I sit at a small round glass table enjoying the scent of two dozen red roses in a vase that is right under my nose (the roses are also making me sneeze, but it’s totally worth it). The front window is open and I can hear cars whizzing by and people talking as they stroll down the street.  It feels like spring rather than autumn; it’s been in the 60s and 70s today and gently breezy.

I am writing in the cozy upper Westside apartment of my friend Joyce Maio. Her apartment is a home away from home on many occasions when I’m visiting in New York. She is out for the evening and has generously allowed me to stay in her apartment. Having grown up in Queens—where my parents still live—I entertain the fantasy of living a sophisticated Manhattan life, if only for one day. From Joyce’s house I can walk to Central Park or grab a bite to eat at any of the zillion deluxe restaurants that line Columbus Avenue. Or I can stay in her apartment, as I’m doing now, and enjoy the feeling of being in the city, listening secretly to the throbbing sounds of the street while safe inside.

I have known Joyce for seven years. She is the daughter of Egyptian Jews who were forced to immigrate during the Suez crisis. Her mother was eight months pregnant with Joyce when they arrived in Paris, where Joyce was born.

Joyce and I met when we were both associated with IVRI-NASAWI, a Sephardic cultural organization that eventually folded. It was started by Jordan Elgrably, a son of Jews from Morocco. Jordan grew up in Paris and is now based in Los Angeles. He continues to maintain the ideals of IVRI-NASAWI and the Levantine Project by organizing events that promote Jewish-Arab dialogue through music and performance.

It was Joyce who first showed me the photographs of Humberto Mayol, the Havana-based photographer who collaborated with me on An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba. Joyce said, “Why don’t you work together with Humberto?” She has a way of being very persuasive. While in Havana in 2002, I contacted Humberto, who didn’t know there was a Jewish community in Cuba. As a photojournalist he had documented the revitalization of the Afrocuban religions of Santería and palo monte and was intrigued by the idea of working with me to create a photographic portrait of the Jewish revitalization. As soon as our project got underway, I knew I was blessed to cross paths with Humberto. And I owed it all to Joyce.

Joyce surprised me by coming to my event at the Jewish Museum two nights ago, on October 18.  She looked elegant as usual, her curly hair in waves around her face, an embroidered shawl with patches of transparent fabric draped lightly around her shoulders.

I had flown into New York the same day, expecting to have a few hours to relax. But my flight was an hour late and it took forever to get a cab. As soon as I got to my uptown hotel, On the Ave, located at 77th and Broadway (a courtesy of the Jewish Museum), I threw off my jeans and shirt and changed into the huipil that Sandra Cisneros gave me for my birthday last year. My huipil is a gorgeously embroidered blouse with big flowers in red, pink, and orange. It is a style of blouse worn by poor women in Oaxaca, but it has recently become a collector’s item among more privileged women, especially Latina writers and artists who appreciate the beauty and passion of their designs. I paired up the huipil with a black skirt and my Argentine red platform sandals and a glittery red shrug.

Sandra has written a marvelous essay about the huipil and why she chooses to wear this garment made by an “indigenous designer from Mexico” rather than clothes from Nieman Marcus. Her essay forms part of the stunning exhibition, “Huipiles: A Celebration,” at the Alameda in San Antonio, Texas [www.thealameda.org].

All my years growing up in Queens I rode subways back and forth to Manhattan, but now that I live in the blissful town of Ann Arbor I find I need to be in the city for a couple of days to recover my street confidence and feel at ease traveling inside the belly of the city.  That’s why, as soon as I’m dressed and ready, I hop into a cab to go downtown to 16th Street to  record a podcast with Lisa Kleinman of the United Jewish Committee.

It’s 4:30 and I’m an hour late for my appointment, but Lisa graciously carries out the interview. She has a list of prepared questions, all of them thoughtful. We finish at 5:30pm, and I was supposed to be at the Jewish Museum to set up my power point presentation at 5:15pm. The doors open to the public at 6pm. On my own, I would have started to panic, but luckily my New York publicist, Shira Dicker, is with me and she advises we take the subway to avoid rush hour traffic.

