Elias Baron
Elias Baron grew up in Mexico City, where his parents had settled after leaving Eastern Europe in the 1920s. His father emigrated from Lithuania as a teenager, arriving with all his brothers, while his mother came from Ukraine following the pogroms, also accompanied by much of her family. Elias recalled that many Jews came to Mexico when the United States closed to immigration, and his father often spoke of how fortunate they were to find economic opportunity and a kind, welcoming country. He described Mexico City of his youth as a beautiful place at high altitude, with a close-knit Jewish community made up of families from Eastern Europe as well as from Syria, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and elsewhere, all connected through the Jewish sports center.
Elias attended a Jewish elementary and junior high school, learned Yiddish fluently and studied Hebrew, then completed high school at a well-regarded Catholic school before graduating as an engineer. He was an avid member of an outing club, spending weekends hiking in the mountains near Mexico City. After developing a computer programming language while working for IBM, he became self-employed and marketed his software. When one of his clients moved to the Dallas area and invited him to install his software, Elias, seeking to escape Mexico City's growing pollution and crowding, decided to relocate his family. They arrived in Dallas in 1983, and he spent the first six months helping his children learn English and adjust to school.
In Dallas, Elias adjusted to the variety of Jewish denominations, having grown up in an Orthodox-style setting. He taught Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism through a program called the Joys of Jewish Learning at the JCC, learning Hebrew as he prepared his classes, and later led Torah study groups in his home, including teaching Bnai Noah students in Arlington. He earned three master's degrees, including one in counseling, and worked briefly for the Jewish Historical Society. His son became an ordained rabbi, and both his children remain active in Jewish community life. In retirement, Elias took up poetry, photography, and long-distance cycling and kayaking, describing his outdoor journeys across the United States as a way to admire what he calls the masterworks of the great painter of the universe.
Full Transcript
i am here joe rheingold with elias baron and we're going to be interviewing about for the one story at a time viva shalom celebrating latin american jews here in dallas good morning good afternoon hi elias um tell us where are you from originally and where were your parents and grandparents living where were they from originally yes i was born and grew up in mexico city my father came from lithuania in the 1920s as a teenager and my mother came from the ukraine also in the 1920s after the programs in ukraine and both came with almost all of their families my my mother had like two
aunts and uncles that came also that immigrated to mexico so we had a large family in mexico and my father came with all his brothers bites his brothers they all came to mexico and i believe that at that time people wanted to come to america and america was the u.s and when the u.s was not open for immigration they say well just mexico is next door and they went to mexico and my father very often mentioned how fortunate with the jews that went to mexico instead of the us he he read all these yiddish newspapers arrive from their talk and other newspapers in english and
he was mentioning how people in new york the seamstresses and that making garments failures that were workers were kind of exploited and in mexico there was a big economical opportunity and most of jews in mexico at that time were doing financially very good mexico was a very kind and open country my father said that when he was traveling to the country and he was for one time he was in wholesale with pancreatic chips a kind of a small manufacturing and he mentioned how people were so kind and patient and when he couldn't speak well they were very helpful so uh mexico was in those days
some sort of paradise the population were very small when i was growing up in mexico city there were like five million people in this city by the time we left and came to the us there were over 20 million people so can you imagine a place like can you imagine all the texans living just in dallas not allison port just in dallas everyone in texas so i that could be a nightmare to imagine that and mexico was situated in a very beautiful place he situated because of latitude and altitude mexico is at 7 200 feet above sea level so it's usually cool in the morning
and in the evening and during the day weather is just nice and whenever you go someplace else in mexico you go down you go over the mountains and go down so usually you go to a place which is warmer and since altitude is less you feel so light and so relaxed so going on vacation in mexico was like you really felt the vacation they had a vacation feeling a warmer place uh less pressure from altitude and then at that time the majority of the jewish community was kind of jews from europe eastern europe there were also communities from people coming from from syria aleppo and
in another place there were jalapenos and and uh charming and there were people from separate traditions from bulgaria from athens from turkey from from greece from turkey and each community had their own schools their own synagogues but everybody belonged to the jewish sports center so the community was very close-knit as i was growing up you just knew everybody when there was a uh in mexico they had the quinceanera's birthday parties when girls became 15 years old and there was a big party and you didn't need to be invited to go there you went to the jewish sports center and then you heard that there is
a party and they just went there and and you met everybody so it was a very interesting warm and pleasant community but on the other hand there was a time of a lot of uh air pollution there is a uh lake the skulko lake and uh it is a little bit higher than mexico city and the government said there was a risk of floodings and they dried up the lake the bad thongs said that the reason they dried the lake is that at the time of the conquest there was a battle there between the aztecs and non-cortez that was trying to flee to flee with
a treasury from the temple gold and other things and when they were defeated all the treasury fell into the lake and some people said that they dried up the lake looking for the treasury but the fact was that after drawing the lake uh after the mexican revolution in that started 1910 there was a uh a intention desire need to uh to keep peace and land and so big large ranches extensions of land were forbidden they were expropriated and they were split into little parcels and given to farmers landless farmers and they thought to do that with the death of the this cocoa lake but they
