S

antiago is a city of contrasts — a bustling modern city set in the center of a mostly third-world region. With the Andes Mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west Santiago is a massive metropolitan center complete with a sophisticated subway system world-renowned universities and thriving commercial centers. It is also the home of 80 percent of Chile’s Jewish community and the site of one of the busiest kiruv networks in Latin America.

The majority of the Jews in Chile are descendants of immigrants from Germany Eastern Europe Greece and Yugoslavia who arrived in the years before and after World War II. Although culturally Jewish most have very little Torah knowledge; this is why Debbie Waissbluth and her husband Rabbi Chaim Waissbluth have such a receptive audience. As the rabbi and rebbetzin of Aish HaTorah Chile the Waissbluths are at the forefront of a growing kiruv movement in a population thirsty to learn about its heritage.

But how did a young New Yorker come to be an instrumental force in a community on the opposite side of the equator?

The Address on the Napkin

Debbie’s story begins years ago when she was still in high school. Always cause-driven and involved in various pursuits Debbie excelled in Spanish a skill her mother recognized as valuable. When she decided to major in speech therapy in college her mother encouraged her to continue studying Spanish pointing out that the ability to speak Spanish would increase her earning potential in the field. Little did they know where else this would take her.

In the meantime Debbie had begun traveling to Eretz Yisrael on her semester breaks to learn more about Yiddishkeit. “My parents unfortunately were very nervous about the security situation in Eretz Yisrael and every time I went they were terrified ” says Debbie. “When the second intifada broke out they begged me to come home and that was the end of that!”

Debbie dutifully returned home but she found herself itching to travel again and looked around for somewhere else to go. A seminary friend Chana Libedinsky mentioned Rabbi Avi and Shira Horowitz the North American rav and rebbetzin living in Santiago Chile who had been instrumental in her path to Yiddishkeit. Chana scribbled Rabbi Horowitz’s e-mail address on a napkin and Debbie came across it several months later in Maryland.

“All kinds of things started happening and before I knew it I had decided to travel to Chile” Debbie relates. She planned to go for five months and participate in a foreign study program.

Things didn’t go exactly according to plan though since a student strike broke out as soon as Debbie arrived. For three of the five months she spent in Chile there were no classes to attend and Debbie gradually found herself with the Horowitzes’ encouragement getting involved in the Jewish community. Although her Spanish was rudimentary at this point she learned quickly.

As Long as He’s Not Israeli!

At this critical juncture, the Horowitzes introduced Debbie to her future husband. “My husband was just starting his path to Yiddishkeit at the time, and at first I wasn’t interested,” Debbie relates. “Shira set us up the first week I was there. He was always at their house and so was I, and she was very insistent!”

Debbie and Chaim started meeting. They spoke to each other in English at first, “since his English was much better than my Spanish.” Debbie’s parents didn’t mind that their daughter was dating a South American Jew; they were just relieved that he wasn’t Israeli! When Debbie returned to New York, Chaim went to Eretz Yisrael to learn. Having already obtained a degree in engineering, he now wanted to strengthen his Torah knowledge.

Shortly after, Debbie flew to Eretz Yisrael, where the couple became engaged. Their wedding in Chile was one of the first frum weddings the Santiago community had ever seen. “It was a cultural experience for everyone!” says Debbie.

Much to Debbie’s parents’ dismay, the Waissbluths decided to begin their married life in Eretz Yisrael so that Chaim could continue learning. Torontonians Dov and Nancy Friedberg, parents of Shira Horowitz, sponsored their learning in Eretz Yisrael for several years so that they could eventually return to South America and give back to the Santiago community.

Induction into the World of Kiruv

Debbie was excited at the prospect of returning to Chile, having always felt comfortable there, and planned to teach in the fledgling day school. Chaim, on the other hand, was less enthusiastic, thinking he would have to begin working as an engineer when he really preferred to stay in learning. After several years at Yeshivas Darchei Noam (“Shapell’s”), he moved to the Mir and continued to grow in his learning, while Debbie attended Moreshet, the kiruv training program for women at Neve Yerushalayim.

Ner Le’Elef, the World Center for Leadership Training and Community Outreach, was the natural next step. “We’d heard about Ner Le’Elef while we were still in Chile, and we loved it,” Debbie says. “It made us feel that [kiruv] was the most important mission in our day.”

Hoping Chaim could find something to do in klei kodesh in the spiritual desert of Santiago, the Waissbluths began davening for an opportunity to turn up.