“It’s grungy, but it’s fast,” Shira says.

Shira has a huge backpack that she assures me isn’t heavy at all. It contains her gym clothes, since she intends on working out later in the evening, after my talk.  Shira has so much energy that Jeremy, my Rutgers publicist, says that if he talks to her before 9:30 in the morning, he can skip his double shot of coffee. I love being with Shira. Her energy rubs off on me. I start talking faster when I’m with her. She’s also hilarious and make me laugh out loud. As she bolts down the stairs to hold open the doors of the train, I rush after her, holding on to the handrail not to trip in my red platform shoes.

Shira is right. We get uptown quickly. Then it’s several blocks to 92nd Street. Shira notices I’m wilting and hails a cab.

I am sweating by the time we arrive at the Jewish Museum at 6:15pm. The huipil is designed to keep the air circulating under the arms, and they’re cut a bit short, so you also get air around the belly button. I’m hot, but the huipil still looks fresh. No wonder women like them in Oaxaca.

My event is set to start at 6:30pm. The security guard says my host, Jennifer Mock, the program coordinator, has been pacing nervously for the last half hour. When Jennifer appears, I apologize profusely. But she very politely says everything’s fine, there’s still time left, and she hasn’t been worried at all.

“Your audience is waiting,” she says. “Looks like you’ll have a full house tonight.”

A few ladies, longtime regulars of Jewish Museum author events, arrived at 5:50 pm. Normally, the auditorium doesn’t open until 6pm, but the ladies demanded that Jennifer open the auditorium for them.

I look inside. What an elegant auditorium! High ceilings, gleaming wood flowers, a stage meant for an opera singer. An enormous room, complete with balcony seating. My heart races. With jello legs I follow Jennifer, who wants me to quickly take a peek at the podium and make sure everything is set up properly.

“I’m going to take you back into the hallway afterwards, so you can rest, okay?”

I tell Jennifer she’ll have to yank me out of the room, because I was brought up to be extra-nice, so if anyone comes up and starts talking, I’ll feel obligated to listen. Jennifer says she’ll get me out. Sure enough, she’s already locked arms with me when my mother comes rushing over. Mami’s hair is freshly styled and her nails manicured. She has on a red sweater and a flower-petal necklace I gave her.

“No me vas a saludar?” she says.  

Oh, no, my mother guilt-tripping me, minutes before I have to address my first substantial New York crowd!

“Hi, Mami. Que bueno que llegaron. Look, I have to rest for a few minutes, okay? Nos vemos luego.”

I feel bad, but Jennifer has my arm and she pulls me away.

I turn back and see my parents camped out on the far side of the room, a few rows back. I’m grateful they’re not sitting right in the front row. They probably would if they could, but the Jewish Museum ladies have grabbed those seats [Later my mother confirms that this is exactly what happened. She also tells me that the couple in front of her consisted of a husband who couldn’t hear and a wife who repeated everything I was saying, word by word, into his ear].

Jennifer escorts me into the hallway and we go over the plan for the evening. She’ll introduce me, I’ll talk, and afterwards I’ll accept three to four questions, no more. Then Jennifer will return to the stage to announce my book is available for purchase and that I will stay to sign them.

At 6:35 pm, Jennifer leaves me alone in the hallway and goes up to the stage to introduce me. When I hear people clapping, I am to come in, making the grand entrance by entering from behind the audience and walking up to the stage.

The clapping begins and I enter. I try to walk straight, try to climb the stairs to the stage without tripping, and try to start speaking. The fear passes and soon I’m talking as if I with a friend in the kitchen, not on stage in an auditorium filled with people. I discern familiar faces in the crowd—my parents, Joyce, my cousin Henry with his wife Susan, Shira, Jeremy, and my son Gabriel, a film student at NYU, who arrives later and stays standing at the edge of the room.

