El Rabino of Cabo: Rabbi Benny & Sonia Hershcovich

00:00 Speaker 1 Anybody that moved to Cabo before 2008, the reality is if you moved to Cabo in those days, Judaism was not high on your list.

00:08 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Benny Hershcovich of Chabad of Cabo, Mexico, a resort city at the far southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula. Hershcovich and his wife Sonya arrived there in 2009. They were thrilled that they were getting over 60 people at their Shabbos table at the outset, but-

00:29 Speaker 1 Within a month or two, we came to the very sad realization that of the 65 people around the table, there was probably 35 or 40 of them that were not Jewish. I would say even 98 or 99% of our community was intermarried.

00:43 Speaker 2 Their initial survey indicated that there were over 30 Jewish children to educate in Cabo. As they soon learned, there actually were only five or six.

00:54 Speaker 1 And that really shattered us. Two, three months in, we had our foot halfway out the door already. You know, this was a mistake.

01:01 Speaker 2 And as if that weren't challenging enough, when the winter tourist season ended that first year, the Jews all but disappeared.

01:09 Speaker 3 It was probably one of the hardest thing when people stopped coming, realizing that it was exciting for like two months. So that was, that was hard.

01:18 Speaker 1 We came to that realization that it wasn't as fuzzy and as promising as it seemed.

01:23 Speaker 3 I was so done. I was done. I had two little kids, and I was done.

01:28 Speaker 2 Or so Sonya Hershcovich thought, because the series of events that would keep the Hershcoviches in Cabo would not only astonish them, it would bring their Jewish community together in ways that none there could have imagined. I'm Gary Wolk, and this is Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Back to our story in a moment, but first, I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with Lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the shluchim you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review Lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch. Rabbi Bentzion Hershcovich goes by a few names. He usually goes by the more familiar Benny, but all around Cabo-

03:25 Speaker 1 Well, I'm the rabbi, el rabino in Spanish. El rabino, that's how everybody knows me.

03:33 Speaker 2 Hershcovich grew up in Montreal, where he shared the dream of many a Canadian boy.

03:38 Speaker 1 From the youngest age, I had those dreams of being a hockey player.

03:42 Speaker 2 That dream eventually yielded to another one. Hershcovich's mother was a baal teshuva. His father was very involved in Montreal's Chabad community. Benny left home for yeshiva at age 16, studying in England, Argentina, where he learned to speak Spanish, and then back to Montreal. He spent a year on Merkos Shlichus in Hong Kong.

04:05 Speaker 1 A fantastic, fantastic year. I got to meet interesting, fascinating people. I got to meet hippies and Israelis that had just spent eight months out in Nepal and in India, and it was just completely, completely fascinating.

04:19 Speaker 2 Hershcovich studied for rabbinic ordination in Ottawa and New York. In late 2006, he worked on an interactive production of the Hanukkah story at the Jewish Children's Museum in Crown Heights. That caught the attention of a nice girl who grew up on Shlichus in a distant land, but who also worked at the museum.

04:40 Speaker 3 My name is Sonya, and I am the 12th child of 17 kids growing up in Milan, Italy.

04:49 Speaker 2 Sonya's parents, Rabbi Shmuel and Rebbetzin Devorah Rudel, began their Shlichus in Milan in 1970. Sonya says living in a small apartment with 18 family members was actually a wonderful experience, especially right before Shabbos.

05:07 Speaker 3 My mother is cooking in the kitchen. Kids are cleaning, taking baths. There's only one bathroom with a sh- a working shower, so it's like a revolving door. Like, "Are you done?" The most crazy mess.

05:19 Speaker 2 But life in Italy wasn't always so easy. Sonya would go for walks on the streets of Milan with her father, a rabbi with a big beard.

05:28 Speaker 3 I remember people, you know, mostly Arabs, spitting at him and saying, "Dirty Jew," or even sometimes Italians saying, "Oh, you still exist? I thought the Nazis took care of everything." He was so above it, and he was oozing with confidence and pure joy to be the luckiest person to be a Jew.

