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Ole', oy vey! Haven for Acapulco’s Jews by Murray Malkin C anadian Jewish News It’s down the road from the Holiday Inn, past the hot new disco, the golf course and three liquor stores, but right across from the Acapulco Center, Mexico. It’s impossible to miss it. Hotel Posada Del Sol and its magic letters, kosher, drawing Jewish tourists like a magnet. Jewish tourists looking for a good meal—a bowl of matza-ball soup, some chopped liver, maybe a bit of herring—come here for a meal, a nosh. Most tourists don’t expect to find kosher food in Acapulco. Taco stands, yes, steak and lobster, maybe, but a kosher restaurant? But it’s there, and the owner, Maria Gancz, a Hungarian Jew, has been running the restaurant for 16 years. However, the restaurant, located in the hotel, is only a small part of the intriguing story about Jewish life in Acapulco. The real story is Jerry Goldberg, a transplanted American who keeps things hopping in Acapulco for Jews. Goldberg is the city’s mashgiach. Goldberg was hired by the chief Rabbi of Mexico in order to make the stay of vacationing Jews more comfortable "An Orthodox Jew wants away from home what he gets at home I try to make him at home so he won't lift a finger,” says Goldberg, w ho spends a good deal of his time worrying about arranging minyans two or three days in the future. "We have aliyas to Acapulco and the new Jews who come to Acapulco don’t know that they'll be helping.” Goldberg, who spends about eight hours a day around the restaurant, is a friend to every Jew who wants a friend. He speaks English. Yiddish, Hebrew and Spanish, so if he can’t help a person in one language, he’ll more than likely be able to do so in one of his other three tongues. Besides arranging the minyans, which take place in the small shul at the back of the restaurant, Goldberg helps to find rooms for persons arriving in Acapulco only to find their room already occupied. “Or sometimes a guy comes down here, his wife spends too much money and he’s broke. I’ll take his personal check. Anything to help a fellow Jew in trouble. It’s all what I feel a mashgiach should do." Goldberg says there are only about 15 Jews living in Acapulco year round. Most are either in the clothing or jewelry business and they have nothing to do with Goldberg, the kosher restaurant or the little synagogue. “Most of them go to Mexico City for the High Holidays because we close on May 31 and we don’t open until November.” One of the little touches Cioldberg started in order to make the stay nicer for the guests and diners at the restaurant was teaching the waiters Yiddish. On Friday night, the waiters wish their patrons “Good Shabbis" and on holidays "A good Yontif." Goldberg says sometimes this causes problems, because the people getting the greeting automatically think they’ve run into a Mexican Jew. “They start speaking a mile-a-minute Yiddish and to the waiter it sounds like Martian But they know what to do, they yell “Mashgiach” and I come to the rescue." According to Goldberg, the only reason there's a kosher restaurant here is because the owner of the Posada Del Sol, a 75-year-old Lebanese Jew who moved to STAFFeFOOD* EQUIPMENT* EXPERIENCE <zf^onnie. i date. FOR ALL OCCASIONS’ In Town...Out Of Town At any location of your choice: Indoors and/or Outdoors Kosher Catering is A vailable RONNIE SPETALNICK 255-7824 Mexico when he was three, “keeps the restaurant going out of respect to his late Orthodox Jewish father. This is his contribution.” An American airline has requested on many occasions to rent the space that the restaurant occupies, but “Carlos Hadid, the owner, says no. He is a wealthy man who owns three hotels in Mexico City, land in Brazil and the land of the British embassy in Israel.” Even though Hadid is extremely generous to his fellow Jews, by practically giving them the restaurant and shul, Goldberg says he knows little about Judaism One of Goldberg’s little touches involves having candles available for women to light for Shabbat “When I told Hadid that I needed candles for the women, he told me it was no problem. He would buy them and send them to the shul. So you know what arrives? A case of Yahrzeit candles,” says a laughing Goldberg. Everything in the synagogue was obtained through donations, lallesim, an eternal light, prayer books. The synagogue needed a Torah; and when Hadid heard that, he bought a beautiful one which Goldberg loves to show guests. “There’s only one problem, it’s not parchment, it’s on paper and it's been Xeroxed. Moshe Rabainu didn’t know about Xerox; if he did maybe he would've been into it But still, we can't use the Torah,’’ says Goldberg. Goldberg, who makes only $200 a month as the mashgiach. has to spend several hours a day in the sun because of a skin disorder. He spends the rest of his time helping his fellow Jews. “1 feel I’m perpetuating the Jewish precepts that all of us hold so dear.” Icwixh Digrsl MONEY DOESN’T GROW \ A FROM TREES A | —El BUT \ THE LAND OF ISRAEL DOES! Jewish National Fund 3 Piedmont Center, Suite 416 Atlanta, Georgia 30305 404 237 1132 23 OPENING JUNE 28 SPECIAL Ptf Person Double Occupancy 70 of 145 Rooms TO AUGUST 23 5% DISCOUNT FOR 14 DAY STAY •2 GREAT KOSHER MEALS t LUNCHEON SNACK DAILY •CHH.DRENS DAY CAMP •ANTS. CRAFTS. ENTERTAINMENT OIAL FREE 800 327 6642 RESERVE NOW 5 DAVID HOSNIR S IM7- Mil IN KASNAUTH YIN FI HACK Or Me Ocean at 67th Street Miaam Beach Florida 33141 HIGH H01Y DAYS SEPT 20 OCT 2 CONSTANT RABBINICAL SUPIRVISION RABBI JOS KAUFMAN COME VISIT! 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(in Buckhead) Mon.-Sal. 8-6 THE peKlNQ RESTAURANT Atlanta's First and acclaimed the best Mandarin Style Chinese Restaurant The Peking is the only Chinese restaurant to be voted as one of Atlanta’s best in the )an/Feb 1977 article “A Guide to Atlanta’s Best Restuarants.” —Brown’s Guide to Georgia Alto Serving Hunan and Szechuan Serving Bear and Wine Qi Closed Tuesdays Lunch Special From $1.88 S 3361 Buford Hwy. (Northeast Plaza) 634-2373 Take Out Page 15 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE August 3, 1979