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Some of Richard Kleiman’s best memories growing up in Puerto Rico are from Highland Gardens, the neighborhood where his good friend Jay Kleiman lived.
They played football on the streets in the tropical heat and took Hebrew lessons twice a week, along with other children from the island’s close-knit Jewish community.
He chuckled as he remembered their annual trips to Jewish summer camps in North Carolina and upstate New York.
“We would come up there and they would say, ‘Oh, the Puerto Ricans are here! “We were the life of the party,” Kleiman said, remembering how they spoke Spanish so the girls they loved wouldn’t know they were talking to them.
Although the two friends shared the same last name, they were not related. But their friendship was so strong that they were “like brothers,” said Richard, 52. “It was never like friends. We were always together.
The close group of Puerto Rican Jewish families whose parents migrated to the United States more than half a century ago recently suffered a devastating blow, which highlighted the more family-like ties on the small island. of the Caribbean.
On June 22, Richard, who had recently moved to Miami, called Jay from his son’s bar mitzvah in the Bahamas to make contact, never imagining it would be his last conversation with him. Jay had just flown to Surfside, Florida from Puerto Rico to attend a funeral service and was residing in the Champlain Towers South condominium tower where his mother and older brother lived.
Jay, 52, maintained his reputation as a “cool daddy” when he answered Richard’s call with a funny “Whazz up!” Richard recalls, adding that Jay always had a smile on his face.
The building where Jay was staying partially collapsed two days later, killing him, five of his family and at least 92 others. The Surfside Building collapse has been considered one of the deadliest structural failures in American history.
The tragedy reverberated through the Jewish community in Puerto Rico as devastating news came that several generations of Jay’s family were missing.
The body of Frank Kleiman, 55, Jay’s older brother, was found in the rubble days later alongside the remains of Frank’s bride, Ana Ortiz, 46, and her stepson Luis Bermudez , 26 years ; both were not Jews. The following week, authorities recovered Jay’s body, along with the remains of his mother, Nancy Kress Levin, 76, and his young cousin, Deborah Berezdivin, 21.
Puerto Rico, an island of 3.2 million people, is home to more than 1,500 Jews. Despite its small size, it is considered the largest and wealthiest Jewish community in the Caribbean, according to the World Jewish Congress.
“It’s a big family and people get married with friends,” said Joni Azulay, a Puerto Rican Jew who now lives in Florida. “We are talking about three generations of people who are interconnected.”
The Cuban roots of Puerto Rican Jews
The history of the Jewish community in Puerto Rico dates back mainly to World War II, after European Jews fled Adolf Hitler’s Nazism and the Holocaust. Many Jewish families from Poland and Turkey have settled in Cuba, according to Diego Mendelbaum, religious leader and community director of the Jewish Community Center in Puerto Rico.
Kress Levin and her sister, Diana Berezdevin, were part of the new generation of Cuban Jewish children. Richard said his mother sat next to Jay and Frank’s father, Saul, at school in Cuba.
The sisters, along with Richard’s parents, were part of a group of Jewish families who left Cuba after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, settling in Puerto Rico. Many were young adults who settled in newly built suburbs like Parkville in the town of Guaynabo, and had children born on the island.
Some of the children, like Jay, later raised their own families in Puerto Rico. In Jay’s case, he had returned to the island despite moving to Miami as a teenager.
“People came to Puerto Rico to live, as a haven of peace,” Azulay said. “Remember they have these commonalities and these connections, so once the first family comes in here they help the second that comes in and then everyone helps each other out.”
“The Jewish Community Center, also known as the Shaare Zedeck Synagogue, had already existed for several years. But the institution acquired its character with the arrival of Cuban Jews, ”Mendelbaum said in Spanish.
A number of families have opened retail stores that have grown into well-known businesses, some of which are owned by the Kress Levin and Berezdivin families.
Diana, who lost her granddaughter Deborah in the collapse, is well known as a pillar of the community and for her influential support of the Jewish Community Center. She is one of the founders of the Young Judaea chapter in Puerto Rico, which has become a central part of Jewish life on the island, organizing summer camps that children and adolescents attended on the American continent.
Deborah, the youngest of the extended family to die in the collapse, had become a popular counselor at one of North Carolina’s Jewish summer camps, showing that “Diana and his contemporaries continued and inspired several generations, including Deborah’s generation, ”Mendelbaum said.
“My parents are Cuban, but I am Puerto Rican”
Tommy Babil, 48, who was also born and raised in Puerto Rico to Cuban Jewish parents, lived across from Jay and Frank in Highland Gardens. They grew up building makeshift panels on palm trees to play basketball and eat “limbers” or Puerto Rican popsicles.
“We all grew up in the same type of environment,” Babil said, explaining that their parents “definitely went the extra mile to instill and teach us what our religion was.”
Like other Puerto Rican Jews of his generation, Babil said it is not where his parents or grandparents grew up that he identifies with and calls home.
“It’s funny, people ask me, ‘So, do you feel Cuban or Puerto Rican? Your parents are Cuban, so you must be Cuban, ”Babil said. “But I say I’m not Cuban, I’ve never been to Cuba. I think of Cuba, my parents are Cuban, but I am Puerto Rican.
Babil attended college in the United States and eventually settled in Florida, like many other Puerto Ricans who moved north. He had recently met Frank and Ana briefly, and they had vowed they would get together.
Days later, Babil, Azulay, Kleiman and many other Puerto Rican Jews living on the island and in Florida attended the funerals of those who lost their lives in the building collapse.
Azulay estimates that around 1,000 people attended in person and countless more did so virtually through Zoom.
“You could hear a fly flying around the room,” she said. “Everyone knew someone in this building.”
“Of course the family’s grief is 10 times more than anyone else’s,” Azulay said. “But it’s really like a tree with many branches. It really goes beyond the family.
Rabbi Diego Mendelbaum has accompanied the community in their grief, amid burials in Florida and now back in Puerto Rico.
“The absence of these loved ones along with the sadness and discouragement made our community more active,” he said.
Amid the devastation of the collapse, they were there for each other, as families have done across generations and migrated across continents and islands.
“I think this is the best way,” Mendelbaum said, “to honor the memory and legacy of the people we have lost.”
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