By Donald H. Harrison

DEL MAR, Calif.—If you are an influential member of a synagogue,  Stanley Falkenstein of the non-profit  Jewish Cuba Connection, Inc., would like a word or two with you.

As he explained earlier this week at a gathering at the home of Gert Thaler, Falkenstein would like you and other members of your congregation to go together to Cuba.

Not just because it will be interesting for you—although it will be—to see how Judaism can flourish even in the most grinding poverty, but also because the Jews and Gentiles of Cuba really need you and your fellow congregants to serve as what indelicately in the world of drug transportation are known as "mules." 

Falkenstein wants all of you to carry drugs in your baggage—the legal kind, of course, the kind you can get at a pharmacy with or without a prescription.  Can you picture the fun and irony of it, transporting drugs from North America to Latin America?

Medicines of all kinds are in desperately short supply in Cuba.  True, they have universal health care on Fidel Castro's
     Gert Thaler and Stanley Falkenstein

Communist island.  What they don't have, in anything like the quantities needed, are prescription medicines to make that health care effective, Falkenstein reports. The Cubans blame the shortages on the U.S. blockade.  Others say it is Cuban bureaucratic inefficiency. Regardless, the bottom line is that the people need the medications.

Getting humanitarian aid to Cuba is a tricky business, because both the mutually antagonistic United States and Cuba have rules and regulations bearing on the issue. For example, the U.S. says if you send aid, it must go to a non-governmental organization, and never to either the Cuban government or to the Communist party there. On Cuba's part, any donation that is perceived as being funded by the U.S. government is rejected. Medications must be inspected by the Cuban Ministry of Health, which sometimes confiscates them. Seized shipments, whether from the United States or elsewhere, sometimes are sent by the "people of Cuba" to other countries to build good will for the Cuban government.

The United States government permits only certain kinds of travel by its citizens to Cuba. You can't go there on your own.  However, members of religious organizations such as a synagogue, under U.S. government rules, can be licensed to travel for "full-time religious interactions with their counterparts," Falkenstein said.

Cuba permits visitors to bring 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, of gifts, provided they are not electrical devices because the country suffers from power outages.  Also unwelcome are recorded or written materials that are critical of the Cuban government. Medicines of all kinds, so long as they are under the 10 kilo limit, will be permitted into the country, Falkenstein told the group..  If enough members of a synagogue go on such a mission, they can bring in pharmaceuticals sufficient to help the community of approximately 1,200 Jews in Cuba, and to help Gentiles as well.

Hadassah Cuba, under its president  Dr. Rosa Behar, founded and operates a pharmacy at El Patronato, a Conservative synagogue that bears that nickname because "patrons" paid the money years ago to build it. The congregation, known formally as Beth Shalom, welcomes through its doors everyone, regardless of religion, while Hadassah Cuba makes those medicines available for free to any Cuban who presents a valid doctor's prescription.

After  dropping off the medicines to the synagogue pharmacy, synagogue missions frequently visit not only El Patronato but two other congregations in Havana, and also travel to Cienfuegos and Santa Clara to visit their tiny Jewish communities. 

For some people travel can be broadening.  For Falkenstein, a similar visit to Cuba in 2000 was transformational. .

The semi-retired certified public accountant from Los Angeles liked to travel off the beaten path, so he was pleased to read six years ago that an Orange County synagogue was putting together a mission to visit the Jews of Cuba.  

Signing up for the trip, he had no idea that meeting the Jews of Cuba—and seeing how they live—would give the purpose to his life that he felt was missing.

Falkenstein said what struck him about the Jewish community "was that as materially poor as the people were, it was their willingness to share, and their warmth and love of family... I saw positives that I don't see in the United States, with all the wealth we have." 

Ten dollars a month—this is not a misprint—is a typical salary of a worker in Fidel Castro's Cuba, whether that person be a street sweeper or a professional person. One guest told the story of a fellow who was publicly drunk, and when police came to arrest him, he said "unhand me, I am a bellboy at one of the big hotels."  The man's wife told police not to believe him.  " A bellboy indeed! When he gets depressed he has delusions of grandeur.  In fact, he's nothing but a neurosurgeon."

Apocryphal  though the story may be, the truth is people who work in the tourist industry are the only Cubans who receive "tips" and who can therefore augment their meager salaries. With everything else owned by the Cuban government in the worker's "paradise," neurosurgeons don't earn much more than office workers.  

If you visit a Cuban home, Falkenstein says, chances are your hosts will be very warm, very generous, but have little food to serve you.  What food they share with you will be on paper plates—the only kind many families have.  Yet, they will not begrudge either the international visitors or a neighbor who happens to come in, their meager supply of food, he added.  "If the neighbor helps himself to some eggs—which are very hard to come by in Cuba—no one will complain.  They know that someday soon, they will need to borrow something else from the neighbor and he won't begrudge them either."

Another guest commented that a Jewish communal dinner at which chicken might be served is a major event—not only because the community is together but because getting to eat a chicken is a real treat.

After his first eye-opening trip,  Falkenstein formed Jewish Cuba Connection, Inc., a group that collects pharmaceuticals and arranges for them to be carried to Cuba by visiting mission members.

I asked Falkenstein why, of all the humanitarian projects that one might become involved with, helping the Jews of Cuba became his passion. Besides falling in love with the community, he said, he felt that with only 1,200 people or so, the community was of such a scale that his efforts could make a real difference.  Besides that, I learned, Falkenstein's parents both came to this country from Germany in the 1930s. A German-American living in North Dakota sponsored 100 German Jews, including Falkenstein's father—and had that man not been so willing to reach out—"I might not even be here."  Falkenstein's grandparents, who remained behind in Germany, perished in the concentration camps.

Many people criticized the United States—as well as its Jewish community—for not doing more to alleviate the situation of European Jewry.  While the situation is far different in Cuba—with Castro even said to have a "soft spot" in his heart for Jews because some of the founders of the Cuban Communist party were Jewish—the Jews there still are in dire need, and this is a way for Falkenstein to give something back.

If you'd also like to help, either by going on a mission or in some other manner, Falkenstein may be reached by telephone at (310) 823-4066, or by email at jewishcuba@hotmail.com