How patron Moshe Tussie transformed his hometown into a Torah citadel

Photos: David Garcia Lara; Family archives

Yochonon Donn, Mexico City

Back in 1975, a visionary named Moshe Tussie realized that the only way for a yeshivah day school to succeed in Mexico would be to import a kollel along with it. That first endeavor turned into an unquenchable drive for the communal askan, who today has dozens of kollelim under his umbrella in a country few imagined as a Torah citadel

The main boulevard of Mexico City’s upscale Polanco neighborhood feels almost like Thirteenth Avenue in Boro Park, but in a Spanish version. Mothers push strollers along its leafy sidewalk strips while kollel yungeleit, seforim tucked under their arms, hurry past the high-rise office buildings and gleaming storefront showcases.

We’ve been hearing a lot about the planned Ir HaTorah that will be built in Ixtapan, a suburb about 70 miles away. The groundbreaking was a watershed moment for the century-old community that now boasts about 45,000 frum Yidden — a growth spurt its leaders could never have foreseen.

“We didn’t go from A to B but from A to Z,” says Chacham David Shwekey, the founding rosh kollel who arrived here 45 years ago fresh out of the Mirrer Yeshiva in Flatbush, referring to Mexico’s burgeoning community, which boasts a network of more than four dozen kollelim and a vigorous student body of nearly 600 homegrown yungeleit.

But it wasn’t always like that.

It was a man of action by the name of Moshe Tussie (pronounced Tu-SEE-yei) who, with the backing of a few likeminded men, laid the groundwork for the transformation over the last five decades. We met when I was in Mexico last month covering the cornerstone laying of the upcoming Ir HaTorah that will be built in Ixtapan.

Sitting over a snack of white chocolate-covered almonds, pale pink gooseberries, and fleshy cherries in the well-appointed living room of his palatial home (surrounded, as is every other house in this part of the city, by an imposing wall and terraced gardens), I notice the walls filled with pictures of gedolim who’ve visited — Rav Aharon Leib Steinman and Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg are the most famous — and plaques from various causes he’s helped.

The elderly Moshe Tussie follows my gaze. “I am not talking to raise myself up,” he says, motioning with a sweep of his hand to the wall of plaques and pictures. “You see all this? I only want people to learn from what I’ve done in my life.”

No Time to Waste 

Moshe Tussie grew up in a poor household in the Mexico City neighborhood of Roma, the local frum stronghold, where his father Ezra was a shochet and chazzan. He attended the local cheder, where he was taught alef-beis and rudimentary Chumash. Like all the local Jewish children, he was satisfied with the curriculum, imagining himself having received a significant education.

But then one day in the 1950s, a fundraiser for Brooklyn’s Yeshiva Torah Vodaath came calling on Ezra Tawil, a wealthy businessman who had recently moved to nearby Polanco, becoming the locale’s second frum family.

“I’m scared,” Mr. Tawil confessed to the meshulach. “I just moved into a new neighborhood, and none of the neighbors keep mitzvot. What can I do so that my children should remain frum?” The meshulach told Mr. Tawil, “Give me your boys. I’ll take them back to Torah Vodaath, and I’ll see to it that they get a solid Jewish education.”

Ezra Tawil immediately dispatched his three sons, as well as his preteen younger brothers, Yitzchak and Raul, to what was then the continent’s premier yeshivah on East Ninth Street in Brooklyn.

The move sent shockwaves through Mexico’s small Jewish community. A group of six other parents came to Ezra Tawil, entreating him to allow their children to go along. Ultimately, an additional ten fresh-faced children opted to make the pilgrimage, making for a Mexican contingent of 15 bochurim who showed up in New York. Two of those were 12-year-old Moshe Tussie and his nine-year-old brother.

“When we came there,” Mr. Tussie says with a smirk, “we thought that we were geonim. We had studied almost seven years in the Talmud Torah, where they taught us how to say the taamim [trop].” His introduction to the world of high-level Gemara learning came when he watched two bochurim fighting in the beis medrash, throwing their hands at each other in spirited debate.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘What’s happening here? Why are they fighting?’ I didn’t understand what was going on. When I opened the door and saw all the avreichim, all the talmidei chachamim, my neshamah — ay, ay,” he clutches his heart, his voice trailing off. “It finally went into my heart — it was unbelievable. I remember thinking, ‘What a beautiful thing to be here.’ That’s how I started learning.”