05:50 Speaker 2 Rabbi Shmuel Rudel passed away in October of 2022, but the example of Jewish pride he and Devorah Rudel set for Sonya planted the seeds for her future.

06:02 Speaker 3 'Cause for me, being happy, and being on a mission, and being fulfilled, and have a purpose couldn't be separate from the idea of being a shliach. If it's a little bit crazy, I'm in.

06:17 Speaker 2 Sonya attended seminary in Israel, after which she went to Crown Heights. She had heard about Benny's work at a Ukrainian orphanage. Now she was working in the same museum as Benny. She decided she should meet him. Sonya's parents called a shadchan, a matchmaker, and Sonya and Benny met in early 2007. They were engaged shortly after, and they married that June. Benny received smicha in early 2009. They had already begun to discuss shlichus.

06:50 Speaker 1 I didn't have that exciting upbringing as her, growing up on shlichus, but I was pretty set on living a life of shlichus, especially after my year in Hong Kong where I saw just how amazing it is, how meaningful it is, how impactful it is, and I was young at heart, and I really wanted to do that.

07:06 Speaker 2 The young couple knew that they wanted somewhere unusual and off the beaten path. They didn't know where that should be, but-

07:14 Speaker 3 They thought it would just come to us, and it did.

07:17 Speaker 1 So we applied to all the lists and whatnot.

07:20 Speaker 2 Shlichus came to the Hershkovitches, just in a not-so-conventional way.

07:25 Speaker 4 My name is Jonathan Pykoff.

07:28 Speaker 2 Pykoff was born and raised in Hackensack, New Jersey, where he and his family attended a non-Chabad synagogue.

07:35 Speaker 4 And sadly, Hebrew school was a place where we all jokingly say we never learned Hebrew.

07:40 Speaker 2 Pykoff moved to Mexico City in the late '80s. He had earned a law degree in the US. He decided to also do that in Mexico.

07:49 Speaker 4 So while working in the Mexican law firms, I also studied the five years of Mexican law school. So in the end, it was 12 years of college. As my mom would say, "You could've been a doctor."

08:02 Speaker 2 Pykoff established his own law firm in Mexico City, and embarked on a spiritual journey to learn more about Judaism. There, he attended an Orthodox shul and began to eat kosher. He moved to Cabo in 2005, and he loved it.

08:18 Speaker 4 Imagine the beauty of Cabo. You've got the desert and the Pacific Ocean next to each other. Very, very pretty.

08:26 Speaker 2 There's snorkeling, sailing, fishing, kayaking, and golf, and lots of natural beauty.

08:32 Speaker 4 But I felt like I was missing going to services and studying, and I started asking around if there were other Jews in town.

08:42 Speaker 2 There were. One of them told Pykoff that there was a rabbi, Mendy Polichenko of Chabad Baja California, in Tijuana, who made monthly visits for Shabbos. A different rabbi would come for holidays. Pykoff appreciated their efforts, but he felt Cabo needed and deserved its own full-time rabbi. One day, Pykoff got a call from Polichenko.

09:07 Speaker 4 And he said, "Jonathan, I think I have a perfect candidate for you."

09:14 Speaker 2 He recommended his brother-in-law, Rabbi Benny Hershkovich, a Chabad rabbi and emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

09:22 Speaker 4 I'd heard of the Lubavitch movement, but I'd never had any interaction. I'd never gone to a Chabad center, a Chabad house, and I was a little skeptical, but I was also desperate.

09:34 Speaker 2 Polichenko knew that Hershkovich spoke Spanish and was looking for a shlichus opportunity, a perfect match for Cabo. But Benny turned the suggestion down. He and Sonya were considering shlichus on a US campus. But a year later, in December of 2008, Polichenko called again.

09:56 Speaker 1 And he says, "Hey, come down for a Shabbos."

