Tijuana, Mexico (special) -- If you were to pass Tijuana's Centro Social Israelita while 
walking or driving along Avenida Cuahutemac Sur, formerly Avenida 16 de Septembre, it is 
unlikely that you would give the unadorned blue and white building more than a passing 
glance, except perhaps to notice the satellite dish hovering over the roofline. 

Only if you specifically were looking for Number 3000,  and walked up to the doorstep to find it, would you be likely to notice a small, worn plaque identifying the premises, in Spanish, as those of the Jewish Social Center of Baja California  The building's unspectacular frontage masks the size of the complex, which not only includes the street-side building, but another long building containing the sanctuary and classrooms; a tennis court, playground area, swimming pool.

Centro Social Israelita

An impressive alcove features a sculpture of a man breaking the chains of slavery. On 
either side of the man are the busts of Moses the Lawgiver, and Mexican hero Benito Juarez, the revolutionary who overthrew the Empire the French had imposed on Mexico and who 
wrote into the Mexican Constitution protections against religious bodies dominating the 
state.  Good relations between men, as between nations, lead to peace, Juarez had taught. 
His words, like those of the Ten Commandments, are reproduced in the alcove. 

The Centro Social Israelita participates in both Jewish affairs and in Tijuana's civic affairs. 

For example, it serves each year as a screening clinic for patients who hope to go to San  Diego for free surgeries offered by Mercy Hospital and its doctors on a weekend every September.  Patients with cleft palates, club feet and other ailments gather at the Centro in the hope they will be among  the lucky ones chosen for the surgeries. The program not only brings together Jews and Christians, Mexicans and Americans, but also  volunteer units from the Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, San Diego Rotary Club and the San Diego law firm of Thorsnes, Bartolotta, McGuire & Padilla.

Moses and Benito Juarez

Even so, as the plain front of their building attests, the Jews of the Centro Social Israelita do 
not like to draw too much attention to themselves.  Like the building of the United Jewish 
Federation in neighboring San Diego, no large menorah, or Star of David, or large written 
inscription advertises to the casual passerby that a major Jewish organization is housed 
within. 

Dedicated in 1967, the Centro was originally planned as a scaled down model of Mexico 
City's Jewish sports center for which many of the Tijuana center's founders held fond 
memories. 

Making the building a sport center also had practical reasons. San Diegan Al Slayen recently 
told HERITAGE about the time he arranged for leaders of Tijuana's Jewish community to 
tour the North County Jewish Community Center in Vista (which later became Temple 
Judea) as they considered designs for the Centro.  These leaders told him that under Mexican law, ownership of a religious institution would revert in 100 years to the Mexican state, while no ownership limitation was placed on sports facilities. 

The Centro is the third home of the Jewish community in Tijuana, which organized itself in 
1942 after European Jewish refugees swelled the ranks of a community that until then had 
consisted mainly of a few enterprising merchants. 

The first two facilities were rentals in Tijuana's downtown, close to the Avenida de la 
Revolucion, home of the jai alai palace, tourist shops and numerous restaurants. The Centro Social Israelita is located in an area known as Colonia Gabilondo. 

In the dining room, where one can purchase a kosher luncheon, or in the banquet hall above 
the modern sanctuary, or perhaps sitting out by the swimming pool, one can hear from 
members of the Centro the stories about how their families came to settle in Tijuana. 

Ivan Ilko, a former president of the Centro, told me he was born in Guadalajara, where 
"sometimes we didn't even have a minyan, so I was initiated into a family that could not be 
very observant." His father, who had a degree in animal husbandry from Hungary, 
immigrated to Mexico, and "he met the President of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, and he went 
to work for him as an expert in protecting animals and in trying to increase the quality of the 
sheep, cows and horses. 

"He was asked by the government to go to Europe and buy livestock for breeding, and he 
contracted a boat like Noah's Ark, and he brought a shipload of animals from Hungary and 
Czecheslovakia for the country. The President was very happy with my father and he asked 
him to go a second time." 

Ilko's father was quick to accept the second assignment from Cardenas because it gave him 
the opportunity to see again at a Budapest bank a Jewish cashier who had helped him 
convert his Mexican money into Hungarian money. After meeting her on his first trip, he 
had conducted an increasingly amorous correspondence. 

