Tijuana to Tefilah
Crossing from Mexico to America with Jewish children who do it every day
Fernando Sur, whose father drives
him from Tijuana to Southern California Yeshiva High School in San
Diego, wraps tefillin at his all-boys school.
As I stepped out of the van into the chilly, pre-dawn Tijuana air, I
could just barely make out the shadows of the pedestrians nearby, all of
them stepping over puddles and street trash, walking in the same
direction.
I watched as two girls, Chaya Leibkinker, 16, and her sister, Tali, 11,
grabbed their backpacks from the trunk of their SUV, quickly said
goodbye to their father, Israel, then, along with their mother, Sandra,
melted into the crowd approaching the Tijuana-San Ysidro pedestrian
border crossing into the United States.
Every weekday, about 30,000 people cross this border into the United
States, the vast majority of them Mexican citizens who work in
metropolitan San Diego.
Among the crowd are seven Jewish children from Tijuana, who, five days a
week, make the multihour cross-border trek to day schools in northeast
San Diego so they can receive a Jewish education. There are no Jewish
schools in Tijuana, and the community there can’t offer them a viable
religious education. So each day, they cross northbound through U.S.
Customs and Border Protection and then return southward each evening
into Mexico.
It wasn’t always like this. From 1997 to 2004, Tijuana had a very small
Jewish day school, run by Rabbi Mendel Polichenco, who leads the city’s
only traditional Jewish synagogue, a Chabad.
But with only about 25 students per year, the school’s small budget
made it too difficult to provide a great level of education, and there
was not enough demand to continue making a go of it. Plus, there was the
problem of turnover; many of the children’s families immigrated to the
United States as soon as they were able, Polichenco said.
Bottom line: A dollar spent on transporting children to San Diego every
day goes further than a dollar spent schooling them in Tijuana.
Judaism, though, is not the only reason parents and their kids spend so
much time and energy crossing the border every weekday.
After all, throughout the United States, many observant families in
small Jewish communities lacking a serious educational infrastructure
supplement their children’s education by enrolling them in online
classes with experts in Torah, Talmud, Hebrew and other foundational
elements of a comprehensive Jewish education.
One of Sandra Leibkinker’s main motivations: She believes access to
Southern California’s Jewish community could very well impact whether
her daughters marry Jewish men and build Jewish homes for their own
families.
“This is a small community,” Sandra said of Tijuana, as Tali made a
face while her mom untangled the girl’s knotted locks. “I want that she
will marry with a Jew.”
For Rabbi Josef Fradkin, head of school at the Chabad Hebrew Academy in
San Diego, where a handful of the Tijuana students learn, the young
Mexican Jews lucky enough to obtain student visas to go to a Jewish day
school in America — as opposed to a public education in Tijuana — simply
have better odds of growing economically as well as religiously.
“That’s why their parents send them every morning across an
international border — to give them a chance to succeed,” Fradkin said.
Sandra Leibkinker stands with
daughters Tali, 11, left, and Chaya, 16, as they wait on the American
side of the U.S.-Mexico border for the carpool van.
Most of these students have Secure Electronic Network for Travelers
Rapid Inspection (SENTRI) cards, which allow them to cross relatively
quickly while riding in the carpool van. The Leibkinker girls, however,
don’t have their passes yet, so each day they cross through Customs by
foot, lengthening their commute by at least 30 minutes. The girls and
their mother, who accompanies them into the United States each day, meet
up with the rest of their group on the other side of U.S. Customs.
My own morning started early, at 5:15 a.m. Theirs began at 5 a.m., as
it does every day. To get Chaya to Torah High School of San Diego and
Tali to Chabad Hebrew Academy by 8 a.m., the Leibkinkers picked me up at
my Tijuana hotel, the Palacio Azteca, at 5:55 a.m.
It was dark outside, and Carretera Federal No. 1, Tijuana’s main
traffic artery, was still nearly empty — until, that is, we got close to
the border, where dozens of other cars were dropping off some of the
thousands of Tijuana residents crossing to work in California.
Inside Customs, the Leibkinkers and I split off into different lanes —
they have a fast pass, but for pedestrian crossing only. On a normal
Tuesday, crossing into San Ysidro in the standard lane often takes
nearly an hour, according to a Web site run by UC San Diego.
Despite a border guard’s somewhat intense questioning, I got through quickly, in about 10 minutes.
Just a few feet away, in San Ysidro, the sun was rising over the
horizon and the Leibkinkers had been waiting for me for a few minutes.
