Semitic Sandinista

It was my third week teaching English at a Nicaraguan prison. I approached the gates ready to be waved through as usual when the jefe of penal education looked up from his newspaper to address me. “Hey chele [light-skin],” he said. “No class today, entertainment instead.”

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A full band was tuning up in the courtyard. I was surprised to see musicians in a prison so under-funded that not all guards had uniforms and many inmates depended on the food their families brought in from town. The band started to sing: “Hay vida, hay vida, hay vida en Jes\xc3\xbas. ” Now I understood–they were an evangelical rock band on a mission to convert the predominantly Catholic prison population to their version of Christianity. In between songs, the lead singer, a Nicaraguan Vin Diesel, outlined some of his shared tenets (such as belief in Jesus Christ) with, and differences (such as not praying to saints) from Catholicism. Heated debates broke out among the inmates.

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On the walk home, scattered facts about cults who targeted Jews for conversion cluttered my head. On my bed, I found a letter from my parents waiting for me. The letter casually inquired, “Do you have any plans for the High Holidays?”

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I did not. But the combination of attempted prison conversion and familial guilt filled me with resolve: I would attend Rosh Hashanah services.

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But where were the Jews? I knew that neighboring Costa Rica had a large American Jewish expatriate population, as well as a prominent native Jewish Community that traced itself back to the country’s founding. Unfortunately, Costa Rica was a 12-hour bus ride away.

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I hit the streets, searching for clues. After an entire day of fruitless inquiry, I realized I was mispronouncing jud\xc3\xado, the Spanish word for “Jewish.” Instead of placing the emphasis on the word’s middle syllable, I was putting it on the end. But even when I corrected myself and people understood that I wanted to meet Jews, they still didn’t know where I could find any.

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Day three produced a breakthrough. It came in the form of an elderly man wearing a hat and shirt that said “PLC” (the initials of Nicaragua’s largest right-wing political party). “Jewish?” He replied in a rural accent. “Herty Lewites is Jewish, and he controls all of Managua!” I knew Herty Lewites was the Sandinista (left-wing party and historical enemy of the PLC) mayor of Managua, Nicaragua’s capital. But I had not heard anyone else say he was Jewish. Unsure whether this was mild anti-Semitism or accurate information, I decided to investigate further.

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I asked several other people on the street; they didn’t have a clue. But because political tensions run so high in Nicaragua, I often got a rant about Lewites’ performance instead. “Lewites, Jewish, what? Who knows, but do you see how he has helped all the children?” was a typical response. Even more puzzling, I had read that when the Sandinista government first came to power, it had seized the building of Nicaragua’s only synagogue.

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By day four, I had discovered that Lewites was indeed Jewish, but also impossible to reach.

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On day five, I gave up on people and took to the Internet. After a quick hitchhike into the town of Esteli, I paid my c\xc3\xb3rdobas and logged on at an Internet caf\xc3\xa9. A quick search dealt a fatal blow to my quest, courtesy of the World Jewish Congress. According to its Web site, “Nicaragua’s Jewish Community has been dormant” since 1979. The mayor of Managua and his family seemed to be the only Jews in the country.

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I bought a bus ticket to Costa Rica and went to services at a synagogue in San Jos\xc3\xa9. The rabbi’s sermon sounded a familiar note: he admonished his congregants for only coming to synagogue on the High Holidays.