were the uh the the bottom of the lake was sandy and after time the storms came into the city and they brought a lot of dust and many people said to there over 1 million people and they didn't have sanitary conditions so they defecated open air so the winds came and all the droppings came flying with the air every place so there was a lot of diseases these respiratory digestive things the kids were always sick so in a certain way because of air pollution we decided to leave mexico and came to the us additionally in the middle of the city there was an oil refinery
there was cement factory and there was some glass factories and they produced a lot of pollution now those things are gone and the air quality has improved a lot but uh people in mexico always were worried after cuba that the revolution could come because some people were very well-off and there was a lot of poverty in poor people so the community always was worried that something like cuba could also happen in mexico but the community is still there it is striking it he's doing very well and uh most of them how old were you how old were you when you left mexico what did you
do after high school i need to see your leads if not i can work okay what did you do after high school and how old were you when you left mexico can you repeat your question what did you do ask what did you do well first of all tell me about your high school years where you were and what was your favorite things to do in high school and then what did you do after high school okay i i attended a jewish elementary school in junior high school and i learned edition i speak fluently and i also learn a little bit of hebrew and then
i learned more afterwards then uh my my school ended uh with junior high and then to a high school i went to a there was a catholic school that had a very good name was a very good school and then i did high school there was at two years and after that i studied in the school of engineering and i graduated as a as an engineer and uh my activities in mexico where i believe kind of special and was not very common i belong to an outing club and when i was in college almost every other weekend i went we went discussions to the mountains
in mexico situated in such a place that within three hours drive you can go out every weekend every two weeks and you won't be in the same place for a whole year it was just amazing and so beautiful so i came to to dallas with my boots and my backpack expecting to go and visit the dallas mountains there were no mountains here team was far away but here i found the sierra club and i had two groups of friends with one group we used to do backpacking trips went to california and washington state and we went all over so the difference was that in these
states i went for one week backpacking trips instead of weekend mountain trees and there was another group we went paddling and we paddled all over rivers all over the country and and deploring the ocean so what is interesting what you do in one place you can carry over and bring it and find it in the new place where you are uh i was used to the orthodox style of shoes in mexico and at that time everyone everyone went to an orthodox school that doesn't mean that they were orthodox but they were just one and i came here to the us and there were many styles
and it was kind of confusing at one time uh-oh then when we came in 1983 there were not too many well most of schools were either reform or a couple of them conservatives but there were no big rabbis and there was and the jcc this program choice of jewish learning and i participated in a book club that we read kind of jewish books and somebody there recommended me to teach at the joys of jewish learning so i was teaching capala courses and jewish mysticism and and so there were no rabbis so i was uh there is a thing in mexico to have one eye in
the land of the blind so i got one eye there were a lot of white people and we had a wonderful time uh studying uh i want to ask you something wait right there yes i thought i had time so it took a whole week to prepare one hour class and i didn't know hebrew well at that time so i was struggling to translate and that's how i learned hebrew and for a couple of years i learned i i was teaching a choice of jewish learning but then things came and more uh qualified people came and rabbis and they started teaching and the choice of
jewish learning and for me i think i do not know exactly what happened but it was a wonderful time having people with whom who share jewish studies and i came here 19th to three masters and i became young again i in mexico i was an engineer i developed software and i came here to sell my software but then i got three masters i got young again and the third one was in counseling so i worked in counseling for some time and for some time i worked for the jewish historical society and just briefly one year maybe and uh and so being in dallas has been
an incredible experience how elias let me ask you though you haven't explained one thing that's very important how did you make the decision or your family to come to dallas texas of all places and did you get okay what happened is that in mexico i i developed a programming language a computer programming language when i started after graduating i i came to the us i was going to to do some graduate work at the university of illinois chicago circle and was doing research at the presbyterian's local hospital in chicago and then in 67 uh the world the 6-8 world was coming and since i had
in mind to go to israel i with other dreamers went to the israeli consulate in chicago and said we want to go to israel and said no you cannot go to israel for the world we don't need you and i said we came a couple of times there and then at the end said well if everybody is mobilized who is indeed he would see picking up oranges i want to go and do that and they say okay come tomorrow i will let you know and some said yes you can go and i laugh went to israel before the uh just a couple of days before
the board my sister was there and was pregnant and her husband was mobilized and it is a whole very long story so i came back to mexico i started working for ibm and at that time the uh hardware was rented and software and system engineers were part and given for free to the clients and there was no software and i developed a programming language while working started while working for ibm and then i in the end i became self-employed and i say i became self-unemployed and i marketed my language and there was one company one bank that was user of my software and one of
