No Tourists Here

While Venezuela’s Jewish presence dates back as far as the 17th century, the most dramatic changes have taken place over the last 90 years. The country’s Jewish population swelled dramatically in the wake of World War II, those numbers rising even more as newcomers from the Middle East and Africa began putting down roots in Venezuela. There were well over 20,000 Jews in Venezuela by the 1990s, but that number was halved when an economic crisis, safety concerns, and political instability rocked the region, prompting thousands of Jews to pack up and leave Venezuela for good.

While Venezuela’s Jewish population has shrunk in the last 25 years, Caracas still has a vibrant Jewish community, with Chabad playing a strong role in keeping the flame of Yiddishkeit burning. As Klein mapped out his trip to Caracas, he reached out to one of the local shluchim, something he often does when he travels, but this time the conversation was different.

“They didn’t believe me when I told them I was coming simply as a tourist to visit Caracas,” recalls Klein. “They thought it was a prank call because in the last 10 years, with all the unrest and travel warnings, not a single tourist had come to their Chabad house. It took me time to convince them that I was serious.”

Even after he provided references who could vouch for him, Chabad of Venezuela’s Rabbi Hillel Levinson was still astounded that anyone would come to Caracas voluntarily.  But for Klein, the idea of visiting a place that never saw guests was even more appealing, because it dovetailed with his mission of visiting places off the tourist map.

After arriving in Caracas, Klein and Bleich headed straight to the local Chabad — Hogar Jabad Lubavitch — to catch a minyan for Minchah and Maariv. Unlike far-flung communities where there is little in the way of Yiddishkeit and shluchim run a Chabad house to welcome visitors, along with possibly a restaurant or an information center, the setup is different in Caracas, which has an established Jewish community. Hogar Jabad Lubavitch offers a wide array of services including davening, educational classes and recreational activities, as well as, as its website proclaims, “Judaism with a smile.”

Because crime is a problem in Venezuela, the local Chabad is surrounded by thick walls, and there are substantial security measures in place to ensure the safety of anyone who might be on the premises. Yet once inside the building, Klein felt completely at ease.

The shul had a distinct Iraqi feel, in a nod to the Sephardic ancestry that is prevalent in Caracas.

There was a yahrtzeit seudah taking place on the night Klein and Bleich arrived, and they found themselves surrounded by a shul full of people who were surprised to see American visitors. They assumed Klein and Bleich were in Caracas on business.

“The question we got most often was, ‘What company are you with?’” says Klein. “They were sure that we were salespeople, because the idea of tourism just didn’t make sense to them.”

Once davening was over, Klein and Bleich decided to go out for a short walk. While there was no shortage of communist propaganda on display in the streets, the area was clearly upscale and felt peaceful, a far cry from the dire warnings Klein had heard from those who tried to talk him out of going to Venezuela.

New Realities

The Hebraica Jewish Community Center is the hub of nearly all things Jewish in Caracas. In addition to housing the Hatzalah garage, offices of several Jewish communal organizations, multiple eateries, a grocery store, a bakery, a swimming pool, and a tennis court, the Hebraica JCC is also home to three out of four of Caracas’ Jewish schools, which cater to the different segments of the local Jewish community. Klein had planned on davening with the minyan at the Ohr Chabad school on his first morning in Caracas, but after going through the wrong door, he and Bleich found themselves at Herzel-Bialik, a Modern Orthodox yeshivah serving students from elementary through high school, which was about to start davening Shacharis.

The two New Yorkers were welcomed warmly by the Herzel-Bialik boys, who like the others they had met previously, were shocked that anyone would come visit their city. The boys danced with their guests, singing Yair Elitzur’s “Od Yoter Tov” over and over again until the school’s principal decided that the time had come for them to return to class. Klein and Bleich were invited by the principal to have breakfast at the school’s cafeteria, after which he took them on a tour of the building, showing them the beautiful grounds that make full use of Caracas’ magnificent weather, including its open-air lunchroom.

“In many ways, the school was no different than any yeshivah in Brooklyn,” notes Klein.  “Everything is very up to date, but the community is getting smaller and smaller. At one point they had around 2,000 students, but now there are less than 400.”

