Poland's Jewish Awakening

At the heart of Europe and the epitome of a changing continent, Poland and its Jewish community are redefining and rebuilding themselves in a post-communist Jewish revival. A pillar of this Jewish resurgence in Poland is JDC's introduction of Limud, a grassroots studyfest that brings together Jews of all ages and backgrounds for a shared experience of rediscovering and celebrating their Jewish heritage.

Special thanks and appreciation to the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island for their continued support for the renewal of Jewish life in Poland. 

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What we need is to be normal

 I spent a few fascinating hours yesterday in Lod.

Lod is unique, because it has a 6000-year history. It’s one of the oldest cities in the world. There are layers and layers of history and depth when you walk through its streets and sights.

And yet …

The city is filled with negative forces – drugs, crime, neglect, weapons, prostitution. The army’s Border Patrol (not the police) has been called in to fight gang warfare, and until recently the city didn't even have an elected mayor. It’s usually seen as the drug- and crime-capital of Israel. It’s a dangerous and unpleasant place, in some areas.

So young people leave as soon as they can. And you have a negative spiral, with the weak and vulnerable pulling the socioeconomics even further down. One-third of the population of Lod is treated by welfare authorities.

There’s no cinema (in a city of 75,000 people).

There’s no cultural life.

There's only one café (just opened last month; it’s not very good. The food is awful and the service is worse).

I was walking with some friends and colleagues around the city and we saw a group of Polish tourists come visit the Church and Mosque of St. George. “They come to see the holy site, maybe buy some holy water, then they get back on the bus,” said my colleague Lior, Director of our new Center for Young Adults. “There’s nothing else for them to do here. Living here is a sacrifice. What we need is to be normal: tourism, trade, personal security.”

Lior and his team were interviewing new candidates two weeks ago for the new Center for Young Adults. One of the candidates, a young and promising woman with a good resume, called from the parking lot. She refused to come in to the interview because she was too afraid to leave her car and come across the lot. 

That’s the challenge we’re facing there.

Some good news

I’m in Israel for a few days. Always good to read good news when you fly back. This is a very interesting piece in the latest Economist – “Technoglobe” – about an enterprising entrepreneur visiting startups around the world.

What was fascinating (ok, for me at least) was that ”Israel is now the most likely place for people to start a tech firm: the country has an estimated 375 startups per million inhabitants versus nearly 190 in America.”

The need for suffering

I'm on my way to Israel for a few days for some presentations and site visits. But this caught my eye ....

“I don’t know you, Random Russian Lady, so why are you showing me your rash?” ... 

The ‘How Are You?’ Culture Clash

New York Times, January 19, 2014

“WHEN an American asks me this question, it’s like a wall of ice crashing down between us.”

The question my Moscow-born friend Galina was referring to had nothing to do with Putin, or Pussy Riot, or the culinary ethics of adding ketchup to your pirogi. And yet, it is the back across which Russian-American relations are broken.

The question in question is, “How are you?”

The answer Americans give, of course is, “Fine.” But when Russians hear this they think one of two things: (1) you’ve been granted a heavenly reprieve from the wearisome grind that all but defines the human condition and as a result are experiencing a rare and sublime moment of fineness or (2) you are lying.

Ask a Russian, “How are you?” and you will hear, for better or worse, the truth. A blunt pronouncement of dissatisfaction punctuated by, say, the details of any recent digestive troubles. I have endured many painful minutes of elevator silence after my grandmother (who lived in the Soviet Union until moving to the United States in her 60s) delivered her stock response: “Terrible,” to which she might add, “Why? Because being old is terrible.” Beat. “And I am very old.”

Cue desperate thumbing of the “door open” button.

It feels as if I’ve spent half my life trying to smooth over the bafflement of my American friends and the hurt feelings of my Russian expat family as a result of this innocuous inquiry. “ ‘Fine’ makes Russians think that Americans have no soul,” I explained recently to an American-born friend. “That they just want to go home, eat a frozen dinner in front of the TV, and wait out the hours before going to work to make money again.”

He laughed, then quickly sobered. “You know, there’s something to that.”

But if the American “fine” can come off as plastic and insincere, the speed with which Russians unload intimate details is just as disturbing. I was born in Ukraine to Russian parents, but I grew up in the United States, and I get it. It’s like, “I don’t know you, Random Russian Lady, so why are you showing me your rash?”

The thing most Russians don’t realize is that, in English, “How are you?” isn’t a question at all, but a form of “hi,” like the Russian “privyet!” The Americans weren’t responsible for its transformation; that honor goes to the British. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the phrase’s precursor, “How do you do?” as a common phrase “often used as a mere greeting or salutation.” The anodyne exchange dates at least as far back as 1604, to Shakespeare’s Othello, where Desdemona asks her husband, “How is’t with you, my lord?” and Othello replies “Well, my good lady.” Even though he is half-mad with jealousy and only five scenes away from murdering her.

