Persevering Through Rising Antisemitism: Sam and Valeria Botbol

holidays

Jun 19

Sam and Valeria Botbol are a Jewish-Gentile couple living in Southern California. They both grew up in Latin American cultures with many similarities but with different experiences and ideas around antisemitism. Now, in the wake of October 7 and an increasing surge of antisemitism, they’re learning how to persevere and care for each other as a newly married couple.

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Interview Transcript

Tuvya: Hi, this is Tuvya Zaretsky with Jewish Gentile Couples, and I’m delighted to be with Sam and Val Botbol today. This is several months after October 7—I want to call it a massacre in Israel. Our hope is to share a little bit of what it has been like to be a Jewish-Gentile couple discussing those matters and looking at the vulnerability that Gentile partners have seen in Jewish partners and experienced themselves and what they’ve learned from that. So, Val, Sam, welcome.

Sam: Thank you.

Val: Hi.

Tuvya: Sam, I’m going to let you get started here, just so folks get to know you first of all. Your mom came from Poland and Morocco. Your dad came from Morocco and Argentina. And they’re both Jewish.

Sam: Yes.

Tuvya: Where’d they meet? What was that like, and you were born where?

Sam: Okay, so, yes. My family’s history comes from a long line of migration. My father was born in Argentina, and my mother was born in Venezuela. But from my father’s side, my father’s father, he was born in Morocco but grew up in Argentina. And my father, as I said, he was born in Argentina but grew up in Venezuela. My father’s mom is from Argentina from Jewish Spanish descent. Also, from my mother’s side, my mother’s father comes from Morocco, and my mother’s mother was born in Venezuela but from Poland. They met in Venezuela. That’s where they got married. I was born there, and I grew up in Costa Rica.

Tuvya: And in your teenage years, you visited Israel?

Sam: Yes. As soon as I finished high school, we took a year course with the youth movement in Israel.

Tuvya: Okay, and when you were growing up in Costa Rica, you went to a Jewish school?

Sam: Yes. So, I had a very full Jewish life. I grew up in a Jewish traditional home. I did go to a Jewish school, and every single morning we attended synagogue. The community I grew up in, in Costa Rica, is an Orthodox community. It was like the biggest Jewish community in the capital city, San Jose. So, they were the ones that owned the sports club, the youth movement, the school. Many of the institutions I attended had a Jewish Orthodox background. So, yes, we went to synagogue every single morning from Monday to Friday. On Saturday, I would go to the youth movement, and Sunday I would share also with my Jewish friends. So, most of my background was around that.

Tuvya: You went back to Israel when you were 18?

Sam: Yes. So, going to Israel on my year course, it was my first time I felt at home. After living a full Jewish life in the diaspora, I always learned what Israel could look like—might look like—and then I arrived there, and it was way more than I could even imagine. I remember just walking down the streets and recognizing the street names of important Jewish characters from history that I learned. I remember on Shabbat, buses stopping, and everyone resting at home, at least in several cities, like Jerusalem. So, it was very impressive because I felt for the first time I was in a place where my culture was all around.

Tuvya: So, what did you do about that?

Sam: I came back to Costa Rica after my year course, and I felt I wanted to go back to Israel. So, I made aliyah, which means going up, going back to Israel.

Tuvya: It’s more formal than that.

Sam: Yeah. I migrated and became an Israeli citizen.

Tuvya: Yeah, okay.

Sam: I got my Israeli nationality and passport and also served in the army for two years.

Tuvya: Okay. Now all this was well before you met Val.

Sam: Yes.

Tuvya: And so, I’m going to turn to you, young lady. Very different background and experience growing up in Costa Rica.

Val: Yeah. I grew up in Costa Rica. I was born there, and my family’s also from Costa Rica, very different from the world that Sam is sharing. I grew up in a Christian family in a very rural area of Costa Rica.

Tuvya: And your mom and dad were both involved in ministry.

Val: Yeah, so they have been involved in ministry. They are mobilizers of the church. I usually say that my testimony of believing in Yeshua comes from them.

Tuvya: Yeshua meaning …

Val: Jesus.

Tuvya: Yeah. You didn’t grow up calling him “Yeshua” though.

Val: No, that is very recent. So that happened after I met Sam. We had this story where we got to know each other at a work doing some interpretation.

