Manuel Rajunov
Manuel Rajunov was born in Mexico City and moved with his family to Tijuana at age eight, staying until he graduated high school. His family history spans several traditions: on his father's side, his grandparents came to Mexico in the 1920s from Ukraine and Poland, fleeing persecution in Europe, and worked in leather tanneries and distribution. On his mother's side, his family came from Aleppo, Syria, Damascus, and Beirut in the early twentieth century, arriving in Mexico via Paris and working in the clothing business. He is proud of this blended Ashkenazi and Sephardic heritage.
Growing up in Tijuana, Manuel was part of a Jewish community of roughly a thousand families that maintained its own JCC, a synagogue he described as conservadox, a daily Hebrew school, and a Zionist youth organization affiliated with Maccabi. Because the town's private schools were parochial, he attended a bilingual secular school run by Southern Baptists, where he learned English, and later became the first Jewish student admitted to a local Catholic high school. He graduated in 1990, returned to Mexico City, and attended law school while clerking for the Mexico City office of a U.S.-based firm.
Manuel moved to San Antonio in January 1996 for what was meant to be a three-year assignment, met his wife Debbie, and in 1998 relocated to Dallas for a larger firm, with his work still tied closely to Mexico. He and Debbie raised two children in Dallas, Abby and Josh, and became deeply engaged in Jewish communal life. Manuel is active with AIPAC, serves on the board of Pro-Israel America, supports Jewish Rock Radio, and is involved with his synagogue and AJC. He credits his family's leadership and Zionism as central to their identity as proud Jews.
Full Transcript
my name's fonda r better and it is may 13 2021 and i'm interviewing manuel rajinov for the one story at a time project it's called viva shalom celebrating latin american jews in dallas good afternoon manuel hi panda how are you good to talk to you again same here will you please tell us where you're from originally um well i i was born in mexico city i have a pretty unique uh background uh i was born in mexico city uh but uh when i was uh eight years old uh my family moved from mexico city to the border to tijuana which is on the border with
san diego and i i stayed there until i graduated high school and what's what what school did you go to in tijuana so it's it's it's an interesting story so um obviously tijuana at that time was it was was somewhat of a small town and right and all of the private schools were parochial um uh were either boys only catholic schools or girls only catholic schools okay there was this one school um uh out uh uh on the outskirts of town that was run by a group of uh southern baptists and they ran it on a secular basis but they also ran it on the
platform that was the only bilingual school uh in town and so that's where all the jews and their kids at the time the jewish community of tijuana was probably about i want to say 900 families a thousand families um and where where did they all come from uh from tia one um how did they end up in tijuana well most of them were originally from mexico city or one of the large cities in mexico right and and and and a lot of them went there just to um just to strike fortune just like my family did right i mean they wanted to move into a
smaller the border was it was always very dynamic there was a lot of cross-border commerce and cross-border tourism and that gave a lot of these families the opportunity to um you know to to to strike it out in business and they built a very very nice community on the mexican side of the border back in the 60s and 70s eventually eventually the community moved northward into the u.s but it's still very interesting how even though the community has been basically us-based for probably the last 30 years uh maybe 35 years um it's it hasn't integrated to the broader jewish community of san diego the mexican
jewish community of san diego is still pretty pretty self-contained with their own institutions their own their own um you know their own their own organizations and they stick together but but my schooling at the time so we all went to this school run by southern baptists which they they were secular they were not teaching religion okay but they ran in and they're a very christian very christian philosophy but they were very very open and very welcoming of the jewish population and and that's where the jews went to school the the byproduct of that is that it was bilingual that's how i learned how to speak
english oh tell me um what kind did you have a jewish life in tijuana i mean what what kind of synagogue what kind of jewish community center you had yeah we had a very vibrant jewish community jewish life in tijuana um like i said there was a thousand families and we were very uh very very cool very well stuck together very cohesive uh we are we we have our own i mean they're still still operating the jcc which served both as the social gathering place for the community but also as a school uh it was a i would say a conservatox synagogue okay that uh
on friday night services we could sit men and women together but in shabbat in the high holidays we would sit separate um and uh you know some like i mean microphones were used but no video i mean it was a very it was a very like i said conservatox community uh but it was very uh it was very very very strongly committed to judaism and we even had uh we had we had a hebrew school which operated every day from monday through thursday so and where where where did you meet at the jcc i mean we would we would we would uh we would go
