March 8, 2020

Arie Marancenbaum

Arie Marancenbaum was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, into a family with deep Jewish roots. His father's side traced back to a scholarly rabbinic family in Poland; his paternal grandfather, an electrician, fled Poland around World War II, paying a great sum for a passport, and eventually reached Bolivia by way of Brazil. His mother's family came from Yugoslavia and Croatia, and her lineage reportedly reached back to Marrano Jews of Spain. Growing up, Arie belonged to youth groups, attended Jewish camps, and learned Hebrew beginning around age ten, in part from an Israeli couple working in Bolivia. Although his community had no full-time synagogue or cantor, members took turns officiating, and he learned to sing and chant, celebrating a memorable bar mitzvah attended by his grandfather.

At about eighteen, Arie moved to Dallas to attend Southern Methodist University, encouraged by his father because the family already had relatives here, including his grandfather's sister and her husband, who had come for his bar mitzvah. Having just returned from six months in Israel and travels in Europe, he settled in with the support of local families, especially the Kasanovs of Tyler, whose home became like a second family to him. He attended Temple Emanu-El with them and experienced Jewish life in a new setting. His parents and brother later immigrated to Dallas, roughly four to eight years after he arrived, as political and economic troubles mounted in Bolivia.

Arie studied medicine for six years in Guadalajara, Mexico, then completed an internship, social service year, and surgical residency in Bolivia during a difficult financial period. After his family relocated to the United States, he repeated his training here, completing residencies in family medicine and additional work in obstetrics, delivering babies and assisting with surgeries near Houston. He later moved to Dallas, working in wound care using skin grafts and hyperbaric oxygen before becoming an emergency room physician in 2012, a role he loves for the chance to help people in difficult moments. Father to six children, twice divorced and newly remarried in 2019 to a woman from Longview, Texas, he continues to keep Jewish traditions alive and takes pride in his heritage.

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