jews d

in
the

travel

Havana street scene

than 10,000 Jewish refugees managed
to slip into the country between 1933
and 1944. After the war, less than 15
percent of them remained in Cuba.

COMMUNITY OF COMMUNITIES

Cuban Jewry remained divided
into three large sectors: Americans;
other Ashkenazi, mostly of Eastern
European descent; and Sephardim.
Each community kept on as a sepa-
rate entity in their secure corner of
a larger “Jewish island” within the
island of Cuba; each comfortable
with its own cemeteries and servic-
es, needs and desires, attitudes and
expectations.
Cuba took them all, and for the
most part — with tolerance and
acceptance. The actions of various
Cuban dictators, like the infamous
Batista, did not affect Jewish com-
munities: Most Cuban Jews stayed
away from the dangerous politics in
their home-island. They were well-
off and content, and they wanted
their tiny secure “islands” to last for
eternity. But Castro’s revolution of
1959 had entirely destroyed their
world, and it seemed forever.

REVOLUTION AND THE ‘TRIUMPH”

Castro reinvented the history and
the calendar. The year of 1959
became the Year of the Revolution
and years that followed were called
the Epoch of Triumph. For the Jews
of Cuba these events fueled a true
exodus, and by the early 1960s, the
Jewish community of Cuba ceased
to exist.
In the words of Ruth Behar, a
renowned anthropologist from the
University of Michigan and a Cuban
Jew whose family fled to the U.S.,
“the dissolution of the community
was swift like a lit candle snuffed by
the wind” (An Island Called Home,
2007).
Castro’s policies were never anti-
Semitic; rather it was his socialistic
destruction of the middle class that
prompted many Jews to flee. Out

of nearly 15,000 Jews, fewer than
1,000 stayed. The new Constitution
stated that any religion was illegal as
a manifestation of counter-revolu-
tionary attitudes and actions. Most
synagogues and Jewish schools were
closed or abandoned. The totalitar-
ian state came into being, and the
Jews had to — once again — assimi-
late and adapt.
They were not Jews anymore but
Cuban citizens and comrades. Like
other Cubans, they had to get used
to poverty and rations, revolutionary
atheism and fear of political perse-
cution. They also faced ferocious
anti-Israeli attitudes and rhetoric
after Castro broke up with Israel in
1973.
However, the island’s Jewish story
defies rationalization. How would
one explain the fact that the remain-
ing Jews were singled out to be the
“chosen people” for a rare luxury?
For it was during our conversation
with the vice president of the Beth
Shalom Synagogue in Havana that
we learned about …

FREE In-Home Estimates
)XOO5HPRGHOLQJ6HUYLFHV$YDLODEOH

LaFata Cabinets are manufactured
right here in Southeast Michigan

:HRIIHUIXOOUHPRGHOLQJVHUYLFHVLQDGGLWLRQWR
SURYLGLQJEHDXWLIXOKDQGFUDIWHGFDELQHWU\IRU\RXU
KRPH6WRSLQRQHRIRXUVKRZURRPVRUJLYHXVD
call to talk to a designer today!

THE KOSHER BUTCHER SHOP

Protected by a 1962 personal letter
from Fidel Castro, this tiny shop sur-
vived through the years of govern-
ment actions to extinguish religious
observances. The store is in the
heart of the former Jewish neigh-
borhood on Calle Cuba, around the
corner from the only Orthodox syna-
gogue in Havana — Adath Israel. We
learned that the shop never stopped
supplying kosher beef to the Jews of
Havana.
Our guide told us that beef is a
precious rarity and is allotted to
schoolchildren only as part of their
free lunch. Cows are considered the
property of the state. To slaughter
a cow without special permission
is a federal crime. The government
decides not only where and how
people live and work but what and
how much food they consume.
The libreta or a ration book allows

6KHOE\7RZQVKLS‡:HVW%ORRPÀHOG

ZZZODIDWDFRP‡/$)$7$

continued on page 110

jn September 14 • 2017 109