Published Saturday, May 10, 2008
Small Jewish enclave thrives in Cuba after languishing
By Mike Williams
Cox News Service
HAVANA, Cuba | The synagogue has been proudly and lovingly restored.
Services that for the past 40 years attracted only a handful are now
brimming with new members. The youth group is popular and active and the
Sunday school for children attracts dozens each week.
But best of all for Adela Dworin, curious Cubans have started returning
to the Jewish library here in numbers. Many are descendants of Jewish
families who have suddenly come alive to their history, intent on
learning more about their religious traditions.
After languishing — like all organized faiths — following Cuba's 1959
Revolution and Fidel Castro's adoption of a communist government that
discouraged religious practices, Cuba's tiny Jewish community is
thriving again.
Daniel Motela, 28, leads a 200-member Jewish youth organization. 'Many
of them come and enjoy the group activities,' he said. 'But I think most
come to continue their family traditions and learn more about the Jewish
faith.'
Cuba now boasts three synagogues and a community center, along with
small pockets of followers around the island. Several dozen Cubans with
Jewish roots have converted, including adult men who agreed to the
Jewish circumcision ceremony. The Sunday school now routinely draws 60
children each week.
The community still lacks a full-time rabbi, but is supported by rabbis
from other Spanish-speaking countries who visit frequently.
Although still tiny in number on an island with a population of 11
million and deep Catholic roots, Cuba's Jewish community's rebirth seems
to have assured Jewish traditions will live on here.
'At one point we were down to about 800 Jews in Cuba but now it's back
to about 1,500,' said Dworin, a cheerful, intelligent woman who speaks
English and serves as president of Cuba's Jewish Community. 'Now we are
celebrating all the holidays.'
The community's revival can be traced to the 1990s, when Castro eased
the official line discouraging religious worship. The change came amid
Cuba's crisis sparked by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
island's loss of billions in annual subsidies from its long-time
communist patron.
Castro met with leaders of all the island's faiths, reversing a
long-standing prohibition on Communist Party members joining churches.
The religious re-awakening culminated in the 1998 visit by Pope John
Paul II, but Dworin recalls with pride that the Cuban leader did not
ignore the Jews.
At a meeting with religious leaders, 'I shook hands with [Castro] and I
asked if he could visit the synagogue,' Dworin said. 'We didn't tell our
people we might be having a special visitor, so they were astonished
when he came. He gave a speech and was very kind. It was a big honor.'
Dworin, in her 60s, always remained active as a Jew, but recalls the
long years when the community's numbers dwindled.
At times not even enough male members attended services to create a
quorum. It was a challenging reversal after what had been an amiable, if
brief, history of Jews in Cuba.
The community traces its roots back to 1906 when the first Jews arrived
in Cuba, many from the U.S., who came to grow sugar and tobacco. Their
numbers swelled in the 1930s as anti-Semitism flared in Europe in the
lead-up to World War II, and continued growing as the war broke out and
Hitler's Nazi Germany began the systematic extermination of 6 million
Jews in the Holocaust.
'My father came to Cuba in 1920 from a town that is now in Belarus,'
Dworin said. 'Like most Jews, he wanted to go to the U.S., but there
were quotas, and it was almost impossible to get a visa. He didn't even
know where Cuba was.'
Most of the European immigrants were poor, and many found work in Cuba
as peddlers, selling items door-to-door in the streets of Havana. Over
the years, many prospered, with Dworin's father first opening a clothing
store and eventually a clothing factory.
As Cuba's Jews gained success, they encouraged their children to become
professionals, doctors and lawyers with skills that would support them
no matter the vagaries of economics or politics.
Dworin herself studied law, but eventually became a librarian overseeing
the Jewish community's books and historical treasures.
Most of Cuba's Jews supported Castro's Revolution, she said, hoping it
would bring an end to the widespread corruption that beset the island
under dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s. But when Castro's
government adopted communist ideals and began confiscating private
businesses and properties, most Jews fled, many to the U.S.
'But they didn't leave because of anti-Semitism,' Dworin said. 'In Cuba,
the behavior of the people toward the Jews was always very nice. There
was never any persecution. I decided to stay because I always felt like
a Cuban, proud of being born here, very Cuban and very Jewish.'
The long years that followed were difficult, but Dworin remained
optimistic.
When Castro met with religious leaders in the 1990s and reversed the
state's discouragement of organized religion, Dworin and others,
including Dr. Jose Miller, began seeking out Cubans with Jewish roots.
Most of the island's Jews by then had married outside the faith, stopped
attending services and lost touch with Jewish traditions.
With the help of American and international Jewish support groups, the
small number of faithful in Cuba began rebuilding their membership and
refurbishing their facilities.
'I cried a lot when we re-opened the big sanctuary in 2000,' Dworin
said, noting that the extensive remodeling job was supported by American
Jewish groups. 'For so long we used the small chapel, but we grew so
much we no longer had enough room for services there.'
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20080510/NEWS/730108677/1010/NEWS05
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