I end my remarks by telling people about the creation of a Jewish-themed hotel in Havana, the Hotel Raquel, in which there is a room named Ruth, and how ironic that feels to me after years of searching for a true home in Cuba.

I finish when I’m supposed to and I open it up to questions. Everyone seems to have a question they want answered. People want numbers: How many Jews are left in Cuba? How many are elders? How many are young? How many attend religious services? How many don’t attend? Is there anti-Semitism in Cuba? Can they also travel to Cuba? Can they go to Cuba with me on my next trip?

Soon I have answered seven, eight, nine questions, and I know I should stop, but an old friend of my parents, Ysrael Seinuk, attired in an imperious suit, stands up in the back of the room, and motions to me with some urgency. Ysrael is a dean and professor of engineering at Cooper Union and he’s always been supremely self-confident. Among his Cuban-Jewish friends, he’s known as “the Senator.”

“And you should all know,” he says, “that no Jew in Cuba can stay in the Hotel Raquel. Cubans aren’t allowed to stay in any of the hotels that Castro has built for foreigners.”

I can tell he’s gearing up to give a mini-lecture of his own. Jennifer Mock is looking very worried. A few people are starting to leave.

Jennifer was right! Never take more than three or four questions.

I say a few words in response and remember to say thank you to the audience and then Jennifer runs up to the stage to remind people that books are available. As we descend from the stage arm in arm, people rush to ask more questions, and she ushers me away. The only person I’m allowed to greet is my son Gabriel. I give him a hug and Jennifer whisks me to the table, not letting go until I’m seated and ready to await my well-wishers, who are expected to form an orderly line.

One of the first people to approach me is an older woman who looks vaguely familiar. She asks if I will sign her book.

“What is your name?”

“I’m Rhoda Weinstein,” she says.

“Mrs. Weinstein!”

Her eyes light up when I recognize her.

Mrs. Weinstein was my favorite history teacher at Forest Hills High School. I come out from behind the table to give her a hug. I need to find her address, so I can tell her what a thrill it was to see her again. Thank you, Mrs. Weinstein!

The night keeps going like that. All paths meeting, converging.

A woman asks if I wouldn’t mind signing three books. She’s buying them to give away to family members for Hanukkah. Bless her heart!

I recognize two women who were on a Jewish Museum trip to Cuba with me a few years ago. Rosita’s father was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Guanabacoa and we were able to find his tomb there. Her companion, Laurie Goldstein, says, “I think that’s me in the photo with Salomón the schnorer.” It is indeed her! In the photo she’s carrying two heavy shoulder bags and intently listening to Salomón’s request. He’s one of the “celebrities” of the community and roams from temple to temple observing the goings-on, consuming free meals, and talking to American Jews who go to Cuba on “missions” to help Jewish Cubans. He was photographed for a recent New York Times story about the Jews of Cuba. He enjoys asking American Jews for anything they can part with, a pen, a little cash, a magazine. The leaders of the community find him embarrassing, but I’ve come to find him endearing.

My cousin, Henry, and his wife, Susan, say hello. I am touched they have come. Henry’s father, Samuel, passed away a few weeks ago in Miami. I haven’t told Henry that in my book I write about his namesake, his uncle Henry, who died of leukemia in Cuba. When I first returned to Cuba, I went looking for my cousin’s grave in the Jewish cemetery in Guanabacoa. He was the first Jew I searched for in Cuba. His spirit haunted me. I’ll have to ask Henry if he feels a connection to the memory of his uncle. I hope he won’t object to what I wrote about him.

My mother just retired as head of the diploma department at New York University after 32 years of service. Her Cuban friends from the office are there in solidarity. Elba, Ramona, and Aguila, gracias por estar conmigo!

Milos Silber, a Tisch film student like my son Gabriel, is a Brazilian Jew. He tells me he’s going to do an NYU semester abroad program in Cuba and plans to make a documentary on the Jews of Cuba. He and Gabriel meet that night.