Whereas it’s easy to read a particularly American optimism into the easy embrace of the auto-fine, Russians seem almost congenitally unable to fake fineness.

The Russian food critic and cultural historian Anya von Bremzen recently offered me an intriguing hypothesis as to why this might be the case. In Soviet days, proclamations of joy, enthusiasm and optimism were associated with state propaganda and officialese. As a citizen of a Communist utopia, you were pretty much supposed to feel fine all the time (never mind the time you spent squabbling over the communal stove or waiting in a two-hour line to buy toilet paper). So, Ms. von Bremzen explained, a moan or a complaint would be considered a more authentic, non-state-sanctioned response to “how are you.”

I liked this theory, but my father scoffed when I suggested it was the Soviets who devalued “fine.” By way of explanation, a quote from Dostoyevsky arrived in my inbox: “The most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything.”

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Psychologists at the University of Michigan have shown that, while Russians are, indeed, more prone to brooding than Americans, their open embrace of negative experiences might ultimately be healthier, resulting in fewer symptoms of depression.

Recently, when I looked through a few American guides on traveling to Russia, I was disappointed to find that they all suggested that tourists adopt the American approach to “How are you” (“kak dela” in Russian) and lob back a hearty “Khorosho!” My advice? Don’t let “How are you” be your Waterloo. Instead, take a vacation from fineness.

If you lack the Russian vocabulary to fully express your unquenchable suffering, fear not — a lot of angst and ambivalence can be packed into just a word or two. Try “tak-sebe” (so-so) or “normalno” (the usual) or “eh” (eh). Even “fine” is fine. Injecting a world-weary sigh before your “khorosho” can neatly reverse its meaning, or render it shorthand for that other, more satisfyingly nuanced, response: It’s complicated.

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Szarvas and Memory

I loved this piece ... so eloquent and so compelling ...

Finding the Alte Heim

Pessy Katz - Times of Israel 

January 19, 2014

I found the alte heim — the old home — in the Hungarian countryside, right along the Koros River, this past summer. I did not know that I was looking for the alte heim, I no longer even believed it had ever existed as it does in the romanticized collective memory of the Hassidic community in which I was raised. But then I found it, more complex and vibrant than a Hassidic girl could ever have dreamed it to be, at Camp Szarvas, an international Jewish camp in Hungary.

Growing up in the Satmar Hassidic community in Boro Park, my world was enclosed but I was lovingly provided with everything I needed to grow into a modest, poised young woman who would marry a good learned man and build an ultra-Orthodox home that in my young imagination was always filled with a gleaming chandelier, pious sons and daughters that would carry on the traditions, and sounds of Yiddish wafting through the air mixing with the delicious aroma of freshly made kokos (babka).

Indeed, I knew from a young age that the sign of a talented hassidic balabusta (housewife) is the stuffed cabbage she lovingly prepares twice every year, once for Simchat Torah and once for Purim. I would watch my aunt as, on every Friday in the winter time, she would roast gesztenye (chestnuts) to serve after Shabbat dinner when her husband and sons would sit around the table and sing beautiful Shabbat melodies. My paternal grandmother would prepare large pans of rakott krumpli (potato casserole) for my aunts, uncles and many little cousins as a special treat for the yearly Chanukah party she would host, and my maternal grandmother would remind us at every bris, engagement party or other special occasion to praise her for standing over the stove to prepare hundreds of beautifully thin palacsinta (crepes) which she served filled with cheese, cocoa or nuts.

Long before I knew how to prepare these foods, they created the pattern of Shabbat and Jewish holidays through which our year revolved around in Boro Park. To me they became the representation of love, warmth and special Judaism. I knew that these foods and rituals were tied to the alte heim, much as everything we did was encouraged to be. We were at turns inspired and admonished to emulate the actions, clothes and emunah p’shuta (simple faith) of our not-too-distant ancestors back in Europe. Thus, even in our modern-day Hassidic lives in America, the alte heim, with the images our teachers would invoke of women in head-scarves knotted under their chins and somber men bringing freshly slaughtered chickens home for their wives to salt and kosher was very distant but also very real. It lived in our collective memory and in our aspirations of the insular Orthodox utopia we sought valiantly to recreate right here in New York City.