One winter day about three years after their marriage, Chaim received a phone call from Ner Le’Elef. The organization wanted to open a branch of Morasha, Ner LeElef’s learning center for college kids, in Santiago, and they needed five kollel men to start the program. The Waissbluths were thrilled at the opportunity. Four of the participants were chosen: Chaim Waissbluth; Matias Libedinsky, husband of Debbie’s seminary friend Chana; Marcelo Melnick; and one American, Shimon Vinger, who miraculously materialized. But they lacked a fifth person to join the group, and for a while it looked like the entire plan would fall through.

Suddenly, someone realized that a frum young Israeli family had temporarily relocated to Chile to avail themselves of the services of an occupational therapist who was teaching their daughter to walk. The husband, Yitzchak Azoulay, was approached to join the Morasha group, and with his acquiescence Morasha Chile was launched.

Entering the Leadership Role

“Because all college kids live at home in Chile, there’s no campus kiruv here,” Debbie explains. “Most of the Chile community is not religious, but has very strong cultural Jewish ties. There are many Conservative and Reform Jews as well. In high school, there are lots of afternoon and weekend programs for the kids — Zionistic programs, programs building leadership skills, and so on. Once they get to college, though, everything ends, and the kids are looking for something both Jewish and social.”

Morasha filled this need remarkably well. They set up a college-style program with options for different classes the students could attend. Then the five young teachers needed to figure out how to attract students. One big draw was a stipend offered in exchange for attending a certain number of classes. Another draw was the numerous trips and retreats Morasha organized, making the learning more exciting.

With Matias Libedinsky acting as rosh kollel and Chaim Waissbluth filling the role of director, Morasha soon became recognized as a formidable force on the Santiago Jewish scene — not without some protest from secular quarters. But the group persisted. “Chaim’s engineering skills really came in handy in Morasha,” relates Debbie, “since he was able to keep things running smoothly.” The five men learned in the mornings and used the afternoons for planning and administration, and taught in the evenings. Their wives gave classes in Morasha as well.

The formative years of Morasha were exciting and intense, and the group learned a lot on the job. “I used to have trouble keeping track of names,” Debbie says. “I’d meet these girls once or twice and then forget them. Then one girl came to my house, and I asked her name. She turned such pained eyes on me and said, ‘You’ve given me a million classes, and you still don’t remember my name?’

“The question really hit home. I felt terrible, but I also remember thinking, Wow, I matter to people. They want me to notice them.”

During this hectic time period Debbie also began teaching in the Maimonides School, as planned, and her young daughter entered the baby nursery in the school (where the school nurse watched the teachers’ babies). Morasha grew steadily, with one hundred students coming through its doors on a weekly basis, and Debbie and Chaim hosted many of them for Shabbos meals, building strong ties with them.

Blessing for when You Almost Die

“When we arrived in Chile,” Debbie explains, “there were only four frum shuls: Rabbi Avi Horowitz’s; Kehillas Chafetz Chaim, run by Rav Yitzchak Shaked; Aish HaTorah Chile; and Chabad.”

The Aish HaTorah Chile shul was headed by Rabbi Shoshan and Miriam Ghoori, an American couple who spearheaded the teshuvah movement in Chile. Both husband and wife had learned to speak fluent Spanish, and Rabbi Ghoori was part of the committee that translated the ArtScroll siddur into Spanish. When the Ghooris left Chile, several years after the Waissbluths’ arrival, the Aish shul had no rav, and Aish HaTorah spent many months looking for a replacement.

Finally, the shul board approached Chaim Waissbluth and asked if he would fill the position. Rabbi Waissbluth was completely unprepared for this offer, as he was busy with Morasha day and night and happy in his role there. But after thinking it over, he and his wife decided to accept the position — and all the responsibility that came along with it. “Although Chaim never planned to become a rabbi, it seemed clear that Hashem had put us in the right place for the position, and that he had the skills to do so,” says Debbie.

Making the switch from teaching college kids to teaching adults was initially a challenge, but Debbie encouraged her husband to apply the skills he’d used in establishing Morasha to running the shul.

Of the 15,000 Jews in Chile, there are only 120 shomer Shabbos families, so the Waissbluths have their work cut out for them. Debbie finds herself regularly running into people who are looking for answers. One Friday, for example, she was doing her grocery shopping when a woman she knew slightly approached hesitantly. “Mrs. Waissbluth, is there a prayer to say when you almost die?”

