Blog: Reflections on Passover in Cabo S. Lucas

Cabo S. Lucas sits at the tip of the Baja California peninsula. Once a small fishing town, it’s been reborn in the last decade as a tourist hotspot.

Where the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortes merge in a tumultuous union of water and rock called Land’s End, people now flock to relax, get away from their troubles, or simply escape from the woes of the world at large.

This Passover, my wife and I flew to Cabo to spend the holiday with my friend Rabbi Benny and his wife Sonia Hershcovich, the Chabad representatives to Baja California Sur. There in the small enclave of local Jews and tourists gathered from the four-corners of the world, they’ve managed to create a flourishing community, diverse in its background, but united by a common love of Judaism.

As a journalist, I immediately began to search for “story” – and indeed there is much to write. There was the innovative seder, with hidden questions and an all out play – written by the Rabbi – to draw the participants into the Passover tradition. There’s the beautiful Jewish community center, recently renovated by the Hershcovichs, prominently located at a mall overlooking the marina.

As the cups of wine were drunk, the matzah crunched, the participants concluding the seder with “lshana habaa b’Yirushalayim,” and ultimately with the end of the holiday this past Saturday night, I chanced upon another realization. The most compelling story, the most profound Jewish experience of Los Cabos, was made up of the innumerable, smaller encounters.

There was the Russian-born Polish Jew, who made his way from Siberia to Cabo via Israel, France and a half dozen other countries. On the afternoon that we arrived in in Los Cabos, my wife and I hauled our double stroller onto uneven roads to go for a short walk and survey the scenery. After just five minutes, a block away from the Hershcovich home, we heard him scream “Holy Yidden” before running to us in excitement. His skin tanned with the Mexican sun, body clad in cut-off shorts and an open denim vest – a Star of David hung prominently around his neck. “You must be here visiting our rabbi! Welcome to our community.”

At the seder a family from Los Angeles sat next to me. “What is Chabad?” the son asked. “Does it mean we’re going to sit here through a lot of praying.”

“It means you’re going to learn something,” the father replied. “And have some fun while you do it.”

There were the retirees with a home in the majestic cliffs that line the marina and bay of Cabo. Spending their third Passover in Cabo S. Lucas, they confided in me that before their search for some sort of Passover experience here in Baja a few years ago, they never would have considered setting foot in a Chabad center. Yet today, “there’s no other place we’d rather be. When you come to Chabad, it feels like . . . you’ve come home.”

Before leaving the seder, an elderly woman from Las Vegas turned to her husband, both of them out well past the 11 o’clock deadline they’d set for their seder experience, and exclaimed, that one of their friends always talked about Chabad in their hometown. “Now I know what she was referring to. Maybe we should visit the Chabad when we get back home.”

Here, a 20 hour drive from the nearest Jewish community, people were finding a way in through the open doors, experiencing Jewish life and affirming their identity.