With a touch of chutzpah and “a little help from God,” Braulio Rocha, a Roman Catholic Portuguese immigrant, traded in his mop for a camera. Mr. Rocha, an amateur photographer, had recently arrived in Canada from Madeira with $50 in savings and a beat-up old Canon camera that he always carried with him in his car. Brisses soon led to bar mitzvahs, and six years later, Mr. Rocha, a 45-year-old Roman Catholic, has been called the bar mitzvah photography king of Montreal by rabbis and clients alike. Mr. Rocha, who had never met a Jew before setting foot in Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in 2015, is now so in demand that he sometimes shoots five bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies a week, is booked for bar mitzvahs into 2023, and employs a team of eight assistant photographers. He recently expanded into Hasidic weddings.

Source: thestar December 31, 2021 22:00 UTC