History of the Jews in Cuba
In the early 20th century, Sephardi Jewish immigrants from the Ottoman Empire began to arrive and in 1914, they established their own community organization, Union Hebrea Shevet Achim.
[4] Throughout the rest of the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of Jewish immigrants continued to enter Cuba from Europe, largely as a result of Nazi and fascist persecution (see also MS St. Louis).
The Jewish immigrants from Europe came during an economic downturn and found it difficult to integrate into a country lacking industry and inundated with cheap labor from Haiti and many turned to peddling to make ends meet.
Jewish refugees from Antwerp introduced the diamond polishing industry to Cuba during World War II, establishing 24 plants in one year.
The main communal body of the Eastern European Jewish immigrants was the Centro Israelita, and during the 1920s it came to offer a range of activities and services from welfare assistance, a clinic, a library, a language school, a student center, and a drama club.
[5] Many Jews were initially sympathetic to the Cuban Revolution of 1959 under Fidel Castro, seeing the change in leadership as an opportunity to rid Cuba of the corruption that was associated with the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
[6] As Castro's plans became clear, Jewish Cubans who had emigrated from Eastern and Central Europe became increasingly concerned with the impending revolution, as a result of their prior experience with religious intolerance associated with Leninist policies and Bolshevik Russia.
[7] During the earliest days of the revolution, the most paramount concern for the Jewish Cuban population was the nationalization of industry and agriculture and the laws which supported it.
[6] Finally, the First Urban Reform Law stripped Jews of their property rental business by turning ownership to tenants and creating longterm rent-free leases.
This shunning of religion helped shaped the religious identity of Jews who remained in Cuba, as well as the exiles who immigrated to the United States, Israel, and other areas throughout North, South, and Central America.
[10] Three of the ten original members of the Cuban Communist Party were Jewish including Fabio Grobart, Manuel (Stolik) Novigrod, and Enrique Oltuski.
[11] Fabio Grobart, whose original name was Abraham Simchowitz, immigrated from Poland to Cuba at the age of 19 and brought along with him knowledge of the radical leftist movements from Eastern Europe.
He represented the party in communist ideology, as he had the ability to translate the readings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels from Russian and German to Spanish.
[14] Manuel (Stolik) Novigrod was born into a family of Jewish communists and fought directly alongside Castro against Bautista's forces in the Sierra Maestra Mountains.
His collaboration with Ernesto "Che" Guevara while representing Las Villas as its leader of the 26th of July Movement enabled him to ascend to highest-ranking Jew in the revolutionary government.
[1] Because South Florida and New York City have large Jewish and Cuban populations, a significant number of people in these areas claim descent from American Jews and Cuban-Americans, usually Catholic non-Jews.