09:59 Speaker 3 We had no idea what kind of community it was, and we came to check it out, and we just jumped into it.

10:05 Speaker 2 The Hershkovitches arrived in Cabo for the first time in late December 2008.

10:11 Speaker 1 This place is packed with tourists. Everyone's on vacation. I showed up, and we had, uh, 65 people around the Shabbos table, so we were just amazed. It's the fastest-growing tourist city in Mexico. We were completely blown away.

10:24 Speaker 2 The next morning, the Hershkovitches met with some of the founders of the community, including Pykoff. They learned what they needed to know about Cabo, that it had about 150 Jews living there at that time, that it was a rapidly growing tourist town, that it's an amazing place to visit, and an even better place to live.

10:45 Speaker 3 It was a really wonderful, wonderful... It had this, um, really laid-back atmosphere. You know, even if there's, like, a huge event or, or a big dinner that was happening that night, there was no stress felt. It feels very, very Hamish. Like, it's a beach town, so it has the glamour of having the celebrities, but at the same time, you could totally walk around in your pajamas, and it's like no big deal.

11:15 Speaker 1 They took me scuba diving Sunday morning. I won't lie, that was also part of the convincing factors.

11:21 Speaker 2 But there were more practical matters to consider.

11:24 Speaker 1 My wife specifically, coming from Italy, one of her non-negotiables in looking for a shlichus was a place where we can have education for the kids. And there's 30 kids in the community. 30 kids, we got a school. So for us, this was just a real, real catch.

11:39 Speaker 3 This is heaven. I'm coming.

11:43 Speaker 1 And, uh, we came home, and it was a quick decision. We really, really fell in love with Cabo. We moved down. We took our one-way flights.

11:50 Speaker 2 The Hershkovitches arrived in Cabo with their nearly one-year-old son on March 1st, 2009.

11:57 Speaker 1 We were young, idealistic, and pretty stupid.

12:01 Speaker 3 And we came, and once we came, the reality hit a little bit different.

12:05 Speaker 2 But that would come a bit later. Arriving just before Purim, Sonya and Benny settled into a tiny apartment which also served as their shul, and they began hosting Shabbos meals.

12:20 Speaker 3 We made like a seven-course meal all for free. You know, we just made food and food and food galore. In the beginning, it attracted a lot of people.

12:30 Speaker 2 The Hershkovitches held their first holiday event titled, naturally, Megillah and Tequila, and they were getting strong turnouts.

12:39 Speaker 1 And with time, I think they came around, and they, and they realized that we don't bite.

12:43 Speaker 2 Sonya says it was all very exciting, but as the weather got hot, 95 degrees is Cabo's average temperature during summer days, tourist season waned. So did the Shabbos guests. And the Hershkovitches realized that during the off-season they'd be working mostly with the local residents. Not only did that mean fewer people would be coming, but-

13:07 Speaker 1 Anybody that moved to Cabo before 2008, when there was zero Jewish life here, the reality is if you moved to Cabo in those days, Judaism was not high on your list. I would say even 98 or 99% of our community was intermarried.

13:25 Speaker 2 So even though the Hershkovitches had been getting big Shabbos dinner crowds-

13:29 Speaker 1 Within a month or two, we came to the very sad realization that of the 65 people around the table, there was probably 35 or 40 of them that were not Jewish. These wonderful Mexican people, but they're eating all my kosher chicken, and one guy is bringing his ex-wife's uncle with his uncle's three kids. There's like a whole family of 11 that are coming every Shabbos and sitting, and I don't have money. So, uh, we came to that realization that it wasn't as fuzzy and as promising as it seemed.

13:59 Speaker 3 It was probably one of the hardest thing when people stopped coming, realizing that it was exciting for like two months. So that was, that was hard.

