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In a 2011 survey of Jews living in Cuba, one respondent described the experience of religious Jews during the socio-political environment of the post-Revolutionary period: "People were not persecuted because they practiced religion, but if you wanted to be a member of the Communist Party, or go to university, it was necessary not to be a believer.
It was called the Jewish Society of Eastern Cuba (Spanish: Sociedad Union Israelita de Oriente de Cuba) and was composed mainly of Sephardic Jews from Turkey. In 1939, the congregation built its first synagogue, called the Synagogue of Santiago de Cuba (Spanish: Sinagoga de Santiago de Cuba). Ashkenazi Jews arrived from Poland during World War ...
The relationship between Judaism and politics is a historically complex subject, and has evolved over time concurrently with both changes within Jewish society and religious practice, and changes in the general society of places where Jewish people live.
In 2007 Centro Hebreo Sefaradi Synagogue was described as “…the only remaining institutional legacy of the Sephardic presence in Cuba.” [citation needed] As of 2010, the synagogue had eighty families constituting 320 members. The majority of congregants were 60 or older.
Completed in 1953, Temple Beth Shalom is the main synagogue serving Havana's Jewish community of 1,500 people. The congregation was founded in 1904 and it has been an epicenter of Jewish life in Cuba. The synagogue welcomes thousands of visitors each year for both Shabbat and tours of Jewish Cuba. [2]
For Jews living in Cuba, the collapse of the Soviet Union and their island government's changing opinion of religion. Despite the material shortages created by the end of Soviet support to Cuba, the end of the years of plenty is also an end to the enforced religious vacuum —a vacuum now being filled by “reborn” Jews.
There were 15,000 Jews in Cuba in 1959, but many Jewish businessmen and professionals left Cuba for the United States after the Cuban revolution, fearing class persecution under the Communists. In the early 1990s, Operation Cigar was launched, and in the period of five years, more than 400 Cuban Jews secretly immigrated to Israel.
In 1919, Cuba supported the idea of independence of the Jewish people and condemned the extermination of Jews by the Third Reich in 1942. [2] On 29 November 1947, Cuba was the only country in the Americas to vote against the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine which led to the founding of Israel. [3]