Caribbean archipelago gets its first synagogue and permanent rabbi
When Jill Swann moved to the Caribbean Island of Providenciales to teach windsurfing and sailing, she found just about everything she wanted in Turks and Caicos, an archipelago of 30 islands boasting 230 miles of beach, most of it sprinkled with soft, white sand and surrounded by the sparkling blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Although it was hard for Swann not to fall in love with the place, “there was no Jewish infrastructure and no one to pull the Jews together,” the native of Long Island, N.Y., who has lived on Providenciales—the “gateway” of the Turks and Caicos Islands—for 35 years tells Chabad.org. “After I adopted my son, I took him to church because I wanted to give him a belief in a higher power.”
Today, much has changed, with Jewish services and community growing in large part due to the warmth and leadership of Rabbi Shmulik and Chaya Berkowitz, who founded the first synagogue and Jewish community center in the archipelago’s history in late 2019, only a few months before the coronavirus pandemic began to spread worldwide.
In a villa right off Providenciales’s main thoroughfare, Grace Bay Road, Chabad of Turks and Caicos Islands is easily accessible to guests at the island’s many hotels. “The rabbi and Chaya are so warm and so inviting; people love coming to their home for Shabbat meals or attending services and events,” attests Swann. “I know visitors who have even bought homes on the island to be close to them and participate.”
During the past year, when much of the world was shut down due to the pandemic, Rabbi Berkowitz says they saw steady participation, in part due to North American families who chose to isolate themselves there, attending school and work virtually from the Caribbean.
All through the winter, the Berkowitzes held outdoor Shabbat services and communal meals, and expect to continue with their regular activities until the island empties for the hurricane season in August.
Having gotten to know more and more locals over the year-and-a-half since they arrived, the Berkowitzes hosted 80 people for the Passover Seder in a giant tent.
Since nearly all food is imported from the United States (the British territory is 600 miles southeast of Miami and uses American currency), there is no shortage of kosher staples. Meat and dairy, however, have had to be shipped in privately and kept frozen. The rabbi reports that he has arranged for a local supermarket to carry the kosher products and expects kosher meat to be on the shelves in a matter of weeks.
To serve the local children as well as those there just for this past winter, the Berkowitzes have held pre-holiday educational events and hope to start a Hebrew school in time for the coming school year.
‘We Knew This Was the Place for Us’
The two both come from families that have served as Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries for generations. Chaya Berkowitz is from Miami, where both her parents and grandparents are emissaries, and the rabbi is from Los Angeles, and would frequently assist Chabad Houses nearby and abroad. After they married in the winter of 2019, they began searching for a place where they could make a difference.
Through Rabbi Mendel Zarchi of Chabad of Puerto Rico, who founded the first permanent Chabad House in the Caribbean in 1999, they became acquainted with Turks and Caicos, and flew down for a pilot trip.
Zarchi then connected them with an individual who owns a home in Turks and Caicos and had promised to contribute toward the founding of a Chabad presence there. Three weeks after the birth of their child, Shalom Dov Ber, the Berkowitzes moved to Providenciales, just in time to celebrate Chanukah 2019.
“We had a big menorah-lighting on the beach, and 100 people showed up,” recalls the rabbi, “and we knew this was the place for us. We were busy every night with lightings in resorts and villas.”
With a Torah scroll Zarchi had obtained from the Jaffa Foundation, they began hosting Shabbat services and were planning their first Passover with their new community.
Then the pandemic hit, and they had to halt their operations until the restrictions eased up, but they used the quiet time to get to know people individually and reach out to Jewish islanders and second-home-owners.
“Turks and Caicos is a very small community even by Caribbean standards,” says Zarchi, who has overseen the founding of Chabad centers on 14 islands. “But the Berkowitzes have synergizing different energies that comprise the Jewish experience—primarily the locals, as well as those with second homes, and those who visit briefly to enjoy the beauty of Turks and Caicos—facilitating a fantastic surge of Jewish life.”
The Berkowitzes report that they keep on “finding” more and more local Jewish residents who are excited to learn that they have a center for Jewish worship and celebration on the island. “It is amazing how fast Jewish souls can be ignited,” says the rabbi. “The Jewish pride and Jewish awareness on the island is growing by leaps and bounds.”
One indication of how far things have developed is the fact that they are now under contract to purchase a permanent location for their center, which they hope will soon be expanded to include a mikvah as well.
“The Berkowitzes reach out to people and make connections,” observes Swann. “I speak for many others when I say that I am very grateful that they are here.”
