The day Fidel Castro came to a Cuban Chanukah party

Published: 22 February 2018

Last updated: 5 March 2024

ADELA DWORIN, THE president of Cuba’s Jewish community, is not shy. When she found herself face-to-face with Fidel Castro for the first time, at a meeting he initiated with religious leaders in 1998, she immediately invited him to come and meet Havana’s Jews at the capital’s Beth Shalom synagogue.

Religion had not been outlawed by Castro after the 1959 revolution, but those who proclaimed themselves people of faith could not join his Communist Party. In the early 1990s, however, that restriction was lifted, and Dworin figured this was the moment — that an invitation to meet the community just might be well received.

And so it proved: When the small, indomitable Dworin asked Castro why he’d never looked in on the Jews, he retorted that they’d never asked him to.

Recalling the moment during an interview in the synagogue’s offices last week, Dworin says she knew she had to think fast. Castro’s aide was already motioning impatiently to her that the president’s time was short. “Chanukah,” she managed, “is revolution for the Jews.”

Good answer.

FULL STORY When our woman in Havana asked Fidel Castro to the synagogue Chanukah party (Times of Israel)

Photo: Adela Dworin hosts Fidel Castro at Havana’s Beth Shalom synagogue in 1998 (Courtesy Beth Shalom)