wish famili7N7'
Lost And Found
After many years of hardship and struggle, a family comes to Judaism — and builds its first sukkah.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
AppleTree Editor
T
wo years ago, Yocheved Morgan
found something she had been
searching for all of her life: Her
people.
A native of Panama, she came to the
United States, alone, as a teen-ager. She
spoke almost no English and had no job
skills. She knew she was Jewish, but had
no idea what it meant to live a Jewish
life.
Today, Yocheved Morgan stands in
the backyard of her Oak Park home
where she and her husband are building
a sukkah. There's a large tree, but other-
wise the yard is bare, with plenty of
room for this temporary home, which
Yocheved's husband is constructing him-
self
When she talks about her Judaism
today, Yocheved speaks through tears. It
has taken her many years, and many
struggles, to come to this point.
"I am home," she says. "But I have
paid such a high price to come home."
"Look For Your People
)7
Yocheved Morgan was born and raised
in La Chorrera Province, Panama.
There's little anti-Semitism in most of
Panama today, she says, "and we've even
had two Jewish presidents."
La Chorrera, when Yocheved was lit-
tle, was a different story (though now
the community has an Orthodox com-
munity). Consequently, many Jews in
the province preferred to hide, or com-
pletely discount, their Judaism.
Not Yocheved's grandmother.
"Look for your people," Myrta
Martinez Alvarez told her granddaughter
time and again.
Yocheved's people were Jews, original-
ly from Morocco and Spain. The family
genealogy is filled with the names of
scholars and philosophers, along with
men, women and children murdered in
the Inquisition because they were
Jewish.
Yocheved's mother had married at 15
and raised three children: Yocheved
(then known as Karys Alila; Yocheved is
her Hebrew name) and her twin sister,
Myrta Leticia, and one son, Alejandro,
from her second marriage. The family
moved a great deal and Yocheved
Yocheved and Yehoshua Morgan, right, stand in their sukkah, built with the help of
their sons, Jonathan, 10, and Ariel, 12, and neighbor Shay Ben-Yair, left.
remembers her early years as difficult.
Many of her happiest hours were spent
reading.
Yocheved knew virtually nothing
about Judaism as she was growing up.
Her mother, for reasons Yocheved never
fully understood, had no interest in her
religious heritage and was often even
hostile — despite the fact that
Yocheved's maternal grandmother,
Myrta Martinez Alvarez, was committed
to a Jewish life.
(Yocheved's father, meanwhile, had
gone to the United States when his
daughters were 2. They would not meet
again until Yocheved was almost 15.)
Myrta Martinez Alvarez was a woman
of "phenomenal strength," Yocheved
says. She wrote poetry, kept kosher and
was known throughout the province as
the kind of woman you should come to
for advice.
"I clung to her," Yocheved says.
One day, Yoceheved found a
Hebrew/Spanish Bible in her grand-
mother's home. She began reading it,
and she was enthralled.
Quickly, though, she became con-
cerned about Judaism's admonition
against sorcery. Like many residents of
Panama, Yocheved's mother practiced a
kind of white witchcraft.
Yocheved approached her mother and
told her any sort of witchcraft was unac-
ceptable. Yocheved's mother responded
by beating her and telling her to stay
away from Judaism, she says.
"I just told her: 'Kill me if you want.
I'll do what I think is right."'
"I don't love you, nor will my family,"
her mother replied.
"I lost my mom when I told her the
Torah said that witchcraft is wrong,"
says Yocheved, who no longer commu-
nicates with her mother. "But she lost
her neshama [soul]. Still, I pray for her
and I still love her."
When she was 15, Yocheved came to
California. Her parents had divorced,
and her father was living in the United
States. During a visit to Panama,
Yocheved's father asked his daughters if
they wanted to come to the United
States. Yocheved took him up on the
offer.
When she arrived in California,
Yocheved, with her father's help, began
living in an efficiency apartment. Next,
she found employment helping an elder-
ly couple, as well as in a Spanish-speak-
ing elementary school where she worked
in the cafeteria, the school office and as
a teacher's aide.
When she was 18, Yocheved met a
young man from Grosse Pointe, a stu-
dent attending school in California. The
two fell in love and got engaged.
Yocheved moved to Michigan in prepa-
ration for a life here.
Then one evening, she went to a con-
cert with friends. Standing less than 10
feet away was a man she had "seen in
my dreams. The man I always knew I
would marry"
His name was Darin (today,
Yehoshua) Morgan.
Yocheved can't explain the mystery of
what drew her to Yehoshua Morgan. It
was magic, she says, though one feature
attracted her immediately: "I knew what
kind of father he would be. I knew that
if we had children they would be loved
LOST AND FOUND on page 42
10/ 1
2004
41