New president, new year: What the election of Claudia Sheinbaum might mean for 40,000 Mexican Jews

EL CENTRO, CALIF. (CN) — Over a million people live in Mexicali, Mexico, but to celebrate important religious holidays the city’s observant Jews have to wait sometimes hours in line to cross the border into the U.S. to attend services at the region’s only synagogue in El Centro, California — population 64,000.

For Laura Derobles, a Jewish resident of Mexicali, “It’s the moment to be with people who connect me with Judaism,” and not just religion, but customs and traditions. She braved the thankfully quick border crossing security line to attend Rosh Hashanah services at Congregation Beth Jacob in El Centro on Wednesday night.

Religious services to mark the beginning of the Jewish near year — where about half the congregation of two dozen travel from Mexicali and have a live translator to translate the rabbi’s English into Spanish — and break challah and dip apples into honey to actualize a sweet year. Schmoozing with fellow congregants means “things we have will continue,” Derobles said.

But this year, 5785 in the lunisolar Jewish calendar, is a little different.

This week, Mexico inaugurated not only its first female president, but its first president of Jewish heritage, Claudia Sheinbaum.

“It was a big surprise, one because she’s a woman, then because she’s Jewish.” Derobles said in Spanish through a translator about Sheinbaum’s election. “It awakens a lot of expectations.”

Although she’s the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Bulgaria and Lithuania, and in the past she’s said she celebrated Jewish holidays with them and feels a cultural connection to Jewish identity, Sheinbaum said she was raised without religion.

During her inauguration ceremony on Tuesday, Sheinbaum described herself as “a mother, a grandmother, a scientist and a woman of faith, and from today, by the will of the Mexican people, the president.” What faith remained in the ears of the listener.

Although Sheinbaum didn’t reach out to the Mexican-Jewish community during her campaign, Derobles said she trusts the new president was raised with Jewish values. But those markers of identity don’t mean anything if she doesn’t put them into action to improve the county’s education system, the state of human rights in the country, and safety and security — a task that might be harder to achieve because of her gender and heritage in a country full of machismo and subtle antisemitism, Derobles added.

Some of that antisemitism comes from people just not being personally familiar with Jews in their lives, since the Mexican-Jewish community numbers just 40,000 spread throughout Mexico, she said.

Some of that antisemitism became less subtle during Sheinbaum’s campaign, which saw photoshopped pictures grotesquely elongating her nose shared on social media and comments about her family being rich immigrants and communists who launder money.

When Sheinbaum was photographed wearing a crucifix, Mexico’s former President Vicente Fox reposted the picture on X and wrote “JEWISH AND FOREIGN AT THE SAME TIME.”

And many in Mexico’s Jewish community don’t support Sheinbaum. One student who spoke on condition of anonymity said they voted for her but doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it with their parents because “it’s been very demonized" — some members of the Jewish community think voting for Sheinbaum is voting against the community’s own interest.

A part of that interest is the community’s security, said a Mexican-Jewish woman who now lives in the U.S. and also requested anonymity to protect her family’s safety.

It’s dangerous to criticize the government. “There’s no safe place anywhere. Not now,” she said.

For her, violence spread by cartels and government corruption from the drug wars, and whether Sheinbaum will do anything to stop it, is a major issue. But she said she’s always wary Sheinbaum will continue it like her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“Maybe this Claudia will change something. Maybe. You can never say never,” she said.

Security has especially been on the community’s mind after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault on southern Israeli towns and Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza. Derobles said some in the community are concerned with how Sheinbaum and her political party, the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, will use their foreign policy power in Israel and Gaza, and now Lebanon and Iran.

Morena is critical of Israel but the Mexican people “have nothing against Israel here,” said Rabbi Yosi Mayzlesh, co-director of Chabad of Bosques outside of Mexico City.

“Here it’s different, it’s not Europe, there isn’t that much antisemitism,” he said.

This past June, the International Court of Justice confirmed Mexico had requested to join South Africa’s case claiming that the Israeli government is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

But, the next day, then-President Lopez Obrador refused to define Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide.

Sheinbaum has been tight-lipped about Israel and Gaza, but according to the Jerusalem Post she did condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel while also calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Mexican-Jews — and all Mexicans — will know if she’s a good president, and her character, in the first 100 days of her presidency according to Anna Vandiver, who lives in Calexico, Mexicali’s sister city in California. Vandiver served as the translator for the Spanish-speaking congregants at the Rosh Hashanah services.

Vandiver said “we just hope she’s a woman of values” who upholds the needs and protects the Mexican people, especially women who are subject to increasing violence and femicide.

And Derobles said she hopes that Sheinbaum’s presidency will give the Mexican-Jewish community an opportunity to find points of commonality.