Ysrael Seinuk is much too busy a person to wait on line—the line has actually grown long! He gets in front to say goodbye and tells me that he’s given the book to my mother for me to sign for him and his wife Fanny. I’ll be curious to hear what he has to say about the book!

And where is my mother? It’s almost too sweet… She’s standing at the back of the line, waiting to get her book signed too. Ay, Mami! You don’t have to do that!

It takes a while, but finally Mami and Papi reach the table. They have bought a copy of my book—even though I was going to give them one—and they have the books that their friends have purchased; there is Ysrael and Fanny Seinuk’s book, and Zelmi and Ricardo Wilkowski’s book, and Miriam and Enrique Perkal’s book. They put them all on the table and I start signing them. I write the dedications in Spanish, of course, and sign my name simply as Ruti, my childhood name.

I want to take some pictures with my parents, with Gabriel, but by this time the security guards just want to go home. They’re not shy about letting us know. “Closing time,” they start saying, louder and louder, until we get the message.

After everyone has gone, it’s just me and Gabriel and Joyce and her friend Alan. We walk down the street looking for somewhere to eat a late dinner and by sheer accident we end up in a restaurant on Madison Avenue called “Island.”

The pistacchio-encrusted grouper is delicious and the accompanying mashed turnips are good comfort food. We request cinammon ice cream with our apple and berry tart but get something that looks a lot like Breyer’s vanilla. Joyce says she can taste the cinammon, but it’s very subtle. She is a woman of very refined taste, so I don’t question her.

We’re almost done with the tart and the ice cream when the waittress appears with a bowl and sets it on the table. “Here’s the cinammon ice cream,” she says. “Sorry, they made a mistake in the kitchen.” This ice cream is brown like butcher paper. The four of us eagerly dip in with our spoons. Unmistakeably cinammon. Nothing subtle about it at all. [www.islandnewyorkcity.com]

*

The next morning, October 19, I took an express train to Philadelphia. I arrived as Rebecca Karp, my host, was setting up the computer for the film and power point presentation. Rebecca, though young, is already an Assistant Director of the American Jewish Committee, Philadelphia/Southern New Jersey Chapter. She reserved an elegant conference room in the Wolf Block office in downtown Philly and ordered sandwich wraps (tuna and vegetarian) and cookies for lunch.

The co-sponsor of the event was the Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. I love participating in Latino-Jewish dialogues and often find myself in situations where my presence brings together members of these communities who otherwise have little contact. Varsovia Fernandez, the Executive Director, came with other women from her office who are Dominican and Puerto Rican.

We began by showing the opening section of my film, Adio Kerida and then moved to my presentation of photographs from An Island Called Home.  Since everyone was seated around a seminar table, I found it difficult to maintain the lecture format and allowed the event to turn into a free-flowing conversation.

There was one question that stayed with me. A woman asked, “Why should Cuba matter to the rest of the world?” I replied that whatever we may think of Fidel Castro, whether we love him or hate him, he did succeed in putting Cuba on the map by leading a revolution that had high ideals for humanity. Cuba, a mere island in the Caribbean, gained a role in history, become a player on the world stage because it dared to dream bigger dreams than it should have dared to dream. I ended with a favorite quote from journalist Alma Guillermoprieto, who says about Cuba, “Such a small nation, such a great role in history.”

*

I spent the evening in Philly with my brother, Mori, a composer and bass player who is featured in my documentary, Adio Kerida, and my sister-in-law Beatrice and nephew Max. They took really good care of me. After a hearty Cuban meal at a Colombian restaurant near their house, we put our feet up in their living room and Bea made us warm chocolate chip cookies and tea. Mori showed me how he’s composing tunes on his computer using garage band. He has 154 tunes up on the web. To hear his music, log onto: http://www.icompositions.com/artists/mbehar  Don’t miss Mori’s haunting rendition of “Strange Fruit,” the sad song that Billie Holiday made famous.

