FIU Zionist activist Yoel Rotterman.

It has happened to me many times that friends who know that I am Jewish and also an ardent Zionist find out that I was born and raised in Colombia, and get very confused. It might be because they have never come across a Jewish person that was not American, or because I don’t look like the typical Colombian stereotype they might have in their minds, or because they don’t understand why a Colombian is so passionate about Israel or simply because it is actually an uncommon combination.

When I try to understand why my friends get so confused with me being a Colombian Jew, I try to go back a couple of generations before me to explain myself why am I able to carry a Colombian passport everywhere I go, and still have my Judaism as a lifestyle, a religion and a heritage.

From my mother’s side, my grandfather Wilhem (William) was born in Hagen, Germany and my grandmother Mariane was born in Hindenburg, Germany. My grandfather studied culinary and was a cook for several hotels throughout Germany when he decided to leave the country in 1937 because of the hostile environment for the Jews. My grandmother was nine years old when the Nuremberg laws came into order and she wasn’t allowed to suspend time with her friends anymore, or even attend school. Her parents made the wise choice of emigrating to be able to carry out a normal life for them and their family. Several years later they met in Bogota, Colombia and got married.

From my father’s side, my grandfather Elias was the youngest of 7 brothers of a humble family from a small town in east Poland called Zelechow. By the late 1930’s, his parents decided to send the two youngest children outside the country (which was what they could afford) because they could feel how the situation was starting to get bad. Elias and his brother Izik were supposed to get on a boat going to Dominican Republic, but they confused the boat and arrived in Puerto Colombia, a big and important port in the north of Colombia. My grandmother Eva, also from Zelechow, was very young when she moved to Colombia. The Polish immigrants who settled in Barranquilla, the city my grandparents were living in, used to have meetings for the people to continue the heritage from their native countries, and this is how my grandparents met.

So the truth is that I am not a Colombian Jew. I am a Jewish Colombian. That is the right order to phrase it. The reason my grandparents left their native homelands and luckily for them Colombia opened its gates and they were able to create a new life, was simply because they were Jewish. I am Colombian by pure luck. But my Jewishness goes back for centuries.

Now, why is this Colombian Jew so passionate about Israel, my friends may ask? Besides the reason that Israel is such an incredible country, full of diversity, innovation, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, powerful history, amusing landscapes, uncountable cultures, and unique characters, it creates a very strong feeling inside me to think that she is the home for the Jewish people. Sometimes I think that if the Jews had a safe place where they knew they could have gone whenever they were facing any adversity like the Nazis, maybe I wouldn’t be Colombian. Maybe my grandparent’s first choice would have been that country.

Israel is that country. It is the state of the Jewish people. I had the opportunity to do a gap year program in Israel in between high school and college. I spent four months in Jerusalem in an institute with people from various Latin American countries studying history of Israel, Zionism, Hebrew, Shoa, how to be a leader, and experienced Israeli life from many different perspectives. Then I did a 2-month army course in the south of Israel in Sde Boker and I lived the morality of the IDF by myself. For the last part of my program I lived in a Kibbutz for over 2 months experiencing the legacy that the pioneers accomplished in Israel.

So the reason I am so involved in the pro-Israel movement on campus and in my daily life, is because I feel a moral obligation with my family and my people to do so. Every time I have the chance I try to create awareness about the misconceptions some people might have about Israel. Every time I have had the chance to visit Israel, I get more amused by her and I know that Israel will be there for me and for any other Jewish person, always.

Yoel Rotterman is a student leader in Shalom FIU, the university’s pro-Israel group. He is also a ZOA Campus Fellow.