Three Jews are languishing in Mexico City, unable to make aliyah.
This is their story.
For 14 years, 34-year-old twins Oskar and Rodrigo Rivera and their 65-year-old father, Gustavo, have been preparing to join the Jewish people and make aliyah. Today, they face a bureaucratic dilemma that threatens to reverse all their hard-won progress.
Lacking an Orthodox option, the family converted through the Masorti/Conservative Jewish movement in Mexico. “After completing the conversion program, we had to do the brit milah, which was a painful process, but it did not compare to the joy of being part of the Jewish people,” said Oskar, who communicates in fluent English.
Now the three are ready to make aliyah but are caught in a policy snare from which they cannot release themselves.
The Jewish Agency requires all new converts to live in a Jewish community for nine months before making aliyah. What is otherwise a reasonable condition has stymied the Riveras’ progress because of a long-standing rabbinic decree in Mexico that refuses to recognize converts and admit them into their communities.
“This makes it very difficult, even impossible, for a person to convert to Judaism in Mexico,” Oskar explained. He has led the battle on behalf of his brother and father to find someone who can help them break through this impasse.
"Difficult, even impossible, for a person to convert to Judaism in Mexico"
The Rivera family were nominally Catholic, although, according to Oskar, “something [about Catholicism] did not fit with our way of thinking and believing about God.”
Their attraction to Judaism began “when we learned that everything the Bible mentioned spoke of the Jewish people and of Israel. This opened a great panorama for us to know that the Jewish people are a light for the nations. From that moment, we knew that we wanted to be part of that light.
“Now we are sure that our destiny is to be Jews because our whole way of living, thinking, and believing changed for the better. We love life. We love the way the Jewish people have come out ahead after having lived through so many very difficult challenges, [even] until now, and we want to be part of this strength that we have only been able to find in the Jewish people and Israel.
“What we love the most, and [what] leads us to want to be Jews forever, is the resilience they have as a people, their ability to recover from adversity and, above all, to always be united, despite the different ways of thinking. What leads us to want to live in Eretz Yisrael is that it is the only place where we can live as Jews without being judged by anyone,” Oskar said.
Fourteen years ago, the family started learning basic Torah concepts independently. They have spent countless hours learning the weekly Torah portion, the haftarot, Mishna, and more with a range of traditional rabbis online.
“We have even done all the holidays from home, from Rosh Hashanah to Tisha B’Av,” Oskar reported. They weren’t permitted to build a sukkah where they live, but they adopted a kosher diet. From YouTube videos, they taught themselves to make challah, which they now do every week, as well as hamentashen and sufganiyot.
“We do everything a Jew does, although we know that this is not enough because all Judaism is communal. We really want to be part of the community to continue learning more from you,” he emphasized.
“Unfortunately, we continue to face a big problem, and that is that no [Mexican] Jewish community wants to open its doors to us because we are converts. Today, more than ever, we have an urgent need to be part of a community,” something the Riveras have been unable to accomplish in Mexico.
“We have exhausted all our resources looking for possibilities. We have also tried to talk to rabbis, leaders, and members of these communities, but we have not had any success” in being welcomed.
“Our desire is to be able to immigrate to Israel. We want to live with real people, learn, [and] live as Jews without being rejected.”
Moving to the US is not an option because “the immigration situation between Mexico and the United States is very complicated,” he explained.
The Riveras have knocked on the doors of dozens of institutions for help, among them Shavei Israel and Yad L’Olim. Most organizations that assist olim are unable to help, insisting that the community participation requirement is not negotiable.
Meanwhile, the Jewish communities in Mexico remain impenetrable.
“Our only hope of being able to go to that blessed land is Hashem and [the possibility that] someone in the government of Israel could give us the opportunity to be able to [make aliyah],” Oskar related.
“There is no doubt about the love and support for Israel on our part. What is at stake is the Zionist dream of us as converts. What is at stake is being able to have a home, like any Jew, to which we can go when everything gets difficult in our countries of origin,” he added.
Ironically, even though they are not accepted as members of the Jewish community in Mexico, they have been victims of multiple antisemitic attacks. “The antisemite and anti-Zionist does not distinguish between an Orthodox, Conservative, convert, or secular Jew. For them, we are simply Jews,” Oskar said.
The three men have been rejected by members of their extended family because of their decision to become Jews, and they have lost work when clients found out they were now Jewish. Nevertheless, “my family and I have openly declared that we are Jews. We cannot hide our identity because it is a gift from Hashem, and we are certainly willing to continue sacrificing more things,” Oskar pledged.
“We need some person, rabbi, institution, or someone in the government of Israel to give us the opportunity to be able to immigrate to Israel and give us the opportunity that no one has given us here in Mexico, to be able to show you that we want to be part of you, both religiously and culturally, that we really want to integrate and learn from you and contribute.
“We do not want to be people that only receive. We want to be people who can serve. Here in Mexico, we are only wasting our time without being able to do anything,” he said. The brothers, especially, want to marry and raise Jewish families.
“For our part, we love you enormously, more than you can imagine.” The opportunity to make aliyah, “to allow us to embrace the blessed land as our home, that would take away all this pain we have had from years of rejection and would undoubtedly make our hearts extremely happy,” Oskar said.
“We need your help to help us immigrate to Israel and be part of that reunion of all the exiles of the chosen people. There are many obstacles that we need to overcome, and we cannot do it alone. We really need your help.
“I know that as converted Jews, we need to show that we deserve to be part of you and that the way to make aliyah is different from a person who is born Jewish. That is why I ask for your help, and that you understand us and know how difficult it is for us to be rejected just for being converts,” he pleaded. ■
To offer assistance, contact rivkah@kotevet.com.
The writer is a freelance journalist and editor of Ten From The Nations: Torah Awakening Among Non-Jews and Lighting Up The Nations.