But as I grew older, I came to understand that insularity does not make one more virtuous, that piety as a woman did not have to be measured by what I wear, and that a broad education may be full of spiritual pit-falls but is also filled with joy. Though surrounded with love and food, I learnt that I could expand my experience as a woman, and as a religious woman, beyond the Hassidic community in ways richer and more meaningful than I had previously been allowed.

My pursuit of intellectual independence and greater religious expression as a woman – whether it was receiving a college education, completing political internships, or becoming an active participant in progressive Orthodox institutions – was from the beginning coupled with the desire to maintain not just a loyalty to halakha but the purity of the joyous traditions with which I was raised. I knew early on that this challenge would by no means be a simple one, that of trying to mesh traditions so rooted in a specific and enclosed world with a reality that strives for open-ness and intellectual honesty. But then, this past summer, this challenge found reprieve in the most unexpected, yet beautiful, of places.

It was while completing a year-long fellowship in Israel that I first visited Budapest. In Budapest the stuffed cabbage of Simchat Torah was sumptuously displayed in the Christmas markets; the many foods of my childhood literally filled the streets. The language I had heard only through the mutterings of my elderly bacsi’s (uncles) andneni’s (aunts), which we all delighted in, was now all around me, spoken by young and old in bars and in museums, and the humor and the sensitivities of the people in this foreign European country were intimately familiar to me. I knew after that first visit that I had to return and indeed, when I did this past summer as a staff member at Camp Szarvas, in the south of Hungary, I understood why. Camp Szarvas was my past and future melded in one perfect place in the present.

Every summer, 1,500 campers from over 25 different countries participate in Camp Szarvas, sponsored by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.  Under the clear Hungarian sky and searing sun, my days at Camp Szarvas with Jewish teenagers from all over the world, were filled with international sports competitions, art projects, peulot (educational activities), bonfires, talent shows and of course, as every Szarvas-er will tell you, the iconic wandering Jew, who led many educational and entertaining activities throughout each two-week long session. I was fascinated and delighted to see how in its unique, dynamic and joyous way Camp Szarvas allows each participant, whether Hungarian, American, or Latvian, to live and choose their own Jewish identity, while ensuring the possibility of finding community.

As a staff member for the Szarvas Fellowships, the American cohort at Camp Szarvas, it was a constant thrill to be able to facilitate these experiences for my campers. But one morning at camp I could not contain my enthusiasm and joy when we walked in from morning mifkad (line-up session) and I noticed the breakfast set on the tables. My campers looked on in confused amusement as I exclaimed excitedly over the bowls of steaming hot tejberizs. This special oatmeal broth, I explained, was the same breakfast that had previously been served to me only at the Hassidic girls’ camp I attended for eight consecutive summers in the Catskills, in New York. This food, to me, evoked warmth and Judaism and sincerity. It conveyed home.

At home now at Camp Szarvas, however, I sang and danced with people from all over the world, discussed ideas and thoughts, wore what I wanted, and explored Jewish identities, preferences, meanings and affiliations freely, as I once could have only imagined. And most thrilling of all, I could not only bond with them over our shared love of palacsinta (crepes), but I could share who I was, as a woman, as an American, as a Jew, as a Hungarian, and as a fellow human being, along with everyone else at the camp. And I knew this experience of open-ness, of sharing and of joy was shared every day by each of campers and the staff from all over the world there with me.

Somewhere along the way, between learning the camp cheers of Bulgarians and of Romanians, between facilitating discussions about the role of Israel in the lives of Jews worldwide and between dancing to Yaakov Shwekey’s v’hee sh’umdah and to Hava Nagila, my image of the alte heim began shifting. At Camp Szarvas, with the familiar foods and personalities around me, I knew that the alte heim was very real and in its own, even better way, continues to exist. It is filled not with black-hatted followers, but with Jews of all sorts who are vibrantly working to mesh their Hungarian lives with their dynamic Jewish identities and are creating their own niche in Jewish culture.

And as I was learning about my new-found Hungarian community, my Hassidic community was coming into focus too. On Friday night, a week into my Szarvas experience, we gathered our campers on an outside terrace. Campers and staff members of many different countries joined us as, swaying in unison, we sang Shabbat melodies together under the shooting-star filled Hungarian sky. Sitting at that circle I held a book of zmirot (Hebrew songs) that my mother had given me to take along on my trip. It was a special book because in addition to the traditionally found Hebrew zmirot, this one included old Yiddish songs too, and one Hungarian song. The song of szol a kakas, about a bird lost in the forest and longing to find its way out. This song, which also tells its metaphor of Jews in exile longing for the Land of Israel, is one that all the men and boys of my Hassidic community know.

