Nechama Baron
Nechama Baron was born in 1946 in Turkistan, then part of Russia, in the aftermath of World War II. When she was only a week old, her parents traveled by train back to Poland hoping to find their families, but their relatives had all been killed by the Nazis. The family stayed in Poland for four years, where her parents felt the weight of antisemitism and saw no future. They applied to go to Israel, arriving in the early 1950s, and Nechama grew up there. She trained to teach English as a second language and taught for a year in schools in Ramla and Lod.
In 1967, just after the Six-Day War, a cousin who taught Yiddish in Mexico City invited Nechama to come teach Hebrew. She intended to stay one year but remained for 16, teaching Hebrew and Bible to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders and learning Spanish, which she came to see as essential for understanding the mentality and culture of the people around her. She embraced Mexico's rich cultural life and its many museums. She met her husband Eli through a nature and travel club, and the couple married in Israel before returning to Mexico and eventually moving to Dallas in 1983.
The family settled in Dallas as their son approached his bar mitzvah, which they celebrated in Israel. Nechama found teaching work at Solomon Schechter around 1984, preparing her own first-grade Hebrew materials since the school then went only through fourth grade. She and Eli built friendships largely through their children and among fellow immigrants from Israel, Argentina, Mexico, and elsewhere. After retiring from teaching, including years at a Solomon Schechter and later at a high school, she moved to Plano in 2006 and stayed active with Bible classes, book clubs, and an online Spanish-language book club connecting readers across Latin America and Spain. She takes pride in her children and grandchildren and in her long, loving career in Jewish education.
Full Transcript
joe reingold and i am interviewing nakama baron for the aviva shalom celebrating latin american jews here in dallas good afternoon nakamura goodbye we have history we go way back to when solomon schechter first opened that's when we first met but can you please tell everybody what is your original your origin where are your parents your grandparents from how did they get where they lived and where did you grow up okay you know i am like a typical a a jew that is going from one place to another actually i was born in turkistan which was russia after the war in 46 and my when i
was just a week old after the war my parents um went back they took the train and went back to a poland to see if they find their parents which they didn't find they were all killed by the nazis and we stayed in poland for four years and we already felt my parents felt the anti-semitism and they didn't see any future there and they applied to go to israel it took us a year in the 50s we arrived and actually i grew up in israel and i studied um [Music] for a teacher teaching english as a second language and i thought a whole year english
with a hebrew accent in sixth and seventh and eighth grade in israel in two schools in ramlan and in lod then i got a phone call from my cousin in mexico which worked as a teacher she was teaching yiddish in youth la met parets it's called the na then naya idi she should which doesn't exist anymore so uh and she asked if i can come to teach hebrew it was in 67 just after the six day war and i said well i will go for one year and um i stayed there for 16 years until we moved to dallas i was teaching there hebrew and
and torah bible and i actually learned the language i came there without without language just hebrew and yiddish um i remember when i was in the airport i met the headmaster of the talbot school from mexico and when he heard that i'm going to mexico he said well remember one thing he said it to me to me in spanish como mexico no idos like mexico you will not find another and i did not understand what he meant yet but he said when you go there you will find out and really i came to mexico i lived with my and rest rest in peace and um
i was teaching sixth and seventh and eighth grade in youth la with parrots and i took uh spanish at seven o'clock in the morning because i felt that i need the language in order to understand to understand the mentality of the people and i learned that you know language has a big importance in communication and in understanding what what people think and believe and you cannot translate it it is in their language i also discovered that mexico is a beautiful country a lot of culture a lot of museums and during the 16 years that i visited um museums i still did not finish to learn
everything um i um i enjoyed working there with my cousin she was the yiddish teacher and i was the hebrew teacher and um sure i was i also um missed israel at the same time it was hard because i left my my parents my my sister my family everybody and the country itself and we i've survived with letters that you know corresponding um weekly and sometimes daily and in those days um phone calls and traveled from mexico to israel was much more expensive than now um and then i met my husband and where did you meet him how did that happen i met him in
a it's like a uh it's a club of um like the sierra club here it was he was a he liked nature and he liked traveling and i went there with a friend and we started also to to go on trips and so actually this is where i met him and we married in israel and we thought to make a liatu as well but it didn't it didn't work out the way that we wanted so we came back to mexico and then we moved to dallas i asked him the same thing so i'll ask from your viewpoint how did you pick dallas why dallas and
