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Sephardic Jews in Cuba - From all their Habitations

Judaism, Wntr, 2002 by Margalit Bejarano

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According to Cuban Jewish sources, most of the immigrants from Turkey were Jews. (19) While Jews from Asia Minor, in particular from Izmir and its surroundings, preferred to emigrate to Argentina, most of the Turkish Jews who settled in Cuba came from the European part of Turkey (including the European districts of Istanbul). Official Cuban statistics for the years 1908 to 1914 distinguish between immigrants from Turkey in Europe and from Turkey in Asia. The number of Sephardic Jews who emigrated to Cuba directly from Turkey during the first wave of immigration that preceded World War I, was around 900 persons. (20)

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Several interviewees emphasized that 1920 was the year in which brides, wives, and children of former male immigrants came to Cuba, to reunite with the men after the long separation of the war years: "My father emigrated to Cuba in the year 1914. During World War I there was no communication between Cuba and Turkey. In the year 1920 my mother received a telegram from my father, asking how we were, what had happened to us, and if were ready to go to Cuba--he was going to send us a cheque." (21)

Sephardic pioneer settlers created chains of emigration from their home towns to specific areas in the countries of immigration. Informants state the earlier settlement of a relative as the reason for choosing the destination of their emigration. While the arrival of the first immigrants may have been incidental, the news about their success, together with the desperate situation at home, had a growing impact on their whole community. (22)

Patterns of Economic Adjustment

The great majority of Sephardic Jews integrated into the country's economy as peddlers, following the paths of Syrian and Lebanese Christians. The advantage of Sephardic Jews over other groups of immigrants from the Ottoman Empire was the similarity between their mother-tongue and the Spanish language, that facilitated communication with their customers. Unlike their Eastern European brethren, their immigration started in a period of economic prosperity. With time, however, these advantages lost their importance, and the Asbkenazim overtook the Sephardim in their economic progress.

Immigration to Cuba started with the foundation of the Cuban Republic, at a period in which the industry of sugar started to expand throughout the island, and the social and economic openness towards European immigration was at its height. Out of the 854, 278 immigrants who entered Cuba between 1902 and 1920-68% came from Spain, 19% from Haiti and Jamaica, and only 1% from Syria and Turkey. (23) The development of the new sugar centers, in the Eastern provinces of the island, was accelerated under the impact of large American firms that bought vast tracts of land and established new sugar cent rates.

The new centers in Camaguey and Oriente created new opportunities for itinerant merchants, and many of the Sephardic immigrants tended to disperse throughout these provinces. Those who succeeded in establishing themselves in trade supplied merchandise on credit to the newcomers; the same chains that directed the emigrants from their hometowns to their new settlements, shaped their occupational patterns. (24) They peddled in the cent rates and in the small towns that surrounded them, offering clothes, shoes, lingerie and other merchandise to the native population: "One day after my arrival [at Santiago de Cuba] my brother took me to work as a peddler-as he was. We sold blankets, sheets, bedspreads; in addition we carried women's underwear... it was a very hard work, but since it was hard, we gained a lot." (25)

Sephardic Jews in Cuba - From all their Habitations

Judaism, Wntr, 2002 by Margalit Bejarano

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