My brother learnt to sing szol a kakas in both Hungarian and Yiddish when he was a bright eyed three-year old boy at cheder. During Jewish holiday meals he and my cousins would proudly sing the song in Hungarian along with my grandfather, who’s face behind his long beard would have a wistful look every time they sang this song. Was he truly yearning for the Land of Israel, as the bird in the song? As a child, I could never tell. But as I sang szol a kokos on Friday night at Camp Szarvas along with my many new Hungarian friends, I understood that my grandfather was longing too for the land of this song. A land that I too had come to love.

When moving beyond the Hassidic community in which I was raised, I understood that I was choosing to live a life of choices, of inter-weaving my Judaism with other facets of my identity.  When I came to Camp Szarvas with a community vastly different than the one in which I was raised, yet right near where it began, I found that it was a choice and challenge that many of my international Jewish peers share. But what I came to understand most deeply was that, like me and my peers at Camp Szarvas, my grandfather and the community he sings for has in their own way made those choices too.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/finding-the-alte-heim/

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Cuban small businesses

This was a really interesting article about the Cuban economy and the impact of policy changes. If you’ve been on a JDC or federation mission with us to Cuba, you’ll have witnessed some of these challenges and the developments on the ground.

Three things struck me as particularly interesting from the article:

(1)   There isn’t enough money on the island to support a thriving public sector.

(2)   There aren’t many white-collar jobs on the legally private list of activities.

(3)   High-end tourism businesses (restaurants, especially) are doing well. For the local scene, the only area that really has prospered (relatively) is a few gyms.

Lack of Customers Affects New Cuban Micro-enterprises

Canadian Press | Dec 27, 2013

HAVANA – The dented metal pizza trays are packed away, so too the old blender that never worked when it was needed. Gone is the sweet smell of rising dough that infused Julio Cesar Hidalgo’s Havana apartment when he and his girlfriend were in business for themselves, churning out cheesy pies for hungry costumers. Two years on the front lines of Cuba’s experiment with limited free market capitalism has left Hidalgo broke, out of work and facing a possible crushing fine. But the 33-year-old known for his wide smile and sunny disposition says the biggest loss is harder to define.

“I feel frustrated and let down,” Hidalgo said, slumped in a rocking chair one recent December afternoon, shrugging his shoulders as he described the pizzeria’s collapse. “The business didn’t turn out as I had hoped.”

The Associated Press recently checked in with nine small business owners whose fortunes it first reported on in 2011 as they set up shop amid the excitement of President Raul Castro’s surprising embrace of some free enterprise. Among them were restaurant and cafeteria owners, a seamstress and taekwondo instructor, a vendor of bootleg DVDs and a woman renting her rooms out to well-heeled tourists. Their fates tell a story of divided fortunes.

Of the six ventures that relied on revenue from cash-strapped islanders, four are now out of business, their owners in more dire financial straits than when they started. But the three enterprises that cater to well-heeled foreigners, and to the minority of well-paid Cubans who work for foreign businesses, are still going and in some cases thriving. While the sample size is small, the numbers point to a basic problem that economists who follow Cuba have noted from the start: There simply isn’t enough money to support a thriving private sector on an island where salaries average $20 a month.

“Clearly, there is a macroeconomic environment that does not favour the private sector or the expansion of demand that the private sector requires,” said Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban Central Bank economist.

Vidal has long called on Communist authorities to adopt a huge stimulus package or more aggressively seek capital from foreign investors. Now a professor at Colombia’s Javeriana University, he says one has only to look at the trends since 2011 to see the private sector economy is nearly tapped out. After a surge of enthusiasm, the number of islanders working for themselves has stalled for the past two years at about 444,000 — or 9 per cent of the workforce.

Even in developed countries where entrepreneurs have access to capital, loans and a wide pool of paying customers, startups are risky ventures. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, about half of all new establishments in America close within five years, and two-thirds are gone within a decade. The failure rate of Cuban entrepreneurs followed by AP was 44 per cent in less than two years, and worse if one considers only those that relied primarily on Cuban customers.

“There’s not enough money circulating in the economy in the hands of everyday people,” said Ted Henken, a professor of Latin American studies at Baruch College in New York and author of an upcoming book on private enterprise in Cuba. “You’re all competing for the same customers, most of whom are poor and have very limited disposable income.”

Economists have criticized the Cuban government for a series of measures to crack down on what it sees as illegal activities — including banning private movie cinemas, taxing the import of hard-to-get products in travellers’ luggage, and banning the sale of imported clothing. But on Saturday, Castro came down firmly in favour of increased regulation, sternly warning entrepreneurs that “those pressuring us to move faster are moving us toward failure.”