my users moved to dallas he was living in hearst and once he called me and asked me to come and install my software in his computer in his company and we have been thinking and looking for places where to move in the u.s to get away from pollution and crowded that mexico city was so i came a couple of times stayed with him in his house and i just felt great i could go out and jog and one day i went back home and i told my family okay we're going into dallas and we just came to dallas and the first six months i didn't
work didn't do anything just supported the kids with learning english and getting adapted to school and after six months i then started working and so it was indirectly because of work that we came here and we settled and uh and so here we are how did you find the jewish community here when you first came what was it like for you can you repeat i know you said that the synagogues were different than what you were used to in mexico but how else yes we we are members we have been members of now we belong to and i have been members of many shows initially
it was sort of shoes and and so like four or five now now we do zoom and i have my wife she is doing more songs than i do nowadays and but we have been kind of passively active active in the community all the time in one way or another nakama now is more active than i am and there was a time that i was more active than she was so my son he he works also something with software software and he is a rabbi he was ordained in uh he studied in los angeles but he doesn't work as a rabbi he worked with software
and uh so he kind of does something with shoes wherever he has lead he live in san diego and now he lives in maine and he's kind of the ideal way of being a rabbi that you can teach torah with tao depending on a shul job that was my wish when he went to rabbinical school enjoy your learning along enjoy torah and i wish you that you don't become a synagogue surrounding issues and things and what does your daughter do i know you have a daughter also what does she do here yes well he saw some things i used to do but maybe in a
better more professional way i constantly for some time after the choice of jewish learning i always had a group that came home and we studied torah different topics of torah and talmud so he would see people coming home and studying torah and for one time i used to go there was in arlington a group of uh banai noah people they're interested in learning so i used to teach them in and uh and then there is a time for everything and all that and this and so both my son and my daughter and her cousin are very active in their shoes and in the community and
uh and so you kind of pass the pattern you're active at one time and then the turn is for the young generation to go on with whatever you were doing and now i uh there is something that i find it very beautiful there is a midrash that when god created the uh hatamakatmundi the first person the first man that he was able to see from one end of the world to another mesoappallam and so forth and when god said what would happen with generation of the bubble tower and in the flood he concealed the uh he he kind of restricted the length of you that
person could see and a person was able to see just be what is beyond his nose but was not able to see me so far much of all so i decided that i would ride my bicycle and paddle my kayak from one end of the world to another and i have been riding my bicycle all over and in two more weeks i'm doing a bicycle ride from the atlantic to the pacific from washington dc to florence in oregon and it takes 75 days to go across the u.s 3800 miles and i have gone from seattle to boston from canada to mexico and i have paddled
in mississippi river the minnesota rivers and all the rivers in texas and you know is a such a special thing for me that is the big the love that you go out and you know what is the most beautiful villa that you can say you point and you say wow you admire the master works of the great painter of the universe and that's what i am is most my show now i call and admire the masterworks of the great painter of the universe that is basically well okay so i have one more question for you then besides god being the master of the universe what
what are you the most proud of that you've done in your life what are you the most proud of or something that you're very proud of that you have accomplished in your life so far well i think i always love to guide myself with teaching some wisdom from and since my days in high school i enjoyed reading torah secretary schles sounds the book of job and to learn about life and i was guiding myself like those things so when i retired um i know i i like how to write poetry so in the morning i'm drinking my tea and a word comes to my mind
and then associations happen and then a point is born so almost every day i write something and uh that's a connection with take pictures of the moon design watch my backyard uh nature preserve and then above cat calms and butterflies guns and bird cars and and it is just amazing last year when we were kind of a lot of time at home sadly i discovered what a beautiful natural preserve there is in the back of my of my heart and when there was the uh that everything was closed last year uh then i i discovered a lot of beautiful places in dallas sobers i live
in plano and i mapped like 50 different bicycling routes in plano frisco mckinney and then just all over east west north and south and it is incredible job that there are so many tree covered trails and you live in dallas in the middle of the city and you imagine and you feel like you live in the middle of a forest with wonderful trees and incredible nature and so dallas is such a beautiful place and you know like in torah they say this the oral torah the written torah be revealed and be concealed and you find out in your everyday life there is the dallas that
we all see with freeways and roads and things but then there is this other dallas of the parks and the trails and of and so i got them take pictures and people ask me where is that i say keep it just around near my house and that's the beauty of that whatever you are reading you can bring it to your daily life and uh so you need only to have eyes to see and ears to hear and it's amazing what you can what you can see it here very good yes now for the uh forty transamerica bicycle ride i i was recommended a book by
a man who did a route similar to this one and on the way he was listening and recording birth song so can you imagine that you go to a symphony a choir a celestial choir of birds and you are every day in a concert you wake up and you listen to birds you are out there this trip is mostly camping you're out and you're out there for the sunrises and the sunsets and you have time and you talk with the master with the great painter of the universe and your friends with him here he and so that's the way i would summarize my living in
dallas in texas well it sounds beautiful to me and we wish you well on your journey your bike ride it sounds fantastic thank you you