14:09 Speaker 1 And then the worst part was we came to the realization that of the 30 kids that were on the list in their database, 24 of them were not Jewish. There was two Jewish families. There was about five kids, six kids that were Jewish in our community, different ages. It just became impossible to make a school, and that really shattered us. Two, three months in, we had our foot halfway out the door already. You know, this was a mistake.

14:34 Speaker 2 But the Hershkovitches knew that when the going gets tough, shluchim get tougher. They hung on that first summer. When the weather cooled, they refocused on Cabo's many Jewish tourists. But after a couple years, the Hershkovitches were, by their own admission, still struggling. Kosher food was hard to get and expensive. They were raising children. They were wedged into a tiny apartment, and they needed a real synagogue. Money was scarce. Pykoff and other permanent residents were doing all they could to provide funding, but Sonya and Benny once again questioned their decision to do Jewish outreach in Cabo.

15:18 Speaker 3 In the first years, we questioned whether we should stay, like probably every two hours. But it was one particular Shabbos where I was so done. I was done. I had two little kids, and I was done.

15:32 Speaker 2 But here's where the Hershkovitches' story begins to turn, even though they didn't yet know it. While walking one Shabbos with her children on a Cabo beach-

15:42 Speaker 3 This random Mexican guy pointed at me, and he said, "You, you are gonna stay here forever." Like, I don't know him. He didn't know me. I don't know, maybe it was Eliyahu Hanavi. He makes a good Mexican accent. It gave me that strength to say, "Okay, maybe, maybe I do belong here."

16:02 Speaker 2 Maybe that random stranger knew something because around that time a miracle was in the making. During Hanukkah of 2011, the Hershkovitches held their community menorah lighting, as they always had, at a local marina.

16:20 Speaker 1 A very difficult year, Hanukkah, for us. We didn't have gas money, so we were walking from our house to the marina. It was that tight, our finances. We lit the candles, and we all sang together. We had the music and the latkes. And the next morning I got a phone call from Jonathan Pykoff, and then he says, "Hey, Benny, do you remember this guy, Raymond Shenasi?" I say, "Yeah, I, uh, yeah, I remember I, I met that guy Yom Kippur, yeah. What about him?" He says, "You know, he was at your event last night, and he absolutely loved what was going on, and he wants to have your wiring instructions. He wants to send you an $8,000 donation to show that he's serious and start looking for a property."

17:00 Speaker 2 But who was this mysterious visitor to Cabo?

17:03 Speaker 5 So I was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Italian Jewish family.

17:08 Speaker 2 That's Dr. Raymond Shenasi, organic medicinal chemist and professor of pediatrics at Emory University. One glance at his family history would indicate why he's so keen on building Jewish life in Cabo and elsewhere.

17:23 Speaker 5 My father was born in Tanta, which is a major city in Egypt. My mother was born in Alexandria. We spoke the language. We knew the culture. We'd been there 300 years. We respected the government. We respected their laws. We were treated fairly.

17:36 Speaker 2 The Shenasi family had thrived in Alexandria as traditional Jews. Young Raymond attended fine schools there, including an English school where he had learned the language. Life was good for the Shenasis until the Suez Crisis and ensuing war.

17:53 Speaker 5 But then Nasser came along and, uh, made our life miserable, and, uh, we had to leave. Uh, unfortunately, we left with nothing. We survived. Like all the people who lived in Egypt, we had to move on and continue to live. We loved Egypt. We still do. But unfortunately, we had to leave the country and not look back.

18:12 Speaker 2 In February 1963, the Shenazzys left Egypt for good. Raymond was just 13. They fled to Naples, Italy, where they lived in a refugee camp for a brief time. Then the family left for Spain via Switzerland. Raymond was sent to Carmel College, a Jewish boarding school in England. A bit later, he completed his bachelor's degree in chemistry and then his PhD at Bath University, after which he attended Yale University, the University of Chicago, and the University of North Carolina for post-doctoral fellowships. He currently holds several positions at Emory University. Shenazzy is best known for the discovery and development of innovative drugs that treat life-threatening infections. That has made him well-known and a man of resources, but it's sometimes made him tired. While working at Emory during the winter break in 1991, Shenazzy, a self-described workaholic, was persuaded to visit Cabo with some friends.