"He wrote her again, declaring his love, and she for some reason accepted...but because she 
was less than 18 years old (and an orphan), they wouldn't let her leave Hungary with him," 
Ilko related. "But they authorized her to leave Hungary on a French boat and then to be 
married by the captain when the boat docked. And that was what happened" 

After Ilko's parents, Alejandro and Violet, were married, Alejandro  took another government 
job, serving as both a teacher of animal husbandry and as a controller of alcohol in 
Guadalajara.  "My father was inspecting against the moonshiners," Ilko said.  One night 
when Ilko was 11 years old, "I remember it like yesterday, a car outside the house came with 
a machine gun, then sprayed the first story with bullets.  We were on the second floor, and it 
was to scare us.  We left in a hurry that night; we went to Ensenada."A year later the family 
moved to Tijuana. 

Sofia Model, current president of the Centro, said her father Wolf Modelsky came from a 
large family in the area that is today Ukraine, where they prospered as dairy farmers. "I 
remember my dad telling me that they (Sofia's grandparents) would churn up the butter, fill 
up warehouses with ice in winter, and then put the butter in to get cool...and that lasted until 
the next winter." 

But the farm was confiscated by the communists after the Bolshevik revolution, and Wolf 
Modelsky "used to go from one town to another and in one town he would buy salt, and then 
get on a train, go to another town, sell the salt and buy sugar; back and forth, back and forth. 
That is how he survived." 

Her father also learned about the different grades of furs, and "they gave him the waste and 
from that he would make furs and sell them."  When he reached his 20's, he arranged for a 
state-authorized vacation and went to Germany, and then to France, and from there took a ship to Veracruz, Mexico. He settled in Mexico City, later moving to Guadalajara where Sofia was 
born. 

The Models from the Ukraine and the Ilkos from Hungary, like many of the Jews of 
Tijuana, are Ashkenazim whose families learned to speak Spanish. Today, many people 
assume falsely that all Mexican Jews are Sephardim because they speak Spanish. 

Sephardim, indeed, made up an important part of Tijuana's Jewish community. There was 
perhaps no better example than the late Jack Swed, whose family moved from Aleppo, Syria, 
to New York when he was 10. In 1917, when he was 15, he decided to go to Mexico to sell 
bolts of cloth out of a suitcase. The trouble was he didn't speak Spanish at the time, "so I 
went to small towns and put a sign on my chest, saying 'If you need something, look inside 
my case and pay me,'" he recalled in a 1993 interview with HERITAGE. 

Sometimes Swed would stretch a banner across a steet of a small town, announcing the sale 
on the items in his cart would last only 15 days. "Sometimes," he chuckled, "business was 
so good that 15 days would last 90." 

In 1927, when Prohibition in the United States prompted adventurous Americans to go south 
in search of drink and fun, Swed found his way to Tijuana. Avenida de la Revolucion was 
filled with bars, backroom gaming rooms and bordellos as well as some fine restaurants, 
including Caesar's, whose continental staff invented the Caesar Salad. 

Real estate was at a premium. Swed said people were asking for rents of $800 a month even 
for a tiny booth in a store. To one of those men, whose name was Mr. Jaffe, Swed said: "I 
know that you too are a Jew." 

"Oh," Jaffe replied, 'Are you Jewish?" 

"Yes," Swed answered.  "My grandfather was a rabbi." 

"Mine was too," answered Jaffe. 

As a result, Swed reported, "I got the place for $400. Now mine really was a rabbi, who was 
very well-known, Rabbi Moshe Cohen of Aleppo. I don't know about Jaffe's grandfather." 

Swed's Perfume Bar occupied that small booth. An alcohol bar known as the San Francisco 
Cafe next door drew the rich and the famous. Swed added jewelry, crystal, porcelain, and 
French clothing to his inventory.  Soon it became commonplace to meet such Hollywood 
stars at his store as Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Rudy Vallee. Mexican President Miguel 
Aleman was also a favorite regular customer. 

Swed helped organize the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce, the Tijuana Rotary Club and the 
Masons (and later in his life would donate to the city the land on which an elementary school 
named in his honor was built.) But in those early days, there were not enough Jews in
Tijuana to sustain a minyan. After he and his wife, Shirley, a distant cousin, were married in 
1936, they davened at San Diego's Tifereth Israel Synagogue, which then was Orthodox but which is today Conservative. 

In 1942, Tijuana's Jewish community swelled with European refugees, and the Sweds hosted 
High Holiday services at their home after borrowing a Torah from Tifereth Israel Synagogue. Jews came from the four major cities of Baja California: Mexicali, Ensenada, Tecate and Tijuana.  About 90 persons in all attended. They decided to form the Magen David Jewish community and elected Swed their president. 