we would go to a regular schooling you know during the day from say 8 a.m in the morning to 2 o'clock in the afternoon and then we would go from 4 30 to 6 30 monday through thursday for um for hebrew school um and then and then on saturdays we had our uh our zionist youth organization uh affiliated with uh with makabi so uh it was a very very zionistic very very uh jewish uh community that was very very attached to our cultural heritage did you graduate um uh high school in tijuana yeah i graduated high school so that little baptist school that i went
to only went through middle school um so for high school you know we all had to make decisions and and a lot of the people went to it went to the us to to high school to a public school in the united states some others um went to a a different high school in mexico but for me the best fit was actually a catholic high school and i was i was the first jew to ever be admitted into this catholic high school and it was very very interesting because my parents were very very concerned about me going to this school so they negotiated with the
with the with the headmaster of the school that i did not have to attend religion classes that during religion classes or mass i could go to the library and and work on a paper on a i would have to submit a paper each month and judaism uh so you know i probably wrote four papers and recycled them throughout the the years but uh very interesting and and and you graduated there yeah but i mean it was quite interesting that after one year i figured you know what this is silly i'll go take the classes and i'll just use it as a cultural background and i
did and uh and i learned a lot about about the catholic faith and it actually reaffirmed my jewish um and that was very interesting so i graduated high school in 1990 and then i moved back to mexico city my entire family we moved back to mexico city and i went to law school in mexico city and um how and why did you make the decision to leave mexico this is another interesting story so when i was uh when i was in law school in mexico city i was clerking for the mexico city office of a us-based firm in san antonio very small tournament san antonio
okay and um when i graduated they told me hey why don't you come and work in the u.s for two or three years and you know learn about how we operate etc and eventually you can go back and help us develop our own mexico city office or a broader mexico city office and at the time i was i was single i had just finished law school and i really wanted to come back and be closer to the u.s so i said why not so i moved in january of 96 to san antonio for what was supposed to be a three-year stint and 25 and a
half years later i'm still here and the main reason i ended up staying was because i met daddy my wife um who is originally from new york but grew up in chicago uh her parents are israeli and you know we met when i was working on a project in chicago for a client and and i decided that i wanted to stay in the u.s and make a life out of living in the us and uh eventually i changed jobs and in 98 we moved to dallas and we've been here ever since um what brought you to dallas it was a job it was it was
it was a job opportunity i wanted to go to a bigger market i wanted to go to a bigger firm um i wanted to work on on on bigger uh matters that i was working on in the small firm in san antonio and uh and i met through some people that i met that was i had the opportunity to come to dallas um and all the work that i do still has to still uh deals with mexico so i continue to go to mexico my entire family is still down there my siblings my parents my aunts and uncles my grandmother i'm the only one that
doesn't live in mexico city uh so i still go down there or before covered i was going down there a lot um and still see family but i ended up in dallas because of a job and the community embraced debbie and i fairly could i mean i got married about six months after i moved here and the community has embraced us since then and both of our kids were born here uh and uh and this is where home is for us now uh can you list your kids and their names sure so i have a daughter who was 19 years old her name's abby uh
abigail uh she goes to ringling college of arts and design in sarasota florida very nice she just finished her sophomore year we're very proud of her she's a very talented art student and i'm very familiar with it yes yeah i mean you've seen her work yes and then our son our son is joshua josh is 16 years old and he's a sophomore here at wakeland high school in frisco okay there it goes now you know we didn't talk about your um grandparents or how your entire how your family ended up in mexico city uh sure so i mean my my family is a total mishmash
well let let's sort it out let's start with your either great grandparents or grandparents whichever one i'll start on my father's side that's going to be okay so on my father's side is ashkenazi um on on my father's side my grandfather's family uh came to mexico in the 1920s from ukraine um the the entire family who came was from around the area of kiev and and my grandfather was actually born in kiev uh and his father give me his name please uh david david david what oh okay okay got it got it and and and he and his family you know his father and his
mother and his siblings they moved to mexico in the 1920s and what brought them to mexico uh i mean they were just fleeing fleeing close acts yeah yeah being fleeing prosecution in europe and again we all wanted to come to america i mean the family i mean the goal of the family was to come to america but at the time and america meaning the united states but you know immigration into the united states was limited so usually the next port of call was either cuba or mexico uh and they came to mexico you know with the idea that one day they would come to the
