CUBA IS A COUNTRY VISITED BY RELATIVELY FEW AMERICANS. Despite the fact that it is only 90 miles south of Key West, Florida, there are severe restrictions placed on Americans who would like to visit the country. The Clinton administration has recently moved to liberalize some of these limitations, and it is possible for groups on cultural or educational missions to visit the country legally. According to the current law, it remains illegal for most Americans to spend money in the country. Nevertheless, a large and growing number of Americans ignore the ban and visit illegally.
Although we think of it as one large island, the country is actually an archipelago with more than four thousand islands and cays. Most of the population lives on the large main island, which stretches from east to west. There are fields of sugar cane that stretch for miles, large patches of tobacco plants, and all sorts of semi-tropical fruits and vegetables, including some of the tastiest papaya in the world, and glistening white sand beaches dotted with coconut palm trees flanking bright blue water as far as the eye can see.
It would not be an exaggeration to call it a tropical paradise. And yet, as we all know, there are troubles in this paradise. Even so, Jews continue to live here. Let me describe the Jewish community of Cuba today, gleaned from two recent visits, and put contemporary events in the context of the historical background of the past four decades.
A Brief Historical Perspective
Most Jewish immigrants came to Cuba in the early decades of the twentieth century. [1] Many were Sephardim from the Ottoman Empire, as well as Egypt, Algeria, Syria, and other Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Some settled in Havana, but others established homes in other areas, such as Camaguey, Santiago de Cuba, and Santa Clara. [2] The Jewish community in the provinces was heavily Sephardic historically, and today is almost entirely of Sephardic origin. There were also Ashkenazim who arrived from Eastern Europe; about two-thirds were from Poland with others from Russia and Rumania. Most established small businesses. Many of them began working as manual laborers and then opened up small stores in Havana once they had saved up some money. The more successful were eventually able to move into wholesaling, and some became quite affluent. [3]
Many of the Jewish immigrants to Cuba--particularly the Ashkenazim--saw their time in Cuba as a temporary stopover on their way to the United States. After 1921, and even more so after 1924, there were immigration restrictions placed on Jews trying to enter the United States; many Jews eager to leave Eastern Europe felt it was better to emigrate to Cuba where they would be close to America and would be able eventually to move to the United States. Many hoped to receive legal visas, while others believed that it would be possible to enter the United States illegally, either directly from Cuba or across the Mexican border into Texas or California. Some refer to their stay in Havana as "Hotel Cuba," indicating that they never believed that the island was their home.
In 1996 a visiting rabbi from Chile officiated at a double bar mitzvah ceremony for two cousins, Robertito Novoa Bonne and Andresito Novoa Castiel. A month later, Rabbi Stuart Kelman of Congregation Netivot Shalom of Berkeley, California came to Santiago for a second double bar mitzvah ceremony. The double bar mitzvahs were the first ones held in the city for almost twenty years, and most of the members of the Jewish community attended the ceremonies. [28] Upon his return to Berkeley Kelman stated that "these are people coming back to Judaism with enthusiasm and passin." [29]
One young Cuban who has re-embraced his Jewish identity is Eitan Behar. At the time of his birth in October 1972 in Santiago, no organized Jewish community remained in the city. Like most descendants of Jews in the Santiago community, Eitan's parents were intermarried. His mother's family came from Turkey, and his father's grandparents were Catholics from Spain. Yet, he writes, "I knew I was a Jew." Much of this Jewish identity took the form of a visceral identification with Zionism, a deeply problematic political loyalty in pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist Cuba. Eitan recalls, "I had a small flag of Israel, and my mother was afraid of it. I loved to wear it all the time. But Cuba is [was] a pro-Palestinian country, and Israel was directly [connected to the UN resolution] 'Zionism equals racism.' So my ideology could be [criticized] for wearing such a symbol of racism. I remember a few very good teachers in high school who told me, 'Do you know what is the meaning of this flag?' When I said, 'Yes,' they answere d, 'You should be proud of it.'" [30] Both the Batista and the early Castro regimes formerly considered Israel a small country struggling for freedom just like Cuba. But once Castro formed an alliance with the Soviet Union, the official line on the State of Israel changed dramatically. Yet Eitan felt that most Cubans in Santiago continued to feel a great deal of respect for Israel, remembering it as "the country that plants flowers in the desert"
Eitan confirms that when he was growing up religion in Cuba was not persecuted per se, but everyone knew that the government supported atheism and the doctrine that religion was the opiate of the people. Education was Marxist-Communist and most people were afraid publicly to practice any kind of religion. Eitan described the situation as he experienced it in Santiago, but it was true for the entire country. Most people stopped going to their churches or synagogues. Yet a large percentage of Cubans kept their beliefs. As Eitan told me, "You can change a government, but you cannot change people's belief in a couple of years." [31] So most Cubans retained some type of faith in their home but avoided any public demonstration of that faith.