The next year, High Holidays were held in a former dance hall, with a Torah presented by a 
New Yorker named Buco Mayo. A Torah procession was held from Swed's home to the site 
of the services. "It was the first time in Tijuana," he recalled proudly in that interview. 
"Hundreds of people came. All the girls were dressed in white. Boys were carrying the 
Jewish flag and the Mexican flag. We marched all the way to Second Street; it was quite a 
bit of walking." 

Artist and historian Elena Saad, a Mexican-born La Jolla resident was a featured lecturer on 
Tijuana's Jewish history at last year's San Diego Jewish Book Fair. Saad recently told HERITAGE that Tijuana's proximity to the United States always has been the magnet for Jewish settlement in Tijuana. "Everybody who moved to Tijuana--and this is the interesting thing--they didn't want to settle there forever," Saad said. "Their goal was to cross (into the United States)." 

But for many, obtaining a residence permit in the United States was not possible, so they 
began building a Jewish community, Saad said. Subsequent newcomers, on finding a Jewish 
community already in place in Tijuana, decided to stay and build, she said. 

Developments on the American side of the border, like the establishment in San Diego of 
huge military bases with thousands of personnel who liked to spend money on liberty 
weekends, helped to make Tijuana commercially viable. As the tourist economy boomed, 
Mexicans whom it employed also needed to buy goods and services. Jewish families helped 
to establish major department stores like Sara, Maxim and Dorian's. 

In 1965, the Jews of Tijuana decided to build the Centro Social Israelita, modeling it in 
concept after the Centro Deportivo (Sports Center) in Mexico City, which provides the social 
setting for so many events for the Jews of the capital city.  Along with a tennis court and 
swimming pool, and the banquet facilities, the community also decided it needed to find 
someone to serve as its religious leader. 

Max Furmansky, a Polish Holocaust Survivor who had been trained as both a cantor and as 
a stage performer, taught himself Spanish and served for 18 years as a cantor, choir master 
and Hebrew school director in Buenos Aires. 

Along came Yehuda Voidaslavski, a Jewish bookseller who travelled to Spanish-speaking 
communities throughout Latin America. In Tijuana, his customers told him they were 
looking for a versatile man who could be rabbi, cantor, school director, youth director--the 
works. Voidaslavski recommended Furmansky. Tijuana's Jewish leaders sent him a 
telegram advising him of their interest. 

Furmansky told HERITAGE in a 1993 interview that after he received the telegram, "I went 
to the Mexican consulate in Buenos Aires, and said 'I want to know where is Tijuana exactly' 
and the lady there said, 'you know, believe me, I do not know.'" 

Next he went to a travel agent and they consulted an encyclopaedia and learned that Tijuana 
then had about 200,000 people (compared to more than 1.5 million today), had a jai alai 
palace, a bull ring, dog races and horse races--and that it was on the border with the United 
States. 

Furmansky spent a month visiting Tijuana on the community's invitation, then accepted the 
offer to become its religious leader. A Conservative Jew, Furmansky initially conducted 
services all in Hebrew, but eventually agreed to make them half Hebrew, half Spanish. 

The cantor also established a kosher kitchen at the Centro, though not without resistance. 
"One time we had a bar mitzvah reception for 450 people and I planned to go to the kosher 
butcher in the United States for chickens. And this lady-I won't mention any names-came to 
me and says, 'why are we going to pay double for kosher chicken?  For 450 people, it will 
cost me a fortune. I want to buy regular chickens.'" 

The cantor said he went to the head of the family "and I told him that I will pay the 
difference. Of course, he said, 'No,' that he would pay the difference. And so we had a 
kosher reception." 

Furmansky said he also helped to develop a Jewish day school, a youth camp, and a soccer 
league for Tijuana's Jewish youth during his 13 years at the Centro. Additionally, he said, 
he was able to serve as a spokesman for the Jewish community--particularly when it came to 
clearing up common misconceptions among Mexico's overwhelmingly Catholic majority 
about Jews. 

According to Sofia Model, Furmansky left the Centro at a time when many of its members 
were not at all certain that it was worth keeping open because of Mexico's uncertain political 
situation. In 1975, Mexico voted for the infamous United Nations resolution equating 
Zionism and racism (which years later was rescinded). 

