Santiago Hotels
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C is for Chile - read of the Jewish Fire Brigade
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Now we are back in Santiago.
We did a tour of the city the morning after we arrived. Very interesting but because we were so exhausted from our Bolivian trip, we did not appreciate all that the city has to offer.
In the afternoon we did a tour of the Jewish aspects of the city. By then we were more awake. There are about 12,000 Jews in Santiago out of a total population in the city of some 6 million. The whole of Chile has a population of 16 million with a total Jewish population of 15000. Not many.
Did you know that Santiago is the only place in the whole world other than Israel which has a Jewish Fire station.
All firemen in Santiago are volunteers and years ago, the Jewish community apparently volunteered to set up their own fire station. We were given a tour of the station and apart from dressing up with a fireman's helmet, Aby achieved a (new) lifelong ambition and slid down the fireman's pole.
The city is surrounded by the Andes mountains. Although the temperature was a warm 30 degrees Celsius you could see in the distance snow on top of the mountains.
Even with such a small Jewish population there is a Jewish country club (Hebraica) which features, swimming pools, tennis courts, gyms, halls, restaurants and gardens. British Jewry really do seem far behind their South American counterparts.
The Hebraica also has a holocaust memorial and various holocaust dedications. All the signs at the Hebraica are in Spanish and Hebrew. A most impressive place for such a small Jewish population.
There are three kosher restaurants and we ordered food from one of them for shabbat. They delivered 16 huge boxes to our hotel and the food was excellent. We can highly recommend Mr. Vasershten of Shemtov Kosher Catering (shemtovkosher@yahoo.com) A very nice man to deal with.
There are a number of synagogues in the city. We visited an inner city synagogue that is about to close. The Jewish population has moved a number of times from the centre to outlying suburbs mainly in the North East of Santiago and is still on the move. We also visited a huge Reform Synagogue as well as the new Lubavitch one which is due to be formally opened on April 6.
The new Lubavitch shul is in an area called La Dehesa on the North Eastern part of the city. Part of the exterior is modelled on the Lubavitch headquarters in New York (770 Eastern Parkway) and the interior has palm trees and most stunning architecture. All shul facilities that you could think of, are there. Banquet halls, kitchens, nursery school, mikvaot, bet hamedresh as well as huge main shul. Impressive indeed.
We're getting tired of seeing so many new and wonderful sights and so are in a way looking forward to getting back home to Israel. But its been a wonderful few weeks and if ever anyone wants to pick our brains on what to do or see in the countries we've visited, please just ask.
The end. And now a few days of sleep.
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| 7. | C is for Chile - read of the Jewish Fire Brigade - Santiago, Chile Feb 28, 2008 (  23 ) |
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