Part Two - Ruth Behar

Memoir
1
(continued)
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Cuba’s Jews: People of a Solitary Star
Continued from page 4
Watching throughout the 1990s as Jews in Cuba found
their way to a Jewish identity amid the gaze of all the
outsiders who had a stake in their Jewish awakening, I
decided to write a book about this emerging community
that mixed stories and photographs. In 2001 I met the
photographer Humberto Mayol in Havana after seeing an
impressive collection of his black and white photographs
focusing on the Afrocuban religions of Palo Monte and
Santería. I asked him if he’d be interested in photographing another religious and ethnic community—the Jews in
Cuba. He wasn’t Jewish and knew nothing about Jews,
but he agreed right away. Over the next five years we
traveled all over Cuba searching for Jews, he with his
camera, and I with my pen, working together to reveal
the conjuncture of Jewishness and Cubanness, visually
and textually.
The Jewish revival that was in full force by the late
1990s soon made it clear to the world that it would be the
responsibility of the four percent of Jews who stayed in
Cuba to guard the Jewish legacy and keep it from disappearing. It is the Jews on the island today who learn to
chant from the Torahs brought 80 years ago from Poland
and Turkey.
Alberto Behar teaching Torah to young bar and bat mitzvah students
It is they who continue to bury their dead in the Jewish
cemeteries of the island, surrounded by palm trees. Upon
them has fallen the burden of preserving the scattered
bits and pieces of Jewish life, the archaeological relics
that have survived. They are the keepers of the yellowing
satin kippah worn at a Jewish wedding in 1959, as the
Revolution began.
Alberto Behar with 1959 kippah
Unlike the pre-revolutionary Jewish community of
Cuba, which had few converts to Judaism, the post-revolutionary Jewish community is almost exclusively made
up of converts. With support from the Joint Distribution
Committee in New York, Jewish teachers from Argentina
are sent to provide Jewish education, and rabbis periodically visit to perform circumcisions, weddings,
and conversions.
To become a
Jew you need
documents, and
two brothers
in Camaguey,
w h o s e p a t e rnal grandfather
is Jewish and
was circumcised at the age
of 67, hold up
proof of their
J e w i s h n e s s — Boys in Camaguey with conversion documents
their conversion
papers.
On my first visits to Cuba in the early 1990s, I’d spend
the Sabbath in the Patronato, the once elegant but crumbling Havana synagogue where I’d gone as a child. A
handful of other congregants were there. They didn’t
know Hebrew and couldn’t follow the religious service.
Pigeons flew in and out through the torn roof.
By 2002, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg had
visited the Jews of Cuba. While in Havana for a film
festival, he’d asked to be taken to the Jewish cemetery
and to the Patronato, which was by then newly renovated
with support from the Cuban Jewish community in Miami
and American Jewish organizations, complete with air
conditioning, a computer room, a video screening room,
and a new roof. Spielberg knelt and shook hands with
little Moishe, or Moisés—a five-year-old who knows by
heart the blessings for the washing of the hands and the
partaking of bread and wine. Spielberg was so moved that
before leaving he wrote the Jews of Cuba a note—“When
I see how much cultural restoration has been performed
by you and others, it reminds me again about why I am
so proud to be a Jew.” He added the words “Thank you”
before signing his name, as if to express his gratitude to
the Jews in Cuba for simply existing.
From pigeons in the synagogue to Spielberg in the synagogue—that defines the dramatic arc of transformations
I have witnessed as a traveler to Jewish Cuba—a Jewish
Cuba I never forget might have been mine had my own
Jewish Cuban family stayed on the island.
The idea that Jewish life has been possible at all under
Fidel Castro contributes to the exotic appeal of Cuba’s
Jews, who maintain their identity in a web of contradictions and paradoxes. Since Israel votes to support
the U.S. embargo, Cuba is officially pro-Palestinian and
doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel. Yet Israel,
together with Spain, is a major investor in the Cuban
economy. Jews in Cuba suffer no discrimination. In fact,
the Cuban government goes out of its way to accommodate Jewish needs, neither interfering with the functioning of the kosher butcher shop in Havana nor the distribution of matzah; neither interfering with activities in the
synagogues nor the numerous departures of community
members to Israel. Although the Cuban press frequently
expresses anti-Zionist views, there is wide admiration
and respect for the Jewish people. Schindler’s List was
shown on Cuban television and was the subject of much
sympathetic discussion. It has not escaped the notice of
the Cuban government that American Jews have fueled
the revitalization of the Jewish community and that they
have also been among the most active grassroots diplomats, engaging with Cubans through cultural exchanges
Globalization and the New Humanities, November 14-5
currents, they will explore how the disciplines of the humanities in China are rearranging
themselves in light of China’s rapid globalization and social change. In what ways are
questions of identity (for China, or the Chinese humanities) taking precedence in their
work? To what extent have the humanities achieved public voices in the new China?
