jueves 20 de diciembre de 2007 13:38:39
Jorge Ferrer
An Island Called Home. Returning to Jewish Cuba, de Ruth Behar, es el
repaso más abarcador y ameno que conozco de la presencia de los judíos
en Cuba.
Un libro que es a la vez catálogo, porque Ruth se paseó por toda Cuba en
busca de las huellas judías, y testimonio, porque el relato es el de su
propio reencuentro con una Cuba que abandonó siendo niña -«Se la
llevaron», cuenta que decían de ella cuando explicaban en la Habana su
avatar de expatriada.
Leído por exiliados cubanos, se trata de necesario ejercicio. Diáspora,
palabra que usamos con cierta ligereza para referirnos a la dispersión
cubana por medio mundo, es palabra griega, pero traduce el hebreo Galout
y se refiere a la (mala) suerte de los judíos, desprovistos de su tierra
y provistos, desde entonces, de un destino unido al deseo de su
recuperación.
Carecer de una patria, haber sido expulsados de ella, añorarla, vivir
soñando con el regreso. Tal es una dimensión del exilio cubano, de su
historia.
Así, los avatares de la comunidad judía asentada en una Cuba que
concibieron como mera plaza de tránsito hacia los EE.UU. da testimonio
de una dimensión diaspórica paralela y dotada de la espiritualidad que
imprime una religión. El dolor, y la desesperación de quienes huyeron de
los horrores de la Europa en guerra para acabar encontrando una
provisional pax caribeña que la revolución de 1959 vino a soliviantar.
Cerca del 90 % de los judíos que vivían en Cuba se marcharon a los
EE.UU. durante los primeros años de afianzamiento del castrismo. Atrás
dejaron sus cementerios y sinagogas, sus muertos y sus rollos de la Torah.
Ruth Behar se reencontró con los últimos supervivientes, secularizados
por la fuerza –la cesión de la sede de la Unión Sionista a la delegación
en Cuba de la Organización para la Liberación de Palestina (OLP) en 1978
no es más que un episodio del acoso de la revolución a los judíos-, pero
ávidos de recuperar una tradición que los apartara del adocenamiento
totalitario. Y los salvara de la miseria.
La conversión de esa pequeña comunidad en objeto de deseo de las
organizaciones filantrópicas de judíos norteamericanos y argentinos, su
rápida transformación en destino turístico, es asunto al que Behar
dedica las que probablemente sean más atrevidas páginas de An Island
Called Home. Esos pocos representantes del «pueblo elegido» tuvieron la
suerte de ser «elegidos» para ofrecerles caridad. El drama moral que tal
elección conlleva es narrado desde un discurso antropológico trufado de
anécdotas, conmovedoras escenas, truncas, o retomadas, «historias de
vida». Las fotografías de Humberto Mayol jalonan la narración con la
impronta de rostros y lápidas.
Los testimonios de muchos judíos dispersos por la geografía cubana
dibujan un extraño paisaje que parece invención literaria. No lo es.
Pero hay historias, como la de Jaime Gans Grin, el «último judío de
Palma Soriano», que muestran los horrores del siglo y la desolación
privada con esa terrible belleza que es patrimonio del espacio literario.
An Island Called Home en Amazon.com; en Rutgers University Press; en
Books & Books.
The Last Jew of Palma Soriano
(Fragment)
By Ruth Behar
[…] Eugenia and I sit side by side in the van that belongs to the
synagogue of Santiago de Cuba. It is ten o'clock in the morning and,
just as she promised, Eugenia is taking me to Palma Soriano, a town an
hour away from Santiago, so I can meet Jaime Gans Grin, the only Jew who
still resides there. For the last twenty years she has worked in the
provincial headquarters of the Ministry of Culture and she has explored
every alley in the city of Santiago and every town in the Oriente
region. If there are any hidden Jews to be found around these parts,
Eugenia will certainly know who they are.
When I met Eugenia in 1995, during the reopening of the synagogue in
Santiago, she was modest and unassuming. Now, as the president of the
Jewish community in Santiago, she has become a confident leader and has
published her own books about the history of the Jews in the region,
while maintaining a united family.
"Don't judge Jaime by his appearance," she warns. "He's a jewel of a
person—es una joya en su propio estuche, a jewel in his own unique
case." And she adds, "Don't be taken aback when you hear him stutter.
He's a very learned man. He reads a lot. He's helping me write a book
about the Jews in Cuba using maps."
Eugenia is taking me to Palma Soriano to meet Jaime because she has
faith that I won't misrepresent him. She considers me a fellow Cuban
Jew, she says, "one of us." Foreign visitors, she's certain, would draw
the wrong conclusion if they saw the ruined state of his house and his
forlorn appearance. It distresses her to read articles in Jewish
American magazines that portray Jews in Cuba as backward, mired in
poverty, and desperate to be saved by "missions" from the United States.
Arriving in Palma Soriano, I have to admit I'm glad for Eugenia's
warnings. Jaime's house is dark as a cave, but more than simply gloomy,
it's a house that feels abandoned. If a house can be shipwrecked, this
house is shipwrecked. Two stuffed chairs, coated with a thick layer of
grime, are the only furniture in the living room. The one touch of color
is a fishnet bag of limes, which Jaime offers to me and Eugenia.