us but obviously that's the story of the jewish community of mexico in general not just my family um and they eventually you know stayed in mexico and made a great life uh my grandmother on my father's side they also came into 20s and they came from poland uh same reasons escaping prosecution and uh and they again they settled in mexico um and um and uh you know and and and and and that's and you know we had family that was left back back in poland in in the ukraine and unfortunately a lot of them perished in the holocaust um and uh some of them were
able to escape uh some of them are in israel today some of them uh are in the united states but but i really they're very distant family members of this do you how did your grandparents meet in mexico city i mean i mean the mexico city community has always been very tight-knit um they just met through the community i mean and it's very it's very um it's very um the community is also very uh divided amongst uh ethnic background and by i mean i mean geographical background yeah yeah so the ash can now have their own institutions their own synagogues their own day schools uh
you know their own everything and then and then the the spartak they're even further divided amongst themselves depending on the on the areas that they come from and that's where my mom's family's from so my mom's family um my great grandfather on my mom's side and my my grandfather's father and my mom's came to mexico in the 1910s from from uh aleppo syria okay wow and uh and and they they they were not escaping prosecution there was no part they were just looking for again they were coming to america there's there's a big my family name on my mom's side which is tawil is a
very very large uh family uh from aleppo syria there's actually jews and non-jews can you spell that for me p-a-w-i-l i t-a-w-i-l correct and and and if you go to brooklyn today you'll find a lot of syrian jews that come from aleppo and there's a lot of people that have that same last name and they're all somehow related to me wow my great-grandfather ended up in mexico uh and then on my grandmother's side on my mom's side uh her family was originally from damascus but at some point in the 1890s they went they went to live in beirut and my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother met
in beirut and they eventually came to mexico in the 1920s um via paris how many how many kids did they have they're 12. 12 children yeah and your mother's one of 12. no my my my mother's won a fight my great my grandmother had 11 suits um got it my the interesting thing is that at my grandmother's house in mexico city there is a picture of her there's a wedding picture of her parents the truth is is that that picture and then they're wearing the wedding dress and the tuxedo the reality is that that picture was not taken on their wedding that picture was taken when they were in paris underway underway to mexico and by then they already had three children and my great-grandmother was pregnant with a fourth wow are they are they any of them
living now my grandmother so my grandmother and her younger brother are the only ones alive the only only ones and they live in they live in mexico city yes uh and give me your wait the last name of your grandmother her maiden name yeah it's yadiv y e d id okay and she was also from uh she she was one she was born in mexico but but several but three of her siblings were born in lebanon okay got it okay got it so uh did your grandparents in mexico city have any on your mother's side did they have a business or what did they do
uh so uh on my on my father's side um they were uh they owned tanneries they were leather leather people uh-huh they own leather tanneries and leather distribution businesses okay my grandmother's side on my my mom's side i should say uh they were all in the shemata business clothing okay um and um and that's and that's what they did at the time you know the mexican jewish community in mexico i would say from the early tournament of the 20th century until the 40s and 50s um they were all merchants that were mostly merchants sure very few of them went into into any into any type
of professions or we went to college um at the time you know there was a lot of anti-semitism in mexico the the community managed to um organize itself in a way that it created every institution you can imagine to protect the jewish community from assimilation and anti-semitism uh that's what you have i mean you have mexico today of about 30 000 to 50 000 jews that's it um but you're about 10 days that go from pre-k to through uh through high school um you have you have the largest jc scene in latin america um i mean they just have every institution you can imagine for
jews who basically live in a jewish environment you know our guest speaker for the event may 27th is the consultant on a new museum being built about the jews it's brand new yeah it's being built in mexico city and she's the consultant yeah that's pretty that's pretty cool i mean the mexican community is very unique in the sense that uh it's it's very similar to the south african jewish community from what i gather uh-huh and um and uh in the sense that it's a small one but but but it's very it's very influential in mexico it's been very very successful the anti-semitism that i talked
