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Monday, January 22, 2007

Religious freedom helps Jews in Hotel Cuba

Religious freedom helps Jews in "Hotel Cuba"
Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:46 PM EST
By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Salomon Mitrani sat through his wedding ceremony.
After all, at 84 years old he finds it hard to stand.

By Cuban law, he has been married to his wife, Pilar, for 55 years, and
they have eight grandchildren. But, in a ceremony last week, he was
finally getting married under a Chuppah canopy according to Jewish custom.

It was no ordinary ceremony. Twenty other couples of all ages took their
marriage vows in a ritual officiated by three visiting Argentine rabbis.
The grooms smashed their wine glasses underfoot as a cantor sang age-old
blessings in Hebrew.

It was the largest wedding members of Cuba's depleted Jewish community
can remember and a sign of a revival of Judaism in a country where there
has been no resident rabbi since an exodus of Jews fleeing President
Fidel Castro's communist government in the early 1960s.

"I've always felt Jewish. I went to fight for Israel's independence in
1948," said Mitrani, a painter and sculptor whose parents, Sephardic
Jews, emigrated to Cuba in 1913 from Turkey.

The mass nuptials at the restored conservative Beth Shalom synagogue,
the largest of three in Havana, were preceded by 70 conversions,
including whole families, dozens of young Cubans, and Mitrani's wife
Pilar, 75.

"I wanted to have a Jewish family like my forefathers. The family is
vital to maintain our customs and perpetuate the values of the Torah,"
said Alberto Behar, a computer analyst like his wife Caridad Morales,
who converted for the wedding.

Cuba has a mix of Sephardic Jews, who came mainly from Turkey and the
Balkans before World War One, and Ashkenazic Jews who escaped turmoil in
Eastern Europe, mostly Poland and Russia.

As many as 25,000 refugees from Nazi persecution arrived from Austria,
Germany, France and Belgium in the 1930s en route to the United States.
Refused entry due to U.S. immigration quotas, they landed in what became
known as "Hotel Cuba."

EXODUS

When Castro took power in 1959, there was a flourishing and prosperous
Jewish community of 15,000 in Cuba.

Within a few years, as the new government nationalized businesses and
steered Cuba toward communism, 90 percent of them left for southern
Florida, Mexico, Venezuela and Israel.

Cuba became an atheist state and the synagogues emptied. Congregations
fell below the quorum for prayer ceremonies as Jews that stayed
assimilated into the new status quo, stopped teaching their children
Hebrew and lost their customs.

Years of isolation followed. Castro broke off diplomatic ties with
Israel in 1974 following the Yom Kippur war.

"They were difficult years, but Jews are used to being persistent in the
face of adversity," said Simon Goldsztein, a 69-year-old groom wearing a
Tallit prayer shawl. "That has been our history."

Things changed after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Cuba
struggled to survive a severe economic crisis. Cuba became a secular
state and allowed religious worship even by card-carrying Communist
Party members.

Impoverished Cuban Jews began to receive aid from abroad, especially the
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which has helped rebuild a
community of 1,500 people.

Community leaders say their numbers have doubled, but many young Cuban
Jews have emigrated to Israel.

"People have left for different reasons, but there has been a constant
renewal. This is a crucial moment in our revival," said Annette Eli, a
young architect.

Kenneth Cohen, a rabbi who visited Cuba in January with a group of
students from American University in Washington, was impressed by the
commitment of young Cuban Jews.

During his visit, he noted that a group of men in their 20s had recently
been circumcised. "That is a big commitment," he said.

Cohen went to isolated communities in provincial towns that needed more
help from abroad. In Sancti Spiritus, a town with a distinctly Catholic
name, he was told he was the second rabbi to visit in 50 years.

"Seeing these communities of only 18 people struggling to hold on, with
a matron teaching little kids how to read Hebrew, almost moved me to
tears," he said.

One problem with being Jewish in Cuba is coping with the local cuisine,
which is based almost entirely on pork. But the community now has its
own kosher butcher shop, to the relief of many.

"We try to avoid pork. When we can't, we just eat less, so it doesn't
become our diet," said Behar.

http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2007-01-22T044651Z_01_N18454933_RTRIDST_0_LIFESTYLE-CUBA-JEWS-COL.XML&archived=False

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