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Jewish community blooming
as Cuba eases restrictions
By Doreen Hemlock. Havana
Bureau, Posted January 7 2007. Sun-sentinel.com.
HAVANA - Llina Appel remembers a thriving
Jewish life after she moved from Poland
to this Caribbean capital 80 years ago.
There were busy synagogues, social clubs,
kosher butchers and bakeries, plus big Jewish
weddings to attend.
But after Cuba nationalized businesses
in the 1960s and declared itself an atheist
nation, most Jews left. Few of those remaining
frequented synagogues, partly because of
concerns that open links to religion might
thwart advancement for their families.
Growing up during the initial decades of
socialism in Cuba, Llina's granddaughter
Eva Grabosky recalls lighting Sabbath candles
at home, but not being religious. She married
a non-Jew and neither mastered the Yiddish
spoken by her grandmother nor explored Jewish
traditions.
But Llina's great-granddaughter, Laura
Brizuela, now spends her Sunday mornings
learning Hebrew, folk dances and other lessons
at the Jewish Community Center in Havana.
And she hopes to visit Israel one day, where
some of her Cuban friends recently moved.
The three generations -- ages 93, 42 and
11, who live together in a Havana apartment
-- illustrate the evolution of the Jewish
community in Cuba. The group has morphed
from ebullient to nearly extinct to, now,
budding again. And the path is inextricably
tied to Jews in the neighboring United States,
Jewish community leaders say.
U.S. Jews were among the founders of Cuba's
first cemetery and congregation a century
ago. Some were members of the U.S. military,
who stayed after the Spanish-American War
of 1898.
More recently, after Cuba switched from
an atheist to secular state in the 1990s,
U.S. Jews have been key to funding a revival
of Cuba's synagogues. And they also provide
donations for struggling Jews on an island
where salaries average $15 a month.
When community leaders gathered Nov. 30
to celebrate 100 years of Jewish organizations
in Cuba, with Llina's great-grandaughter
dancing in the show, organizers honored
such U.S. Jewish groups as the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
U.S. aid is so vital that the Bush administration's
tightening of restrictions two years ago
on U.S. travel to Cuba have hurt synagogue
coffers.
"Before, we'd get maybe 20 visits
a day from Americans who'd put money in
the donation box. Now, we're lucky to get
one," said Luis Rousso, who manages
Adath Israel, an orthodox synagogue in colonial
Havana.
Llina Appel recalls how her family and
thousands of other Jews mainly from Europe,
Turkey and Russia streamed into Cuba in
the 1920s, '30s and '40s, fleeing upheaval
and persecution in their homelands and hoping
to reach the United States. Washington had
quotas on immigration by country then, so
they selected Cuba as a way station en route
to nearby U.S. shores.
Many Jewish immigrants congregated near
the seaport in colonial Havana, which they
expected would be their exit route one day.
Some even called the island, "Hotel
Cuba," said Adela Dworin, president
of the Patronato, Cuba's largest Jewish
group.
As they waited, their community blossomed,
with Jewish schools, synagogues, social
clubs, arts and businesses. Appel and her
husband, a Polish Jew she met in Havana,
opened a leather tannery and shoe shop.
By the time World War II ended in 1945,
up to 25,000 Jews lived in Cuba, placing
the island among the largest safe havens
for Jews per-capita during the Holocaust,
Dworin and other Jewish community leaders
say.
But many Jews left Cuba after World War
II, mainly to the United States or Argentina.
The community numbered about 15,000, when
Fidel Castro and his rebels toppled the
U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista
in 1959 and ushered in socialism, leaders
say.
By the late 1960s, up to 90 percent of
those remaining left, after the government
seized their businesses or banned their
private professional practices, leaders
say. Appel said nearly all her family left,
most to the United States, but she stayed
to care for her aging mother and aunt.
Appel kept attending synagogue, but attendance
dropped under Cuba's atheist decrees. Appel's
daughter, who had married a Cuban Jew in
1957, did not emphasize religious teachings
to the next generation, including Eva Grabosky,
now a computer science expert.
Appel remembers painful isolation in the
early decades of the Cuban revolution. She
longed to see her family in the United States
but communication was nearly impossible.
Aid from U.S. Jews withered.
But the fall of the Soviet Union and end
of massive Soviet subsidies to Cuba in the
1990s forced financially squeezed Havana
to open up to the capitalist world and religion.
Now, Appel rejoices when visiting the Adath
Israel synagogue. Gone are the termite-ridden
beams and broken windows in the main sanctuary.
And the flood-damaged ceiling in the smaller
sanctuary has been upgraded -- helped by
donations from U.S. Jews.
The community has been rebuilding too.
As synagogues and churches offered food
and other aid during Cuba's tough economic
times in the 1990s, many Cubans found religion.
Some converted to Judaism. By some estimates,
Cuba now has about 1,500 Jews.
Limits remain, however. There's no resident
rabbi; visiting rabbis come from Latin America
for high holidays and other special occasions.
Nor is there is a resident mohel to perform
circumcisions for male infants required
under Jewish law.
Finances also continue to be shaky. The
Sephardic Center in Havana, for instance,
continues to rent one floor as a gym, and
most Jewish groups depend largely on foreign
donations, leaders said.
Future growth remains uncertain too. Hundreds
of Cuban Jews have left in recent years
for Israel, welcomed under Israel's right
of return policy. Cuba's Jewish youth raised
amid economic hardship since the Soviet
collapse are among the most likely to leave.
Samuel Zagovalov, 59, Cuba's only kosher
butcher, now has one child in Israel and
two in Miami. "I have my roots here
in Cuba," said the son of a Russian
immigrant father and Cuban mother. "But
that doesn't mean I might not go one day
to be with my children."
While Havana still has fewer synagogues
than five decades ago, Appel marvels at
how the congregations are reviving. She's
especially proud that her great-granddaughter's
generation is learning traditions to keep
the Jewish community alive and hopefully,
thriving during another century.
"After the revolution, there were
few Jewish youth groups," said Appel,
as her great-granddaughter showed off her
Hebrew studies book. "The future is
the youth."
Doreen Hemlock can be reached at dhemlock@sun-sentinel.com.
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