The reality is that, of those few hundred, most of them will likely leave once they reach adulthood. When Klein asked the boys how many of them planned on staying in Caracas when they got older, they explained that while they loved Venezuela, the country holds no opportunities for them.

“Their older siblings ended up moving to places like Panama and Miami,” Klein says.

Yet even as its Jewish population continues to shrink, Caracas remains a vibrant community with a strong infrastructure that continues to evolve. Founded during the pandemic, Hatzalah of Venezuela has around 20 members and two well-equipped ambulances.  And Esh, a new restaurant that opened for business just three months before their visit, is owned by a Venezuelan who had moved to Panama, but decided to return home and launch a new eatery.

“The community isn’t growing, but people still believe in it,” notes Klein.

While Klein has seen high prices for kosher food in his travels around the world, none compared to what he saw in Caracas. Shelves at Shu Market, a kosher grocery and deli, were filled with familiar items, including Kedem grape juice and Mehadrin cheeses, but because everything is imported, prices were sky-high.

“A small snack-sized bag of potato chips was $3, while the large bag was $9,” says Klein. “Grape juice was $15 for a 64-ounce bottle, yogurt was $5.50 and a can of tuna was $7.”

Those realities are hard to ignore, and the school’s administrator gave him another view of the financial situation in Caracas.

“Twenty years ago, there were wealthy families who were able to contribute to the school’s scholarship fund,” says Klein. “Now, members of those families can’t even afford to pay their own kids’ tuitions.”

One tour guide told Klein that government workers are paid just $5 a month, and they rely on government assistance for housing subsidies and food coupons, boosting their incomes to the rough equivalent of $400 a month. While there are those in some professions who are doing better financially, the reality is that Venezuela isn’t what it once was.

“Back in the day,” says Klein, “tzedakah collectors and institution fundraisers used to come to Venezuela to raise money, but once socialism became the reality, things started to go south.”

Treats and Terrorists

Wanting to get a broader taste of Venezuela, Klein and Bleich paid a visit to Petare, which has earned the dubious distinction of being South America’s biggest slum. Located on the eastern edge of Caracas, Petare is home to two universities and is also known as a place where violent crime runs rampant. According to a 2023 report published by the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence’s Social Sciences Laboratory, Petare saw 6,973 violent deaths reported in 2023.

Petare definitely isn’t a typical tourist attraction. Klein and Bleich wandered through the area, purchasing treats and playing ball with the shabbily-dressed children — until a police officer came by and suggested that they leave, explaining that Petare definitely wasn’t safe for tourists.

Klein also paid a visit to Casa Natal del Libertador Simón Bolívar — the birthplace of Simón Bolívar, the political and military leader who liberated Venezuela and several other South American countries from Spain in the early 1800s. A popular tourist attraction, the house is one of the rare few in Caracas that date back to the 1600s, and while the restored home was beautiful to see, Klein was also struck by the diversity of the other visitors he encountered — tourists from Yemen, Lebanon, Iran, and Russia.

The many pictures of military heroes on display throughout Caracas were somewhat unsettling to Klein, an incontrovertible reminder that while Venezuela may be beautiful and have picture-perfect weather, one needs to tread carefully.

“Paintings of Qasem Soleimani, Hassan Nasrallah, and Yihya Sinwar are glorified on the streets,” says Klein. “I cringed as we saw them.”

Unexpected Encounters

While there were many aspects of Caracas’ Jewish community that came as a surprise to Klein, perhaps the biggest shocker of all was Centro Beth Shemuel, the shul where Klein went to daven Shacharis on Erev Shabbos. It was clear to Klein from the moment he walked into Beth Shemuel that the flavor here was more Bnei Brak than Brooklyn.

“The minute they saw my camera, they let me know that they didn’t want any digital items in their shul,” says Klein. In fact, nearly all of the shul’s kollel members were in the midst of a taanis dibbur, where they weren’t engaging in any conversation that wasn’t part of their learning. One man who had already completed his “fast” begged off as well when Klein attempted to strike up a conversation with him, explaining that doing so would be bittul Torah.

