Meet the Jews of Cuba and their fascinating history

I have always been fascinated by the story of the Jews of Cuba who have lived on the island for centuries. The story is unique, in which there are those who can trace their Jewish heritage as far back as the Spanish Inquisition, in which Marranos (Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity) left the continent of Europe and set sail to the new world. I found it an honor to recently sit down with a dear friend and prominent member of my community in NYC named James Berenthal whose family is from the Jewish community of Cuba. James L. Berenthal is the founding partner of Berenthal & Associates, P.C. and started the firm over 40 years ago.

Based in New York, Berenthal has vast experience in banking and finance, having represented two of Spain’s largest banks in the US. Berenthal also represents a variety of international organizations and has structured business and real estate acquisitions in the US, as well as overseas markets. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Berenthal to hear about the distinctive role that his family had in this historic community.

Tell me about the history and origins of the Jews of Cuba.

The history of the Jews of Cuba starts as early as 1492 during the time of Christopher Columbus (who might have been a Marrano Jew) who was financed not by the Spanish King and Queen but by two Marranos who were courtiers in Spain. They received the charter maps to travel to Cuba which probably had the Island of Cuba on it from the Portuguese Navigation Charts from the School of Jewish cartographers. They were all Jewish and Portugal considered these valuable maps like the secret to the atomic bomb. Portugal had sent their charter ships to Africa and other locations and it was a guarded secret. Two Jews received these charts from the Jewish cartographers that were in Portugal and gave it to Columbus. They essentially financed the first trip for Columbus who was going to leave Spain forever and his first trip to the Americas (a day before Tisha Be’Av) was postponed. Columbus’s son was given the position of Viceroy of Jamaica since the Spanish Inquisition had never reached that location. Columbus brought an individual who knew Hebrew as well as Aramaic (and changed his name) because he was convinced that he would find the 10 lost Tribes of Israel and he wanted to have someone with him who spoke that language and was of the remnants of Israel. This is where the story begins and Columbus got most of his mariners from the jail houses which were comprised of Jews that didn’t want to convert.

When did your family originally arrive in Cuba?

They came on two trips. My father came right after World War 1 from Romania (in the Carpathian Mountains) and traveled to Cuba. The ships stopped in Santander, in which my father told me a story that when they stopped over he asked my grandfather for permission to take a walk there because he was seasick. My grandfather said to him that he cannot go into this land because the blood of our family still runs through it, in which I then realized that I have a Sephardic component in my life. My mom left on one of the three ships that left Germany and stopped in Danzig. She left from a place in Poland  (now part of Russia) from a famous Jewish town called Brisk and her cousin was Menachem Begin. She lost nine brothers and sisters and her parents in the Holocaust. She came one week before the famous St. Louis to Cuba. Of the three ships, the St. Louis was the only one that returned. The secretary of state of the United States sent cables to President Federico Laredo Brú not to let the Jews in. The American Jews had paid $500 a head to the president of Cuba and $250 a head to Batista to allow the Jews to remain but President Roosevelt and his secretary of state sent cables not to let the Jews stay. Three of the Jews jumped ship and remained in Cuba and one of them cut his vein. The ship was literally in front of Miami Beach and the US Navy told them they would bombard the ship if they didn’t leave the US coast.

When did your family leave Cuba and how did it change after the Revolution?

My mother left in 1960 and my father followed and left in 1961 because he wanted to make sure that the whole Jewish community were also able to leave and he was still the president of the Yeshiva of Cuba and had responsibilities. He remained and he had to ask for political asylum in Nicaragua during a time that Fidel Castro had just come to power. I left in 1955 ahead of my parents. My mom had promised her only surviving brother that he could have a son to be with him. I went to the States to study in Indiana where I received my undergrad and my law degree as well. On Yom Kippur when I moved to Brooklyn, I was in shul and my future wife and mother-in-law were there with her cousin. She overheard me speaking Spanish and the next week I saw her crossing the street and asked her on a date. We went out for coffee and that’s how we met.

Who played the major role in preventing the Jews from leaving Cuba?

The Catholic Church did not want the Jewish community to move the synagogue from the red light district in Old Havana. It asked Batista to intervene and he granted permission, stopping protestations from the Ecclesiastic headquarters two blocks away from where the grand El Patronato Synagogue was built. Batista came for the opening and I have a picture of my cousin standing next to him. The Catholic Church did not want us to leave Cuba and there was also an older Synagogue in Cuba as well. The Sephardi Jews came to Cuba from Turkey in 1895 to 1898. The Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews in Cuba did not want to mix and get married. The first couple that did marry came over to my father and said that the parents didn’t want them to get married. My father’s response was that if this is something that is happening in this Jewish community then I am going to close down everything in the Jewish community besides the butcher, grocery store and the synagogues. The Cuban community took care of all the needs of widows and orphans and made sure that they had food, school, clothing and shelter. When my father started closing these institutions he told the community to speak to the parents of this young couple and they ended up getting married.

My final question is that as you continued to do your activism in Cuba since the early nineties such as with the Alan Gross case when you got him out of jail, what else have you been involved in?

Regarding the Alan Gross case, I went to Cuba with Rabbi Elie Abadie and we spoke to the foreign minister who was at that time my friend and asked for him to let Alan out. On account of that meeting, the United States started speaking to Cuba, which led to the Obama administration reopening relations. Another way that I have been involved in Jewish Cuba is that for many years I have tried to get a kosher hotel established there. I have ensured that the Orthodox synagogues in Cuba are running and that people in the Jewish community can find jobs as well. Regarding the kosher hotel, we have a Kashrut committee in Cuba that is ready but has met resistance from the Religious Affairs Ministry. The idea behind opening a kosher hotel was to ensure that people in the Jewish community could have a job and assist in operations. We spent over $100,000 in planes and travel and money that is earmarked for the opening of the hotel that we were hoping to open but wasn’t allowed by the government. The community is slowly disappearing and there are only around 200 Sephardim left there who are halachically Jewish, but the rest have intermarried. The community is getting older and the younger people who are left hope that they can go to Israel or the States, as there is really nothing left for them in Cuba.