Henken and Vidal said Cuba must find a way to raise state salaries, expand state-funded microcredits and create a functional wholesale market to service the new businesses. They also noted that for a relatively well-educated society like Cuba’s, there are remarkably few white collar jobs on the list of nearly 200 activities that have been legalized.

Still, not every entrepreneur is struggling. High-end bars and glamorous new restaurants have become common in Havana, with shiny state tour buses disgorging photo-snapping travellers to sample lobster tail and filet mignon at upward of $20 a plate. Private rooms and homes that rent to foreigners can go for $25-$100 a night, less than most tourist hotels. Cubans with the means, and the business sense, to tap into the gravy train can do very well.

Chef-owner Javier Acosta sank more than $30,000 into Parthenon, a private restaurant catering to tourists and diplomats. He struggled at first, telling the AP back in 2011 that there were nights when nobody came in and he and his four waiters just sat around. But the restaurant slowly gained a reputation, in part because Acosta makes a potent Cuban mojito and offers a special suckling pig that can feed up to five people for $50.

These days, Acosta is expanding. He recently added tables in a new room decked out with mosaic tiles and faux Greek pillars, and plans to build a roof deck. He even has started advertising, paying $300 a year to have his establishment included in a tourist magazine. “I haven’t yet managed to recover my initial investment and the other money we’ve put into the place,” the 40-year-old said. “But in two or three more years maybe I can.”

Even more humble operations can do well, as long as they have some access to foreign money. One woman who rents an apartment to foreigners for $25 a night in the upscale Vedado neighbourhood says her business provides a stable income that supports her and allows her to help her son and granddaughter.

Two women who sell $1.25 box lunches to Cubans and foreigners in a building in Old Havana with many international firms and consular offices have managed to stay afloat despite a sharp drop in customers following the departure of several companies, and what they say has been a steady rise in prices of key ingredients like black beans, rice, cooking oil and pork. “This has become difficult,” said Odalis Lozano, 48. “But we’re still here, because we can always make some money.”

For those without access to that foreign cash line, the results have been grim. Besides, the failed pizzeria, a DVD salesman, seamstress and street-side cafe owner who allowed the AP to tell their stories shut down after less than a year in business, citing high monthly taxes, a lack of customers and limited resources and business sense.

The only two operations that rely on everyday Cubans for revenue which remain in business are gymnasiums. One is run by Maria Regla Zaldivar, who in 2011 was giving taekwondo classes to children in Nuevo Vedado and dreamed of converting a ruined dry cleaning factory into a proper gymnasium. The factory remains a crumbling shell, but Zaldivar said her business continues. She declined to grant a formal interview, but said in a brief phone call that she had rented a small space near her apartment and continued to give classes.

The other success story belongs to Neysi Hernandez, the mother of Julio Cesar Hidalgo’s girlfriend. Hernandez opened a simple gymnasium for women in the courtyard and garage of her home in Havana’s La Lisa neighbourhood, charging the equivalent of $5 a month for membership. Two years later, she has 25 paying clients and ekes out a small profit.

Hernandez says her customers are loyal, despite the fact the gymnasium lacks basic amenities like a shower room, lockers and towels. Unable to afford imported equipment, Hernandez uses sand-filled plastic water bottles for weights. Her three exercise bicycles and mechanical treadmill are creaky and aging. “My gymnasium is modest, but they like it,” Hernandez said, adding she has dreams of one day installing a small massage room and sauna. “A little bit at a time.”

For the pizza man Hidalgo, however, the experience with private enterprise has been a bitter one. He says he lost between $800 and $1,000 on the pizzeria. He is appealing a $520 fine levied by tax authorities who accuse him of understating his profits, even though the business failed. He has had bouts with illness, and has been unemployed since the pizzeria closed in April. Hidalgo says he has not given up on the idea of opening a new business one day. But he is also setting his sights beyond Cuba’s shores.

“What I wanted was to work and make money so that I could live a normal life, have money to buy myself shoes, eat, and go out with my girlfriend,” Hidalgo said, punctuating each modest desire with a flip of his hand and a rueful smile. “I hope that kind of work materializes in my country, but if the opportunity presents itself to work somewhere else, I won’t turn it down.”

Recently, Hidalgo’s girlfriend, Gisselle de la Noval, 25, took out a license to operate a nail salon in the space once occupied by the pizzeria. The salon has been open a matter of weeks and it is too soon to know if it will do well. But she says she is content, charging about 40 cents for a manicure and slightly more for a pedicure. “I don’t miss the pizzeria, but I am sad it wasn’t a success,” she says with a shrug. “But I am young, so whatever. Now I’m dedicated to this.”

