Many young Cuban men speak to you on the street these days. Many want to offer you cigars, hotels, marijuana, girls, boys.... Others just want to be your instant friend. Maybe Americans are still a pretty rare sight there; anyway Cubans are a gregarious lot (as the Insight Guide says). Or maybe they just want a tip.
The Insight Guide has a sidebar about the kosher butcher's in Old Havana, and I thought I might stop by if I came across it. (The Insight Guide says that before the Revolution there were 20,000 Jews in Havana.) I spy a butcher shop on Oficios. It is void of meat, of course, but there are three men conversing inside. I ask them if they know a kosher butcher shop. They scratch their heads, and eventually one seems to remember it's on Acosta.
I take Oficios back down to the foot of Acosta and turn right. I see a point-of-interest sign indicating a synagogue ahead. I keep walking and eventually sight a small building (the buildings are all in one row, but this one is single-story). It is as unpainted and quasi-bombed-out-looking as the rest, but has Hebrew lettering on the front, behind an iron gate, where two men are talking. I snap pictures and draw attention to myself (as if I weren't already the center of attention as the only visible outsider on the crowded street). The older of the two men in the doorway calls me over. "Do you want to come in?" I hesitate, but he insists.
In the entryway he greets another, thinner old man, and they lead me to the doorway of the temple. "Whereyoufra?" asks the first. I tell him in Spanish I am from California. "Sprechen Sie Jiddisch?" "Nein, aber Deutsch schon." They give me a yarmulke from the box and lead me inside. They give me a welcome that feels like a homecoming. It is cool and dark in the small congregation hall. (Did they really have a separate upstairs gallery for women?) The thinner man, lovely sympathetic face, offers to show me the Torah scrolls and invites me to take a photo.
żEs usted el rabino?
No, yo soy el shames.
When they invite me warmly to come to services the next day, I immediately confess that I'm not Jewish. They laugh. "But you have a lot of Jewish friends in California, yes?" I ask how many Jews there are in Havana: 1500 is the reply. The Insight Guide reports that "...a few years ago Cuba's last permanent rabbi left the island, leaving the responsibility of passing on Jewish traditions to a dwindling group of pious old men." I think I have just met them.
Suddenly the thicker one produces a crumpled piece of notebook paper from his pocket and asks me to look at it. I think he is going to ask me for a sight translation. I read:
I, 76 YEAR OLD OF SEFARDI ORIGEN LIVE IN HABANA NEED OF ECONOMIC ASISTENCE PLEASE HELP. DANIEL SHIMON
The thinner one also sticks out his hand as I start peeling ones off the roll in my pocket.
As always in Havana, the friendliness was as genuine as the need for dollars.