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History of the Jewish Community of El Salvador The Jewish Community of El Salvador was founded on September 21, 1943. Its first presidents were Mr. Max Freund and Mr. Eugenio Liebes. Mr. Claude Kahn has been president since the early eighties. He arrived to the country from France, in 1965. |
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 The first records of Jewish immigration to El Salvador date from
1868, with Mr. Bernardo Haas, and in 1886 with Mr. Leon Liebes. Most Jews that came to El
Salvador were from France and Germany. Alfredo Widawer arrived in1909. He organized the
religious and community life, leading the first High Holiday services.The first synagogue, located in the center of the
city, was built in 1949. Between 1938 and 1956 rabbi Alex Freund was the spiritual leader of the community. Rabbi Saltzman led the community between 1956 and 1958, and Alexander Granat was the community leader from 1958 to 1979, the year in which a civil war started in the country. Since 2002 the spiritual leader of the community has been Rabbi Daniel Zang. The Jewish Community of El Salvador has approximately 70 member families, representing the totality of the Jews in the country. The community has always held Shabbat and High Holidays religious services. Even during the war years they held Kabbalat Shabbat services, and celebrated Pesach and Rosh Hashanah with community dinners.
Activities Shabbat (Kabbalat Shabbat and Shacharit)
services, and festival services are always well attended. On Pesach and Rosh Hashanah the ladies
committee organizes community dinners, that practically the whole community attends.
Furthermore, there are important celebrations on Succot, Shavuot, The ladies committee has also assumed responsibility for the assistance given to the State of Israel Kindergarten, a governmental school. These ladies make sure that the place is well kept, and give presents to the children on different holidays. The community also has several frameworks for non-formal Jewish education for children and youth. Besides the traditional Noar, which functions on Saturday mornings, for children 5 to 15 yrs. old, a Gan also functions ( once a week) for children 3 to 5 yrs. old, the Chevre (once a week for children 6 to 8 yrs. old), and the Machon (once a week) for childen 9 to 12 years. old. Presently, the community has more than 30 children under 12. This gives its members an optimistic look to the future , considering the small size of the community. University students have their own organization: EJES (Jewish Students of El Salvador) affiliated with the FUSLA (Zionist University Students of Latin America). This organization organizes several encounters and activities year round. For adults the community offers different educational opportunities in the form of courses or lectures. We also have Hebrew classes, a Women’s Havurah that gets together every two weeks and, once a month, a Jewish Cooking course. The community publishes a Kehilaton, a weekly bulletin that is given out at the synagogue. The on-line version of the Kehilaton is e-mailed to numerous readers in different parts of the world.
Ties with Jewish Organizations The community is a member of the Union of Jewish Communities of Latin America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, different Israeli and World Jewry organizations are represented in our country , e.g., Keren Kayemet LeIsrael, Keren Hayesod and the World Jewish Congress. Israel has an embassy in El Salvador, and El Salvador, together with Costa Rica, are the only countries with an embassy in Jerusalem.
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