Kosher and Jewish Life in Cuba

Jews first arrived in Cuba as conversos sailing with Columbus, who landed at this largest Caribbean island in 1492. In the latter half of the 1800s, a trickle of Jews began settling in Cuba. The Cuban Jewish community remained modest until the early 1900s, when Jews from Turkey arrived after the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. Many were Sephardim whose ancestors had fled to Turkey during the Inquisition.Before Castro’s revolution, there were roughly 15,000 Jews living in Cuba. Today, there are just about 1,500. For the decades in between, there was no rabbi on the island and just one kosher butcher. At the Sephardic Hebrew Center in Havana, the exhibit “We Remember” tells the story of Cuba’s Jews and Cuba as one of the few places that accepted Jews escaping WWII Europe; it was partially funded by Jewish tourism. When the subject of the 2013 Maccabiah Games came up at Havana’s El Patronato, the largest of Cuba’s congregations, visitor Steve Tisch, owner of the New York Giants, pledged support. As a result, nearly 50 athletes travelled to Israel for the Cuban Jewish community’s first Maccabiah. Finding kosher food in Cuba is difficult.