The Jewish experience in Cuba has complexity, and transience.  A history on the Jewish experience in Cuba alone can have the mind reeling.  In all, there have been approximately eight to ten migrations of Jews ranging from Turks to Germans in Cuba.  Some of them migrated for fortune while most did so to flee political persecution, and quite a few used Cuba as a stepping-stone for entrance into the U.S.  With its many variables of ethnicity and migrations of Judaism, the Jewish experience in Cuba is a difficult task to define.  This is probably why I felt like I hardly had a grasp of what it meant to be Jewish in Cuba.  I have the background in the single solidarity of Ashkenazi Judaism in the New York area.  This paper has introduced me to the myriad of Judaism, and has peeled off some of my ethnocentrism.  As is the Jewish experience in Cuba is different so will be my approach in defining it.  Most of the paper will be a review of Robert Levine’s book, Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba, with interjections of my personal research, thoughts, and additional journal research when needed.

     First let me define some terms that the average reader may not be familiar with.  Ashkenazi Jew is usually of European decent, while Sephardim means that the original country is from the Middle East or Spain.  Levine speaks of these two types frequently but does not explain the real distinctions.  The difference is merely country and thus culture i.e.: Sephardim eat rice on Passover when bread and leavened items are not allowed.  

     The first Jewish immigrants were Jews from Spain making the first of migration Sephardim.  Spain had allowed Jews to enter its colony in 1881, but they were not allowed worship until 1898.  Consequently the first Jewish cemetery in the U.S. is a Sephardim one in Rhode Island.  This Spanish immigration was small in comparison to the immigration of the Turkish Jews in 1902.  The Turks known as turcos or moros immigrated because of the expansion of the sugar industry.  A report published in 1918 estimated that 90% of the 1,000 Jews in Cuba were from the Ottoman Empire and the rest came from the U.S. (Bejarano 2000).  The Americans who represent the 10% were mostly soldiers who stayed on after the Spanish-Cuban-American war.  The Americans became quite affluent though the industries of tobacco and sugar.  

     The second wave of Sephardim immigration coincided with the Ashkenazi.  The American Quota Acts in 1921 that imposed severe restrictions on immigration from Eastern Europe and Mediterranean countries motivated it.  The Polish and Russian Jews known as polacos were running from a pogrom-ridden atmosphere, and the Sephardim were fleeing unstable warlords.  The American Jews had built synagogues in the reform (liberal) style, and did not intermix with the Ashkenazi or the Sephardim.  From 1921 until the late 30’s and 40’s this was the migration pattern.  It was the eve of WWII, which brought another migration, one that I will discuss later.

     The cultures of the different Jewish populations created a barrier to the shared religion.  The Sephardim Jews did not mix with the Ashkenazi and the Americans held both as inferior.  This is not to say that the Americans never helped in times of need.  In fact, most of the humanitarian groups were American based.  They helped financially but did not worship with them.  The Sephardim Jews came as families and some were wealthy business owners prior to immigration.  The Ashkenazi Jews were mostly men and dirt poor.  The Sephardim Jews could adapt to Cuba’s hot climate and they spoke a dialect similar to Spanish, Ladino.  The Ashkenazi spoke mostly Yiddish, and only learned rudimentary Spanish.  The Sephardim did not allow women to work and they were very orthodox practices.  The Ashkenazi held more liberal views on women and the early founders of the Cuban Communist party were said to be Ashkenazi Jews with a left orientation.  These reasons and many more created a deep chasm between the two forms of Jews.  The Americans just looked over the both of them, but mostly helping the Ashkenazi because of their poverty and relation in ethnicity to the American Jews.  The banter existing between the two sounded something like this, " If a Sephardim man became ill, his brother would have to take care of him because his wife would not know how"(Levine 1997 p.41).    Many of the Ashkenazi Jews used Cuba as a "hotel" on their way to America, while the Sephardim stayed in Cuba.

     For both Sephardim and Ashkenazi Jews, life was hard.  They often had to obtain visas either illegally or legally with large amounts of money.  Work came in the form of peddling neckties or buttons on the street at a fraction of the cost of retail stores.  A common phrase of the Jewish peddler or merchant was "they earn little and sell much" (Levine 1997 p.49).  Cubans became irritated by this influx of cheap labor and in 1933 the 50 percent law was decreed stating that half of factories workers had to be native born Cubans.  This pushed the Jews into illegal employment or the continued peddling of cheap goods.  It was very hard for them to keep kosher let alone observe the Sabbath (many worked on Saturday out of necessity).  For many it just became easier to abandon these traditions, and especially for the single Ashkenazi men, marry Cuban women.  This assimilation is why Levine (1997) says the task of counting how many Jews were really in Cuba is a difficult one. Those who did leave their tradition became assimilated into the Cuban society, but those who didn’t remained separate from their tropical brothers and sisters.  The American Jews did assimilate more because they were considered Americans with money not Jews who were American.  In a heavily American "influenced" island this seems logical.  For the most part Jews in Cuba received little prejudice. 

