Cuban Jews

There's an interesting piece in the New York Times today about the small Jewish community (no more than 1500 Jews) in modern-day Cuba. The picture above here is also taken from the piece, and depicts a Havana street from inside the only kosher butcher shop in Cuba. It offsets the piece from earlier this week (see my post below), which accuses some American Jews of fueling anti-Semitism, in an interesting way. Jews in Cuba, it seems, have different concerns -- apparently there is not one rabbi living in Cuba. Before 1959, when Castro came to power, there were more than 15,000 Jews living on the island, most of whom fled once private business and property were nationalized. The article quotes one Cuban historian as saying, “To be Cuban and Jewish is to be twice survivors.”