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Cuban Baseball

What It's Like to Watch Béisbol in Cuba

The Estadio Latinoamericano in Havana during an Industriales game in November Photo: John Miller

By 
• JOHN W. MILLER

Havana

December 27, 2013 12:53 PM Wall Street Journal

Baseball was one of the main reasons I visited Cuba last month. Growing up in Europe, I used to watch the Cuban national baseball team show up for tournaments in the Netherlands looking like a squad of recreational leaguers. Dressed in faded uniforms, they smoked cigarettes in public and carried equipment in plastic bags. On the field, however, they almost always destroyed sartorially superior American, Japanese, Dutch and Korean squads.

It made me want to see these Cubans play at home, on their own turf, which by the way offers something that's hard to find in America, where I live now: winter baseball. The National Series—Cuba's top level of play—runs November to April.

What I discovered during a visit to Cuba last month surprised me. No, the level of play, particularly the pitching, didn't come close to matching even a bad Major League Baseball game. And you can see top Cuban players at home, such as Yasiel Puig, the outfielder who starred this season for the Los Angeles Dodgers, or first baseman Jose Abreu, who this off-season received $68 million over six years from the Chicago White Sox.

Rather, Cuba's real world champions are its fans. The island loves baseball more than anyplace I've been. I can go weeks in America without running into a fellow seamhead. In Cuba, it was easily the best, most available conversation lubricant.

"Me gusta los Baltimore Orioles," I'd say. "¿Conoces Manny Machado?" Yes, they all knew him.

I got to three games, all at the Estadio Latinoamericano, a 1946 ballpark a couple of miles southwest of Old Havana. It is the home of Industriales, winners of 12 championships, the Yankees of Cuba. I saw the best.

The Estadio is said to seat 55,000, but its size feels between minor- and major-league. A half-dozen stands outside sell beer and soda, and different meats on bread. The prices are pennies for locals, while tourists pay U.S.-level prices. (Cuba uses a dual-currency system to soak outsiders.)

The stadium bowl is symmetrical, like the cookie-cutter American parks of the 1960s, but without upper decks. The ramshackle press box hanging behind home plate looks like a stiff breeze could airlift it to Miami. There is no corporate marketing anywhere; no Budweiser or Coke signs. Only a bit of writing breaking up the blue: Beyond the left field fence, a sign hails "Cuba, País de Campeones." And in right: "El Deporte, Conquista De La Revolucion."

On the three nights that I went—one rainout and two Industriales wins—no one was allowed to sit in the outfield seats. I tried and was waved away by police. The crowds are predominantly young and male, and make up a sea of earrings, necklaces and gelled hair.

Admission is about 12 cents for Cubans, $3 for foreigners. For most fans, there are no designated seats, just one concrete bowl for everybody, like at a high-school game. There is only one concession area, with a few stands selling sandwiches, popcorn and sodas. There is no beer or even water for sale. Between innings, fans sit and watch and talk. Smoking, of course, is allowed.

On the field, the players warmed up with brown practice balls. Foul or overthrown balls are usually returned from the stands, even during games.

There are no programs or official scorecards to tell the peloteros. No organ music. Between innings, it is salsa and reggaeton. The national anthem is swift, electronic and taped.

A few things look familiar. Some games are broadcast on television (albeit state-run TV). One evening, as I arrived, an attractive female sideline reporter interviewed 23-year-old cleanup hitter and right fielder Yasmani Tomas.

When rain torpedoed that contest, the groundskeepers emerged and tarped only the hitting area and the pitcher's mound—just another example of the scarcity of an impoverished country stuck in the past.

The most remarkable, and pleasing, aspect of attending a Cuban baseball game is the focus of the crowd, which numbered between 10,000 and 20,000. It is as if you had an entire stadium full of seamheads.

In Cuban baseball, the scoreboard offers inning tallies and run, hit and error totals. No batting averages, pitch velocities or fun facts. And it never, ever tells you when to cheer.

And so the gasp that comes with every pitch is because of the pitch. The horns hammer on incessantly during tense parts of the game because of the game. A big hit sparks furious roaring. (With every run, the entire dugout empties to congratulate the scorer.) Even in routine early innings, fans stand up and scream about corner pitches they thought were strikes.

I wandered around a lot, sitting on the concrete steps with Cubans and occasionally in the foreigners section, which is behind the home-plate box seats for sports and Communist party officials. Only the field was brightly lit; the spectators sat in a hazy dim.

Few other Americans were there. U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba remain strict, though they are loosening. I was there as a journalist.

The young star, the man with the name that buzzed with every baseball conversation I had in Havana and whose talent on the field was blinding, was Tomas. He is 6-feet-1 of thick muscle and fast hands. In the three games I saw, he cracked several extra-base hits, including a line-drive homer to left. The sounds of Tomas's dinger went: cheer, crack, roar.