Jaime has a bed and clean sheets, as well as a television, thanks to
Eugenia. She wants to move him to Santiago, but Jaime won't leave Palma
Soriano. Once upon a time, his house, located in the center of town, had
been among the plushest homes in Palma Soriano. In the front room,
Jaime's parents, both Hungarian immigrants, had a well-stocked general
store, with everything from sewing needles to mattresses. Attired in a
white tuxedo, Jaime had celebrated his bar mitzvah in the synagogue of
Santiago de Cuba in 1953. Six years later, the Revolution began and
Jaime and his parents chose to stay. He never married. His parents
passed away and he considered leaving for Israel, but this was back in
the years when the desire to immigrate was viewed as a
counterrevolutionary act. He made the mistake of speaking too soon of
his dream to the postman, who turned him in to the authorities. Now he
just wants to spend the rest of his years in Palma Soriano.
Although he's gaunt, Jaime's dark brown eyes shine with intelligence and
this makes him handsome. He also looks younger than his years because he
has a full head of hair. In his gaze I see decency, a trusting nature,
and a recluse's terror of being humiliated.
Jaime does, indeed, stutter, but once he's charged up about a subject he
speaks fluidly. When he learns I'm an anthropologist, he takes me into
his library, a small room adjoining his back yard.
In the room it smells like the beach after a storm. The book bindings
are coated with green mold, as if they've been rescued from the bottom
of the ocean. Jaime, who clearly knows his way around his library, pulls
out a Spanish edition of Claude Lévi-Strauss's Structural Anthropology
and shows me his copy of Pelea contra los demonios, the classic work of
Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. He collects history books, he says,
and has an 1858 history of Cuba published in Paris. It is the first time
I've ever seen the edges of a book worm-eaten into delicate lace. I ask
if he has a favorite author and Jaime says it's Kafka. Who else? I think
to myself—who else but the Jewish author who was excruciating in his
depiction of our anxiety and petrified smallness before the invincible
structures of the modern state?
Surrounding Jaime are the ravages of time and yet he's found a Zen
serenity amidst the deterioration. It's almost as if he welcomes decay.
I'm not surprised when he announces that he's an amateur archaeologist.
From a room next to the kitchen he brings out boxes of objects he's
collected—arrowheads, stones, shells, and buttons from military coats
worn by Spanish soldiers in the nineteenth century. But this, he tells
me, is only a fraction of what he has. He's donated his more precious
finds to the municipal museum.
As I look at his collection, Jaime says, "When they discovered a
pre-Colombian archaeological site in Palma Soriano, I dedicated myself
to doing excavations on my own. I had the good fortune to find a clay
pot bearing an anthropomorphic figure. That pot is now the most
important piece in the municipal museum."
Maybe because I'm in awe of all the things he's kept, Jaime takes me
into the front room of the house, once the location of the family store,
which is now his bedroom. From a dresser he retrieves a box of old
pictures and letters.
He clasps a photograph of a young couple. Then he holds up a letter. It
is written in Yiddish. He says it's from relatives who were killed by
the Nazis.
Humberto, who strives for a conscious invisibility during my interviews,
patiently watching as I gather testimonies and waiting for natural
pauses in conversations before he snaps a picture, now suddenly tells
Jaime to be very still. Jaime holds the letter higher, as though it were
a veil, and looks straight into Humberto's lens. As Humberto prepares to
take the picture, he turns to me and says it's going to come out very
well. The darkness and shadows are going to make for a very dramatic
image in black and white.
We all gasp when Jaime reaches deeper into the box and shows us the
postcard with the Hitler stamps.
"The writer of this postcard was dead by the time it arrived at its
destination," Jaime says.
I start to feel as if this visit is anthropology at the end of the
world. Here, in an isolated shipwreck of a house, the angel of history
seems to have stashed away the fears that scare us to death, the fears
that keep us awake at night, the fears that threaten to turn us into
sleepwalkers.
Later, on the way back to Santiago, Eugenia will tell me that she's
visited Jaime numerous times and she's never known he had this postcard
in his possession.
"Jaime has shown you things he's never shown anyone. You won his trust,"
she will say.
I will wonder why I won Jaime's trust.
And I will find it strangely appropriate that the last Jew in Palma
Soriano should have this document in his possession, which tore away
brutally at my illusion that Cuba, a refuge for Jews, was the one place
that Hitler—even Hitler's likeness—never got to.
Humberto photographs Jaime holding the postcard with the Hitler stamps,
getting close enough to show his ripped-up nails, for Jaime spends long
days wielding a machete. Then, as if glad to finally part with it, Jaime
gives the Hitler postcard to Eugenia.
"Thank you, Jaime," she says. "You couldn't have chosen a better moment.
Tomorrow is Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of the Holocaust. I'll
show it to everyone in the synagogue."
Jaime nods and promises to be there—he'll get to Santiago standing on
the back of a truck, if he's lucky, and if not he'll walk, but he'll be
there.
La fotografía de Jaime es de Humberto Mayol.
Publicado en: El Tono de la Voz | Actualizado 20/12/2007 13:43
http://www.cubaencuentro.com/es/blogs/el-tono-de-la-voz/los-ultimos-judios-returning-to-jewish-cuba
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