Okay, a timeout from the world of Women’s Philanthropy and our travels to Cuba, our very exciting plans for Women’s Awareness Day and the Lion Lunch on April 30, and Spring Fling on April 15. Here’s what’s really happening on Leslie’s Laptop – the search for Passover recipes! It’s taken a few days of research on the internet, consultation with various cookbooks and old issues of Gourmet and comparing what I made for the past few holidays (we’re giving Chicken Marbella a nice long, well-deserved rest), but I’ve come up with the menu and started cooking yesterday. A note on recipes for Passover (I once sent a letter to the editor of Gourmet on this topic, but it never saw print) – anyone who writes a recipe for a Passover meal that concludes with “serve immediately” has never attended a seder. We need recipes that can be prepared in advance, can withstand uncertain timing (another round of “Dayenu” – why not? Late arrivals from outer boroughs – of course!) and that are still colorful and delicious when served. I’ve served more than one carefully planned meal where, upon laying out the buffet table, I realize everything I’m serving is some shade of brown. I’m trying to avoid that result this year – starting with not having brisket – and also looking to lighten things up, which includes a wonderful quinoa salad courtesy of Alma Schneider at www.TakeBacktheKitchen.com and a tomato and avocado salad I found in one of my new favorite cookbooks, Hip Kosher by Ronnie Fein. I’m never sure how I’m going to get everything done in time, and I need to leave myself big reminders to roast the shankbone, find the seder plate (which disappeared for a while after my kitchen renovation, but I found it when I was making Rosh HaShanah dinner last fall – I hope my sister-in-law remembers where I told her I found it, actually) and dust off the haggadot. Somehow it all comes together and the most important part is not the food, but that family and friends are sitting together, remembering that we were once slaves in Egypt and our obligation to bring freedom to this world today.

Wishing all of you a zissen Pesach, filled with great food, wonderful seders and a lovely Passover break – I will see you again after the holiday with more tales from the beautiful island of Cuba.

Leslie

Before I left for Cuba on the Women’s Philanthropy Major Gifts Mission, I was sure that I would have weeks of columns to write that would simply roll off my fingers and onto the page. I was correct – I have weeks of columns, but they are not coming to me easily. We met true Jewish heroes whose stories I want to recount and do them justice; we spent hours trying to piece together what life is really like for the people we were meeting and it’s hard to tell that story for many reasons; and the experience so filled my heart and mind that I almost don’t know where to start.

I’m going to begin with the women I think of as the pillars of the Patronato. The Patronato was built at the height of the Jewish population in Havana. As the Jewish community prospered and grew in the 1940’s and 50’s, families moved from Old Havana to a more fashionable area called Vedado. The Patronato was built in Vedado and served both as a synagogue and as a community center. If you know someone who has been to Cuba through a federation mission or a synagogue trip, they have been to the Patronato; although there are two other synagogues in Havana, this is the heart of Jewish Havana.

We first heard about the Patronato from Raquel Scheck. Raquel spoke to our mission the night before we left, at a beautiful dinner hosted by Julie Russin Bercow, my great and dear friend, who is the president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation’s Women’s Department. Raquel related the story of her life as a young Jewish girl growing up in Havana in the late 1940s and 50s. The Patronato was at the center of her life, not just for religious services, but for dances, youth group and simply seeing friends. Raquel was 16 at the time of the Revolution. She had led a sheltered, quiet life up to this time. When her family was told that they should send Raquel to Miami in order to avoid her being sent to the countryside for “reeducation,” her life was turned upside down. Within two weeks, she was in Miami, speaking no English and with very little family. With the support of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society – the same HIAS that helped so many of our grandparents when they arrived in the United States – and with her own hard work and determination, Raquel began to make her own way, finding employment and education. She met a New Yorker transplanted to Miami, Michael Scheck and they were married, but without her parents, who were still in Cuba. In fact, because Raquel was only 18, HIAS had to approve of Michael! Raquel’s parents finally arrived in Miami the day before she gave birth to her first child. Raquel and Michael have gone on to have a total of four children, all leaders in the Jewish community (their son Steven is co-chair elect of National Young Leadership Cabinet), and Raquel and Michael are generous leaders in the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. As I related last week, since the revival of the Jewish community in Cuba starting in 1992, the Patronato has been restored and it was the Schecks who donated the furnishings for the new youth lounge at the Patronato.

