Tiny Jewish enclave thrives, witnesses a rebirth in Cuba
HAVANA - The synagogue has been proudly and lovingly restored. Services that for the last 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 - after 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 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 perfect 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 longtime communist patron.
Castro met with leaders of all the island's faiths, reversing a longstanding prohibition on Communist Party members joining churches. The religious reawakening culminated in the 1998 visit by Catholic 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."
The community traces its roots to 1906 when the first Jews arrived in Cuba, many from the United States, 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 United States, 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.
