Jewish melodies in Ecuador

It was Friday night in Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, and as dusk fell, my husband and I approached the Jewish Community Center, a magnificent, one-hectare complex whose light stone walls and graceful architectural arches are reminiscent of Jerusalem.

We joined the community for Kabbalat Shabbat, singing the same Ashkenazi tunes we knew so well from Vancouver as an impassioned, young Brazilian rabbi led the service. With us was Pedro Steiner, a member of the Ecuadorian Jewish community who’d offered to pick us up from our hotel and drive us to and from the synagogue that night.

I admit that it had felt odd sending out an email requesting hospitality over Shabbat a few weeks prior, but as the melody of Lecha Dodi washed over the large synagogue, its domed roof meticulously hand-painted and inscribed with the words of the Shema, I figured it was well worth it. We were 4,000 miles from home, but we felt very much closer in the warm embrace of Quito’s Jewish Center.

Our host was a first-generation Ecuadorian whose Czech and Austrian parents had arrived in the country just before World War II. They were among some 4,000 European Jews who found refuge from the Holocaust in Ecuador and were granted entry permits on the proviso that they work in agriculture. Most of those Jews had been merchants, industrialists and businessmen and while they were grateful to escape the war, most had no interest in pursuing an agrarian lifestyle. After the rich culture they knew in Europe, Ecuador seemed small and culturally impoverished. Perhaps that’s why at least half of those new immigrants left by 1950 for Israel, America, Argentina and Chile.

Steiner’s parents opted to stay.

“My dad bought a book on agronomy and read it while on the ship to Ecuador,” Steiner recalled.

“After arriving he found work on a farm south of the city and by 1955 he’d established a small dairy factory in Quito.”

Years later he sent his son to college in the US and Pedro spent a decade there with his wife before the two returned to Quito to raise their children. Today, many of the children of the 600 Jews remaining in the country have left Ecuador to raise their own families abroad.

“I realized that in coming back to Quito in the 1970s, we were delaying the decision to move for another generation,” Steiner reflected.

Until the early 70s, most Jews in Quito sent their children to the American School, a liberal institution created by Galo Plaza Lasso, the country’s president from 1948 to 1952. Then a student at the school won a prize for his review of Mein Kampf, and the Jewish community, insulted this could happen, determined that it was time to establish a new school.

In 1973 the Collegio Alberto Einstein was founded with “an atmosphere of Jewishness.” The kindergarten-through-grade-12 school is ranked among the top educational institutions in Ecuador and offers classes in Jewish studies, but “it’s not a religious school,” Steiner emphasized. Of the 700 pupils at Alberto Einstein, only 10% are Jewish.

That’s where Steiner’s children were educated. Firmly committed to building Jewish life in Quito, Steiner helped obtain the funding and donations necessary to build the Jewish Community Center in 2000, and proudly guided us around the impressive site. With a ballroom, conference rooms, two synagogues, a kosher kitchen, swimming pool, large sports grounds and rooms for Jewish youth movements and Hebrew classes, the JCC is an enviable facility.

“But it’s underutilized,” Steiner said, his voice tinged with regret.

When the final verse of Adon Olam had echoed through the beautiful synagogue, we joined the community for a meal in the adjoining hall. Among those at our table was a Holocaust survivor who had made her home in Quito, and two women who worked for the American Embassy. English mixed easily with Spanish as friendly conversation wafted over the kiddush and meal, and though we were geographically far from home, in the embrace of this warm community, we felt ever so close.

DAYS AFTER Steiner picked us up from our Quito hotel, we had become more acquainted with Galo Plaza Lasso and his life by spending time at Hacienda Zuleta, the late president’s family home in the Ecuadorian highlands, two hours north of the capital.

The walls of the expansive property are filled with old photographs of tuxedo-clad world leaders rubbing shoulders with Plaza Lasso over the course of his political career.

“He was quite a personality,” said Steiner, whose parents obtained their Ecuadorian naturalization during his presidency. “He was secretary-general of the Organization of American States and was frequently asked to mediate for the United Nations in international conflicts. His government was also very openly amicable to the Jewish community.”

Built in the 1600s, the Hacienda is located in a bucolic valley surrounded by the Andes Mountains.

Cows bellowed gently outside our bedroom window, a fireplace lit the 17th-century paintings on the ancient stone walls at night and hot soups with traditional Ecuadorian dishes warmed our bellies at mealtimes.

The Plaza Lasso family library contains over 1,000 books, but minutes after arriving, we extracted the only one of plain and obvious Jewish significance: a Hebrew Bible inscribed and given to Plaza Lasso by a chief rabbi when he visited Israel in the 1970s. In another book documenting his political legacy, we found a photograph of Golda Meir welcoming him to the country.

“My grandfather was loved by the Jewish community of Ecuador because he helped Jews relocate to Latin America,” said Fernando Polanco, Plaza Lasso’s grandson, who now runs the family home.

Hacienda Zuleta hosts visitors for overnight stays, horseback rides into the mountains and bike excursions.

During our stay we explored the organic vegetable garden, toured the cheese factory, biked past the dairy farm with its herd of 500 cows and marveled at the size of caged condors at a rehabilitation project to help protect this critically endangered bird. Most of these are initiatives that Galo put into place during his lifetime.

“My grandfather’s clear vision, environmental responsibility and social consciousness back in the 1940s made him one of Ecuador’s best presidents,” said Fernando, beaming with pride.

“Zuleta was his trial and error, his conscience.”

A small but historic Jewish community straddling the equator in Latin America hopes for continuity.