But that’s not to say that the men in Beth Shemuel completely ignored their guests. One handed Klein a written note (a form of communication that was allowed for important matters during the taanis dibbur) informing him that he could buy food for Shabbos at Master Sweet, a nearby kosher bakery. Klein and Bleich headed there and were surprised to see ladies in short sheitels manning the counter, with some of them speaking in broken English and Hebrew. After ordering breakfast and picking up challah and cake for Shabbos, they headed for Cheder Meor Hatorah, the only yeshivah in Caracas not located in the Hebraica JCC. At Meor Hatorah, there are no sports and no secular subjects, and anyone entering the building must be properly attired in a black hat. (Unfortunately for Klein, his traveling cap didn’t pass muster.)

His Erev Shabbos encounters definitely left Klein with food for thought as he contemplated the many types of people he had encountered, in a community whose existence isn’t well known to outsiders.

“It was an interesting mix. The people are mostly Sephardi, but the influence is chassidish,” says Klein. “Someone tells you there’s no minyan in Venezuela and then you see this. It’s their version of Monroe. It’s pretty amazing.”

Making his way through the more heimish parts of Caracas, Klein marveled at the diversity of the people who make up Caracas’ tight-knit Jewish community. But as fascinated as Klein was by the people he met, it was clear that those individuals were intrigued by him as well.

“There was one person who asked me to sing him a Sighete niggun when he heard I was from Satmar,” says Klein. “There were others whose families had escaped from Eastern Europe and were so happy to be able to speak to me in Yiddish. You really have all types in Caracas.”

Quiet in Caracas

Because their hotel was a good 20-minute walk in a very mountainous area, Klein and Bleich were hosted for Shabbos by Chabad shluchim Rabbi Hillel and Mushky Levinson at the home of Rabbi Shui Rosenblum, director of Yeshiva Guedola de Venzeula — and Mushky’s father. The Levinsons, parents of two small daughters, Miriam and Malka, were appointed as shluchim in 2023. While Reb Hillel was brought up with shlichus in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Mushky is both Rabbi Rosenblum’s daughter and the granddaughter of Rabbi Moshe Perman, who was personally sent to Caracas by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and is now the director of Chabad Venezuela.

There was a noticeable presence of uniformed security on the street as people walked to their various shuls in Caracas, the cost of those patrols covered jointly by the Jewish kehillos.  Walking home from shul with some locals, Klein learned that while things are relatively quiet these days, it was very different a decade ago, when lawlessness reigned supreme in Caracas. Jewish residents were often targeted because it was known that if a Jew is kidnapped, the community will come together with a ransom.

One such situation involved a member of the local kollel who had been kidnapped and insisted that he would only eat glatt kosher food. His captors were apprehended when their daily patronage of a Jewish restaurant raised suspicions, and as the story goes, when they tracked them down at their hideout, the kidnappers were in the midst of installing a light so that their prisoner would be able to learn at night.

“There was an entire system worked out,” explains Klein. “The community would have negotiators, and when kidnappers asked for $50,000 in ransom, they would talk them down to a few hundred.  Apparently, it wasn’t that these people hated Jews, they just wanted to make an easy buck.”

Of the over 100 people that came to Chabad for Shabbos lunch, Klein and Bleich were the only foreign guests, and they enjoyed an opportunity to interact with the others who were there. The fact that there were just a few young students, among the mostly elderly residents of the city who were present, is an accurate reflection of the demographics in Caracas, where there are roughly the same number of funerals and brissin each year.

Small but Strong

The Jewish community of Caracas may not be growing, but Chabad of Venezuela is taking things one day at a time. At the Ohr Chabad school, administrator Goldie Slavin told Klein that by the age of 16, most bochurim move on to yeshivos in Panama, Mexico, or Israel, and settle down there. Very few return to Caracas, and classrooms that once held 30 talmidim 20 years ago, now have roughly five.

And yet, despite that downward trend, Klein says he left Caracas inspired and happy to see that all the people who had told him that he was crazy for going, that he would never find a minyan, that people were getting shot on the street, and that he would be harassed for being Jewish, had — at least in his experience — been wrong.

“Even if the community is getting smaller, it is still a vibrant Jewish community, with a unique culture that has its own strengths and weaknesses,” says Klein. “At the end of the day, I found a flourishing Jewish community in Venezuela, which wasn’t something I ever expected to see.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1071)