what other places maybe did you consider well um a year before we moved to dallas actually we considered denville and we went with our children to denver and it was summertime it was beautiful we went in to see some schools there um but then i was researching about the weather and everything you know i lived in israel i was used to warm hot weather even and mexico is really mild weather it's like more like jerusalem and then i saw that denver has a very harsh winter and um yes when we went there and we saw houses and we saw these basements and um we were
not used to it but we took this in consideration so but we came back and we said that we are going to prepare ourselves and then um eli found an opportunity through his work to go to so we said well let's go to dallas did you move here without seeing it um actually went several times he came to dallas from work then we make a trip just to visit here but we because it was just the time that our son was turning 13 and we were um preparing him for the bar mitzvah that we thought to make it in israel and we did we made
it in israel so we came here we and we we uh took in account this place to live here um we found here some schools and i went to israel and i prepared everything for the bar mitzvah meanwhile eli found the house here and so we made the move do you still have any family left in poland and who is still in israel now in poland actually we don't have any family in israel i have my my sister and some some cousins and the family of eli he has a sister there and and his nephews and in mexico i have my my aunt passed away
but i have my cousin that i worked with here and she just turned 80 and she lives in in mexico city and i have she has um three children my cousins and grandchildren actually this friday one of the of her granddaughters is coming here and she will be with us the weekend and um so we have still family in mexico also family from a from eli's side okay what was life like for you to adjusting to dallas and the changes that you'd have to make moving here um it was much harder adjustment to mexico city than to dallas when i came to mexico i didn't
have i remember like not only language you know they moved from from i lived in tel aviv from tel aviv to to mexico to this big huge city with all the bridges we didn't have bridges now israel has religiously and and it's also it has grown a lot but in those days in 67 it was a big big difference tel aviv and in mexico city and not only mexico city i went to to veracruz and to acapulco and these places were for me fascinating um dallas was for me uh very clean and and and clean um because the mexico city started to be very polluted
and also no traffic people here complained about traffic but for me it was i didn't see any traffic because when i i compared it still to mexico city even now if you go to mexico city it's really a challenge just to cross the street walking and to drive there um i don't know i don't wish to drive there now you must be really a very good driver there to to drive and not to be bumped into others uh so but the um jewish life was totally different for me mexico city had very and has also now very rich um cultural life they have they have
they have hebrew schools they have seen many synagogues in when we we came in 83 here the jewish community center was for me very poor if i compared it to the uh to the one in mexico so it was um in a certain way um hard to adjust we didn't know what synagogue to go first and um for the children especially it was hard to to identify with the with the synagogues here um they adjusted to the schools very quickly that my fear was the school because you know they came without a language i a little bit um prepared them in english but not enough
but they um they survived they adjusted yes they adjusted faster than me yes um so um it was an adjustment but we really um we we made it fast and faster than they moved to to mexico city did you find work right away here or what did you do when you first um well when we came here the first year we our focus was on our children because we say they for them it was you know a big change so uh we worked with them to help them out during the year and they and actually um i found work in salomon chester through a friend
that is not a routine forgot her name that she lives now in israel and um they needed here a hebrew teacher the school here was just you know until fourth grade if you remember i used to teach more in sixth seventh and eighth grade but um and there were no material so i had to to make to prepare all the materials especially for first grade um so yes i worked there i think you started to work more or less at the same time that i i started in 84. right right exactly yes 84 we say it feinstein right so how did you find i don't think i asked your husband this how did you find the jewish community the people in it when you first came here did they help you were they friendly how did you what was the feel of the jewish community here besides the synagogue life but the people you see we came here no family and we made friends and usually most of our friends were through our children so um our first friends were actually our daughter daphna started in in elementary school she went to third grade and our son went
to junior high and daphne went to prestonwood and when i went to we just came when i went to pick up some materials the books and everything there was a woman there from ecuador and we became very good friends now they also move they live in philadelphia but we are still keeping a communication we went to visit them there and when they come to dallas they visit us so they were our first friends and then you know um both our children actually did not go to a jewish school they because um they needed the language and i didn't for them like our son was just
