Roving Rabbis Reach Out to South Texas Jews

The squeaking of the tortilla machine inside Anita’s Tortilleria on East Jefferson Street pierced the air Thursday as hot corn tortillas rolled off the line during the tail end of the lunch rush.

Once turned off, the mechanism slows and the noise dies down, revealing the Hebrew words of prayer it had been drowning out.

The prayer isn’t heard very often in Brownsville, where it’s estimated just about 100 Jewish families reside.

And that’s precisely why two young rabbis came to visit Avraham Schwarcz, the owner of the tortilleria, as part of the Roving Rabbis program.

An outreach arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, the Roving Rabbis program seeks to bring a sense of inclusion to Jews scattered in isolated areas of the world.

Young rabbis visit Jews in regions across the world where the Jewish population is small and offer the comforts that are often plentiful in regions where Jews congregate in greater numbers.

That’s what brought rabbis Chaim Landa and Mendel Konikov to the Lower Rio Grande Valley all this week as they visited, often one-on-one, with Jews in Brownsville, South Padre Island and other areas where the thirst for Judaism is great.

And while bringing far-flung Jews a oneness with their faith is a comfort to those like Schwarcz, it also gives the young rabbis an idea of the disconnect from the worldwide faith they can feel.

And when a young rabbi visited the Valley nine years ago, it eventually led to the creation of South Texas’ brightest beacon of Judaism.

Rabbi Asher Hecht began just as Landa and Konikov did nearly a decade ago as a young member of the Roving Rabbis program who visited the Valley, but when he visited with the Jews in the region, he saw passion of a type he had not known when he was growing up in New York, or, as he calls it, “the Jerusalem of America.”

“I saw a thirst in people’s eyes,” he said. “In the short conversations I had, I saw a thirst for a deeper appreciation and a deeper meaning for spiritual life.”

He said he realized he had been spoiled in regards to spirituality in the northeast and that the Jews in South Texas had few outlets for their spiritual needs.

“That’s what pulled me here, it was the people’s thirst,” he said. “I knew this place had a tremendous vacuum. There were many gaps.”

That led Hecht three years ago to bring his family from New York to the Valley, a big sacrifice, he said, to quench that thirst.

“It was a big change,” he said, “but I very much felt that if people here need this then I need to be here for them.

“I had to leave the Jerusalem of New York and make a Jerusalem here in the Valley.”

The rabbi now operates the local division of Chabad, Chabad of the Rio Grande Valley, in McAllen, which facilitates the Roving Rabbis program, allowing young rabbis like Konikov and Landa to visit the Valley.

The program can enrich the faith of Jews throughout the region, he said, especially those who don’t live near temples where they can routinely worship.

“They can go out and visit,” Hecht said of the Roving Rabbis. “You don’t have to come to the synagogue, we’ll come to you.”

Having two additional rabbis in town grows Chabad’s ability to reach out, he said.

“Now you’ve got three rabbis in town from our organization,” Hecht said, adding that it can be difficult for a single person to cover such a large region where about 350 Jewish families live.

“I’m a one-man band. It’s very hard to constantly do that,” he said. “(The Roving Rabbis) have the flexibility to go from city to city, visiting the few Jews there and saying ‘Here we are. We haven’t forgotten about you.’ They can reach out to the Jews that live here and reinfuse them with the energy to love life and love God and pursue that. Sometimes you can bring that feeling out in an individual just by sitting down with them.

“It is my greatest hope that during their travels they are successful in even igniting one spark.”

That spark seemed to ignite within Scharcz, who said he had been looking forward to the visit from the young rabbis all week.

Schwarcz, who was born and raised in Israel before coming to the United States, said when he lived in the New York and New Jersey area, his home was next door to an orthodox temple where the men gathered early each morning to recite the prayer.

He came to Brownsville, his wife’s hometown, almost six years ago and shortly after they bought the tortilleria, formerly Limon’s.

He attends Temple Bethel, the reform temple in Brownsville, and occasionally visits Chabad in McAllen, but having the rabbis come to him was a treat, he said.

“I really appreciate it,” Schwarcz said, adding he likes the Chabad movement because it embraces people for who they are.

Visiting him at his place of business with what they playfully called “Judaism on-the-go” allowed him to recite with the rabbis the Shema prayer, a recitation from the Torah that proclaims the oneness of God.

“We want to make them feel like they’re a part of something bigger,” said Landa, who is originally from St. Louis.

And while the aim is to strengthen the faith of Jews across the area, the young rabbis, both 23, said they benefited from the visit to the Valley, too.

“To us, it’s a learning experience,” Landa said. “It’s a unique experience you get.”

Konikov, who is from Florida, concurred.

“What struck me was the curiosity,” he said of the Jews he met in the Valley. “They’re generally interested.”

Landa referred to the curiosity as a thirst, much like Hecht said he noticed when he visited the area nearly 10 years prior.

It’s a thirst the rabbis hope to quench, one visit at a time.