about was never any overt anti-semitism was more like they wouldn't allow kids to join you know they wouldn't allow jewish families to join clubs or to go to certain private schools whatever um but it's been a thriving jewish community it's been both financially very successful but it's also been very enriching to the arts uh to literature to journalism i mean mexico everybody you know the mexican band rather right the mexican walter cronkite the man that for 40 years came into mexico's living rooms to deliver the news from the 1960s through the 1990s as a jewish man and oh no kidding yeah yeah and so so
the the jewish community even though has never pursued political power uh you we have jews that have been you know ministers of government or but we've never had any any member of the jewish community run for public office for elected office or whatever the mexican jewish community has always been very very uh respected by the community has been very respected by the government and and and it was really very it's been always very well embraced by mexican society um do you get together with a lot of your family members around the country uh once a year or do you have any traditions like that i
mean when we go to mexico i mean i mean i mean i go i mean i go to mexico probably i mean again before colby i would go to mexico twice a month and invariably i would go to dinner with my family i mean i would go to sure i mean um i mean we we we attend my family comes here we go there uh where there's a big sim card we go down there and we get together we don't have a tradition of a family reunion once a year but but we tend to try to see each other as often as we can as
the as the you know as the opportunity arises you know i i know that you have been very involved in aipac tell us about your involvement in that organization well you know growing up in mexico in the jewish community zionism was was was was part of who we were right being being supportive of the state of israel and being uh a zionist was part of our essence and um you know when when when i was growing up i always saw israel as as an important component of my life and you know a few years ago but that one's about 15 years ago after the second
lebanon war i was starting during the second intifada i was struggling to figure out exactly how can i uh support the state of israel while in the united states and rabbi weinberg aranche and a few other friends uh introduced me to aipac and i've always been very passionate about politics and i've always been very passionate about israel so apac gave me the gave me the ability to combine both passions and be able to channel uh my appreciation for politics and my love for israel in a way that would that would make tangible difference for for israel uh aipac is is a bipartisan lobbying and and
what we do is we we we work with our elected officials the 535 members of congress to make sure that the united states stands shoulder to shoulder with israel because israel is not only a critical ally to the united states it's a beacon of democracy and progressive and american values in the region uh and and and just a small example of the work that we do is being on display this week as rockets are firing on israel from hamas terrorists um you know israel the israeli society is being protected by the iron dome missile defense system make no mistake about it the iron dome missile
defense system is israeli technology but it would have never come to be had it not been for the strong support of the united states and specifically the financial support of the united states government and aipac plays a critical role in that by loving our members of congress to make sure that they appropriate on an annual basis uh military assistance to israel much of which are some of which goes to developing this missile defense systems that right now are not only saving jewish lives because obviously they're intercepting rockets that are being uh uh lobbed at israeli civilians but they're also saving palestinian lives because if it
were not for iran uh and and hamas would be firing rockets at israeli civilians and the rate that they're firing them israel would have no other choice but to immediately go into gaza and neutralize the threat from the ground which would inevitably um result in much much higher palestinian casualties so iron dome is saving israeli lives because it's it's intercepting the rockets that are being fired israel but it's also saving palestinian lives because it's allowing israel to restrain itself from taking even more uh aggressive action to neutralize the threat well apex really lucky to have you yeah um are there any other organizations that you're
active in yeah i mean i'm very involved with our synagogue with ancient torah i'm very involved with with what we do at the school i think that the school is the central um gathering place for our community that's where my kids uh grew up that's where they went to preschool that's when i went to hebrew school that's where they were bar mitzvah bar and bad mitzvah that's why i hope they get married one day so the synagogue is is the central element of our jewish life uh i'm involved with ajc i like i like the some of the things that they do um uh and
uh uh uh you know and other organizations progress of america uh jewish rock radio um tell me about that what is that so joey's rock radio is the brainchild of a good friend of mine named rick wright uh i'm sorry rick who rig wrecked rick he's the child singer correct the jewish musician that's right that that mostly does songs for children although he does songs for teenagers he's a very popular figure in the jewish camp circuit and about uh 15 years ago 10 10 15 years ago he started this organization called jewish rock radio which essentially is an incubator for jewish artists and um and
