The response was overwhelming. That's how I discovered just how welcoming the Jewish community here really is.
There are about 3,000 Jews in San Miguel in high season and roughly 1,000 who live here year round.
Casa Avra is named for Avrahama, my Hebrew name.
I'm active in both Chabad of San Miguel and Shalom San Miguel, the town's Jewish cultural and community center. I run a Jewish WhatsApp group and host Shabbat dinners, open-house lunches, Jewish learning, and holiday gatherings throughout the year.
All levels of observance are welcome here. So are partners and spouses of every background.
Chabad has been here since 2018. Rabbi Daniel and Rebbetzin Raizel Huebner are raising their family here and have built a warm, deeply caring community.
There's a minyan and traditional services every Saturday morning, Shabbat dinner every Friday night, classes, a religious school with more than 50 children, kosher meat and wine brought in monthly, and a Kitchen of Kindness for people going through illness or a difficult stretch.
Anyone can stop by for a challah, on the condition that you take a second one and give it to another Jewish family.
If you want a full-time Rabbi and Rebbetzin who actually know you, you'll find that here.
The Jewish Cultural and Community Center is the closest thing San Miguel has to a JCC or the 92nd Street Y.
Classes, lectures, theater, music, Hebrew, Torah study, poetry readings, films and cultural events. Services and holidays are led in the Reform and Conservative traditions in Hebrew, Spanish and English.
It's egalitarian, LGBTQ+ inclusive and intentionally unaffiliated with any movement.
Many people here are involved with both communities. I am.
They're thinking about the last few years back home. It doesn't feel safe or welcome where they live anymore.
Not everyone wants Israel. Not everyone wants Florida.
I won't tell you anywhere is guaranteed safe, because nowhere is.
But I wear a Magen David and a hamsa every day. There's a mezuzah on my door. I post my Shabbat table on Facebook. I'm an unapologetic, proud Jew.
And I've never had an uncomfortable moment.
My brother was bar mitzvahed. I never was. That was simply how it went for a lot of women my age.
Now I'm learning what I never learned the first time around.
Whether Judaism has always been central to your life, you're coming back to it, or you're exploring it more deeply for the first time, this is a remarkably good place to do that.
That's a real thing to think about when you're considering a move later in life.
At Chabad, there's an emergency contact list and people check in on anyone they haven't heard from. Someone drives you to the hospital. Someone brings food when you're sick. Someone notices you weren't at Shabbat and calls.
San Miguel is also home to a hospice center with a Jewish liaison, and the local cemetery has a dedicated Jewish section. Chabad can arrange traditional Jewish burial and a chevra kadisha.
If part of what's stopping you is wondering who would show up if something went wrong, that's something worth talking about before you move.
I serve as a Jewish heritage guide in San Miguel for Ayelet Tours and have researched and written about the Jews who made their lives here, including the Cohen family, Syrian Jewish refugees who settled here in 1927.
Read the Full Story of Casa CohenIf Jewish life is part of what you're considering as you think about San Miguel, let's talk. I'll help you understand what's here and what your life here could actually look like.
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