Sven Creutzmann/Polaris, for The New York Times
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By CAREN OSTEN GERSZBERG
Published: February 4, 2007
CLAUDIA BARLIYA, a 6-year-old Cuban-Jewish girl, stood on a cobblestone
street in Trinidad, a small centuries-old city on the south coast of
Cuba. A donkey carrying an old man passed behind her; a group of 30
Jewish-Americans, including this reporter, stood before her. The girl
had asked if she could perform a song for the group, which was on a
humanitarian mission with the Westchester Jewish Center of Mamaroneck,
N.Y. She now had their full attention. When her song rang out — not in
Spanish, but in the Hebrew words of "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav," or
"Jerusalem of Gold" — the group couldn't help joining in.
Claudia is one of about 1,500 Jews who live in Cuba; 1,100 reside in
Havana, and the remaining 400 are spread among the provinces. There is
no rabbi living on the island, and there is only one kosher butcher.
This small Jewish presence is in stark contrast to the bustling
community that existed before Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. In
those days, there were 15,000 Jews and five synagogues in Havana alone.
Still, Jews in modern-day Cuba manage to keep their culture and
traditions alive.
As Maritza Corrales, a Cuban historian who lives in Havana and the
author of "The Chosen Island: Jews in Cuba," remarked, "To be Cuban and
Jewish is to be twice survivors."
Visits by groups like the Westchester Jewish Center, one of many United
States Jewish entities that organize occasional humanitarian or
religious trips to Cuba, are one of the ways that Jews in Cuba nurture
their communities. Although the focus of these trips allows American
travelers to bypass United States restrictions on tourism to Cuba, they
require a full schedule of religious and humanitarian activities that
often include donations of medications, clothing and religious objects
needed for prayer.
On a weeklong trip in November, the group traveled around the island by
bus, accompanied by two English-speaking guides who were well versed in
Jewish-Cuban history and culture. When the visitors from Westchester
entered Adath Israel, Cuba's only Orthodox synagogue — and one of three
active synagogues in Havana — the feeling of connection between the
Cubans and the Americans was palpable. The words, the songs, were all
the same. In the sanctuary, a large wooden bimah, or podium, housed the
Torahs behind a red velvet curtain, and a glass wall separated the men
from the women.
After the service, a 17-year-old college student serenaded the Americans
with his violin, playing traditional pieces like "Hava Nagila." The
musician could have been a college student from anywhere in the United
States, with his facial stubble, sneakers and low-slung jeans. The
difference is that this young man is not allowed to leave his country,
not even to visit his parents, who are government engineers working abroad.
Elsewhere in Havana, there is the Sephardic Hebrew Center of Cuba, and
the Conservative Beth Shalom synagogue, largest of the three synagogues,
with more than 500 members. Beth Shalom houses a Jewish community
center, known as El Patronato, a library and a pharmacy, which
distributes medication — most of which comes as donations from Jewish
groups visiting from the United States — throughout the island to Jews
and non-Jews.
After Mr. Castro took power and nationalized private business and
property, 90 percent of the Jewish population, many of them business
owners, fled the island, and the remaining 10 percent were largely not
observant. There were so few Jewish people coming to pray that the Cuban
minyan was born, counting each Torah as a qualifying member to make
prayer possible (a minyan normally requires 10 Jewish adults).
The Jewish presence continued to fade for years, and it was not until
1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that Cuba changed its
constitution, allowing for religious freedom. The Jewish community began
to rebuild. Rabbis from Chile, Argentina, Panama and Mexico came to
teach the remaining Cuban Jews how to pray and lead services, and Jewish
organizations in Canada began sending kosher food for Passover.
The synagogues welcomed the Jews who came to pick up the food, and
encouraged them to come back for Shabbat and various holiday
celebrations. Within 10 years, a growing number of activities were
established, including the Sunday school at the Patronato, where
children ages 6 through 14 learn Jewish culture and tradition. It
started with 10 children and now has nearly 70. There is also a Jewish
women's group with 150 participants, meeting once every six weeks to
help with women's issues like domestic violence and how to keep a Jewish
home. Jewish life is not as organized outside Havana, where the Jewish
population is much smaller. For instance, only 27 practicing Jews live
in Cienfuegos, a picturesque city on a bay. There is no synagogue to
pray in. Instead, the Jewish community of Cienfuegos gathers each Friday
night for Shabbat services in the front room of Rebecca Langus's
second-floor apartment.
Ms. Langus, the 43-year-old leader of the community, who lives with her
husband and two sons, has adorned the walls of her small home with
Jewish art, the bookcases with Jewish prayer books and the shelves with
an array of Jewish paraphernalia.
"When you are few, there is a responsibility to keep traditions," Ms.
Langus said. "Educating the children is the only way to keep the
community alive."
The 25-member Jewish community of Santa Clara, the capital city of the
central Villa Clara province, has raised enough money to buy a house and
convert it into a synagogue, but has yet to find the ideal property. For
now, they take great pride in the somber Holocaust memorial, erected in
2003, in the local Jewish cemetery. It includes a stone from the
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and in front is a path made of
stones from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Next to the memorial stands a menorah with a Star of David and branches
for six candles, symbolizing the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust.
Although preserving Jewish culture has been an uphill struggle, leaders
remain optimistic about the future. Even though Israel is the only
country with which Cuba has cut off diplomatic relations, there is no
evidence of anti-Semitism in Cuba. "I felt safer wearing my yarmulke in
Cuba than I do wearing one in White Plains," said Jeffrey Segelman, the
rabbi of the Westchester Jewish Center. And the island's Jewish presence
remains solid.
"If you asked me 10 years ago when the community was dwindling, I may
have said that the Jewish community wouldn't exist today," said Adela
Dworin, president of the Jewish community in Cuba. "It won't be the same
as 1959, but now at least we have people who are young, middle-aged and
old."
MS. DWORIN had the opportunity to meet Mr. Castro in 1998, and asked him
why he had never visited the Jewish community, to which he replied:
"Because I was never invited." Ms. Dworin promptly invited him to the
coming Hanukkah celebration at the Patronato. When Mr. Castro asked what
Hanukkah was, Ms. Dworin explained that the holiday celebrates the
"revolution" — a word Castro likes — of the Jewish people.
To her surprise, Mr. Castro showed up at the party of 200, sat next to
her in the front row and addressed the congregation in a lengthy speech.
Joseph Levy, leader of the Sephardic temple, has a more somber outlook
on Jewish life in Cuba. He emphasized how difficult it was to keep
Jewish traditions alive, because without a rabbi, he said, "the Jewish
community here is almost like living in a house without parents."
For the group from Westchester, one member's past was a snapshot of the
Jewish experience in Cuba. Sandy Marantz , a psychotherapist at Beth
Israel Hospital in Manhattan, was born in Cuba in 1959, and 12 days
before the United States closed its borders to Cuban citizens in 1961,
Ms. Marantz, then 19 months old, and her parents left for the United States.
After 45 years of wanting to visit her native country — her parents
never wished to return — Ms. Marantz finally saw the hospital in which
she was born, the apartment in Havana where she lived, the synagogue to
which her parents belonged and the grave where her grandfather, whom she
never met, is buried.
Going to Cuba, said Ms. Marantz, allowed her to "connect with my past"
and "made me feel grateful to be a Jew."
Information about Jewish missions to Cuba is available from B'nai Brith
(877-222-9590; www.jewishcuba.org/bnaibrith), the Cuba-America Jewish
Mission (www.thecajm.org) and the Jewish Cuba Connection (www.jewban.org).
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/travel/04journeys.html?ref=travel
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