Latino Jews Give Hanukkah Time a Special Flavor

It was probably one of the more unlikely celebrations of Hanukkah--the Jewish Festival of Lights--in Southern California: a sold-out dance that featured a popular Latino orchestra playing tangos, mambos, rumbas and salsa music.

But the celebration of the Jewish festival was entirely appropriate for the 200 Jews of Latino background who have found camaraderie in the Club Hebreo Latino at the Jewish Community Center here. The group’s popularity was underscored by Saturday’s Baile de Hanukkah, a dance commemorating the eight-day celebration which begins today.

For 2,000 years, Jews have observed Hanukkah as a celebration of religious freedom, commemorating the defeat of the more numerous Syrians who had captured the Temple in Jerusalem.

To celebrate the victory, the Jews lit a menorah, a candelabra. According to legend, there was only enough oil for one day, but the flame miraculously burned for eight days. Accordingly, the holiday is celebrated for eight days.

In Southern California, not surprisingly, the celebrations take on a multicultural twist.

“Most people in the United States don’t realize there are Jews who speak Spanish and have that kind of background,” said Moises Paz, executive director of the Jewish Community Center in Costa Mesa, and himself a Latino Jew.

“When you go to Israel it’s very evident, because you see people from all kinds of backgrounds there and they blend in.”

But in Southern California, most Jews are of European heritage and few speak Spanish, so organizations that combine the two cultures are rare, he said.

“We thought we needed a place where Spanish-speaking Jewish people can get together and keep our tradition and have a little fun with our own type of music and language,” said Alicia Haber, 55, a founder of the 200-member Club Hebreo Latino, who helped organize Saturday’s Hanukkah Ball. The event sold out at 250 tickets.

“We are trying to keep the (cultural) tradition,” said the Argentine-born Haber, who came with her husband to this country 32 years ago. “This is for the youngsters.”

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The Habers are from Latin America, but they are Ashkenazic Jews, who are predominantly of Eastern European descent. About half of the more than 200 club members are Sephardic Jews, that is, of Spanish descent.

“Sephardic Jews tend to be darker-skinned; you’d think they were Arab or Mexican or something else, as opposed to Jews who have a strong European background,” said Paz, who is Sephardic.

Other differences include their songs and traditions, “the trappings of the religion,” he said. Sephardic Jews traditionally enjoy “Arabic foods, Spanish rice and foods more customary of South America , “ as opposed to bagels, kugels and chicken soup, he said.

There is no significant difference in the practice of religion for Latino Jews, Paz said, but they do tend to be “more homogenous and tend to want to stick together more and socialize with people . . . who also speak Spanish.”

Latino Jews also often dress more colorfully than most European Jews, said Stacy Blumberg Garon, a spokeswoman for the Jewish Community Center.

Members of the Club Hebreo Latino participate in activities in the Jewish community at large, including next Sunday’s ceremonial lighting of the center’s 15-foot - tall menorah for Hanukkah.

They hail from Panama, Colombia, Uruguay, Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina. The club is the latest ethnic organization to emerge at the Jewish Community Center.

“At the center we have a Persian group, a Yiddish club, a Russian club of Russian immigrants,” said Paz, whose parents are from Mexico, grandparents from Turkey and great - grandparents from Spain. “We all meet together to be able to express our Jewish identity in our mother tongues.”

Jaime Tourgeman, 47, a Huntington Beach insurance broker , came up with the idea for the Latin club.

“About two years ago I was sitting in my office with my father,” Tourgeman recalled. “Being born in Panama, we were talking about how much we missed the Jewish community in Panama.”

More than 200 Latino Jews were located in the Orange County area through advertisements and contacts with reform, conservative and orthodox synagogues.

In March, to celebrate Purim, which commemorates the deliverance of the Jews from a massacre, the club held its first dance, Carnival de Purim. “We celebrated it with a Brazilian band and a costume party, costumes typical to the holiday and Brazil,” Paz said.

“For Hanukkah we decided to do a Hanukkah dance and we brought in a Latin music orchestra and we had decorations of Central America and the Caribbean.”