The air was still cold, and Sandra was leading her two girls to a
convenience store, where they grabbed an on-the-go breakfast — a Mrs.
Fields cookie, corn nuts and a Frappuccino.
Then they waited to be picked up by the van and the rest of their
schoolmates, just a few hundred yards inside the United States. This
morning, as we lingered on San Ysidro Boulevard, Chaya played with her
cell phone, and Sandra combed Tali’s hair.
Born and raised in Mexico City, home to a thriving, traditional Jewish
community of 40,000, the Leibkinkers moved north four years ago to
Tijuana, which has a Jewish community of approximately 2,000, Sandra
said. She said the reason was economic, but she didn’t go into
additional details.
She and Israel, a graphic designer, are hoping soon to move the family
to America — like so many Mexicans who move to Tijuana, according to
Polichenco, who, in addition to running the Tijuana Chabad, runs one
just north of the border in Chula Vista.
“Either it [Tijuana] is a stepping stone, or they like the
possibilities that the U.S. gives them,” Polichenco said. “They like
being by the border.”
Polichenco, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, opened the Tijuana
Chabad in 1993, moving into a building on Avenida 16 de Septiembre,
which the Jewish community built in 1965. For the past 10 years, he has
arranged for the children’s transport, paying the costs by raising most
of the needed $25,000 per year from philanthropists in Mexico and
California. He said the students’ families contribute what they can, but
overall, their payments cover less than half of the total cost.
The same goes for tuition, which, without financial aid, runs upward of
$10,000 at Chabad Hebrew Academy and $19,800 at Torah High, for
example. Polichenco said that none of the Mexican families is able to
afford full tuition. They pay what they can, but many of the children
need full scholarships.
Like many families in Tijuana, some members of these Jewish families
are U.S. citizens, while others are not, which is why the dream of
moving north as a family is not yet possible. In the Leibkinkers’ case,
Sandra, Chaya and Tali all are U.S. citizens, but Sandra said that
because her husband is not, they won’t be able to move as a family until
he finds a job in America.
I asked immigration expert Claire Bergeron of the Migration Policy
Institute about the Leibkinkers’ case, as it is often relatively easy
for the spouse of a U.S. citizen to receive legal permanent residence in
a timely manner.
Bergeron confirmed that, yes, in many cases, a spouse can legally
immigrate quite easily, often in less than 12 months. But there are
loads of exceptions that can turn that wait time into years, including
doubt over whether an applicant will be able to support himself or his
family in the United States.
The wait for legal permanent residence in America for people who aren’t
immediate relatives of a U.S. citizen can be very long — particularly
so for Mexicans — 1.3 million of who currently have outstanding
residence applications with the U.S. State Department.
To get to the front of the line can take up to two decades. Even after
obtaining permanent residence, citizenship is usually another three to
five years away.
At their San Ysidro carpool meeting point, Chaya sat on a bench
enjoying her breakfast cookie, and again pulled out her iPhone to play
Candy Crush, which she plays every morning as they wait. Looking like
any other American girl waiting for a school bus, Chaya was wearing blue
jeans and a white hoodie that read “Hollister California” on the
front.
Tali, now fully groomed for school, didn’t say much as she snacked on her corn nuts.
About 15 minutes later, at 6:55 a.m., the mother pointed to a white van
that was approaching. Ezra Torres, a 51-year-old soft-spoken Jew from
Ensenada, who has driven the community’s Jewish children to and from
school every day for eight years, had arrived.
Inside the van, four more students waited for the two girls and a young
man with a notepad to board. Some of the kids looked exhausted. Others
were playing on their phones, chatting or horsing around.
I sat shotgun next to Torres, who greeted me and then turned his
attention to the road, focused on getting the van and its occupants to
the next location, a Chula Vista shopping center where he picked up two
of Polichenco’s children — their family lives in Chula Vista during the
week and returns to Tijuana on Shabbat.
As the van headed onto the 805 Freeway, a young man sitting behind me,
Fernando Sur, introduced himself. Working toward becoming a professional
actor, he is 15 and a Mexican citizen. He nevertheless sounds American,
looks American and dreams of one day living in La Jolla — although his
father prefers Santa Monica.
Fernando summed up the 120-mile difference between the two coastal
communities with a smile: “He has his dream place; I have my dream
place.”
For a teen like Fernando, a Jewish education is not the only reason he
puts so much time into crossing international borders. He needs regular
access to the U.S. to move up the acting chain, which may allow him one
day to work and live in California.
He currently has a 0-1 visa, which the U.S. government issues to a
handful of people with “extraordinary ability” — in his case, acting.
