Baseball
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Shalom de Cuba
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Cuba: Shalom de Cuba
di·as·po·ra - a: the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile; b: the area outside Palestine settled by Jews; c: the Jews living outside Palestine or modern Israel.
In February and November 2004 I embarked on two one-week humanitarian missions to Cuba with a non-profit organization called Jewish Solidarity. My focus was the life of Cuban Jews and how they had survived and maintained their faith.
Cuba has had a small but resilient Jewish population for centuries. And, this resilience has been tested severely during the forty years of Castro's rule. This small but growing number of passionate Jews in Cuba manage to carve a faithful and vibrant existence out of an otherwise unforgiving landscape. Synagogues had been shut down or abandoned, relations between Israel and Cuba have been volatile and strained, Jews have been encouraged to emigrate.
However, the last decade has seen a new flourishing of the Jewish population. Since 1991, Cuba has legalized religious associations, and, since 1992 the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has sent Rabbis and other resources to Cuba to help the Jewish community rebuild itself.
Our group was welcomed everywhere we went. I speak only fragmented Spanish but many Cubans speak English. The food was ordinary but no one goes to Cuba for the food. We were followed a few times and questioned. Running water is random and there are rolling blackouts every night - I am in love with Cuba.
The people were open and friendly and offered me everything of the nothing they had! This multimedia piece is just a portion of an exhibition that travelled the country in 2005-2006.
