International

Documenting
Cuba's Quiet
Revolution

Photographer

Paul Margolis recorded

the Jewish rebirth that's

followed the collapse of

Cuba's made-in-

Moscow economy.

(Left) Fuel shortages have made
bicycles a major form of
transportation.
A 1950s Detroit car sits Idle
in Old Havana.

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ew Cuban Jews are
jumping into boats to
escape with the current
wave of refugees. In
fact, this Rosh
Hashanah a rabbi is
flying in from Buenos
Aires, paid for by the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Com-
mittee (JDC), to conduct High
Holiday services in Havana.
In brief: Most of Cuba's 15,000
Jews fled after Fidel Castro came
to power in 1959. Primarily of
Eastern European descent, many
had arrived in the 1920s and '30s,
hoping to eventually go to the U.S.
They had prospered in pre-Com-
munist Cuba. After the revolu-

(Above) Daniel Esquenazi is both
president and shammes of the
Sephardic synagogue, Chevet Ahlm,
in Old Havana.
The tiny synagogue,
founded in 1914,
is Havana's oldest.

(Top)Turkish-born Elazar Bennudo, 85,
Is the oldest member of Orthodox
synagogue Adath Israel,
in the old part of Havana.
He was at breakfast after the morning
minyan. The food, supplied by U.S.
and Canadian Jewish groups,
is the day's only meal
for many elderly worshippers.

tion, they left for Miami and oth-
er major American cities. Ju-
daism withered as the
population declined to the cur-
rent 1,300 Jews among 11 mil-
lion Cubans.
But Cuba's economic collapse
with the end of the Soviet Union
is creating a climate for religious
rebirth. Hardship with the loss
of Soviet markets and aid com-
bined with the 1991 loosening of
Cuban restrictions on religion
have produced a return to reli-
gious institutions of all persua-
sions. As Moshe Asis, a Cuban
now living in Coral Gables, Fla.,
said, "There's more Jewish life
now than before Castro." Mr.

