City overview

Panama packs two oceans, a rainforest and one of the world's great engineering sites into a country you can cross in a day, and it does it with the largest and best-served kosher infrastructure in Central America. Panama City's skyline sits beside a UNESCO-listed colonial quarter and the locks of the Panama Canal, while the highlands of Boquete and the Caribbean islands of Bocas del Toro are a short flight away. The Jewish community numbers roughly fifteen thousand, mostly Sephardi families of Syrian and Lebanese descent, concentrated in Punta Paitilla, Punta Pacífica and Bella Vista. Kosher Panamá, the certification body of the Shevet Ahim congregation, supervises well over ninety establishments countrywide, and an eruv covers the main Jewish neighbourhoods.