Impoverished, isolated, beautiful, police-state Cuba is no paradise. There are reasons its people try to leave. Despite their high quality of play, its baseball leagues typically never field foreign players. The pay and conditions are too miserable. But as a fan, I will say this: Its ballgames are about baseball, and I loved that.

On the field, the play was fast, sometimes uneven. After Tomas threw out a runner from deep right—an unworldly 300-foot heave—the Industriales booted an easy double play. In one game, there were seven errors. The balls and infield seemed unusually bouncy.

After one game, I squeezed myself out of the narrow, crammed exits and walked to the parking lot. The players were trickling out a door, still in full uniform. They mingled with the crowd, which, like them, lives mostly on state allowances. Most players earn around $60 a month, while national stars can make supplements of up to $500 a month, said Peter Bjarkman, an author and expert on Cuban baseball.

Tomas, who is rumored to be one of the next big targets for major-league teams, emerged. He wore a Cuban national team warm-up jacket over his barrel chest. Somebody called his name. He approached and greeted a band of a half-dozen people. He held the hand of a pretty pregnant girl and chatted, just a big kid after his game.

The 1970s-era team bus honked. The players weeded themselves out of the crowd. As each climbed onto the bus, he high-fived the driver.

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303332904579224613519805806?mobile=y

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Dodgy statistics

You can always count on the Economist to sum up an article in its title. Which is why I found the piece on the Argentinian economy the other week - "still lying after all these years" - so interesting.

The problem, as those of you who've come with us on missions to Argentina in recent years have seen, is that official statistics say one thing, and the facts on the ground say another. "The Health Ministry reduced the murder count by 2/3 by "subtracting 'deaths from outside aggression, of unknown intent,' of which there were 3,124 in 2011," says the magazine. Moreover, according to government statistics only 4.7% of the population is poor ... but a more accurate figure is 27% (!)

I've written about the economic challenges in Argentina before. And I keep reminding myself of the good news: even if there is another recession in the coming year, it probably won't be a repeat of what we - and the Jewish community - saw ten years ago.

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Metaphors and history

I went the other day to the Hungarian National Museum. It’s heavy on the medieval aspects, but still has some excellent 20^th century pieces, so I found it really useful.

There was an interesting section of the exhibit in which they collected the original street signs from the Communist regime-era, which were crossed out and later replaced with new names at the time of the overthrow of communist rule. No more Bela Kun Street. No more Leninvaros or Marx St. Just triumphant red lines through the old names.

It reminded me about the story of Robert Capa, who returned to his native Hungary a few years after the war. So much had been destroyed, and to cover up the rubble and loss, the Rakosi regime put up huge Soviet billboards and renamed the streets and squares. “Budapest,” said Capa, looked like “a beautiful woman with her teeth knocked out.”

You can't say that about Budapest today (ok, you shouldn't really say it anytime) ... but it's a good reminder of the power of metaphors and symbols in Hungary.

This is how you write a thank-you letter

Here I am, in Budapest, with my colleague Taly, who pulls out of our offices one of the most stunning and moving books I’ve ever seen. It’s a collection of acknowledgements from different Jewish communities to celebrate 25 years of the Joint.

So it’s November 1939 … and everything is about to change. Most of those who wrote these letters – certainly those living outside of Budapest – would be killed in the Shoah.

But there is a timeless beauty, an elegance, and a wondrous gratitude in some of these letters. They speak of hope, of help, of relief. They are amazing to read.

“There is no Jew, who would not demand God’s blessing to your work, but thousands and thousands of mothers and children are praying fervently, because they had direct opportunity to enjoy your extreme kindness and nobility.”

“… Where danger was most despairing, [and help] the most urgent, you appeared and brought help. Who would be able to thank you? God sees and has seen all you did…”

“There are many who are preaching humanity. It is easy to proclaim it by words, but difficult to prove in deeds. You have chosen the more difficult and also the most noble way, when you protected and helped our social establishments, giving them possibilities to act.”

I’ve put photos of the documents here, and you can click on them to see them better. But hopefully we’ll get more copies – there are many – and upload them to our archives so they can be accessed and viewed by many more people. It’s a privilege, and a rare opportunity, to see this  aspect of our history.

Yet another reason why I love my job

I spent an hour this morning visiting one of the most amazing Jewish women in Budapest. 

Erzabet (Elizabeth) is 90 and was one of the Shoah survivors saved by the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. She was caught several times by the Arrow Cross (the Nazi-backed Hungarian fascists) and the Nazis, but each time managed to escape. "They kept capturing me, so I kept escaping, " she said.