Rededicating the Synagogue in Camaguey
Camaguey is the provincial capital of Camaguey, the largest province in Cuba. Camaguey Province has a reputation as a tough cowboy type of area. It has immense flatlands of sugarcane and great numbers of grazing cattle. The original city was founded in 1514 on the coast, but after almost continuous attacks from pirates it was moved inland in 1528. Camaguey became known as a center for the marketing of contraband livestock to several nearby Caribbean islands that were settled by the French, Dutch, and English. But this economic success again attracted the attention of the pirates, and in 1668 the English pirate Henry Morgan looted the city.
Another major pirate attack occurred about a decade later. As a consequence, the fear of pirates is visible in Camaguey's early colonial architecture. A network of winding streets that form a labyrinth surrounds the inner core of the city. There are many blind alleys and forked streets that lead to squares of different sizes. There is only one exit from the city; should pirates ever return and succeed in entering the city, the hope was that the local inhabitants would be able to entrap and kill them.
There were two separate synagogues in Camaguey, both built in the 1920s. Both Congregation Shevet Achim and Congregation Tiferet Israel were Sephardic. Both were closed down after the Revolution. In 1942 a society named the Centro Israelita de Camaguey was established. Most of its members were Ashkenazim, although it was not officially an Ashkenazi congregation. It disappeared before the Revolution. The government nationalized most of the small businesses that had been owned and run by the eight hundred Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews of the city.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee sent a representative to work out of Havana for an initial period of about two years. This representative was responsible not only for helping organize the Jews of Havana, but also to assist in the rebuilding of other Jewish communities. The input from the Joint Distribution Committee and other Jewish visitors was profound. Albojaire, a former president of the local Jewish community, states, "They taught us how to sing the prayers; they brought books, gefilte fish-and, most importantly, they taught what we couldn't to our children." [32] Albojaire explains what happened to the Jews of Camaguey. "Years without formally practicing and without any organized services really removed us from Judaism. Most of us, like me, had to marry out of the religion. There were no Jews." [33]
Most of the Jews at Camaguey were intermarried, and many of those expressing interest in Judaism were themselves only part Jewish. There was no interest in accepting a Reform definition of Jewish identity as patrilineal as well as matrilineal. Therefore in 1995, Rabbi Szteinhendler came to Camaguey to officiate at the conversion ceremonies of twenty-one people, mostly spouses and children of born Jews. This relatively large-scale conversion was not restricted to Camaguey; throughout the country there were many other conversions performed under similar circumstances.
Shortly after the revival began in the 1990s, Jewish communal leaders in Havana reached an understanding that conversions would be done to formalize their Jewish status for those who were either of Jewish origin or married to Jews. Individuals who approached the community without either Jewish ancestry or a Jewish partner but who were simply interested in Judaism were generally not allowed to convert, a reflection of the dominant national/ethnic conception of Jewishness. Conservative rabbis from South and Central America performed most of the conversions. Orthodox rabbis performed conversions through the Orthodox Ashkenazi Synagogue in Havana.
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