National Yiddish Book Center - A Journey to Jewish Cuba

The exhibit, “A Journey to Jewish Cuba,” is a visual account of Ruth Behar’s journey back to Cuba to learn about the Jewish world that she and her family and thousands of Jews left behind after the revolution in 1959. Today’s Jewish Cuba is quite different from the Jewish Cuba of the 1950s. The community includes revolutionaries, born-again Jews, Afro-Cuban Jews, tango aficionados, and numerous fervent converts. Most are Jews by choice. They have converted because they are Jewish on their paternal rather than maternal side, or because they have married a person of Jewish descent. Like all Cubans on the island, they have scarce resources, but they have taken on the responsibility of guarding the Jewish legacy.

Haunting black-and-white photographs by Humberto Mayol, a photojournalist based in Havana, are accompanied by poetic texts produced by Ruth Behar.

The exhibit was produced at the University of Miami while Ruth Behar served as a Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professor in the Humanities during the spring of 2008. It was sponsored by the University of Miami, College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Dean, the Department of Art and Art History, and supported by George Feldenkreis Program for Judaic Studies, the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies, the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, Latin American Studies, and the Department of Anthropology.

The exhibit grows out of Ruth Behar’s book, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba (Rutgers University Press, 2007), which has touched many readers in the short months since its publication in November. A reviewer in the Miami Herald says about Behar, “She lovingly intertwines her own thoughts and feelings with the more analytical observations of her profession. The result: a narrative that tugs at the heart."

To learn about Ruth Behar’s work and see samples of Humberto Mayol’s photographs, please visit the website, www.ruthbehar.com.

The National Yiddish Book Center
Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building • 1021 West Street • Amherst MA 01002 • Phone 413-256-4900 • Fax 413-256-4700 • Contact