Tuvya: You were translators?

Val: Yeah, interpreters. And it happened to be that we liked each other a lot, and we got to meet each other, and I found out that he was Jewish, or that he is Jewish, and I was born and raised as a Christian. So, that started a whole conversation about our values and our faith.

Tuvya: Let me step back a little bit. You were educated in a couple of fields that were very related. So, tell us a little bit about your college education.

Val: So, my background is in sociology and also in dance, contemporary dance, and so I think sociology just helped me to understand better societies and the way systems work together to make a functional society. And that led me to a path of serving youth in Costa Rica. And actually, that was one of the ways that Sam and I got connected.

Tuvya: How was that?

Val: So, by the time we met each other, I was working in a project with UNICEF Costa Rica. I was facilitating a program on emotions, and healthy emotions, and how to get to identify your emotions, and how to address them in a healthy way. And Sam came alongside me, and we facilitated the program together. And that was a great way to get to know each other and also to get to know the values he had and the values I had. And I think it was a great space to interact and just get to know each other on a different level.

Tuvya: So that’s kind of the direction we’re going with this, some of the differences in our experiences. Sam, had you ever had any experience with antisemitism growing up?

Sam: Yes, many. Before Costa Rica, my first experience with antisemitism was when I was a little kid. I was part of this soccer club in Venezuela in the Jewish community in Venezuela, and we would go out and compete with other schools. But I remember one of our first games playing with a team that wasn’t from the Jewish community, there was an incident in which the parents were screaming antisemitic slurs to us. We were just little kids playing soccer. And I remember them telling their kids, “Yes, hit that Jew,” or “Kill them,” or really harsh things, but specifically identifying us as Jews. And I remember that was the first time I started questioning myself thinking, “I was born in Venezuela, I have a Venezuelan passport, a Venezuelan nationality, but they see me as a foreigner.”

Tuvya: I know your parents are incredibly loving. They’re just an amazing family. Did they talk with you about what antisemitism is like?

Sam: I don’t recall a specific time where they came to me and shared about that, but it has always been present. Like in our conversations with family, with friends, at school, this is something that has always been present, and we’ve been all of our lives preparing for moments like this. Then growing up I got involved with the Jewish youth movement, and there I was able to see also how antisemitism looks, not only locally where I was but internationally in Europe and through history. So I’ve been very well aware of this. But I have to tell you that even though I learned the history, even though I learned the theory, even though I prepared myself for different scenarios and how to respond, I never would have guessed I was going to live it so closely here in the United States in 2024.

Tuvya: Yeah. Yeah. Val, when you were growing up, did you know very many Jewish people?

Val: No. My grandmother used to work for a Jewish family. They were dentists, and she helped them in that field. And then my dad in his field of work, he has worked with different Jewish people. But not me personally getting to know anyone. I didn’t have Jewish friends growing up.

Tuvya: What did you know about Jews? What did you think about Jews as you were growing up?

Val: The Jewish community in Costa Rica is a very thriving community, and that’s something that I just knew. Occasionally, I would see someone walking on Saturday to the synagogue, but that was very isolated. And I think the Jewish understanding I had before meeting Sam was just that Jesus grew up as a Jew and that the apostles were Jews, and I think that’s it. And just the stories of the Old Testament about the kings and the prophets.

Tuvya: Did you ever relate those biblical accounts, the narrative of the kingdom of Israel in the time of King David or the prophets or the disciples, did you relate that concept of Jewish people to the Jews that you saw in San Jose, Costa Rica?

Val: No, not at all. I think it was in the … like my understanding back then was, Oh, just like the chosen people. You know, they are the chosen ones. But I didn’t see the connection between the present Jewish community in Costa Rica and the stories that I was reading from the Bible.

Tuvya: We got to know one another as you two were dating and you were getting really serious. How did you realize that Sam was Jewish and that was different from your upbringing?

Val: I think the most was when we were talking about a possible wedding ceremony, and I was imagining something different from him.

Tuvya: What were you imagining?

Val: I was imagining us praying in Jesus’ name. And I was talking to him about that, and he was like, “Wait, wait a second. Like you’ll do yours, and I’ll do my Jewish prayers?” And I think that was the moment when I said, “Huh. Okay. I need help.”