October 16, 2007

I flew out to San Francisco on Sunday afternoon, October 14th. On the plane I read an article by Zev Chafets in the New York Times Magazine about “The SY Empire” (10/14/07). The focus is on the Syrian Jews of Gravesend, Brooklyn. I found the article both fascinating and frightening. Chafets discussed how the Syrian Jews in New York had created strict rules of insiderhood in order to prevent intermarriage and assimilation, and also to keep their wealth securely within the community. They maintain such a strong, vital, and prosperous community by adhering to an Edict passed by five Syrian immigrant rabbis in 1935, which mercilessly excommunicates community members who marry outside the tribe. They ostracize family members who marry non-Jews, even if their spouses convert to Judaism with Orthodox rabbis. The unwillingness to accept these conversations is especially shocking. In the Jewish tradition respect has always been given to sincere converts and they are accepted across the wide spectrum of Jewish observation. The Biblical Ruth was a convert to Judaism and is considered one of Judaism’s greatest heroines for choosing to live among the Jewish people by her own volition.

As I read this article, I was thinking that almost all the Jews living in Cuba today wouldn’t be considered Jews by the Syrian Jewish community, since the majority are converts to Judaism. But if it weren’t for the converts, I was also thinking, there wouldn’t be a Jewish community in Cuba. With only a few “pure” Jews left, who are Jewish on both their maternal and paternal side, the community depends on converts who have chosen to be Jewish memory-keepers for Judaism to remain alive on the island.

The first event of my book tour took place on Monday evening, October 15th at the Bureau of Jewish Education, Jewish Community Library on 1835 Ellis Street. I got there an hour early and met my hosts, Rose Katz, Program Coordinator, and Jonathan Schwartz, Library Director. They have organized an exciting program of Latin American Jewish events to take place during the next few months. One of the highlights is an exhibition of photographs by Rafael Goldchain, a Jew from Chile now living in Canada. He makes haunting black-and-white self-portraits, in the style of Cindy Sherman, of all the members of his Jewish family, past and present and imagined. There is also a series on Latin American Jewish films and an evening of Yiddish tango music. I think it’s wonderful that Rose and Jonathan are creating awareness about Latin American Jewish culture. I hope that other Jewish community organizations will be inspired by their example. Here is the link, if you would like more information: http://www.bjesf.org/events.htm

That half hour before an audience arrives to your book event is a scary one. I hoped that at least a handful of people would come, so that I wouldn’t have to present my talk just to Rose and Jonathan. Fortunately, people started to trickle in. One of the first to arrive was Fortuna, my cousin Rebequita’s mother-in-law. Fortuna is a Sephardic Jew from Cuba who married a Syrian Jew. I didn’t get to ask her about the Edict and what her husband thought of it, because soon other people were arriving. June Safran came, who organizes Jewish travel to Cuba and knows the needs of the Jewish community in Cuba intimately. She has a list of who’s diabetic, who’s asthmatic, who suffers from ulcers, and regularly brings medication for them. She also brings diapers for Jewish Cuban babies. Bonnie Burt arrived; she’s an independent filmmaker who has produced several short documentaries about Jewish Cubans. My student, Umi Vaughan, who’s finishing up a dissertation on Cuban timba music, also came, which was great because I had also read his dissertation on the plane ride and marked it up with comments.

The room filled up completely, and they even had to scramble for extra chairs, which I was thrilled about, because my lovely, hard-working publicist, Jeremy Wang-Iverson,  from Rutgers University Press, was also there, by marvelous coincidence, and I didn’t want to disappoint him.

