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In Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum will be inaugurated as the country's next president on Tuesday. She's Mexico's first female president and also the first of Jewish heritage. But as Emily Green reports, many Jews in Mexico are ambivalent about Sheinbaum's rise to power.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Praying in non-English language).
EMILY GREEN, BYLINE: At the Adat Israel synagogue in Mexico City, around a dozen congregates come together on Friday night to pray. It's an Orthodox temple. No one is using electronic devices, and the men and women sit in separate sections.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Praying in non-English language).
GREEN: After services, we sit down for Shabbat dinner, and I ask the congregants what they think about Sheinbaum.
ILIANA KRAUSS: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: "Sheinbaum has turned her back on the Jewish community," says Iliana Krauss. She points to Sheinbaum's pro-Palestine statements and the fact that the president-elect doesn't attend synagogue. But above all, she and the other congregants here don't like Sheinbaum's populist politics or that of her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
KRAUSS: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: "She is far left. That's why we didn't vote for her," she says. Sheinbaum's grandparents were Jews who immigrated from Lithuania and Bulgaria. She was born in Mexico City and raised in a secular household. Sheinbaum says she is proud of her heritage but not religiously affiliated. Josef Collar, another congregant at the Adat Israel synagogue, says Sheinbaum is undeniably Jewish. He worries that her presidency will fuel antisemitism.
JOSEF COLLAR: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: "Whether or not she does a good job, her presidency will affect our community," he says. Today, Jews make up less than 1% in a country with an overwhelmingly Catholic population, one of the largest in the world. And they're often viewed as outsiders, even though they're part of Mexico's social fabric, says Tessy Schlosser, a Jewish political theorist in Mexico City.
TESSY SCHLOSSER: Mexican society tends to be xenophobic, and antisemitism grows parallel to that.
GREEN: Mexicans celebrate a mestizo identity, a blend of Indigenous and European ancestries. But that doesn't account for recent migration, Schlosser says.
SCHLOSSER: So I often get asked if I am Mexican - right? - Like, or where I'm from, even though my great-grandparents were the ones who migrated. So there's some suspicion of whether I am Mexican or we are Mexican.
GREEN: That suspicion found a platform in the presidential campaign, when former Mexican President Vicente Fox posted a tweet attacking Sheinbaum for being, quote, "Jewish and a foreigner at the same time." Still, Sheinbaum's Jewish heritage was a nonissue during the election. She won with nearly 60% of the vote. In the Mexico City neighborhood of Polanco, I visit Marcelo Rittner at Bet-El Synagogue. He's a Rabbi emeritus. He starts our conversation by showing me two pictures of Sheinbaum.
MARCELO RITTNER: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: The first shows Sheinbaum wearing a black-and-white keffiyeh that has become synonymous with Palestinians.
RITTNER: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: The second shows her wearing a skirt with the image of the Lady of Guadalupe, Mexican Catholic imagery for the Virgin Mary.
RITTNER: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: He says the photos are unpleasant and offensive to Jewish people. Sheinbaum's ascension to Mexico's highest office has caused mixed emotions, he says.
RITTNER: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: For Jews in Mexico, there wasn't a sense of pride when she won the election, he says. Instead, they felt worried.
RITTNER: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: "If she is a successful president, people will see her as a Mexican," he says. "But if she isn't a good president, they will label her a Jew." For NPR News, I'm Emily Green in Mexico City.
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