Tuvya: Sam, when you guys were having that conversation, did you ever talk to Val about how your family would be with all of that going on in the middle of the wedding ceremony, or was that an issue?

Sam: Yeah. No, I think that was precisely part of the conversation. I think at that point I already felt a little bit more comfortable with her praying in Jesus’ name, like that was not foreign for me. I do remember the first time she prayed in Jesus’ name for me, and I felt really weird. But then, as the relationship continued, and we got to know each other more, I became way more comfortable with that.

Tuvya: As her thing.

Sam: Kind of. Like I saw the possibility of it becoming my thing or our thing, not necessarily my thing but our thing, considering that was important for her. But then, the conversation came to, “Okay, if we ever get married, how is this going to look for our families?”

Val: Sorry, but I even remember having conversations back then about how to keep the Jewish traditions in terms of the festivals and the different celebrations, and I was like, “Well, you will be responsible for that part. I’m not getting involved.”

Sam: Yes, so that was part of the conversation. So, I remember telling her not to go far away from the subject, but telling her like, “Yeah, what if we want to have Shabbat dinner every single Friday,” and she was like, “Yeah, you’ll be responsible for that.” So, it was a similar conversation in which she asked, “How is it going to look on our wedding? Are we going to pray in Jesus’ name?” And I was like, “Yeah, you could pray in Jesus’ name, and I will do the Jewish prayers.” That was the conversation. But that led into us realizing there was way more that we acknowledged, even though we’re both Costa Ricans in a sense, we were both speaking Spanish, growing up in a Latin American context or culture should be somewhat the same, but as we started to go deeper and deeper into what different things meant to us, concepts such as family, love, God, marriage …

Val: And just to make it clearer, that’s when we met you. And that’s how the program helped us discover all of those concepts and what they meant for each other.

Tuvya: This sounds like a subject for a whole other podcast.

Sam: Yeah.

Val: Yes.

Tuvya: We’ll do that. Just so people know, the work that we do is helping couples find spiritual harmony, and that means we help Jewish partners recognize that it’s possible to maintain their Jewish identity, never have that threatened but enhanced, and at the same time, the faith in Jesus becomes part of that spiritual harmony in the family. So, that’s a whole other discussion, and well worth getting to. Here, we wanted to focus on this very sensitive issue of what happens when a Gentile partner discovers that antisemitism and the hatred of Jewish people and Israel is deeply affecting a partner, and what does that mean for them? Val, the conversation started because of your reaction to October 7 and your relationship with Sam. Do you want to tell people what happened there?

Val: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think once Sam and I got married, and all of those barriers, they got lifted up, and they are no longer there in terms of our relationship and our love.

Tuvya: The challenges to finding marital harmony.

Val: Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Tuvya: So, a lot of those are set aside. And new things are coming up.

Val: Mm-hmm. New things are coming up, and so I think that just led me into a whole discovery of the history of the Jewish people in the diaspora and their returning to Israel. It has been a key element, I think, in my understanding of the Jewish communities, and more than that, in the identity of Sam and how Sam perceives himself in the Jewish community.

Tuvya: Had he ever talked about his father growing up in Argentina and the antisemitism there?

Val: I think it has been discussed over Shabbat dinners when I visited him for Shabbat with his family. But I think more than that, he used to tell me that one of the aspects that made him move back to Israel and be there for a season of his life was the antisemitism he had when he was in the same university I was in. Back then we didn’t know each other, but just the stories of professors saying some antisemitic things to him, asking and wondering about his last name, saying things about the Jewish community in Costa Rica. And at the beginning, I was so shocked that I refused in some ways to believe him. I was like, No, that cannot be possible because I studied there.

Tuvya: So, let me interrupt here. Sam, what happened in your university class that you were sharing with Val?

Sam: I joined this school as one of the most important and prestigious in Costa Rica, and for me from day one, it was hell, because professors were constantly using antisemitic rhetoric at least in the first years. I don’t think that would have gone through the whole career, but the general classes that everyone has to take had a lot of teachers that had a lot of opinions regarding Jewish people in Costa Rica.

Tuvya: Like what? I’m curious. I’ve never asked this before.

