Thursday, July 7, 2011

Feeding the Jewish Community of Cuba

July 7, 2011, 9:30am

Feeding the Jewish Community of Cuba
By Nadia Schreiber

The Jewish population of Cuba, once over 15,000, has dwindled to just
over 1,000 in recent years, but their dedication to maintaining that
community is strong. The three synagogues (an Orthodox, Conservative
Ashkenzi and Conservative Sephardi) in Havana serve as community
centers, distribution centers for donated food and medical supplies,
party halls and, of course, religious spaces.

Despite the vibrant, unified community (and strong influence of Jews
from around the world), Jewish Cubans cannot completely evade national
problems. And one of the biggest issues that the Cuban people face today
is a nation-wide food shortage.

In the American conscientious food community, we concern ourselves with
local and sustainable food and making this more readily available. For
the Jewish community of Cuba, the issue is not whether or not the
plantains in their Shabbat dinner were grown sustainably, it's whether
or not there will be plantains at all. And with only one kosher butcher
on the whole island, kosher meat is hard to come by. Government food
rations often only include pork, if they include any meat at all.

Despite the national food shortage and the meat crisis facing all Cubans
today, the Jewish community has been relatively fortunate, receiving
kosher food donations from abroad, but this raises the issue of how far
our food must travel in order to reach Cuba. All products from the
United States must pass through a third-party country before entering
Cuba. For example, you might be able to find Honey Nut Cheerios in one
of the touristy grocery stores, but they will almost-certainly have
passed through Mexico before landing on the shelf in Havana.

In some ways, the food that enters the Jewish community is often more
sustainable coming directly from the U.S. or Canada through Jewish
mission-trips. (People visiting Cuba can bring a certain amount of food
into the country without having to pass through a third-party country.)
The food is collected at the different synagogues and then distributed
to the members on the basis of need.

Kosher for Passover foods are in fact the most popular donations that
the synagogues of Cuba receive. People all over the world send boxes of
matzo and other Passover foods to Cuba, and generally there is more than
one box of matzo per person. But during non-holiday times, meals become
default celebrations of local foods — whatever happens to be in the
vegetable market that week, or what cheese is coming in from the
surrounding countryside.

In my four months in Cuba, I was lucky enough to get to enjoy a Shabbat
meal with the Ashkenazi congregation nearby. The week that I joined them
for dinner was, like many weeks, a dairy meal, as no meat was available
to the congregation. We ate rice and beans (congri, a Cuban staple —
rice cooked with small amounts of black beans), plantains, cabbage
salad, tomatoes and cheese. This meal was similar to what I ate
throughout my time in Cuba, representing the locally available
vegetables and cheeses. The most meaningful part of the Shabbat meal,
was sitting and conversing with my fellow diners. At first seen as an
outsider, by the end of the dinner I felt connected to the Jewish
community of Cuba.

Much of our work at Hazon is about bringing people together in their
communities; for us, a local food movement is one framework in which we
work. But Cuban Jews are coming together around food in an entirely
different way — they come together to share what little is available
locally, and enjoy the donations that come from Jews over the world.

Nadia Schreiber, one of Hazon's summer interns, was born and raised in
Tribeca, NY and is currently a junior at Middlebury College in Vermont
studying International Studies. She has spent this past semester
studying in the school of History, Philosophy and Sociology at the
University of Havana in Cuba.

http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/139496/

No comments:

Post a Comment