Rebecca Rabinor’s son Samuel is turning 11, and thanks to the arrival of a Chabad couple to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, he has a rabbi to help him study for his bar mitzvah.

Rabbi Shneur and Mushkie Hecht, co-directors of Chabad of Puerto Vallarta, came to the resort city in late September with their two young children a week before Rosh Hashanah. They put ads in a newspaper when they arrived, rented a room at the Hilton and were thrilled when 40 people showed up to celebrate the holiday, including about a dozen kids. They held Yom Kippur services and an elaborate break-the-fast meal, and slowly but surely, started meeting the area’s mix of local residents and travelers.

Rabinor, who moved with her family to Puerto Vallarta about a decade ago, heard about the High Holiday services from friends in her building. She, her husband Zachary, Samuel and her younger son, 7-year-old Nathaniel, have been part of Chabad’s Jewish community ever since.

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Judaism had mostly been a private affair before the Hechts came to town, with people celebrating Shabbat and holidays at home. In fact, Rabinor says she believed that they were “the only Jewish family in town.”

Now, they go to the Hechts and other Jewish families’ homes for holidays. Her older son and two other young people are learning with the rabbi. She’s part of a WhatsApp chat group with other community members and has taken part in a women’s group started by Mushkie Hecht that includes crafts, conversation and classes. The Hechts are also in the midst of formulating an array of Jewish programs, including those for short-term visitors.

Rabbi Shneur Hecht holds their Torah

“They made the community; they have brought the community together,” Rabinor says of the Hechts. “They’re helping those in Puerto Vallarta fulfill what we all want to do in the process of raising our families Jewishly—and that wasn’t available to us before.”

The rabbi estimates that between 200 and 300 Jewish residents live there year-round, with a huge boost between November and April that measures into the thousands, drawn by the beaches and warm weather. The Hechts are working on improving the selection of kosher food; though already, they have made a variety of kosher meats and fresh kosher meals available for residents and tourists through the Chabad-run www.koshervallarta.com. The rabbi has hopes for a kosher restaurant. In the meantime, another big idea has come to fruition: kosher weddings.

“Kosher weddings are now something that people can do in Puerto Vallarta,” announces the rabbi. “We had our first one on Sunday, coordinating with a local caterer and an out-of-town mashgiach [kosher supervisor].”

Four other Chabad-Lubavitch emissary couples serve Jewish communities in Mexico: one in Cancun, one in Playa del Carmen, one in Cabos San Lucas and one in Guadalajara.