The visa allows him to remain in the United States for three months at a
time. Fernando is one of the lucky ones.
Before he received the 0-1, he had a student visa. Polichenco told me
that there are many Jewish families in Tijuana who would love to send
their kids to San Diego for school, if they could — but they haven’t
been able to get visas.
According to the State Department, Mexican citizens who applied before
1994 for permanent visas are only now becoming eligible, two decades
later.
Fernando was born in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, and is an only
child; his family moved to Tijuana when he was 5, and they now live in
Zona Rio, an upper-class neighborhood at the north of Tijuana, on a hill
overlooking California.
“People say that the nicest part of Tijuana is actually San Diego,”
Fernando joked. “There are some nice parts, but living right next to the
border, you can see the difference.”
He is in 10th grade at the all-boys Southern California Yeshiva High
School (SCY High), to which he has commuted for the past seven years.
He said he often stays with friends in San Diego for Shabbat and
travels monthly to Los Angeles for shoots and meetings with
entertainment professionals.
Fernando doesn’t usually ride to school in the van, opting instead to
be driven by his father, who dedicates most of his time to helping his
son climb the Hollywood ladder. A more direct commute to school, though,
doesn’t buy the 15-year-old much extra sleep — he still has to wake up
at around 5 a.m. — but it does give him some time to discuss sports with
his dad.
“It’s good to understand that you need to start making sacrifices at
this age,” Fernando said. “Once I’m older, I’m just [going to get used]
to getting up early to go to work.”
Save for the fact that Fernando speaks fluent Spanish and lives in
Tijuana, much of his behavior seems distinctly, well, American. Like his
friends in San Diego, he cannot wait to receive his driver’s permit,
which will bring him one step closer to getting a car and making the
drive from Tijuana to San Diego on his own.
Behind Fernando sat Raquel Levy and Atenas Machain, both students at
Torah High, an all-girls school. Now that Fernando usually rides with
his father, the three students no longer see each other every day — but
their years of commuting, as well as shared Shabbat meals at the Tijuana
Chabad and their participation in the San Diego National Conference for
Synagogue Youth, a Modern Orthodox youth group, has kept them close.
We ran into traffic at the Interstate 805 junction with Route 54, after
which the van made its first stop at Chabad Hebrew Academy at 7:54
a.m., one hour after leaving San Ysidro and 90 minutes after departing
the Tijuana Chabad. It was more than two hours into most of these
children’s days.
Thirty minutes later, we arrived at Torah High, a large, modern school
located north of San Diego, between La Jolla and University City.
Raquel, Atenas and Sandra got off there.
And finally, at about 8:45 a.m., Torres made his last stop of the morning, at SCY High, where he left Fernando.
Their binational commute naturally distinguishes these students from
their peers, but inside the schools’ walls, any cultural or national
divisions seemed nonexistent.
At SCY High, Fernando wrapped
tefillin and prayed, was the
center of conversations with his friends, and seemed to be on his Torah
teacher’s good side as he designed an illustration of the transition
from the story of Creation to that of Noah and the flood.
Considering his commute and challenges he faces, it would seem like Fernando could complain — but he doesn’t.
“I’m learning
Gemara, which I never had learned before,” he
said. In Uruguay, Fernando attended what he said was a “non-religious”
Jewish school. He said that his family is traditional in their home and
“comes from strong Yiddish traditions.” His ancestors moved to Uruguay
from Russia, Poland and Lithuania.
Fernando’s parents see the time and money they put into giving Fernando
access to the United States as investment, not sacrifice.
“We are making an investment on his future, on his person, on his
values. A sacrifice is something that you make with pain. That’s not
pain — that’s a pleasure,” Fernando’s mother, Vivian Sur, said.
“The values of Judaism he will receive at home,” she continued, “we
think it’s not sufficient at home, so he needs more than we can give
him.”
The word Vivian used most often wasn’t “success” or “career,” but
“mensch.” Giving Fernando the Jewish education that Tijuana doesn’t
offer will, she said, help him become a mensch.
When I sat in on a 10th-grade U.S. history class at Torah High, I
watched Raquel and Atenas, who seem an inseparable pair, listening to
their teacher discuss integration of blacks into American society after
the Civil War. The girls timidly covered their faces and giggled when I
tried to take photographs of them.
Next door, in another U.S. history class, Marione Vigdarovich, also
from Tijuana, jokingly asked her teacher to “not go in alphabetical
order” as she returned quizzes — after spending so much of the morning
in a van, the patience required to wait for her teacher to get to
“Vigdarovich” was just too much for Marione to bear.
