By Donald H. Harrison
DEL MAR, Calif.—If you are an influential member of a synagogue,
Stanley Falkenstein of the non-profit Jewish Cuba Connection, Inc.,
would like a word or two with you.
As
he explained earlier this week at a gathering at the home of Gert
Thaler,
Falkenstein would like you and other members of your congregation to go
together to Cuba.
Not just because it will be interesting for you—although it will be—to see
how Judaism can flourish even in the most grinding poverty, but also because
the Jews and Gentiles of Cuba really need you and your fellow congregants to
serve as what indelicately in the world of drug transportation are known as
"mules."
Falkenstein wants all of you to carry drugs in your baggage—the legal kind,
of course, the kind you can get at a pharmacy with or without a
prescription. Can you picture the fun and irony of it, transporting
drugs from North America to Latin America?
Medicines of all kinds are in desperately short supply in Cuba. True,
they have universal health care on Fidel Castro's
Gert Thaler and Stanley Falkenstein
Communist island. What they don't have, in anything like the quantities
needed, are prescription medicines to make that health care effective,
Falkenstein reports. The Cubans blame the shortages on the U.S.
blockade. Others say it is Cuban bureaucratic inefficiency. Regardless,
the bottom line is that the people need the medications.
Getting humanitarian aid to Cuba is a tricky business, because both the
mutually antagonistic United States and Cuba have rules and regulations
bearing on the issue. For example, the U.S. says if you send aid, it must go
to a non-governmental organization, and never to either the Cuban government
or to the Communist party there. On Cuba's part, any donation that is
perceived as being funded by the U.S. government is rejected. Medications must
be inspected by the Cuban Ministry of Health, which sometimes confiscates
them. Seized shipments, whether from the United States or elsewhere, sometimes
are sent by the "people of Cuba" to other countries to build good
will for the Cuban government.
The United States government permits only certain kinds of travel by its
citizens to Cuba. You can't go there on your own. However, members of
religious organizations such as a synagogue, under U.S. government rules, can
be licensed to travel for "full-time religious interactions with their
counterparts," Falkenstein said.
Cuba permits visitors to bring 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, of gifts, provided
they are not electrical devices because the country suffers from power
outages. Also unwelcome are recorded or written materials that are
critical of the Cuban government. Medicines of
all kinds, so long as they are under the 10 kilo limit, will be permitted into
the country, Falkenstein told the group.. If enough members of a synagogue go on
such a mission, they can bring in pharmaceuticals sufficient to help the
community of approximately 1,200 Jews in Cuba, and to help Gentiles as well.
Hadassah Cuba, under its president Dr. Rosa Behar, founded and operates a pharmacy
at El Patronato, a Conservative synagogue that
bears that nickname because "patrons" paid the money years ago to
build it. The congregation, known formally as Beth Shalom, welcomes through its
doors everyone, regardless of religion, while Hadassah Cuba makes those medicines
available for free to any Cuban who presents a valid
doctor's prescription.
After dropping off the medicines to the
synagogue pharmacy, synagogue missions frequently visit not only El Patronato but
two other congregations in Havana, and also travel to Cienfuegos and Santa Clara to
visit their tiny Jewish communities.
For some people travel can be broadening. For Falkenstein, a similar
visit to Cuba in 2000 was transformational. .
The semi-retired certified public accountant from Los Angeles liked to travel
off the beaten path, so he was pleased to read six years ago that an Orange
County synagogue was putting together a mission to visit the Jews of
Cuba.
Signing up for the trip, he had no idea that meeting the Jews of Cuba—and
seeing how they live—would give the purpose to his life that he felt was
missing.
Falkenstein said what struck him about the Jewish community "was that as
materially poor as the people were, it was their willingness to share, and
their warmth and love of family... I saw positives that I don't see in the
United States, with all the wealth we have."
Ten dollars a month—this is not a misprint—is a typical salary of a worker
in Fidel Castro's Cuba, whether that person be a street sweeper or a
professional person. One guest told the story of a fellow who was publicly drunk, and
when police came to arrest him, he said "unhand me, I am a bellboy at one
of the big hotels." The man's wife told police not to believe
him. " A bellboy indeed! When he gets depressed he has delusions of
grandeur. In fact, he's nothing but a neurosurgeon."
Apocryphal though the story may be, the truth is people who work in the
tourist industry are the only Cubans who receive "tips" and who can
therefore augment their meager salaries. With everything else owned by the
Cuban government in the worker's "paradise," neurosurgeons don't
earn much more than office workers.
If you visit a Cuban home, Falkenstein says, chances are your hosts will be
very warm, very generous, but have little food to serve you. What food
they share with you will be on paper plates—the only kind many families
have. Yet, they will not begrudge either the international visitors or a
neighbor who happens to come in, their meager supply of food, he added.
"If the neighbor helps himself to some eggs—which are very hard to come
by in Cuba—no one will complain. They know that someday soon, they
will need to borrow something else from the neighbor and he won't begrudge
them either."
Another guest commented that a Jewish communal dinner at which chicken might be served is a major
event—not only because the community is together but because getting to eat
a chicken is a real treat.
After his first eye-opening trip, Falkenstein formed Jewish Cuba Connection,
Inc., a group that collects pharmaceuticals and arranges for them to be
carried to Cuba by visiting mission members.
I asked Falkenstein why, of all the humanitarian projects that one might
become involved with, helping the Jews of Cuba became his passion. Besides
falling in love with the community, he said, he felt that with only 1,200
people or so, the community was of such a scale that his efforts could make a
real difference. Besides that, I learned, Falkenstein's parents both
came to this country from Germany in the 1930s. A German-American living in
North Dakota sponsored 100 German Jews, including Falkenstein's father—and
had that man not been so willing to reach out—"I might not even be
here." Falkenstein's grandparents, who remained behind in Germany,
perished in the concentration camps.
Many people criticized the United States—as well as its Jewish
community—for not doing more to alleviate the situation of European
Jewry. While the situation is far different in Cuba—with Castro even
said to have a "soft spot" in his heart for Jews because some of the
founders of the Cuban Communist party were Jewish—the Jews there still are
in dire need, and this is a way for Falkenstein to give something back.
If you'd also like to help, either by going on a mission or in some other
manner, Falkenstein may be reached by telephone at (310) 823-4066, or by email
at jewishcuba@hotmail.com