Sam: So, they will always mention that, I don’t know, the Jews in Costa Rica are very powerful, they own all the companies, they own all the money, which is not true.

Tuvya: Mm-hmm.

Sam: As Val said, the Jewish community in Costa Rica is a thriving one. It’s a community that only two or three generations ago arrived in Costa Rica as refugees with nothing on them, and they started working towards a better future for them and their kids. But hearing those things about my community and also all the false information that we share regarding Israel in the classrooms: Israel being an occupation force; Israel being, you know, an aggressor in the whole Middle Eastern context. That was something that happened constantly. And I even had one teacher that called me a traitorous Jew in front of all the classmates.

Tuvya: What did you do?

Sam: So, I confronted them constantly. I think back then I was more … I was trained on how to respond. Like I was constantly … It’s sad because I’m just 19 years old, and I’d been for at least five years learning how to defend myself in situations like those. So, now I am in the real world, let’s say outside of the Jewish bubble. I’m going to college for the first time facing and meeting and building relationships with more and more Gentiles. And I realized that Costa Rica, which is a really peaceful country, Costa Ricans are actually pretty peaceful in a sense, but then I realized even though they are peaceful, they are not necessarily towards me being openly Jewish. And I remember she was calling me treacherous and that I was ...

Tuvya: The professor was.

Sam: The professor, yeah. The professor was calling me a treacherous Jew in front of my classmates and telling me that she was gonna fail me and that some of my classmates were failing because of me. Yeah. It was just a very confusing situation, and I didn’t know where to turn. So, yeah, at the end, I ended up dropping school and deciding I wanted to go to Israel.

Tuvya: That’s incredible. And, you know, we’re hearing the same kind of stuff was happening on the college campuses where we’re recording this. We’re across the street from UCLA where the events of 2024 saw just a virulent antisemitism that apparently had been going on in the classroom, and it spilled out into an encampment. So, Val, had you seen any of this antisemitism going on in Costa Rica?

Val: So, I remember some students, even back then, trying to bring the topic up of Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli state, but I wasn’t that involved. So, I just saw them here and there, but it wasn’t like a thing. I never had any experiences like Sam’s. Or maybe it was that I wasn’t aware enough to notice it. I think that most likely is the case.

Tuvya: So, what switched after October 7 when you saw in the news what was happening in Israel first and the atrocities there?

Val: I remember that day we were having dinner, and after we were done, Sam’s dad started texting Sam and just trying to understand what was happening. We saw some videos that were hard to watch. And from there, I think the first reaction was to pray together and just comfort him, and I was also in shock. So, he was also comforting me. But I think it was the aftermath of October 7 and how the narrative changed.

Tuvya: The demonstrations on the street, the …

Val: The demonstrations on the street and the intense posting on social media. I think the turn of events where they took this event on October 7 and then they reframe it with “Free Palestine.”

Tuvya: You’re talking about the Palestinian propaganda that came out afterwards.

Val: Exactly. So, I think all of that and then just seeing how that affected my husband and how his friends from Costa Rica were not reaching out to ask him like, “Hey, how are you doing?” and just seeing them posting on social media about things that they don’t understand as well.

Sam: My non-Jewish friends.

Tuvya: Your non-Jewish friends.

Val: Yeah, your non-Jewish friends. And maybe, I cannot say they don’t understand it, because I don’t know. I haven’t necessarily spoken to all of them. But I think just as Costa Ricans, we, in general terms, don’t follow politics or the history of the Middle East. It’s very far away from our general location. But it was hard to see my husband in pain about how his friends that know that he is Jewish didn’t reach out to ask him.

Tuvya: His non-Jewish friends.

Val: Mm-hmm.

Tuvya: Sam, you also had Jewish friends from Costa Rica living all over the world who were in touch with you. What was that like?

Sam: Among my Jewish friends, it was very hard. I think we were all trying to figure out what happened? We were having a hard time understanding how it was possible that happened. But then, as things started to get worse and worse in the United States, it became more confusing even. Like, “How is it possible that we share this common feeling of feeling abandoned by our friends and by everyone we thought of as friendly?” Because not only our friends, but you start to see the musicians that you follow, people that you admire, people that you followed or that you supported in their careers, and things like that. And then you see them turning and talking about the Jewish people and talking about Israel, and you wonder, How long have they kept that inside? Like when they were meeting you and sharing time with you, and then all of a sudden, they feel so emboldened to go and say those things. It makes you wonder how long they have had that within themselves.

