Photos courtesy of and article by Dani Rotstein Dani Rotstein, originally from Woodcliff, New Jersey, is a graduate of Wesleyan University with a degree in Film Studies, and lived in Madrid for one year as part of Wesleyan’s study-abroad program. Later, he began his career as a television commercial producer while living in Miami for six years. Dani has been living in Majorca, Spain with his wife and son since 2014. Editor’s Note: Majorca (this is the British spelling, although the official spelling is “Mallorca”) is a small island off the eastern coast of Spain (see map below). However you spell it, it is pronounced my-YOUR-kah.
For millennia, the Jewish people have overcome darkness. We have prevailed against those who sought to destroy us in each generation by carrying our beliefs, traditions, culture, and, most importantly, our strong sense of peoplehood, forward. Rabbi Hillel reminds us in Pirkei Avot 1:14: “If I am not for myself, who is for me?” implying that each one of us can carry the torch and lead our communities out of the darkness. And this flame can continue to glow when we are connected and dare to share the beauty of our people with the world around us.
My Journey to Majorca
I was raised with a strong sense of Jewish identity, though I was never that observant. Growing up in New Jersey, my parents sent me to a Jewish sleepaway summer camp where I befriended other Jews from around the country and learned the song, “Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish.” At 18 years old I had the unique opportunity to live and learn in Israel, embarking on the Young Judaea Year Course program. There, I strengthened my relationship with Israel and the Jewish people. From learning Hebrew and being able to communicate with my Israeli grandparents, to training with the Israeli Air Force for a week, to living on a religious kibbutz, it was the best year of my life. As I witnessed Jews from around the world come together in Israel, it opened my eyes to the value of our Jewish family — for myself, my friends, and the global community. After returning to the United States and graduating college, I worked in film production in Miami and New York but started to feel a need for change. I was missing that same sense of fulfillment that I had experienced in Israel. I was overworked and desperately needed a break from the rat race of New York City. In college, I had studied abroad in Madrid and had enjoyed it so much – I knew that Spain was calling to me, and I was ready to go. I’ve now been living in Majorca, Spain for five years, and I have again found my purpose in the Jewish community. Originally, I thought that there were no Jews in Majorca. I was quickly proven wrong when I found out about a volunteer-led synagogue with a small group of followers on the island. As I sat at one of the services, I learned that not everyone there was Jewish. There’s a group of people on the island known as Chuetas who identify as Catholic yet quietly preserve the light of a Jewish community nearly forgotten. The Chuetas are descendants of Majorca’s medieval Jewish community and some feel connected to their Jewish ancestry to this day. This finding blew me away as I thought about how powerful Jewish history is: these people are reviving a nearly dissolved Jewish legacy from over 600 years ago!
I was invited to attend once-a-month Shabbat dinners with a small group of Chuetas who had converted and/or returned to Judaism. I looked forward every month to spending time with them, learning from them, and hearing incredible untold family stories. I would bring with me my non-Jewish girlfriend at the time (now wife and mother of our son) who had also begun to express an interest in learning about Judaism as I was expressing an interest to reconnect with my own Judaism. You see, history and culture and what binds us together as a people with a collective shared past — that is what excites me. And who better to learn from than a group of people that were reconnecting to their ancestors’ faith from centuries past! Therefore, I became more involved, determined to instill around the island the passion for Jewish life in the people who were practicing Judaism in various ways. I started by hosting challah-baking workshops and Purim parties, and from there, the excitement spread to others. Our numbers kept increasing, and we became a tighter-knit community. In fact, we’re currently up to 60-70 attendees at our Shabbat dinners.
Limud Mallorca
My wife and I founded Limud Mallorca (limudmallorca.com), a non-profit Jewish cultural association intent on bringing Jewish culture and life to disconnected Jews living on the island, families of mixed-marriages, and those non-Jews interested in learning about and connecting with Jewish values and history. We organized multiple learning conferences that are trilingual — in English, Spanish, and Mallorquin (a dialect of Catalan that is spoken
on the island). We are a volunteer-run organization that is now working with the Palma City Hall and organizing cultural activities and social events: documentary screenings, book presentations, choir concerts, lectures, seminars, holiday celebrations, and community Shabbat dinners at different vegetarian restaurants around the island. Last year the city of Palma’s Department of Education asked us to visit public schools and conduct workshops centered on Holocaust education. Our first educational conference was in May 2018 and we expected around 20 or 30 people, but we ended up with over 85 attendees from around the world! The following year, more than 150 people attended. Soon after our first event, the president of the local synagogue, La Comunidad Judia de les Illes Balears, decided to resign and nobody wanted to fill his shoes. I decided to step up to the task and was elected to sit on the synagogue’s board of directors. Leading alongside me were three Jews by choice, two of whom were Chuetas. This was the first time in over 600 years that Mallorquin natives with Jewish ancestry were once again a part of the leadership of the local Jewish community (the shul had been started in the 1970s by British Ashkenazis who had retired and moved to the island and ever since then had been led by Jewish expats or Spanish nationals from outside the Balearic Islands).
In August 2018, not only was a new board elected, but two Chuetas traveled to Israel to be married under a chuppah — the first-ever Chueta wedding to take place in Israel. The other noteworthy event was the inauguration of a memorial in Plaza Gomila remembering the Crypto-Jews who were burned at the stake in 1691. A memorial had been under petition for at least 40 years and finally manifested itself in the same month as the synagogue board elections and the wedding in Israel, as well as other events. We are living through watershed moments in Mallorquin Jewish history.
Visiting Majorca?
Throughout this time, I was still working as a TV commercial producer, but after volunteering with the synagogue and Limud Mallorca, I decided to make the final leap of faith — to leave my job and open up an educational tourism company called Jewish Majorca (www.jewishmajorca.com).
Our mission is to offer an interactive learning experience that engages both visitors and residents alike and sparks further curiosity into the subject. We opened in May 2019 and had a wonderful first summer and already had bookings for a 400 person Kosher for Pesach holiday in 2020 along with multiple Bar Mitzvah cruise trips and Jewish destination weddings planned. All of this was stopped in its tracks due to the arrival of Señor COVID. Instead of shutting down operations and giving up our dream, we decided to adapt and innovate. We now offer Zoom virtual tours to different communities around the world and even have a standalone Live Walking Virtual Tour that we have been able to share with many different congregations. The fact that international tourism has been temporarily closed down has actually encouraged us to do what we have always been wanting to do — go online and share the Jewish, Converso, and Chueta history of Majorca to the global audience. Throughout my life, I have been blessed to witness the beauty of Jewish life and the immense power of a connected community whether in NYC or in Israel. And now, on the tiny island of Majorca, I hope to continue sharing that light with others, showing that anyone can come together and live in harmony. My experience in Majorca shows how the spirit of the Jewish people lives on in each one of us. Together, we can help to reignite the flames of Majorca’s Jewish community and unite the global Jewish community.