Visiting Cuba’s Jewish communities

A friend of mine asked me to design a program for a Jewish group. With a name like Matt Smith, I may not sound Jewish, but I am… and I’m friendly with Jewish communities across Cuba. So she picked the right person for the job! The idea for this tour isn’t all-Jewish-all-the-time. Rather, they want a general-interest Cuba program that features some visits to Jewish communities.

One complication: Some of the group wants to go for a week or so, and others want to spend more time and see more of the island. I was pretty thrilled to hear that. There are parts of the island you can only visit with 12 or 15 days. And I don’t visit those areas nearly often enough! So I’m always excited when someone wants to spend that kind of time.

Every trip I run is designed to benefit the communities we visit. For Cuba’s Jewish communities, that normally means we bring cash donations, medications, and other supplies. Sometimes we bring supplies to help with religious observance, like Passover foods, Hanukkah candles, etc.

A trip to Cuba could be more Jewish than this – with visits to Jewish cemeteries, or the historically Jewish hotel, or more synagogues, or kosher food (for some definition of the word kosher). But generally, when people want a Jewish tour, or an LGBT tour, or a classic car tour, they’re also very interested in everything else about Cuba. So I aim to strike a balance!

Anyways, here’s what I came up with. I’m sharing this in case others want an idea of what a Jewish Cuba tour could look like.

Draft Program – Cuba for Miriam

Photo credit: NYC2TLV, licensed under the Wikimedia Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.