We met another pillar of the Patronato at lunch on Friday of our visit. Rosa Behar is a gastroenterologist who, along with her daughter Rebecca, established the pharmacy at the Patronato. The pharmacy is stocked because the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee informs missions and groups who are planning on coming to Cuba about the needs; our group brought twenty or so suitcases filled with medical supplies – it’s Rosa who keeps the Joint informed! Rosa was actually born in France, where her father was studying medicine. When the specter of war began to loom in 1939, the young family returned to Cuba before Rosa’s father could finish his degree. This experience in turn influenced Rosa, who didn’t leave Cuba after the Revolution for fear of not completing her medical studies. Rosa didn’t just stay to have a career and a family. Like Jewish women all over the world in small communities, she has done just about everything to keep her community thriving. She is the immediate past president of the Jewish Women’s Association (somewhat like a temple sisterhood, but it is for all of the Jewish women of Havana), she is president of Hadassah Cuba and still runs the pharmacy, even though she is now semi-retired from medicine. If we have any idea how many Jews are in Cuba today, it is mostly due to Rosa, who runs a medical census every other year when the Jews of Cuba come to Havana to pick up their Passover matzah. And here’s the “it’s a small Jewish world” part of the story – Rosa’s daughter Rebecca made aliyah to Israel last year and lives in Ra’anana, one of MetroWest’s partner cities in Israel!

We met another woman at lunch that day, Rosa’s junior counterpart, Marlen Prinstein. Marlen is the current president of the Women’s Association. She also is one of the leaders of Friday night services, leads and teaches two Israeli dance troupes (one for adults and one for teens) and also teaches in the Sunday School. Like many women we met in Cuba, Marlen is a Jew by choice and she inspired all of us to continue to choose our Judaism when we returned home. Her joy and skill in leading services on Friday night was palpable. And after havdalah on Saturday night, she put both Israeli dance troupes -- and us -- through our paces with infectious enthusiasm. Marlen is the embodiment of the new Jewish Cuba – seeking out the beauty of Judaism and sharing it with others in a warm and welcoming way that is hard to resist.

And then something I’ve been waiting to do for quite some time – we met Adela Dworin. Adela is the president of the Jewish community in Cuba; I’ve heard of Adela for many years because she is the cousin of a dear friend and although I heard Adela speak when she came to South Orange in 1998, I didn’t really get to meet her, nor did I really understand how much she has done to keep the Jewish community in Cuba alive. Adela was planning on a career in law before the Revolution; when this became impossible after her father’s factory was appropriated by the Castro government, she became the librarian at the community library housed at the Patronato, preserving the stories and history of the community even as it was dwindling. After the death of Dr. Jose’ Miller, Adela became the president of the Patronato and the Jewish community. We sat and spoke with Adela for about an hour – she spoke without a note, telling us the story of the community and her own life. She was inspiring yet down to earth. It was Adela who invited Fidel to the Patronato – she was at a meeting Castro called for about 60 religious leaders and she asked him why he had never visited the Jewish community. He replied that he had never been asked, so Adela did the asking – and he came, unannounced, to a Hanukah celebration! Adela is one of those women who make you want to stand up straighter and speak in full sentences; you can see how people find it hard to say “no” to her. She reiterated what we had already heard and would hear again, that without the JDC and “brothers and sisters who care about Jewish community,” there would be no Jewish life in Cuba today. She told us that it was inspirational to the whole community that knowing that we care about them gives them strength. To us, sitting around the table with Adela, it was clear who the real inspiration and the real tower of strength was.

These four women are only a part of the story, but they are a significant part of what holds up the community. And all four of them have made devotion to the Jewish community a real choice in their lives, with dedication, love and pride. Raquel, Rosa, Marlen and Adela are some of my new Jewish heroes; they will be in my heart for years to come.

Wishing you an inspiring week,
Leslie

I am just back from a place that will never leave me. I just went to Cuba, with twenty-two other women from MetroWest’s Women’s Philanthropy. We returned on Monday night, at least physically, but we are all still turning over in our minds all of the different facets of one of the most fascinating places I’ve ever been.

We went to visit the Jewish community of Cuba. If I know nothing else right now about Cuba, I do know that the Jews of Cuba are proof that meaningful Jewish life can happen anywhere in the world, as long as we can provide the resources. This week, I’m going to describe how there came to be a Jewish community in Cuba in the first place and its miraculous rebirth in the last twenty years. Much of the information is available in a wonderful book we received as a gift before we left from the mission co-chairs, Wendie Ploscowe and Anna Fisch and honorary co-chair Betty Feinberg, called “An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba” by Ruth Behar (2007). It’s an engaging, haunting book, full of pictures and stories of the Jews of Cuba, many of whom we were privileged to meet.

