Let’s go back in time: We had a Civil War in El Salvador that started in 1980 and ended in 1992 with a peace treaty. To make the story short, our country was a war playground for the USA and the USSR, with Salvadoran soldiers. Before (and during) the war, kidnapping and killing of important people was daily news. One of those victims was our former community president. After that, most of the Jews that lived in the country left for safer ground.

Since the first rabbi came in 1996, four years after the end of the Civil War, the community started a series of yearly conversions of most of its members. Most of us had lived our lives following Jewish tradition, but we weren’t “legal” Jews in the eyes of the Conservative way of thinking (and Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption) since we were sons and daughters of intermarriage couples. A relief for some, controversy for others, as some people didn’t accept this point of view. For them, they were Jewish enough and they had always followed Judaism. Lately, though, more have accepted the conversion state of mind and have undergone the process.

We started to have Shabbat services again (I didn’t know how a Shabbat service was led if it wasn’t a Bar/Bat Mitzvah). Some of us even learned how to read Torah and some Hebrew… it was all so new and interesting! We started to have weddings. Jewish weddings. Once every two years, maybe, but weddings!!! A lot of Jewish people also started to come back, which has been a blessing.

The community also started to print its own weekly newspaper, the Kehilaton.

There was one thing though, that always worked even under gunfire: the Noar Shelanu, our youth movement. Since we were a small community, we never had an international organization running the movement (you know: Maccabi, HaNoar HaTzioni, et al), so ours was independent and self-ran.

We would gather every Saturday morning and have peulot, games and informal Jewish education. The madrichim would get any piece of Jewish information, whether it was about religion, Jewish history, Israel, the Holocaust, anything, and explain it to the Chanichim. The main objective of this movement was to informally teach everything that had to do with Judaism and Israel to its attendants. I can proudly say that I took part in this movement as a chanich, a madrich and Rosh Ken.

The community is getting bigger every year. We’re only 100 Jews in the country and we all know each other pretty well, so it really feels like a cohesive community. The Noar Shelanu has lots of kids every Saturday (sometimes more than 30). We have religious services for all the Holidays. We are part of Jewish regional and world movements, such as UJCL (Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean), COSLA (Zionist Congress of Latin America) and ROI.

We are a building a vibrant community again.

Next issue: What it’s like to be a Jew in a place like this!