ABSTRACT
The Jewish experience in Cuba was different than its contact with the Enlightenment in the nineteenth century. The amazing part of the Jewish experience in Cuba is not its travails or tribulations, but that the sense of community has survived sixty years of tyranny, neglect, mocking humor, and direct efforts to extinguish it. Only when Cuba fell under the spell and orbit of Soviet foreign policy did the Jewish condition in Cuban politics become utterly hopeless. Fascism, Falangism and Communism—translated into German, Spanish and Russian interventions in Cuban affairs took turns in scape-goating the Jewish community. Without grotesque ideological distortions and political entanglements, Jews would not only have had a safe harbor, but would have played a vital role in the further evolution of Cuban society in general. Professor Robert Levine is even handed—perhaps to a fault—seeing the Jews as the agents of their own stereotype.