    Life went on in this fashion with only slightly overt discrimination due mostly to tensions with all immigrants to Cuba, until the Nazi accession to power in 1933.  The new German flag, emblazoned with the black swastika, was displayed in Cuba not only at German offices and businesses but, in a few cases sympathizers (Levine 1997 p.79).  Attacks were made through some newspapers and radio to stop the immigration and called Jews "human garbage".  The community of Jews attempted to unite in an attack against this propaganda but ultimately they could not due to their cultural differences.  Jews continued to immigrate even though they were not legally permitted to work.  American funded Jewish organizations helped these immigrants by giving them eight dollars a week to live on.  This again created friction between the Ashkenazi and Sephardim because it was the Ashkenazim getting aid and not the Sephardim.  Two distinct streams of Jewish refugees from fascism arrived in Cuba. They were either Germans fleeing Nazis or Spanish Fleeing Franco.  The first peaked in 1938-39, then slowed when the Cuban government stopped honoring landing permits issued by their own government.  The second started in 1940 and ended in 1942.  An estimated 3,000 refugees entered at this time.  The refugees had to pay a 500-dollar bond, and they had to posses a letter of credit of 2,000 dollars.  In Nazi Germany, this was very pricey because they had to exchange their German reichmarks at a very high rate.  Bribes and connections with the Cuban government paved much of the way to Cuba for the Jews. Manuel Benitez Gonzalez was the director general of immigration at the time, and perhaps benefited the most from bribery.  Obtaining landing permits sometimes became distasteful.  Levine (1997) recounts Ilsa Mittel-Ashe’s attempts to secure landing permits for her German relatives.  She paid the 150 dollars needed but when she mentioned that one of them was blind "the official exacted an additional payment: he demanded that I minister to his genitals, swelling under his pants. This was disgusting, but even this did not matter as long as I could obtain the coveted papers to bring freedom to a dear one" (Levine p. 96).  

     Although Cuba required a little bribery to open up it’s doors, America didn’t budge.  Many found themselves fleeing to Cuba because America had strict immigration rules and issued high quota numbers.  Refugees would stay in Cuba and await entrance to America for years sometimes.  This is why some of the Jews called it "Hotel Cuba".  There was a time however when Cuba did turn it’s back on the Jews.  It was in the form of a ship called the SS St. Louis.  This boat holds quite a bit of significance to the Jews of Cuba past and present because Levine devotes an entire chapter to it, and Adela Dworin1 the vice president of the current community of Cuba made sure to mention it in my interview with her.  The SS St. Louis was a boat on the Hamburg-Amerika line.  It was chosen by the Nazi propagandists to function as a tool for increased anti-Semitism.  Their plan was to permit a large group of Jews to leave Germany, claim their undesirability, and then pressure countries to not take them in.  May 5, 1939 is when the president Laredo Bru decided to not let any more refugees into Cuba.  Permits and visas issued before May 5th were invalid retroactively.  The passengers of the SS St. Louis did not know this and spent their entire fortunes on the journey to a brave new world.  Bru warned the Germans that the Jews would be turned away, but that was their plan from the beginning.  The refugees remained locked in the Havana port for weeks in the smoldering heat.  Police boats surrounded the ship at all times, least anyone should escape.  Relatives had to ride out in little boats just to speak to their loved ones on board.  An old man who died on board was not allowed to be buried on land.  They buried him in the bay.   Negotiations were tried but to no avail, and the refugees after weeks were turned away.  I cannot imagine fleeing from persecution only to be turned back to the land that holds death as my fate.  The ship passed by Miami, but they were not allowed in.  Eventually the refugees were split up and sent to France, Belgium, England and the Netherlands.  The only ones who survived were the ones diverted to England.  It is said that the passengers made telegrams to heads of many countries including Roosevelt.  Roosevelt claimed he never received these and to this day the history of the SS St. Louis incident is vague.  

     Very few Jews were able to leave persecution in Europe after the forties.  The wartime refugees were separated from the already present Jews in Cuba, thus creating one more piece in the Cuban Jewish Mosaic.  The German refuges brought with them their trade of cutting and polishing diamonds.  This industry mostly employed Jews and trained few Cubans.  I remember walking down the diamond district in Manhattan, and seeing the kosher restaurants and the orthodox men.  It was always a Jewish trade that took pride and precision. Some of the new refugees settled in the middle class neighborhoods in Vedado and Miramar.  

