Helping Cuban Jewish community thrive

[IndianaGreen]

Helping Cuban Jewish community thrive

Canadian Friends of Cuban Jewry organization helps small Jewish community with daily needs of Jewish life, including shipping in kosher supplies, distributing tefillin, running Jewish summer camp, and performing circumcisions

Dan Verbin Published: 04.24.10, 12:46 / Israel Jewish Scene

With the fall of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, Cuba’s small Jewish community faced a great struggle to survive due to the island’s poverty compounded by the loss of billions of dollars the Castro government had received from the USSR.

Enter Canadian Friends of Cuban Jewry (CFCJ), which was founded in the spirit of “Ahavas Yisroel” (love your fellow Jew). Since the early ‘90s, the organization, also known as Chabad Friends of Cuban Jewry, has been actively engaged with the community in Cuba, a unique relationship that has helped the community flourish. Though estimates vary, CFCJ’s Rabbi Shimon Eisenbach put the community’s size at around 1,000 people, adding that Jews live in 22 different towns and cities on the island, with a significant number in Havana. There are also Jews from other countries living in the capital, including Israelis and others who run businesses.

Unlike the aid that the Cuban community receives on holidays from other Jewish agencies, mainly consisting of kosher food and supplies, CFCJ has a year-round presence in Cuba, with its Spanish-speaking emissaries spending extended periods on the island, interacting with the Jewish community to help with day to day needs of Jewish life, including shipping in kosher supplies from Canada and organizing holiday celebrations. They have also celebrated marriages and bar mitzvahs. They recently had an inauguration of a sefer torah.

For Pesach, they distribute thousands of shmurah matzahs and wine and hold public seders, lead by their emissaries.

'Authentic Jewish education'

The community receives an “authentic Jewish education,” said Eisenbach.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3879718,00.html

How terrible that the "communist-run island," as the MSM refers to Cuba, allows Jewish education to go on unhindered.

:sarcasm:

If you think the Xtian fundies in the Miami exile community are going to allow Jewish education, or multi-religious practices, in a "liberated" Cuba you are then not familiar with their ideology which is to the right of Michele Bachmann.

[Mika]

1. The Cuban Constitution does not allow any school to charge a fee for education.

Education is enshrined as a universal human right in Cuba's constitution.

Cuba has the highest teacher/student ratio in the world.

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Dam commies. :sarcasm:

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[proteus_lives]

2. Why can't they have all that and the right to choose their leaders?

Just wandering......