After recovering from the shock, Debbie said, “I think you mean Birkas HaGomel. Why do you ask?”

The woman explained that she’d recently suffered a nearly fatal heart attack, which she’d kept under the wraps, and her doctor, who happened to be Jewish, told her she should “go say a prayer.”

“Well,” said Debbie, “your husband can come to shul on Shabbat and say the prayer for you. That’s the way it’s usually done.”

“Oh, he can’t do that,” the woman said. “He goes to work on Saturday.” (This is not uncommon in Chile, and though the woman herself attended a regular Torah class in Aish, the family was not shomer Shabbos.)

Praying for the right words, Debbie said, “Perhaps he could take the day off this week to make the prayer.” The woman agreed to give it a try.

“At Aish, we try to present ourselves as the shul that welcomes beginners,” Debbie explains. “We encourage the people in the shul to reach out to others who know less than they do. ‘You are who you are because of people who encouraged you,’ we tell them. ‘Now it’s time to give back.’

“Some people end up moving on to more typical, less kiruv-oriented shuls, but for the most part they stay, helping in the kiruv effort. With more and more people trying to help, it makes for a very nice environment.”

One Woman, Multiple Hats

Debbie’s personal kiruv work is multifaceted. “I teach limudei kodesh to fifth-grade girls — Chumash, Navi, Yamim Tovim, dikduk, you name it — and in the high school I teach tenth through twelfth grade. It sounds very impressive, but really there are only a total of eight girls in the three upper classes.”

One of Debbie’s responsibilities is helping the girls put on a musical, which they’ve done for the past two years. When she’s busy with that, Debbie admits, life is really very hectic.

Maimonides School, headed by Rabbi Avi Horowitz, celebrated its first graduation two years ago, and the school is growing by leaps and bounds, especially in the lower grades, as evidenced by the twenty-seven children in the kindergarten class. Debbie’s three daughters all go to school with her each day. The older two attend the preschool, while the baby is in the nursery.

“I have responsibilities to the shul, too, but the school keeps me so busy that I don’t have as much time for the shul as I would like,” Debbie admits. “I get home with my girls every day at three-thirty or four, and I spend the rest of the afternoon with them. For Shabbos, we generally have about eight guests for the two main meals. [Seudah Shlishis is held in the shul.] Not a big Shabbos table, but enough that it keeps me busy.

“The plus side of living in Chile,” she adds with a laugh, “is that everyone here has a maid. Without a maid, I would never be able to do everything I do. I don’t have to worry about laundry or dishes, and she helps me with the cooking, too. It’s a pleasure.”

Debbie also has a reasonable supply of kosher food, which keeps her from having to make the complex food arrangements other kiruv workers must sometimes deal with. There’s a Vaad HaKashrus of Chile that supervises food production and publishes a list of kosher foods. “We have one kind of cheese and two meat suppliers,” Debbie says. “There’s not a lot of variety, but it’s enough.” Chalav Yisrael milk can be purchased at a small kosher store, while most other food items come from the large grocery stores like Safeway. Products with the OU hechsher imported from the US are plentiful, as are fresh fruits and vegetables.

So Much to Do

“Part of me would love to be back in New York or Eretz Yisrael, for my girls’ sake, but for the most part I love it here,” Debbie says. “The school is great; all my kids’ teachers are my friends. I try to emphasize to my girls that we’re here to teach Torah to other Jews, and that makes up for what’s lacking Yiddishkeit-wise.”

Before she came, Debbie was worried about making friends in Chile, especially after living in Eretz Yisrael, surrounded by young kollel wives her own age. Within a short time, though, she’d bonded with the other wives who’d come to teach, and now she finds that the girls she’s befriended through Morasha have become her friends as well.

Although she does occasionally worry about her children’s future, Debbie feels that living in such an out-of-town community has its advantages, bringing out the best in herself as a parent. “If we lived in a large community, I probably wouldn’t feel so responsible for my children’s education,” she says.

That’s not to say there’s no down side.

“Trying to balance everything — the school, the shul, my kids — can get overwhelming. People look to me as a role model, a rebbetzin, and I also feel committed to the school. My kids need me, too. When working in kiruv, you always see needs, so it’s hard to prioritize. There’s so much to be done, sometimes you don’t know where to start!”

