Collection on Jewish Organizations in Cuba

The items in the collection were created by different Jewish communal organizations in Havana, such as the umbrella organization Centro Israelita de Cuba (Jewish Center of Cuba), Ajdut Israel (The Orthodox Ashkenazi Jewish Community), Unión Sionista de Cuba (Zionist Union of Cuba), the Women's International Zionist Organization or WIZO, and the Colegio Hebreo Autónomo del Centro Israelita de Cuba (Autonomous School of the Jewish Center of Cuba). The majority of these items are letters; they also include written agreements, registry entries, affidavits issued to immigrants to both Cuba and the US, and tickets to different events. The collection documents immigration from the 1920s to Cuba and to the US, organizational life that included communal and cultural events, growing Zionist activity, and religious practice. Tickets to the Mexican poet Jacob Glantz's public reading of poetry and to the presentations by the author Aaron Zeitlin from New York and the editor of the Argentinian Di Presse Jacob Botoshansky highlight the Cuban Jewish community's contacts with literati in other countries in the Americas and that Yiddish was a widely spoken language among the members of the Cuban community as it was the case in prewar US and Argentina. That before World War II the majority of the communal correspondence in Cuba was conducted in Yiddish, further reinforces this impression. Yet, a letter in Hungarian in the correspondence illustrates that, after all, Yiddish was not every member's chosen language of communication in the community. The majority of the documents from the postwar period illustrate the Zionist activities in the community. Whereas the registries offer data of particular community members' personal backgrounds, including their countries of origin, some of the documents produced by the different organizations are informative about the composition and politics of these organizations' leadership. Folder 11, titled "Miscellaneous," houses a personal, typed letter from one of the leaders of the community Pete Snyder, two paper bags printed for the 13th anniversary of Israel, as well as a typed list of all the documents included in the collection. It includes minimal information, such as date and author.