     In 1942 the now permanent Jewish community had their own bank, grocery, and religious courts.  They performed Yiddish plays and many poets wrote about Cuban heroes such as Jose Marti.  By the wars end, they were no longer as poor and they sent their children to private schools.  The children now spoke Spanish instead of Yiddish or the Sephardim Ladino, a form of Spanish and Hebrew.  The fifties brought more stability and assimilation to the Jewish population in Cuba.  Most of the war refugees had left for America and the ones who stayed behind were established in business or old.  This time period brought many riches to the wealthy and hardship to the poor.  The Jewish business owners received the same luxuries as other middle class Cubans.  They were allowed to visit country clubs (if their hair wasn’t too kinky), and enjoyed some positions of power in the business world.  The opening of the Patronato indicated the height of Jewish success and the end to the immigration cycle.  The Patronato, in luxurious Vedado, boasted it’s own café, library, and clubrooms.  It was the first time all three types of Jews worshipped together.   Leave it to money to bring a group together!  These times were good to the few and horrible to the poor, a spark that inflamed the Cuban Revolution.

     Fate played a trick on the Cuban Jews.  Those who were most successful at assimilating had to leave after the Revolution.  About 75% of the Cuban Jewish population was engaged in small-scale retail trade.  The Cuban Jews cited socialism and nationalism as reasons to leave not discrimination.  In fact, none of the Jews were persecuted even though they belonged to the "bourgeois" group.  Most went to America and others went to Israel or other Latin American countries.  Those who did stay were the Sephardim who lived in rural towns and the Polish and Russian Jews who had been communist for years.  It is even said that Max Lesnick coined the term "Cuba Si, Yanquis No".  Those Jews with communist roots were very few.  This came to me as a surprise because all my life I have learned of my relatives belonging to socialist movements and fighting for justice.  I suppose it was the assimilation into Cuban Culture especially in the fifties that glazed over their socialist roots.  A handful of Jews helped Castro in the revolution.  

     The Revolution assimilated all Cubans into socialism/communism.  Religion was not allowed up until 1991, everyone had to do volunteer work, and Cubans of all kinds had to wait on ration lines due to the unjust American embargo.  The old synagogues lay in ruins, of which I had got to visit in Cuba.  The synagogues were in the same shape as the other houses.  The embargo has cut off building materials.  The only way to register Jews was to count how many showed up for their Passover rations. The rations included matzo, wine, and a chicken leg that would have to replace the ceremonial lamb shank.  

     During my research prior to our Cuba trip, I read about a Jewish renaissance in Castro’s Cuba.  This excited me to think that I would be able to talk to my fellow brothers and sisters about exile and socialism in an exotic place like Cuba. What I found was something quite different.  The Jews I found were Cubans struggling to create a unique identity after years of total assimilation.  Kaplan (2000) says that many Jews have started to come to synagogue for the first time.  Most of the Cubans now know nothing about Judaism.  Many have not been told as children that they were of Jewish ancestry and had only discovered this on their own.  This is true of one girl I met at the Patronato.  Maria Luisa Zayan was a girl I met while visiting the Patronato, the recently renovated synagogue inVedado.  She was a student studying cultural journalism at the University of Havana. Maria’s grandfather was an Austrian Jew, who she lovingly mentioned played violin.  Her mother and aunt never knew of their background because he died when they were very young.  Maria had recently found out her lineage and decided to create this unique identity for herself.  She entered into Judaism after having her mother convert (they are still very conservative).  When I asked Adela Dworin about this process of converting, she replied that in order to convert one must first be sure that their mother is Jewish.  She included that reformed (liberal) is for Americans.  I understood then why I felt out of place; to her I was an American not Jewish.  This attitude reflects very much what I have read about the sectioning of American, Ashkenazim and Sephardim Jews in the past.

     The renaissance is happening, just not as richly as I had imagined.  There were young children at the Patronato who knew the blessings for the wine, and student organizations met in the small library.  Adela told me that they have many organizations within the community.  Their religious teachings come from visiting rabbis because, just as the old days, Cuba is lacking Rabbis.  Adela confirmed that the Jews never felt any discrimination in Cuba, and now they are allowed to worship once again.  She also made sure to not discuss any politics. They are slowly picking up the pieces to an already fragmented past.  Perhaps when solidarity is reached for the Jews in Cuba, the community will thrive.  It should not matter what country you came from or what style of religion you have, but the Cubans haven’t figured this out yet.  They are merely on the first step towards an evolution of an ever-changing Jewish experience, fresh from the rubble of a failing revolution.
 

Bibliography

Bejarano, Margalit. (2000). Sephardic Jews in Cuba. Judaism. Summer, 219-236.

Kaplan, Dana Evan. (2000). A Jewish Renaissance in Castro’s Cuba. Judaism. Summer, 
     97-108.

Levine, Robert M. (1993). Tropical Diaspora; The Jewish Experience in Cuba. Miami,
     Fl.:University of Florida Press.
 

1. All notes taken from interview taken 7/3/02 at the Patranato Calle I, Esq. 13 Vedado
     Havana, Cuba.