In addition to such political turmoil, historian Saad noted, there also was economic turmoil, 
with some incidents of people burning effigies of Jews in the streets at this time. 

A layman from Israel, David Schatz, led services for a while, and Sofia Model became head 
of the Centro's religious committee. Soon she found herself immersed in various religious 
issues for which she had no training. She spent many hours on the telephone with her son 
Eric Segal, then a student at Yeshiva University, seeking advice on various points of ritual. 
One year in this period Segal assisted Dr. Louis Katz, a La Jolla optometrist, in leading High 
Holiday services at the Centro. 

On another occasion, a fire, assumed to have been of electrical causes, resulted in the 
synagogue's sefrei Torahs being destroyed. The irreparably damaged Torah scrolls were 
taken across the border to the Home of Peace Cemetery in San Diego for burial.  Orthodox, 
Conservative and Reform rabbis all turned out for the sad occasion. 

However, Model said, somehow Rabbi David Waicsman, an Orthodox rabbi in Mexico City, 
heard otherwise. He called up to tell Model he understood that the holy Torahs had not been 
buried in accordance with Jewish law. Model said she did not argue with the rabbi, but 
instead told him to telephone various people who attended the ceremony, to find out for 
himself whether the halacha (Jewish law) had been observed. 

Waicsman subsequently telephoned back to apologize; Model said. Halacha had in 
fact been observed. Model said she told the rabbi she could not accept his apology because 
she considered him much higher than she.  But, she added quickly, he did owe her a 
favor. 

What favor? The rabbi asked warily. 

He must come to Tijuana one week and teach at the Centro for several days before returning 
to Mexico City. The rabbi agreed, and after he held several days of classes there, the board 
of directors there gave him a contract with their signatures on it. All he had to do was add 
his signature and the job would be his, they told him. 

Waicsman returned to Mexico City, where his contract at another synagogue was about to 
run out. Perhaps, he said, in a telephone call to Model, he would indeed sign that 
contract. 

Model said she had wanted a rabbi to take over the religious duties of the Centro, and gladly 
would have hired one from any of the major movements. Fate brought Waicsman. 

When Waicsman took the position, it was not without its controversy. The Jews of the 
Centro Social Israelita--some of whom are intermarried--had grown comfortable with 
Conservative-style services.  Now there would be a mehitzah  dividing men from 
women "There were a lot of problems," Model said. "It wasn't what we had previously, but 
he came and continued" from about 1985 to 1991, she said. 

After he left, there was a succession of lay leaders as well as rabbinical students sent by Chabad  to the Tijuana community's aid. One of the students was Rabbi Mendel Polichenco, the 
present spiritual leader at the Centro. Having grown up in Argentina, Polikchenco was an 
ideal candidate to conduct services in Hebrew and Spanish at the Centro during his summer 
vacation. 

The community pressed Polichenco to finish his rabbinical studies early so he could work 
full time. He went to Israel to do just that. Later he married Dina, and had a son, Abraham, 
so the community has not just a rabbi, but a rabbinical family, as well as some Chassidic 
students. It also has in Yosef Romano, a shochet who provides the community with kosher 
chickens. 

Shabbat and holiday services attract a steady stream of visitors not only from Chabad 
congregations in San Diego but from non-Orthodox congregations as well. 

Those who think that because the rabbi is from Chabad that women at the Centro only 
wear sheidels and modest clothes forget that the building still functions as a sports center. 

It is therefore not uncommon to see the rabbi at study inside, and to look out a window of the 
Centro to see men and women in swim suits enjoying the sun. 

The congregation withstood such crises as turbulence over Orthodoxy versus Conservatism, fears about the congregation's ability to support itself in light of migrations to San Diego, and a 
split between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews that led to the establishment in Bonita of the 
Sephardic Congregation Beth Torah (now called Beth Eliyahu Torah Center). 

There is a spirit of renewed pride at the Centro Social Israelita. Last year, Jose Chacra, the Centro's administrator and artist in residence, was commissioned by Gregorio Goldstein, a past Centro president and a top level executive for the Dorian's chain of department stores, to create 12 stained glass windows to surround the Centro's modern sanctuary.  Now, there is talk about expanding the Centro's kosher dining facility, so that Jews will consider it a place to go for business lunches and other non-religious occasions.

Sanctuary at the Centro

"I want this to be a place where people can come and eat," said a clearly determined Model. 
"A place where we have all the services that people might need. I want it to be fully 
functioning."