When she’s feeling overwhelmed, Debbie calls her former teachers in Eretz Yisrael for guidance, or discusses the situation with her husband, who, she says, always manages to find a solution. “We remind ourselves that Hashem put us here and we’re doing His work. His hand is so clear in every step we’ve taken. I davened for this, and this is what I’m here for.”

A Changed Flight Itinerary

Four and a half years after her arrival in Chile, Debbie reflects on the years that led her to this place. “In Ner Le’Elef they told us that when you go out and do kiruv, you see siyata d’Shmaya. At the time, I was convinced that this applied to everyone else in the room — but not to me. But now I see that it applies to us too. The minute you go out to teach, people are there to hear you.”

On Rosh HaShanah, five hundred people come to daven in Aish HaTorah Chile, and seven hundred show up for Yom Kippur. Debbie describes the situation as both inspiring and intimidating. “These are Jews who have chosen to come to a frum shul for the Yamim Noraim — they want to come back but just don’t know how. I’m always left wondering: How can we reach these people during the year?”

Debbie relates how her husband met Lori Palatnik, who heads the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project, at an Aish conference not long ago and invited her to speak in Chile. As a result of Lori’s visit, a group of nineteen women — Debbie among them, to her own surprise, and on her husband’s impetus — took a ten-day trip to Eretz Yisrael to tour and learn. The majority of the women were middle-aged mothers of Morasha participants and Aish Chile members who were only nominally observant.

“It was inspiring and educational for everyone,” Debbie says. She goes on to tell the following story, which occurred just a few weeks ago:

Speaking to her frum daughter after the trip, one of the trip participants related that she was flying to visit her elderly mother and casually mentioned that she’d booked the flight for Rosh HaShanah. Hesitantly, the daughter informed her formerly disinterested mother that it is forbidden to travel on Rosh HaShanah. The mother was surprised. “But the next day is Shabbos, and I thought you’re not supposed to travel on Shabbos. That’s why I arranged to fly on Rosh HaShanah instead.”

“No, you shouldn’t fly on Shabbos either,” the frum daughter said hastily. “You know, Mom, Rosh HaShanah is the day when G-d decides our entire coming year. Do you really want to fly on that day?”

There was a pause, and then the mother said, “No, I guess not.”

“Can you believe it?” the daughter told Debbie afterwards. “Before the Renaissance trip, she never would have listened to me.”

Changing the face of Chile Jewry, one step at a time — that’s what the Waissbluths’ job is all about.

A Torah Wedding — Chile Style

Today many young Chilean couples are following in Debbie and Chaim Waissbluth’s footsteps and getting married with a chuppah and kiddushin. With so many young people becoming frum, Torah-true weddings have become far more commonplace — though no less joyous.

As Tzippora (Geraldine) Chapochnick-Juchnowicz, a newlywed from Chile now living with her husband in Jerusalem, puts it, weddings in Chile are “full, full of joy.”

“Many couples get married in hotels or halls, but we got married in the country,” Tzippora relates. “The chuppah was outdoors, and we rented a white tent for the meal and the dancing. My family had already seen a religious wedding, since my older sister is also religious, so it wasn’t entirely foreign for them. For many Chilean couples, the parents have a very hard time adjusting. But you make compromises, and it all works out.”

Chilean weddings tend to be on the formal side, with full bands, elegant attire, and fancy food. But, Tzippora says, since South Americans are by nature very effusive, the weddings are full of emotion, with a tremendous amount of dancing. “Three, four dances are normal. We dance through the meal — eating one course, then going to dance, then eating another course and dancing some more.”

Nonreligious friends and relatives often don’t stay all the way through the end of the wedding, but frum people who attend come for the chuppah and stay till the end — no dropping in! “We all know each other, so you never sit at a table with people you don’t know. And the family is so happy for the chassan and kallah — even if they’re not religious, you can see their joy.”

Interestingly, Tzippora says that there is rarely any serious conflict between the frum chassan and kallah and their less-knowledgeable parents. “The family helps prepare for the wedding, so they become closer through the preparations,” she explains. “And we try to involve them.”

At her wedding six months ago, she says, the rav guided her father in benstching his daughter at the badeken. Since her father knows no Hebrew, he had to repeat the words of Yevarechecha word for word after the rav. Tzippora and her husband also wanted to honor her father-in-law with a brachah during the sheva brachos after the meal, and the rav guided him as well.

“They didn’t know what they were saying, but they knew it was a blessing for their children, so they wanted to do it.”

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 206)