that all the women gravitated to the side-pews as the service got ready to start. I’m not accustomed to that, and my visceral reaction was strongly negative, even though I had known it was a possibility. One guy couldn’t do Mourner’s Kaddish because there were only 9 men.

But the positive memories certainly stick out more strongly in my mind. At a point during that first service- we were singing a very familiar psalm- it just hit me how incredible it was that in this foreign country with essentially no Jews, people meet up every Friday night and sing L’Cha Dodi just like back home. Pretty wild. I also got to eat some challah (not really, but close), and they invited up the one kid at the service to say the motzi and pass around the bread.

The people there are not the most energetic, but they have been kind and welcoming to us. Many take interest in the U.S. and tell of their son or niece or cousin who lives there. One tender man with Alzheimer’s asked me where I was from, how long I was staying, how I learned to speak Spanish, etc. twice in a five-minute span, and then he leaned over to give me a piece of advice: “Never stop smiling.”

All in all, going to synagogue has been an exciting enrichment of my experience here. I plan to keep going on Fridays, and I think Rachel does, too. We’re going to try and find out if any congregants are having a Passover Seder and then (not-so) subtly try to get an invite. Will keep you posted.

Abrazos,

Jacob

Carnaval

In November I posted about the celebration of “All Saints’ Day” in Tiquipaya. That was a pretty absurd thing to translate into English. Todos Santos was special because the Catholic holiday got all wrapped up in the traditional Andean worldview and the Bolivian (and human) spirit. We didn’t really experience “All Saints’ Day,” but a special cultural event with no real equivalent in the United States.
So I won’t make that mistake again. This post is about the festivities surrounding Carnaval, which started the first weekend of February and is just wrapping up now. Carnaval has its Catholic roots in Ash Wednesday, but much more memorable and meaningful are the elements of human expression and playfulness that have become part of the tradition.

For the entire duration of Carnaval, it would be ill-advised to leave your house without a water balloon. You have to protect yourself, of course. Tiquipaya becomes one big, never-ending, hardcore water war on the streets. Water balloons, guns, buckets; melees between moving cars; ambushes of innocent pedestrians (white people make especially fun targets). All of this after weeks of news saying that water fights would be illegal and that the police were cracking down. Haha, not a chance. One time a man standing just feet away from two police officers hit me with a powerful jet from a massive, orange and green water gun. I looked over at the police officers, and they were laughing. So I reached into my pocket, pivoted, and quickly threw a balloon. No, I didn’t hit an officer. (But if I did, there’s no way I would have been arrested.) The whole experience was incredibly fun; I wish I could get it going back home. You’ll have to forgive the lack of pictures for good reason.

Apart from the water fights, Carnaval is defined by two main features: blowout parades and the ch’alla (Quechua for “offering”). The entrada (entrance parade) into Tiquipaya kicked off Carnaval on Sunday. Manny played some sort of woodwind instrument and Asia danced in one of the groups. Matt and I went to spectate and ended up getting roped into dancing too. We ended up on a microphone in front of a few hundred people (including my homestay family) being asked questions about where we were from and how we liked Cochabamba. My Spanish suddenly got pretty bad when I was put on the spot. Anyway, here’s a cute picture of Manny and Asia.

  
The next Sunday was the Corso de Corsos, the big parade in Cochabamba. Full of extravagant costumes, folklore dances and marching band music. Alcohol was prohibited there, but that got enforced about as well as the “no water fighting” rule. Speaking of the water fights, they were at their peak that day, and we got a lot of “¡dale al choco!” (throw it at the light-skin!) followed by a stream of water or a spray of white foam (espuma) to the face. Here’s a short clip of one of the performances followed by a classic picture of an espuma-ed Peter.

  
  
Now onto the ch’alla, the distinctly Andean feature of Carnaval. Much like the idea of “Fat Tuesday,” the tradition here is to appreciate the abundance of nutrients that Mother Earth grants us. The antiquity of the ritual (and the fact that it’s not called “Fat Tuesday”) makes it feel much more profound, and probably rightfully so. The ch’alla looks like this:

  
Composed of radiant flowers and aromatic herbs, the ch’alla is burned over hot coals as an offering to the Mother Earth. Then come the requisite ear-shattering fireworks that seem to make the ch’alla official. Every house, business, and school carries out the ritual. In the program house, we carried the burning ch’alla to all four corners of the house as a blessing, and in the homestay, Dennis sprayed the whole house with champagne- a much more fun and messy means to the same end. Afterwards we decorated the car (picture below) and drove around getting water thrown at us and spraying foam out the windows at our attackers. 

  
Carnaval was a wonderful experience of a Catholic holiday overlaid with ancient Andean tradition and a general jubilance of human spirit. Words can’t do it justice- or at least mine can’t.

The next post will come sooner, as there is a major election (actually a referendum) this Sunday. If you google “Bolivia referendum New York Times” you’ll get an article with a decent summary of the facts, but I don’t agree with the main premise, or even the article’s title.

Anyway, now I’m off to synagogue. I guess that’ll go in the next post, too.

Abrazos,

Jacob