in uh in eighth grade so it was like one year so we didn't want to him to change we went to akiba to see but we sent him to westwood and um and daphna went to a school that was very close to our house to prestonwood and um so but we found friends that are in the jewish community and they were very nice um many of them most of them were actually from israel somewhere from argentina from mexico and the people here were very welcoming and very nice um uh it was a good experience to to meet the people here and to see because most
of them they were also new immigrants to the country so we all could identify with the same challenges and the same adjustments that we had to to make here but actually i will tell you that our children went to school and they adjusted very fast and they had to make their decisions what classes to take because we were not so familiar about the system here so they they found their way then they communicated with people and they um they finished here the school and then they studied in austin but um i know that our daughter afterwards when she had the children she sent them all
to a jewish school which are we were very happy um our son also sent them to akiva and then they went to green hill very good besides synagogue life what other things have you become involved in in this city not just jewish anything secular or anything in the community or jewish well we moved here in um in 83 and then we moved we moved again in dallas itself to plano um in 2006 and before i was working i was more busy with work and but now that i am actually retired i am more involved in in the neighborhood so we have here a bible class
and we have a book club and um uh i i actually found here a lot of friends in the neighborhood itself um eli is even involved in the in the neighborhood committee here he even formed the committee here which is um a friendly way to help people that have problems with you know with their yard or with paying dues or so uh actually now what i am more than anything involved is in book labs in traveling i have now a new book club which is very interesting that i found through the internet and it is with uruguay and um i meet there we have we
meet through the zoom once a month and i meet their people from spain from mexico from argentina from peru and most of them are from uruguay and they are actually from the group of neighborhoods and um the book lab is in spanish so i have the opportunity to practice more my spanish and and to read also in spanish so now i want to ask you you've been here a long time you and your husband and raised a family here how have you seen dallas change from when you first got here until now what do you think well the jewish community here has grown a lot
there are more synagogues when we came here there were really just um one one one orthodox and one reform now you have many more choices the jewish community the jcc is has a lot of activities i was teaching there rejoice of jewish learning and i was i am i sent the children there to all kind of activities um so the city has grown in the jewish aspect and also uh it has grown in the population now i can say that there is also traffic here not not you know everything is relative it's not as bad as the city right but it still gets bad yes
exactly you know if i if you remember when we were in salomon monsieur we said oh we are teaching in a place that it's nowhere there is nothing because everything like ended in frankfurt and nothing like all the empty fields for the north and now you hardly find an empty place in the north either because many of the co you know companies came here so now now you put your house on market and in less than a week it's gone all right there is a lot of demand yes if you had to pick one thing if that's possible what are you the most proud of
in your life um you know i am i am proud of my children the way that they raise their children i'm proud of my grandchildren i am i have very good memories in all my years of teaching it was very hard to to stop teaching when i stopped teaching salomon i still was teaching you know private lessons and and volunteered here and there in the synagogues because it was something that i i did with love i liked it very much yeah i know the feeling i made it 29 years yes and i still when i left salmon i went i i was teaching three years
at missouri high school and i enjoyed the girls there very much it was a very good experience also well we're wrapping it up but is there anything else you would like to add to your interview at all it's um i i actually i just i want to say that um it's it has been an experience living in different places and knowing people in different places we are all you know we are we all have at the same needs and um and this and things in common but you know each place has its unique um unique system and culture and and that that enriches your life
so i'm very happy that i could move from one place to another and uh and to start a new life so um sometimes they move to another place is like opening a door in the window to to to a new to another world and it's a big opportunity which i uh i appreciate that i i did have the opportunity to do it also the languages that you learn are a are like doors to to meet people and um you know now that we had this year that a very special um here that we were in a certain way isolated but in the same way we
um we could communicate with so many people from from outside the the city so you know when when things happen you the only way is to adjust and to make the best you can of it because every situation has its you know its advantages and disadvantages so even this covered year um gave us a lot of opportunities and enriched us with many tools that we use is now it's not i i just think about teaching now which is not not an an easy uh challenge um but you know teachers make it and the students have the opportunity to study here and so i think it's
um it was a good life it's not over yet we're certainly happy you ended up here good luck with everything and in the future going forward thank you so much okay thank you