In my presentation, which included photographs from the book, I talked about how when my parents married in 1956, their marriage was considered an intermarriage, because my mother is Ashkenazi and my father is Sephardic. We laugh at this now, but at the time the fact that my father’s Ladino-speaking Turkish family couldn’t speak Yiddish was considered a tragedy by my mother’s family. I went on to discuss the increasing ethnic and racial diversity of the contemporary Jewish community in Cuba, which includes Afrocuban Jews. I commented on how the community has caught the attention of American Jews, who seem dazzled by the fact that any Jews exist at all on the island. I ended by discussing how, in turn, the Cuban government has taken note of the American Jewish interest in Jewish Cubans and it has built a Jewish-themed hotel, the Hotel Raquel, in the newly restored section of Old Havana near the Cathedral.

I didn’t bring a watch and lost track of the time, speaking for an hour, but people didn’t budge. Afterwards, they had many questions to ask me, most of which I could actually answer.

One question came up for which I didn’t know the answer: Was Meyer Lansky (born Mejer Suchowlinski), the gangster who had major gambling operations in Cuba, connected to the Jewish community before the Revolution? I looked to June Safran and luckily she knew the answer. She said Meyer Lansky tried to pay his way into acquiring membership at the Patronato Synagogue, the impressive Jewish community center built in Havana in the mid-1950s, at a moment when the Jews thought they’d be staying in Cuba forever. But he was refused. The community wouldn’t take his money, she said.

Afterwards people approached me with different requests. Some wanted me to listen to their own immigration stories, some wanted to ask how they can travel to Cuba, some wanted to tell me about the trips they had made to Cuba, some even wanted books signed. I was having trouble getting to the table where I was supposed to sit and sign the books, so Jeremy came and ushered me over there.

I did the author thing--I signed books, which is very scary. What if you misspell someone’s name and have to cross it out? What if you have an ink spill that mars the pretty frontispiece?

There were several people who wanted to stay and chat, among them Fortuna and June, but I could tell that my organizers, Rose and Jonathan, had had a long day and they needed to clear up and turn off the lights and go home. We’d started at 7:30pm and it was already after 10pm.

I noticed a man who was looking at me intently but also shyly and I could tell he wanted to say something to me but was having trouble finding the right moment to interrupt Fortuna and June and the others still chatting around the table. I smiled at him and he introduced himself. His name was Dennis Ybarra. He was very soft-spoken and told me he was from the organization that had sponsored my talk. I had noticed that the sponsor was Be’chol Lashon, but I hadn’t inquired what this meant nor who my sponsor was. He thanked me and put a book in my hands, In Every Tongue: The Racial and Ethnic Diversity of the Jewish People by Diane Kaufmann Tobin, Gary A. Tobin and Scott Rubin, with a foreword by Lewis Gordon (San Francisco: Institute for Jewish and Community Research, 2005).

I didn’t have time to open the book until I was on the plane heading back to Michigan. I looked at the color photographs first, of which there are many, which show a diversity of Jewish faces, white, black, brown, both children and adults. I was immediately intrigued and proceeded to read the whole book. The plane trip sped by very quickly! I was sorry I didn’t have a chance to tell Dennis Ybarra how grateful I was that he’d given me this important book. I discovered later that he is a Mexican-American convert to Judaism.

The excellent introduction by Lewis Gordon spoke of how even those who are born Jews “must become Jews” and described the increasing diversity among Jews as “a new stage in the history of Jewish people.”

I learned from the book’s authors that intermarriage, conversion, and adoption account for the fact that at least 20% of Jews in the United States are racially and ethnically diverse. They confirmed a truth that I  had come to see represented so frequently in Cuba: “The story of the Jewish people is filled with interracial and intercultural mixing.” I liked how they made their point with humor: “For much of Jewish history, there was not a matzoh ball in sight.” Looking to the future, they noted that if the majority, white, European-descended Jewish community chooses finally to open the door to a wider range of Jews, who sincerely and passionately seek inclusion, it is possible that fifty years from now Jews “will look far more African, Asian, and Latino... just as America as a whole will look.”

So thank you, Be’chol Lashon, for sponsoring my talk. Now I know that those words mean “in every tongue,” which is a beautiful concept. I am honored by your support of my writing and I am delighted to know about all the important work you are doing. Gracias y muchas cosas buenas!