Jews enjoy new religious freedom under Castro

Cuban Jews celebrate the Shajarit 30 April, 2005 at the
Bet Shalom synagogue, in Havana's El Vedado sector.
The first Jews arrived in Cuba in the early 20th
Century, and nowadays the Jewish community in
Havana has 403 families with 953 members.
AFP PHOTO/Adalberto ROQUE 

by Rigoberto Diaz

Monday, May 9, 2005

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): At the Beth Shalom synagogue in Havana, the Cuban flag flies next to that of Israel, even though the two countries have had no diplomatic relations since 1973.

A bust of Jose Marti, a hero of Cuban independence, stands near the candles lit for Sabbath prayers. Even Fidel Castro went to one of the Cuban capital's three synagogues in 1999 in a sign of the emerging religious freedom in Castro's communist state.

The Jewish community of about 15,000 fell to about 1,000 after Castro's 1959 revolution declared this Caribbean island an atheist state. Now there are more than 900 people from 403 families in Havana and a few dozen more in the provinces.

There has been a Jewish community here since the Spanish conquest. Expelled from Spain by the Catholic Inquisition, some Jews even took part in Christopher Columbus' expedition that discovered the New World.

But immigration took off toward the end of the 19th century with the arrival of American Jews -- after the end of the American-Spanish war, some fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe and some coming from the Dutch West Indies.

But after Castro's revolution, about 90 percent of the island's Jews fled.

Jose Miller, president of the Jewish community council, known as the 'Patronato' told how Jews were mainly considered part of the rich middle classes whose land and goods were expropriated and nationalised by the communist government.

The Patronato has its headquarters in the Beth Shalom synagogue, the biggest of the three in Havana.

With the revolution, "came a style of life and thought that did not favour religious practices at all," said Miller, a retired surgeon now in his 80s.

By the end of the 1980s, the Jews who remained believed they had no future, according to Miller who called it a time of "agony."

But since the middle of the 1990s, there has been a new spirit of openness toward religion and the faithful have returned to churchs and synagogues. In 1999, Castro went to the Vedado synagogue in Havana where most of Cuba's Jew still live.

The Cuban and Israeli flags fly over the Patronato.

But help from the United States and Canada has been crucial for the community, particularly from B'nai Brith, the oldest of the Jewish non-government organisations, and the American Joint Distribution Committee, the main US group that helps Jews outside the United States.

Thanks to funds from abroad, foreign religious teachers have also come to Cuba and the Shin Beth synagogue has been completely renovated.

"Now we are in a position where we can strengthen this rebirth and try to guarantee our future," said Miller, who insisted that none of the moves were political.

In Cuba, he assured, "there is a social police that is not far from biblical."

The aid is crucial in a country where daily conditions are so difficult. A meal, provided by the foreign organisations, is served each Saturday in the community centre at the main synagogue.

There is also a special pharmacy, stocked by foreign Jews who take part in aid work organised by B'nai Brith. Three teams arrive every month, each staying for eight days. Each person in the group must bring between six and 10 kilogrammes (13 and 22 pounds) of medicines, clothes or food.

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