But for the most part, for Marione and the six other Tijuana kids, the
time challenge is just a fact of life, despite being required to
complete the same amount of schoolwork as their American peers. Often,
their long commute offers the best time to complete homework, essays and
take-home quizzes.
Sometimes, parents let their children stay with friends in San Diego
overnight, to save time, to stay late for soccer practice or simply to
do something fun.
Their challenges are not lost on the administrators. Charlene Stanley,
principal of Chabad Hebrew Academy, said she sometimes wonders how much
the Tijuana students can handle.
“It’s really hard to balance with our teachers and our students how
much homework is appropriate for them,” Stanley said as she showed me
the school’s grounds. “Can we really expect them to do the same amount
of homework as a student who doesn’t have to commute that many hours?”
The answer, ultimately, has to be “yes.” The Mexican students aren’t
held to lower standards than their American peers. They take the same
exams, do the same homework, the same classroom work and play on the
same sports teams.
Their daily three-, sometimes four-hour trips are simply the cost of
learning about being Jewish for children who aren’t able to live on the
U.S. side of the border.
Cognizant that children, particularly these children, get tired and
lose focus as the afternoon wears on, Chabad Hebrew Academy’s
administrators schedule physical education as the last class of the
day.
Yaakov Levy, a Tijuana resident and
seventh-grader at Chabad Hebrew Academy, plays a hybrid game of flag
football and Frisbee during P.E. class.
At 3:30 p.m. — the end of the school day, Tali and Yaakov Levy,
Raquel’s cousin, a seventh-grader who is also from Tijuana, played a
hybrid game of flag football and Frisbee. “Sometimes you can tell that
they are tired; that their day has been long,” Stanley said. It wasn’t
showing on this day, as Yaakov sped past as his friends who were trying,
in vain, to grab his flags.
Occasionally, but not often, the students encounter legal and paperwork
issues at the border, said Chabad Hebrew Academy executive
administrator Cindee Sutton. Vivian Sur said that when Fernando was a
student at Chabad Hebrew Academy, the school made their lives much
easier by assisting with the annual paperwork that the U.S. government
required for Fernando to renew his student visa.
When there are legal issues at the border, the fix is usually simple —
a call to Polichenco tends to patch things up with the authorities —
but it’s the students who suffer academically when things like
immigration law get in the way.
“If they can’t come for a couple [days], we are going to make
accommodations,” Stanley said. “Maybe have them sit out of P.E. or an
elective to meet with their teacher.”
And as much as these students’ parents sacrifice to give their children
a Jewish education, Stanley wishes she could meet with the parents more
often. But the distance, and the border, makes that tough.
As P.E. wrapped up and the school day neared its end, Torres, the driver, waited at the front of the school.
At the end of the day, leaving Chabad Hebrew Academy, we stopped back
at Torah High to collect the final three students. As everyone settled
in, and Fernando, Raquel and Atenas discussed typical high school topics
— namely, other boys and girls — Rezi, the youngest Polichenco, was
ecstatic when a bag of lollipops was passed her way.
Then, as Torres turned the key in the ignition, something went wrong — a
strange clunking sound was coming from under the van’s hood. After
trying without luck to start the car, Torres spent the next 90 minutes
on the phone with Polichenco, GEICO and a local Russian mechanic
Polichenco knows.
As the kids waited for the mechanics, they chatted, laughed, complained
and walked around in the chilly dusk air. Eventually, Polichenco sorted
out that a tow truck would drive the broken van to the Russian
mechanic, while another van from a San Diego Chabad would be dropped off
so Torres could drive the group back across the border, hopefully in
time for the community’s celebration of little Elimelech Polichenco’s
third birthday.
When the replacement van finally pulled up, the irony was palpable —
after a day spent in the country where most of these children and their
families hope to one day live and work, there was nothing but relief
when our ride
out of America and
into Mexico arrived.
Arrival time back in Tijuana? Around 7:30 p.m.
VERACRUZ, Mexico A passenger bus slammed into a broken-down truck
and burst into flames, killing at least 36 people Sunday in southern
Mexico, the Veracruz state government reported.Both state and federal officials said that four people survived
the crash, which occurred shortly after midnight in the southeastern
state of Veracruz.A communique from the state civil defense agency said the victims
were business people from the region who were travelling from the
Tabasco state capital of Villahermosa to Mexico City.
The agency's emergency director, Ricardo Maza Limon, said the
victims apparently burned to death inside the bus, which was so badly
charred that the tires melted and the markings on its sides were
unreadable.
