Hispanic Magazine - Forum


Confessions of a ‘Jubana’

The ups and downs of being a Cuban Jewish woman

By Gigi Anders

I am a “Jubana,” a Cuban Jewess. It’s a cultural surf’n’turf that perplexes people—whites, blacks and fellow Hispanics included—who say they never knew there were any Cuban Jews. Why wouldn’t there be? My parents and I were born in Cuba.         

Like thousands of other Jews across Russia and Europe, my grandparents, who were Ashkenazi, emigrated to Cuba from Russia, Lithuania and Poland just before the Holocaust. (They’d have fled to New York if the United States hadn’t filled its quota of immigrant Jews at the time.) These immigrants probably figured, “Nice island, good weather, laissez-faire government, near Miami.

What’s not to like?” Before Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959—my family and I left Cuba in 1961, when I was a baby—there were some 12,000 Jews there, out of a then total population of seven million.

Today it’s more like 800 Jews and 12 million Gentile Cubans. So Jubanas get used to being minority and cultural paradoxes. For example, my four abuelos spoke Yiddish and Hebrew with Cuban accents, Spanish with Yiddish accents, and English with Yiddish-Cuban accents. (The flip side: They didn’t keep kosher, which meant I’d get tasty ham sandwiches for lunch. Cubans love pork.)

Indeed, when I’m down in Little Havana with my Miami Cuban friends and family, I feel right at home in Cubanese. When I go to High Holy Day services, I am equally easily transported. No disconnect at all. Internally, though, I’ve struggled. For years, being smart, strong and independent was at odds with being pretty, married and pregnant, which was supposedly my sole mission, my cultural raison d’être.

The two camps were incompatible in my mind.Because in the Latin world men rule. You have to sort of accommodate to that as best you can. Would I be beautiful or smart? If I was being Hispanic, beautiful. If I was being Jewish, smart. It never occurred to me that I could be both. It’s not that only Latinos value beauty. Judaism values beauty too, but generally speaking, it’s not the only thing.

It’s not at the expense of accomplishment, autonomy and self-expression. Judaism tells us that talent is beautiful, though talent may not be classically attractive or overtly sexy. Nobody associates Hollywood starlets or Playboy bimbos with Jewish women. When you think of female Jewish celebs, Barbra Streisand, Joan Rivers or Bette Midler come to mind.

They’ve all done the best they could with what they have, which is a lot. They never felt guilty about being gifted or making a successful living off their talent that they worked beneath their means. Then again, they didn’t come from Cuban families, where machismo still prevails. My boyfriend, a New York Jew, calls it the Cuban version of the Mexican Like Water for Chocolate syndrome: the first-born daughter must sacrifice all for her mother.

Latin boys don’t have to deal with any of that mess. Which isn’t to say that as a Latina you can’t excel professionally; you can. My being a bilingual Cuban has absolutely given me a leg up. Although I do recall an instance when I was applying for a newspaper job and a well-meaning editor advised me to not say I was Jewish. I asked why—isn’t such a line of inquiry illegal?—and the editor said, “You don’t look Hispanic. Your name isn’t Hispanic.

And they’re looking to hire a Hispanic. If you tell them you’re Jewish they’ll think ‘Mainstream, woman, who cares?’ ” (I took the editor’s advice and still didn’t get the job.) At a different newspaper, this one in the south, I asked my boss for time off for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, offering in return to work on Thanksgiving and Christmas. She refused, insisting those holidays weren’t on her calendar. I complained to her supervisor.

My boss suddenly apologized and agreed to my request. Another time, while still at that newspaper, I wrote a story about a Christmas tree salesman. As a thank-you, the guy gave me a tabletop tree. I wasn’t supposed to accept it, nor did he realize I was Jewish, but down in Dixie people get offended if you reject a gift. Anyway, I gave him a couple of bucks and took the thing home. My cat Lilly decimated it.

My mother, who was visiting at the time, was lighting menorah candles and basting a pork loin for our dinner. We had been having Deep Girl Talk, fantasizing aloud about future wedding dinner menus for me. “Mami,” I said, “I’ve got it! We start with mojitos, big fat shrimp, croquetas de jamón, then a puerco asado and …” “Are you CRAZY?” she cried. “Shellfish and pork at a Jewish wedding with the rabbi there? ¿Estás loca? I’m thinking a nice arroz con pollo and to start with, some yummy gefilte fish.” Badda-bum.