19:19 Speaker 5 And so I had a great time. The weather here is really spectacular. So there's fishing here, there is, uh, golf, there's tennis, there's, uh, hiking. You see the whales in the, in the, in the sea. You have a view to the horizon.

19:34 Speaker 2 Shenazzy says he realized that Cabo was the place to be. He was so impressed that he purchased a place in Cabo. He returns there for four weeks each winter, and has gotten to know the Hershkovitches and their situation well.

19:51 Speaker 5 I saw them struggle. They were living in a very small apartment with two bedrooms. Our, our shul was in the kitchen, so we would do the prayers, and then we would clear the, the space.

20:02 Speaker 1 We had this little dinky apartment, a little three bedroom, and we would fill it up, and it would get full of people, and it was 50, 60 people sitting around the Shabbat table squished.

20:11 Speaker 2 Shenazzy saw firsthand how critical it was for Jews to have a rabbi and rebbetzin like Benny and Sonya. Now he realized that Cabo's Jewish community also needed a synagogue to call its own.

20:26 Speaker 5 And I wanted to do a mitzvah.

20:28 Speaker 2 What Shenazzy did is spectacular by any measure. He imagined a Jewish center and synagogue similar to the one he and his family attended in Egypt.

20:42 Speaker 5 The synagogue is called Eliyah Hanavi, which is a grand Italian marble, beautiful synagogue, one of the most beautiful in the world. There's, uh, lots of arches in that synagogue. So working with Mr. Pykoff and the rabbi here, we came up with a plan.

20:59 Speaker 2 They drew up the blueprint for a beautiful center with all the requirements of Orthodox Jewish life.

21:05 Speaker 5 A place to congregate, a place to have weddings.

21:10 Speaker 4 Trees in the atrium, water in the middle, the shul to your right, the kosher restaurant to the left, the mikveh down the hall, another restaurant event center upstairs.

21:22 Speaker 5 And then also, for Sonya and the rabbi, a beautiful apartment, huge apartment, with all the amenities. And that was important to me to put them in a safe and large place, especially with six kids.

21:36 Speaker 3 You know, when he first told us, "Okay, let's build something," you know, we were happy with the little storefront. And he said, "No, you're gonna have this, and you're gonna have that." And, and we were thinking, "Oh, my gosh."

21:47 Speaker 5 We also have, uh, four bedrooms for people who are shomer Shabbat who want to stay at the synagogue overnight, especially Friday night.

21:55 Speaker 2 Shenazzy put up 8 million of his own dollars to fund the Cabo Jewish Center and the Eliyah Hanavi Synagogue. It opened on November 28th, 2021.

22:07 Speaker 5 It was the first day of Hanukkah, and we invited the mayor, and there was over 200 people in the shul, in the center, uh, and we had a opening ceremony with ribbon cutting and everything. This was a very special day for me.

22:20 Speaker 1 He has a heart of absolute gold, and he created this magnificent building where now we have a shul that'll hold 160, and it, people come in, they're completely blown away, that there's a shul in Cabo, and that there is such a shul in Cabo. It is a world-class Jewish center that he built.

22:37 Speaker 4 It's, uh, really amazing.

22:40 Speaker 3 It's so beautiful, and every time we fill it up, I think back to myself and I say, "Thank God Raymond was in charge of this and not us," you know?

22:49 Speaker 2 But the Hershkovitches are totally involved in the center's activities. It's an inclusive center for every local Jew and for the many tourists who visit every year. It's clearly made a big impact beyond Cabo.

23:03 Speaker 5 People now are coming to Cabo and buying property because there is a Jewish center. They're members, they contribute, and they love it.

23:13 Speaker 3 I think this is the center that is bringing us places.

