c. 1996 Religion News Service

HAVANA (RNS)-Two years ago, Diana Silverstein didn’t know much about what it meant to be Jewish.

Her knowledge was scant when it came to the meaning of religious holidays. She didn’t know much about kosher food. Hebrew was as foreign to her as English.

But in the last two years, Diana and her playmates in the once-grand Vedado neighborhood of Havana have become immersed in everything Jewish, from language to religious symbols to the historical significance of biblical events.

“We have a school that teaches us how to read Hebrew, how to write the letters, how to pronounce,” says Diana, a talkative, freckle-faced girl of 10. “My generation has learned a lot. I’ve learned things that my father didn’t know, and he has also learned.”

Cuba’s small Jewish community, once moribund after years of weathering a communist ideology that equates religious observance with capitalism, has come alive.

In Havana, where 90 percent of Cuba’s 1,000 to 1,500 Jews live, people are celebrating Shabbat (sabbath) in large numbers, boys are preparing for their bar mitzvahs and teachers at the local Sunday school are instructing pupils in Hebrew and the significance of Jewish holidays.

The changes are dramatic in a community that has had little contact with outside Jewish groups, no rabbi, and few people who can speak Hebrew. Now, Cubans who had not practiced their religion for decades are returning to Judaism.

Many are children of what people here have called “mixed marriages”-Jewish and gentile parents. Under traditional Jewish law, Jewish identity is passed from the mother, but in Cuba’s community exceptions are made for those whose only Jewish parent is the father.

Jose Miller, president of Havana’s Jewish community, says it has taken years to attract non-practicing Jews to the community, which is a mix of Ashkenazi Jews who arrived from Europe before and after World War II and Sephardic Jews who came mainly from Turkey earlier in this century.

“Before we started this program, we only knew of 800 people who were Jews, out of (the current estimate of) 1,500,” says Miller, speaking in the library of the Cuban Hebrew Community House. “When you look at this community you see faith and religiosity, and this is because we worked hard to bring this about.”

For years, the community struggled just to draw enough people for Shabbat services. The community had begun to disappear in the early 1960s, after Fidel Castro’s government took over schools run by Jewish institutions. Most of the pre-revolution community of 12,000 to 15,000 fled the country, including all its rabbis. Synagogues closed, and Jewish organizations stopped their activities.

The community’s resurgence has been propelled in part by the close contacts that have been established with Jewish groups overseas, including the Canadian Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The groups provide prayer books, kosher foods, skull caps and other religious items. In addition, Rabbi Shmuel Szteinhendler, an Argentine, visits Cuba about four times a year from his base in Chile for special events.

“They were cut off from Jewish life for many years,” says Amir Shaviv, the New York-based assistant executive vice president for special operations for the Joint Distribution Committee. “In the last four years, they’ve received everything from books and materials to kosher foods and rabbis who’ve come to instruct them.”

Jaime Eskenazi Feldstaju, a Cuban economist, is among those who recently began to practice Judaism.

“I was always a Jew; there was always an Israeli flag in my home,” Eskenazi says. “But I only practiced religion occasionally.”

He says he wants his family to understand the meaning of their religion.

“I wanted my children to be part of the community and also my grandson, so I pushed the whole family to return with me,” Eskenazi says.

Elders in the community say 150 students, children and adults are attending classes to learn Jewish traditions and history.

“It hasn’t been easy because we lost a generation of Jews,” says Alberto Mechulam, director of the school. “Now we have a collective community that is very identifiable. … The children started to come, and they brought their parents, and the parents brought the grandparents.”

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