Tuvya: So, you felt abandoned?

Sam: Yeah. And betrayed.

Tuvya: Betrayed?

Sam: Yeah.

Tuvya: Vulnerable?

Sam: Yeah.

Tuvya: Yeah, I think there’s been a universal sense of being vulnerable among Jewish people in ways we haven’t experienced since the Holocaust.

Sam: Mm-hmm.

Tuvya: So, Val, now you’re attached to the Jewish community by marriage.

Val: I am.

Tuvya: What have you thought about that?

Val: We are always trying to bring hope. Something that I have understood from Sam through different things he tells me and shares with me and just like different events that we have attended, is just the resilience of the Jewish community and the sense of hope in the midst of chaos and despair and pain. And that is something that we’ve always tried to bring into our culture as a family and as a marriage, trying to bring that sense of hope. But, of course, I think I’ve been thinking about how I can support him. That’s been a question that I have had. How can I support him, and how can I support my Jewish community?

Tuvya: How do you do that?

Val: Mm-hmm. One of the biggest things for me has been to understand history and just to be informed and educated. Just learning the history of the Jewish communities in the diaspora, learning the history of Israel, and after the Second World War. And learning more about Islam and the political component of Islam in the region and how that has played out. I think educating myself and getting to understand better has been refreshing for me and for Sam in conversations. And also, I think it’s good to understand what it is that your Jewish partner likes and how they understand themselves in their Jewish identity. That way, you can come alongside them and just walk with them. What that looks like in our relationship is history, just learning more.

Tuvya: Hearing Val talk about the conversations you’re having now about Jewish history, what does it mean to you to be able to share the history of the Jewish people, your own Jewish history with her at this point, and then for the future, God willing, of your family?

Sam: Yeah, so, for me, my Jewish identity has always been one of the most important aspects of my life. It has defined most of the things I do, the way I see the world, the way I behave, the way I relate to others, the decisions in general that I’ve been making throughout my life. So, I remember when we were getting to know each other, and I was explaining to her, “Are you aware that if we are going to continue dating and this is going to move forward, and we are eventually going to get married, you’re getting married into this, and sadly, it might get to a point in which you will experience antisemitism. Things might get tough, and we might get to a point in life when they come for us as they did in Germany.” And I remember she said to me, “If that day ever comes, we’ll run to the Costa Rican hills and hide there.” And I said, “No. If that day ever comes, we’re going to Israel.” Having that conversation, I think, was really important. But as I mentioned earlier, I never would have guessed so early on in our marriage we were going to be experiencing something as we have been.

Tuvya: In the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, it says that God has made a covenant with the seed of Abraham, an eternal covenant. Does that give you encouragement for the continuing existence of the Jewish people today and into the future?

Sam: Yeah. Yes, it does. We were just talking about this, this morning, about how the present feels very scary and feels very uncertain, and it’s very hard to explain what’s happening. And at the same time, we are worrying to see how this may get worse or escalate into other things. But now we have a different kind of peace, the one that is not logical, the one that is not, you know, looking for worldly signs but that we know is there, we believe is there, and that peace cannot be taken away from us.

Val: And as you were saying about the covenant, something that happened at the beginning of October 7, we were reading Ezekiel, and I remember we were just going through hard verses when they were doing harm to the Jewish people back then. And even the manner in which people were murdered, I remember telling Sam, “Look, it’s like seeing how God kept His covenant back then and the promise that He will keep it today.”

Tuvya: Yeah. Yeah.

Val: It’s very comforting.

Tuvya: And that’s why we can say shalom shalom.

Sam: Mm-hmm.

Tuvya: And trust in a perfect peace.

Val: Mm-hmm.

Tuvya: Thanks to both of you for sharing with us like this, and we’ll look forward to that second podcast about your story. This is Jewish Gentile Couples, stories of Jews and Gentiles who have come together finding spiritual harmony. And we hope that this has been an encouragement and a help to you. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. You can reach out to me at tuvya@jewishgentilecouples.com. Shalom shalom.

Sam: Shalom shalom.