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An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba

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Description

Yiddish-speaking Jews thought Cuba used to be supposed to be a mere layover at the journey to the US when they arrived in the island country in the 1920s. They even Referred to as it “Hotel Cuba.” But then the years passed, and the many Jews who came there from Turkey, Poland, and war-torn Europe stayed in Cuba. The beloved island ceased to be a hotel, and Cuba sooner or later became “home.” But after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, the majority of the Jews opposed his communist regime and left in a mass exodus. Though they remade their lives in the US, they mourned the lack of the Jewish community they had built at the island.

As a child of five, Ruth Behar used to be caught up in the Jewish exodus from Cuba. Growing up in the US, she wondered about the Jews who stayed in the back of. Who were they and why had they stayed? What traces were left of the Jewish presence, of the cemeteries, synagogues, and Torahs? Who used to be taking good care of this legacy? What Jewish memories had managed to live on the years of revolutionary atheism?

An Island Referred to as Home is the story of Behar’s journey back to the island to find answers to these questions. Unlike the exotic image projected by the American media, Behar uncovers a side of Cuban Jews that may be poignant and personal. Her moving vignettes of the individuals she meets are coupled with the sensitive photographs of Havana-based photographer Humberto Mayol, who traveled with her.

Together, Behar’s poetic and compassionate prose and Mayol’s shadowy and riveting photographs create an unforgettable portrait of a community that many have seen though few have understood. This book is the first to show both the vitality and the heartbreak that lie in the back of the project of keeping alive the flame of Jewish memory in Cuba.

Reader Guide (http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/pages/behar_reader_guide.aspx)

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