Once forced to practice their religion behind closed doors, Cuba’s Lilliputian Jewish community is bringing its practice and the symbols of its faith out into the open.
Following the Soviet Union’s dramatic meltdown in 1991, religion was transformed from the opiate of the masses to A-OK virtually overnight.
“People prominently display their Jewish medallions. One man had a Magen David on his car,” recalled Martin Stein, a San Francisco computer consultant who was one of a dozen local Jews who traveled to Cuba for a five-day Jewish Community Federation mission in December.
“And there were no guards at the synagogues. The first guard I saw was at the Jewish Museum in Miami on the way back. In that sense, the Jews are treated as well as anyone else. The Jews live badly but so does everybody else.”
Until 1991, filling in a religion — any religion — on a job application was equivalent to writing “give the job to someone else.” Nowadays, however, Havana alone sports three different synagogues.
Before being returned to the Jewish community, the synagogues had been used by the government and one still houses a gym. While not desecrated, the buildings have fallen somewhat into disrepair.
“There’s a Sephardic synagogue and a Conservative synagogue and an Orthodox synagogue, and the Sephardic has some Ashkenazis attend and the other two have some Sephardic Jews, so it’s a pretty blended community,” said Ed Cushman, the S.F.-based JCF’s assistant executive director, of the nation’s 1,500 Jews. “They’re also blended in terms of intermarried families; the intermarriage rate is well above 90 percent.”
Still, Cushman observed, many Cubans are taking Judaism very seriously.
Richard Klein, a San Francisco real estate broker, recalls a conversation he and Cushman had with a young Cuban Jew.
The grandson of a Turkish immigrant, the man grew up in a Jewish household — until 1959, when Fidel Castro came to power. Yet, when the man’s father was dying in 1989, he told his family he wanted to be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
“The gentleman’s brother had gone to Russia because of the tie between Cuba and Russia, married a Jewish woman and moved to Israel,” said Klein. “At the time of his father’s death, he came back to Cuba and said Kaddish over the father. As a result of this, the man became very emotional and decided he ought to look at his roots. Now every Friday, he reads from the Torah.”
Throughout the brief journey, the Bay Area residents took in Cuban sights that appeared incongruous to Americans. Peering out of a bus window, Klein noticed a pair of ice cream shops on opposite sides of the street. Yet while one was virtually empty, the other featured a long, zig-zagging line approaching that of “Harry Potter” on opening night.
Was one shop that much better than the other? No. The empty one takes only dollars, while, after a 90-minute wait at the other shop, you could buy ice cream for pesos.
“The oddities of a socialist regime where a physician makes $15 a month and a person who takes your bags in the hotel makes 10 times that is unusual for Americans,” said Stein. Despite the hardships, however, “the warmth the Cuban people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, extended to us was noticeable. And they were not particularly anti-American. People were wearing headbands that were U.S. flags. Also, I saw everywhere Che Guevara T-shirts, Che this, Che that. I only saw one Castro sign, but I saw Che all over.”
While Cubans are coming to grips with their material disadvantages, they could use a little help. Participants in the JCF trip brought soap, clothes, cameras and, most importantly, prescription drugs. While many pharmacies in the embargoed nation are bare, those in Havana’s synagogues are fairly well-stocked.
Supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and run by Ivan and Cynthia Gleit, an Argentine Jewish couple, the pharmacy aids many non-Jews as well.
The outpouring of warmth and friendliness left trip participants in an optimistic mood following the whirlwind mission.
The Cuban Jews “felt there was a bond, they weren’t alone,” said Stein. “It wasn’t just 1,500 Jewish people in the country but 11 million Jews around the world who cared about them.”