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Templo Chevet Ahim, a distinctive blue building with a Hebrew-lettered sign, has stood on the same Havana street for decades. Nearby, a newer building houses an active congregation called Adath Israel. But when photographer Dan Heller set out to look for Havana's Jewish community last March, very few Cubans had any idea where to find it.

"I'd ask people, 'Where is the synagogue?'" said Heller. "They'd just repeat the Spanish word synagoga and say, 'What does that mean?'"

Heller's photographs of Cuba will be on display at the Marin Jewish Community Center in San Rafael through March 1. The free exhibit, "Cuba: People and Culture," includes some 40 pictures emphasizing the Jewish community.

His scenes from Jewish life are captivating but familiar: a group of men at the bimah, a congregant carrying the Torah, a tombstone in a Jewish cemetery. "There was nothing visually unique about Judaism in Cuba," said Heller, a freelance travel photographer who lives in Marin. "The synagogue is in a regular building, and the Jews are like Jews anywhere."

What makes the pictures remarkable is their context in Heller's exhibit. Placed beside photos of Communist paraphernalia and cigar-factory workers, it is clear that the Jewish photos were not taken in San Francisco or New York. They were taken in Cuba, a country nearly devoid of Judaism only one decade ago.

The Caribbean island once had a thriving Jewish community of 15,000, but all religion was outlawed when Fidel Castro seized power during the Communist revolution in 1959. Cuba's synagogues were closed, and practicing Jews risked being sent to labor camps. Even books by Anne Frank and Isaac Bashevis Singer were prohibited by law. When the Communist Party finally restored religious freedom in 1991, only a fraction of the island's Jew remained.

In Havana, the capital city of 3 million, there are now only 1,400 Jews left, approximately.

"The Jews you meet in Cuba today are either totally indifferent or else very devout, almost zealous in their attitudes," Heller said. "It's hard to be anything but either of those two extremes in Cuba. The rest of the country is so secular that any religious faith would have to be overly powerful. Otherwise it would have faded long ago."

One of Heller's most striking photographs shows a white-haired man bent over his prayer book. He wears a round skullcap, and his arms are wrapped in phylacteries. The photo captures the intent religiousness of Havana's Jews. "Anything they do has to have something Jewish about it, or they don't bother," Heller said.

The Jews Heller met in Havana seemed unperturbed that most others did not know their "synagoga" existed. He quotes Salim Tache Jalak, the administrator of Templo Adath Israel, as saying that Cuba is the best country in the world in which to be Jewish. "There's no anti-Semitism here," said Tache Jalak. "People don't hate us, and we can practice our faith without the threat of intervention, whether from the people or the government."

Somewhat more surprisingly, he also told Heller that he and most of his congregation like and support Castro. They are satisfied with his current tolerance and sympathize with his ideology, Heller related. Tache Jalak even went so far as to say that the Communist philosophy, with its emphasis on caring for the whole community, is "essentially a Jewish one."

To Heller, this comparison seemed a bit like "stuffing an oddly shaped square peg into an even more oddly shaped round hole."

Heller asserted, in light of his month-long stay in the country: "Cubans are not informed about global issues. Most of them don't even bother to form strong opinions, at least not the kinds Americans do. When they say they're happy with Castro, it's because they really don't know anything different."

At the same time, Heller's photographs challenge the American view of Cuba as a destitute island run by corrupt public figures. "Once I got to Havana, I realized that life there isn't so bad," he said. "The things that matter to them are the same day-to-day things we think about: What's going on at work, what's going on at school, what are the Tuesdays and Thursdays of life like?"

This contentment comes through in Heller's images of the Jewish community. His photographs do not highlight the struggles of Cuban Jews or the indifference they face from the rest of the country. Instead, they present Jews praying, smiling, and enjoying their lives.

One shot called "Giggles" shows a young Jewish woman with bracelets down her arm, turning her head sideways and laughing. "It's not that their problems aren't real," said Heller. "Yes, they're poor. Yes, there are a lot of freedoms they don't have. It's just that they're happy people for other reasons. Once you realize that, you can start looking at things from a completely new perspective."