[3] His childhood coincided with tough economic times, and the local Jewish community center was a refuge for his family.
"[3] At his bar mitzvah, he discovered that being Jewish involved a religion, as well as a culture, and entered a Conservative seminary of Masorti movement.
He thought he would make his career in the corporate world until he received a phone call from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in 1997 to come and work in Paris, France.
(They had first known him when he ran High Holiday services for the Jewish community of Cuba as a rabbinical student.
Rebuilding Jewish communities that had basically been wiped out by Nazism and communism was like taking revenge on history.