it's actually a website that you can go on jewish rock jr jewishrockradio.com i think that's the website and you can listen to this artist play their music and there's a channel that's dedicated to israeli music and that's uh debbie and i um are are the sponsors of and uh so i'm involved i'm on the board i'm the board of pro israel america which is a political action committee so wait wait tell me tell me that clearly yeah some of the board of directors of pro israel america which is a a political action committee uh which uh which is which essentially uh what we're doing through
that is we're the largest bipartisan pro-israel political action committee in the country we raise money for uh democrats and republican pro-israel candidates uh and we raise it from the general public you're gonna have you're gonna have to tell me i'm sorry again then it's probably the name again slowly it's pro-israel america pro-israel america and that's different than aipac does the elected officials correct apec is a lobby organization pro-israel america is a fundraising like like clf or something like that um more like black blue or winrate okay okay okay so it's pro-israel america and you're active in that right okay do you want to show um
some of the pictures of your family sure so uh i don't know if you guys can see this uh get it pretty close to let me turn let me take out the virtual background because that's what's causing the problem here just give me a second can you see now so this is a picture can you guys see it um yeah lean it down just a teeny bit no oh okay right there so that's a picture of my family in acapulco when abby was months old this is my grandmother my mom's mother that's my mom that's my dad this is my brother who's 30 years old
now that's my brother-in-law that's my sister and my nephew that's 19 years old now that's deadly my wife and abby my daughter and that's myself i'm sorry you're gonna have to go back and tell me their names so that's debbie my wife that's me below it is vikki my sister and is she married yeah she's married to the guy next to her this is arielle what's his last name i mean her husband's what picker p-i-t-k c-k-e-r okay all right and she's holding her son alan okay next to them is my brother david okay next to david is my father furman okay next to my dad
is my mom anna and next to my mom is my mom's mother my grandmother victoria yeah you told me her last name victoria i will yeah i will and this is this is a picture of my grandmother victoria holding josh my son uh where's the picture taken in acapulco also this was a few years later of course very nice yeah so so um like the rest of the picture i have are electronic um in this day and age we don't have them printed so i have a bunch of other colors you can send them to jessica and she can add them into your file she
can't put them in the video but she can put them in your file for you just so if anyone ever researches you later on they can see the pictures oh that'd be great i'll do that but make sure you list the names of who they are because and where your the pictures are taken i will do so and is um debbie active in school tell me just real quick what what she does so debbie is on the board of anche uh and she's about to be on the executive committee of anche uh very very involved she's chaired many committees at the show she's chaired um
uh you know she's chair the childhood committee she's chaired the religious school committee uh she's uh chaired uh she's chairing a fundraiser right now the menorah project uh and now she's going to be in the executive committee so again leadership in the jewish community is important to our family um not only to debbie and i but to our kids abby's been involved uh in in jewish causes uh her entire life and now josh uh josh is involved with aj's leaders for tomorrow program uh he's involved in the stand with us internship program high school internship program he's been on apac saban high school uh training
summits and he's on review oil leadership regional board so you know being part of a community jewish community is i mean we are first and foremost jewish you know with my background right i'm from mexico i live in the united states my grandparents are ukrainian polish lebanese syrian uh and and and my wife is born in new york from israeli parents that came to israel came to pre-straight pre-state palestine from germany um what are we the reality is that we're and that's the essence of who we are uh and and that's it we're very proud of it we're very uh we're we don't shy away
from it where you can see i have an israeli flag behind me um and and being jewish is the essence of who we are so being leaders in the jewish community is important to us well is there anything else you want to add to this i think we've touched on it all except just real quick um did you send your kids here to a jewish preschool no yes the preschool yes they both went to anche for preschool but then they went to the public school systems here in frisco okay i just i just wanted to clarify that now um i think we touched on everything
so any uh closing words no thank you very much i mean this is a great project i want to thank uh the the jewish historical society for doing this uh it's very exciting for me it's an honor to speak to you guys and to share my my story uh and i can't wait to see the final product on the program you know dallas is very lucky to have your wife and your children here so involved in the jewish community um i just want to thank you no thank you thank you and give my regards to jay and in regards to your daughters and uh i
will thanks manuel thank you okay talk to you later bye