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Sephardic Jews in Cuba - From all their Habitations

Judaism, Wntr, 2002 by Margalit Bejarano

THE ARRIVAL OF SEPHARDIC JEWS IN CUBA ON THE EVE OF World War I was part of a larger emigration from the Middle East to the American continent. This migratory movement, caused by the decline and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, was most evident among Christians of different denominations. It included, however, large groups of Jews from Syria, Turkey, and the Balkan countries, whose declining communities in the Old World were balanced by the growth of new centers in the United States and in Latin America.

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In Latin America, immigrants from the Ottoman Empire were classified as turcos, not only by official statistics of the various countries, but also by the majority societies, which seldom distinguished between Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Turks. In the case of Cuba, the largest group of immigrants from the Middle East came from Lebanon; in 1943 it was estimated that the Arab colony was composed of 22,500 Lebanese, 3,000 Syrians and 4,500 Palestinians. (1) The Sephardic Jews who settled in Cuba came mostly from Turkey, and were the largest group among the Turkish immigrants.

Jewish immigration to Cuba was centered in the period between the country's independence (1902) and the economic crisis of 1930, and was distinctly divided into two waves: The first took place during the expansion of the sugar industry, which reached its peak in 1920. It included a small group of Jewish businessmen from the United States, and a larger group of Sephardic Jews; a report published in 1918 estimated that 90% of the 1,000 Jews residing in Cuba came from the Ottoman Empire, and the rest from the United States. (2)

The second wave of immigration, which started in 1921, was motivated by the American Quota Acts that imposed severe restrictions on immigration from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean countries. The Sephardic migratory movement was integrated into a much larger one of Jews from Poland and Russia, whose original intention was to immigrate to the United States. Many of them decided to remain in the tropical island, and became the founders of the Ashkenazi community--the largest Jewish group--popularly known as polacos.

The Sephardic Jews differed from their Ashkenazi brethren in their language, customs, and habits. Their settlement in Cuba, especially in Old Havana, where many of them lived in streets called Jesus Maria, Picota, and Inquisidor, reminded them of the persecutions of their ancestors by the Inquisition and of their expulsion from Spain in 1492, but was also an encounter with a familiar language and with a society whose cultural heritage bore many similarities to their own. Sephardic Jews were thus a unique ethnic group both among the immigrants from the Ottoman Empire as among their fellow Jews.

The economic adjustment of Jews from Eastern Europe in Cuba received the support of Jewish welfare organizations in the United States, whose recorded activities serve as an important source for the study of the early history of Cuban Jews. The life of Ashkenazi Jews was also reflected in the Jewish press that developed in Cuba in the late 1920s in the Yiddish language, but early studies on Cuban Jewish history tended to ignore the role of Sephardic Jews. (3)

The Situation in Turkey as a Background for Emigration Under the Ottoman Empire the Jews were considered inferior subjects, though tolerated and protected by the Moslem rulers. Like other religious minorities, they were organized under the millet system, in which every ethnic group was governed as an autonomous entity, with its own religious, welfare, judicial, and educational institutions, and with lay and ecclesiastical leadership. (4) According to Stanford Shaw, this system "allowed peoples to maintain their own religions, traditions, cultures, customs and languages... [but] they were segregated from one another. they remained strangers." (5)

Local Jewish organization was based on the kehila, or Kahal, with its synagogue, school, cemetery, hospital, and other institutions. The Kahal was responsible for the collection of taxes, and it represented the jewish population visa-vis the authorities; its religious, as well as its lay leaders were recognized and protected by the Ottoman government. Large cities, like Istanbul, Izmir, and Edirne, were divided into several Kahalim, according to the residential quarters.

National separatist movements in the Balkan Peninsula, as well as the interference of the European powers in Ottoman affairs, motivated the movement of reform, known as the Tanzimat (1839-1856), which granted the millets reigious freedom and equality in taxes and public services. Avigdor Levy has noted that the Ottoman authorities believed that by granting them rights, the minority groups might be persuaded to remain under their rule: "The non-Muslim minorities of the empire had to be assured that their future within the Ottoman polity was preferable to what it might be in the small national successor states." (6)

The reforms limited the authority of the religious conservative leaderships and strengthened the government control on internal matters of the millets. They intensified conflicts between Moslems and Christians as well as between Christians and Jews. Though the Ottoman reformers tried to develop a conception of Ottoman pluralism, modernization among the Jews was oriented towards the West. The Alliance Israelite Universelle introduced French values and foreign languages. Jewish children did not learn to speak Turkish, but their education in the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools facilitated their social mobility, and in the long run also their emigration abroad. (7)

Sephardic Jews in Cuba - From all their Habitations

Judaism, Wntr, 2002 by Margalit Bejarano

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