What kind of public address to the state on matters of human rights, equity under capitalism, state preservation and interpretation of culture, and the future of universities are the
humanities making? How do they compare to the exciting and often critical work done
in the Chinese arts today? What links are being restored or reinvented between Chinese
scholars working in China and the astonishing Chinese diaspora?
The Institute’s Norman Freehling Professor for next year—Haiping Yan—is a chief
organizer of the conference who lives a double life between a Professorship in Theater
at UCLA and a Distinguished Professorship in Shanghai where she is associated with the
building of humanities programs and projects in Chinese universities. The Institute is
fortunate to be bringing back Professor Yan to campus, who was here for two years in
what was then the Center for Global Arts at the International Institute. Yan is an important Chinese playwright who has more recently turned to scholarly writing on Chinese
and volunteer medical assistance programs.
Fidel Castro, some say, has a soft spot for the Jews,
possibly for personal reasons. Might
Castro be a hidden Jew? His daughter,
Alina Fernández Revuelta, claims that
one of Castro’s grandfathers was a Jew
from Istanbul. But all that Castro has
ever told reporters is that his Jewish
identity harks back to the days of the
Inquisition, when Spanish Jews took
on names like Castro and became conversos (Jewish converts to Catholicism)
to escape being burned at the stake.
Irrespective of Castro’s family tree,
it is well known that Cubans as a
whole tend to think of themselves as
the “Jews of the Caribbean.” On the
island, Cubans see Cuba and Israel
as similarly fierce and independent
nations, small in size but huge in
ambitions, surrounded by historical
enemies who seek to topple their efforts to build paradise
on earth. Cuban exiles and immigrants, in contrast, see
themselves as diasporic in the classic Jewish sense, as,
in the words of poet Rafael Campo:
people, of a solitary star
who wander, searching for a home someplace.
Che in the synagogue
Such shared Jewish and Cuban sensibilities make the
actual Jews still living in Cuba a potent symbol of what
it means to search for a home in the world today. Jews
in Cuba breathe the revolutionary air of Che Guevara.
They are shockingly poor in material things, lacking such
accoutrements of modern life as credit cards, frequent
flyer numbers, laptops, and cell phones, but they are
rich in spirituality, and rich in engagement with some
of the last utopian ideals left in the world. Their aura is
such that hundreds upon hundreds of people continue
to travel to Cuba to show their support and attempt to
commune with them.
Ruth Behar is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.
This essay is adapted from her new book, An Island Called Home:
Returning to Jewish Cuba, appearing this fall with Rutgers University
Press.
All photographs in this article are by Havana-based, prize-winning
photographer Humberto Mayol, who traveled with Ruth Behar on her
journey through Cuba. His work has been widely exhibited in the U.S.,
Europe, and Latin America.
The solitary star has more than one meaning for Cuba’s Jews.
It refers to the Jewish star, the star on the Cuban flag, and the red star
of the revolutionary on Che’s beret.
continued from page 8
and global drama from feminist and other
angles. The workshop is the continuation of
one organized by Professor Yan in Shanghai
(June 2005) which brought U.S. scholars to
China (including the Director of the Institute
for the Humanities) to speak to the state of
the humanities in the U.S. today. It is part of
the institute’s larger interest in limning—and
learning from—the institutional and creative
states of the humanities in various parts of
the globe.
Daniel Herwitz is Director of the U-M Institute for the
Humanities, and Mary Croushore Professor of Humanities. He
holds positions in philosophy, history of art, art and design,
and screen arts and cultures, and currently serves as CoDirector of U-M’s Human Rights Initiative.
Haiping Yan, Norman Freehling Professor, Institute for
the Humanities. XIAOCHUN ZHANG/ NEW CITIZENS
WEEKLY