Rebeca Langus Rodriguez greeted the visitors with a warm smile and ushered them up the narrow, steep stairs leading to her apartment.
The living room was crammed with 20 folding chairs. A bookcase held prayer and history books, and a highboy displaying Judaica was topped with a menorah and silver candlesticks.
After members of the mission from California took their seats, Rodriguez began her talk about the Cienfuegos Jewish community — to which she and her family graciously open their home for Shabbat, holidays and other special occasions.
There are about 25 members, she said, including young adults and children, “and we have hope that they will be the future of the community.”
Rodriguez, a schoolteacher, functions as head of the Cienfuegos Jewish community. Her husband, Ramón, is not Jewish, but wholly supports her efforts. Their son David, 21, was bar mitzvahed in Havana in 2004.
Jewish parents “organize themselves to teach their children,” often using materials from “the library of the Jewish community,” she said, pointing to the bookcase.
The handful of families that make up the Jewish community in this seaside city on the island’s southern coast are descendants of immigrants who arrived here many decades ago. Rodriguez said the group “feels connected” to the Santa Clara Jewish community, which is only 40 miles away (compared with Havana, which is 150 miles away).
But mostly they get together among themselves, in the Rodriguez home, for Shabbat and to celebrate the holidays.
“We meet, we experience Judaism. We don’t want to let this die,” she said.
And they relish visits by Jews from abroad, she said. “It is very spiritual for us.”