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Cuban Jews overcome barriers to sustain passion for Judaism.

DAVID J. MAGIDSON
Special to the Jewish News

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David J. Magidson, who
took part in the Jewish
Community Center of
Metropolitan Detroit's
"Jewish Cuba" trip
Dec. 13-21, offers his
o thoughts on what he
saw and experienced.

I

n Havana, I went to five services in three days. First,
a Friday morning Shachrit at (the Orthodox) Adath
Israel, led by Rabbi Leonardo Bitran from
Congregation Shaarey Zedek B'nai Israel in West
Bloomfield and watched over carefully by Senor Dache,
leader of the small synagogue.
Then, Kabbalat Shabbat, led by Argentinean Diego
Mandlebaum, the American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee's man in Havana, and 29-year-old congregant
Dr. Tatiana Assis, at (Conservative) Patronato Synagogue.
Rabbi Bitran did a Dvar Torah in English and Spanish
about Joseph recognizing his family, and how that was
why we were here — to recognize our family in Cuba.
Almost poetry.
Saturday morning, it was the Centro Hebreo Sefaradia
de Cuba. Some congregants, for lack of the one-cent bus
fare, have walked two hours to pray here.

David J. Magidson of Bloomfield Hills is a professor in the

Department of Theatre at Wayne State University in Detroit.
44,7

Services are like I remember from childhood seders, with
half the readings from the Maxwell House haggadot and
the rest a mixture from somewhere else. The service pro-
ceeds headlong into frantic page searching.
Jose Levy Tur, the congregation leader, is charming. We
meet a fellow from Holland who now lives in Mexico after
leaving Africa, but is settling in Cuba. Rabbi Bitran reads
the Torah portion.
We go back to the Patronato for Havdala.
Four, right? What more could happen with only three
Havana synagogues?
Early Sunday, we find ourselves at the Luyano
Presbyterian Church.

Above: Travelers on the JCC Cuba trip included, in alphabeti-
cal order: Prudence Bernstein, Bernard Cantor, Judith Cantor,
Delores Curiel, Nora Curieh Bertha Davidson, Myrtle Everett,
Robert Everett, Samuel Gelbart, Allan Gelfonch Harriet
Gelfonch Charles Gelfonch Glenn R. Giles, Carol Jacoby
David Magidson, Leslee Magidson, Adam Mandleblatt, Irene
Mandleblatt, Martin Miller Judith Miller, Joseph Rose, Ruth
Ross, Feodora Singer, Etta Solway David Stofer, Ida Weider,
Morris Weider, Deborah Zukin, Norman Zukin.

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