Although there have been Jews in Cuba since the days of Columbus, the first recorded organization of the Jewish community is in 1906, when a group of eleven American Jews living in Cuba founded the United Hebrew Congregation in Havana. The Americans had come as part of a wave of investors after the end of the Spanish American war. At the same time, Jews from Turkey started to emigrate to Cuba due to the unrest from World War I. Jews from Turkey constituted the largest part of the Jewish population until the 1920s, when immigration from Europe grew as the United States government imposed strict quotas. By 1958, Havana had five congregations and there were 15,000 Jews in Cuba. By 1962, after the Revolution, 90% of the Jewish community had departed, after businesses were appropriated and in fear of living under a Communist regime. The remaining 1,500 were not free to practice their Judaism publicly, as Cuba had become an atheist state. If you professed any religion, not just Judaism, you could not be a member of the Communist party, thus severely restricting the professions one could enter. So few people attended services that the “Cuban minyan” was instituted: however many Jews were present, however many Torahs were needed to fill in for people, and God. Constrained in this way, it’s not surprising to learn that by 1992, the identified Jewish community in Cuba had dwindled to around 800 souls.

In 1992, however, political fallout from the dissolution of the Soviet Union helped save the Cuban Jewish community. Without the pipeline of financial aid and durable goods, food and medicine from the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro realized he would need new sources of income. By becoming a secular state, religious groups of all beliefs could then come in and provide aid. Dr. Jose’ Miller, then head of the Cuban Jewish community knew that his community was in dire straits. The roof of the once glorious Patronato synagogue was in such disrepair that birds could fly in and out. Jews didn’t know how to pray, had lost touch with the beautiful traditions of our heritage. But Dr. Miller knew that there was help available in the Jewish world. He called the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and told them that if they didn’t come to help, there would shortly be no Jews left in Cuba. Since 1992, the Joint has been in Cuba on a continuous basis, and the population has again reached approximately 1,500. What we heard over and over again, from everyone we met, was that if the Joint hadn’t come, Jewish life on the island would have ended. Instead, we participated in a Friday night service ably led by members of the community (something unimaginable even a few years ago), met young people who have been on March of the Living and Taglit Birthright Israel, and visited all three synagogues in Havana. None of this would be possible without the Joint, and what the Joint does in Cuba – or anywhere else around the world – wouldn’t be possible without each of your gifts to the Annual Campaign.

In the weeks ahead, I hope to bring you the individual stories of the people we met and some impressions of the mystifying, marvelous, maddening place that Cuba is today.

Thank you for letting me share my journey with you; thanks even more for being a part of the journey with your support of the Annual Campaign and the Joint.

It’s good to be home!
Leslie

Do you remember being ten years old? I do – it was a wonderful year for me, in fact. It was the first time I remember being more aware of the outside world. Israel won the Six Day War shortly before my summer birthday, and as a new Young Judean, I was so proud. The Boston Red Sox were on their way to winning a pennant, something that hadn’t happened in almost twenty years. (My niece and nephew in Boston think it’s a normal thing for the Sox to win the whole thing!) I would have a fifth grade teacher who understood my need to read and let me go up to our elementary school library and pick my own books. I finally felt old enough to have my own opinions and was encouraged to think and speak for myself.

Well, I was at a party for a ten year old last night – The Friendship Circle is ten years old and we celebrated last night at NJPAC at the Annual Banquet. The evening honored two families who have been stalwart supporters of this “wonder child,” Sheree, Nathan, and Jennifer Mandelbaum and Howard and Betty Pantirer Schwartz and the 815 teen volunteers for The Friendship Circle who truly make it all happen. The Friendship Circle has a wide array of innovative programming that serves children and teens with special needs and their families. It is hard to believe how much has happened in such a short time. The most amazing number I heard last night however, was not the ten years of existence, but that in the course of the last ten years, over 3,450 teen volunteers have participated in sharing friendship with children and teens with special needs. This is an entire generation of young people who have been touched and now think differently about what it means to be a part of a community which includes people with special needs. I truly believe that Rabbi Zalman and Toba Grossbaum have changed how the entire MetroWest community thinks about children with special needs and their families. May they and The Friendship Circle go from strength to strength.

Happy birthday to a very special ten year old, making a real difference in the world!

Leslie