23:17 Speaker 1 In my wildest dreams, we never imagined such a shul, you know?

23:21 Speaker 2 These days, the Hershkovitches are talking with Dr. Raymond Shenazzy about expanding classroom space for the growing population of Jewish kids. "It's the one thing," says Shenazzy, he wishes he'd done differently at the outset. Jonathan Pykoff is leading a search for a property that will eventually serve as a Jewish cemetery, and Rabbi Benny is looking to resume his Bnei Noah class for non-Jews, which, before COVID, had well over 30 weekly attendees. Incidentally, the Hershkovitches say that they've experienced zero antisemitism in Cabo. And they're raising and homeschooling six kids, who've sometimes made cameo appearances on Benny and Sonya's hilarious Torah videos.

24:11 Speaker 1 And here's where the Torah teaches us something incredible about when to cry. Crying is what we do when we need to express our overwhelming pain for a terrible situation.

24:20 Speaker 3 Uncle Benny, I lost my jelly bean.

24:23 Speaker 4 Dusty Benny opened my shirt like this.

24:28 Speaker 6 Oy, goy,

24:28 Speaker 5 They're all growing up, so we're creating the next generation of Cabo rabbis, I guess.

24:35 Speaker 2 The growing energy in Cabo is attracting a lot of new faces. The permanent residents now number over 300, but that energy is also inspiring some of the not-as-new faces, like Adriana Kenlin, an English teacher, real estate property manager, and four-decade resident of Cabo. She's a regular at Shabbat dinners, where she loves to debate Rabbi Benny on Torah law.

25:05 Speaker 7 I like to give him a hard time.

25:07 Speaker 2 Can you give me an example of what you and he debate?

25:10 Speaker 7 Oh, just about everything. A lot of the things written in the Torah he's taking literally and feels that we should be taking it literally, which for me was very difficult to accept. So we would debate it, and he would always come up with good answers. 99% I would go for, and there was still a couple percent maybe no.

25:36 Speaker 2 It sounds like you're still kind of bugged by that one or 2%, right?

25:40 Speaker 7 Sure, of course. But I wouldn't be a Jew if I wasn't.

25:45 Speaker 8 Adriana Kenlin is an amazing, amazing woman. She moved to Cabo during that hippie era. She's like the community bubbe. She's a no-nonsense Yiddish mama. She'll sit at the front. She'll get up every Shabbos and make an announcement that everybody has to donate and be a part of the community.

26:03 Speaker 2 In fact, that's one of Kenlin's passions. She feels a strong responsibility to support the Jewish center and inspire others to do the same.

26:13 Speaker 7 And the rabbi has done a lot of it out of his own pocket, and that makes me feel really bad because, I mean, he gives everything to this community. He's busy all the time. And as far as the future, I think it's to reach out to those people that we still haven't connected with to find new ways of trying to support the synagogue.

26:37 Speaker 2 Sonia, looking back at the encounter you had with a stranger on the beach, the Mexican man who told you that you'd stay in Cabo forever, what do you make of that now?

26:49 Speaker 9 There's someone who believes in the future. The Rebbe knows a picture that I cannot see yet. The Rebbe takes people that are extremely flawed, even some are more flawed than regular people, and he enables them to do things. It's not always incredible people. It's just very normal people doing incredible things which do not make sense. I think the Rebbe's vision is much bigger than what we thought.

27:17 Speaker 8 Our vision was we'd have a storefront somewhere on the marina that would hold about 40 or 50 people for a shul. That was our grand vision.

27:24 Speaker 2 Now, 15 years later, the reality is far grander than the dream.

27:29 Speaker 8 It's amazing, amazing, and beyond our expectations. So now whatever comes, we're here for it. We'll adapt. We'll make it work.

27:39 Speaker 9 It's not so much, "Wow, you're so capable." It's like, "Wow, Hashem is so great."

27:49 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wolik. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast at L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.