And she was telling us about the food packages she received from the Joint.... and suddenly we realized that she wasn't talking about the food packages she receives now, but rather the ones she received from us in the 1940s, with her first coat, and the taste of chocolate.

Back to Hungary

I'm heading to Hungary tonight to work for a few days with our professionals and leaders there on storytelling and mission staffing.

I've written a fair bit about Hungary in the past: the weight of Jewish history there, and the difference between engagement and outreach in the community, and what they tell us about our future horizons there.
The grappling with history, and all that it entails, is pretty weighty stuff.

I'm optimistic. For a number of reasons, which I've looked at in the past.

But also because there's something about the Hungarian Jewish community that fascinates me. Unlike pretty much any other Jewish community in the world, the Hungarian community isn't an "immigrant" one. The national component of Jewish identity is unique, vibrant and very autonomous.
We talk about the uprooting and rebirth of Jewish life, migrations and reinventions. Hungary is an important exception. There's a lot for us to learn there.

Cuban cars

Cuban hopes dashed as new and used cars go on sale

BY MARC FRANK

HAVANA Fri Jan 3, 2014 6:55pm EST

1 OF 5. A man looks at the price of Peugeot cars in Havana January 3, 2014.

CREDIT: REUTERS/ENRIQUE DE LA OSA

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(Reuters) - Cubans awoke on Friday for the first time in half a century with the right to buy new and used vehicles from the state without special permission, but markups of 400 percent or more quickly dashed most people's expectations.

At the state-run Peugeot dealership in Havana on Friday morning, where prices ranged from $91,000 for a 2013 model 206 to $262,000 for a 508, people walked away shaking their heads in disgust.

"I earn 600 Cuban pesos per month (approximately $30). That means in my whole life I can't buy one of these. I am going to die before I can buy a new car," Roberto Gonzales, a state driver, said, walking back to his 1950s Plymouth.

The average monthly wage in Cuba, where four out of five of the 5 million-strong labor force work for the state, is $20.

A European diplomat quipped, "I am slightly flabbergasted. With these prices, the old-time U.S. cars will not disappear fast from the streets."

Under a reform two years ago, Cubans can now buy and sell used cars from each other, but until Friday had to request authorization from the government to purchase a new vehicle or second-hand one, usually a rental car, from state retailers.

Before September 2011, only automobiles that were in Cuba before the 1959 revolution could be freely bought and sold, which is why there are so many 1950s or older cars, most of them American-made, rumbling through Cuban streets.

Along with Cuba's famous rolling museum of vintage U.S. cars, there are also many Soviet-made cars, dating from the era when the Soviet Union was the island's biggest ally and benefactor.

Newer models are largely in government hands and were sold used before Friday at a relatively low price to select individuals, for example, Cuban diplomats, doctors and teachers who served abroad.

Across town from the Peugeot dealership, where more than a hundred used rent-a-cars went on sale for prices ranging as a rule from $25,000 on up, disgust turned to anger on Friday.

"These prices show a lack of respect for all Cubans. What is here are wrecks. I now have no hope of getting a car for my family," artist Cesar Perez said, looking at a 2005 Renault on sale for the equivalent of $25,000 and available outside the country on the Internet for $3,000.

A teacher looked at the price list and yelled "Are there any bicycles?" as she stomped away without giving her name.

STATE MONOPOLY

The Cuban state maintains a monopoly on the retail sale of cars. There are 650,000 autos on the island, half of them owned by the government.

The decades-old ban on importing cars and need for state permission to purchase from the state has left nine out of 10 Cuban households without a car or other vehicle such as a motorcycle and dependent on the decrepit public transportation system.

The cost of new and used cars sold by Cubans to each other is similar to those that went on sale on Friday because of limited availability.

The government said all profits would go into a special fund to upgrade public transportation.

Diplomats, foreign businesses and select Cubans will still need government permission to import a new or used car without the huge markup.

The liberalizing of car sales was one of more than 300 reforms put forth by President Raul Castro, who took over for his ailing brother Fidel in 2008, and approved in 2011 at a congress of the Communist Party, Cuba's only legal political party.

The proposed changes put a greater emphasis on private initiative, which had been largely stifled under Cuba's Soviet-style system, and less government control over the sale and purchase of personal property such as homes and cars.

"These prices will clearly be outside the purchasing capability of the vast majority of Cubans, even with the support from relatives abroad. In essence, they represent a luxury tax imposed by the government on the nouveau riches of Cuba," John Kirk, one of Canada's leading academic experts on Latin America and author of a number of books on Cuba, said by email.

There are now tens of thousands of small private businesses in Cuba, and thousands of farm, construction, transportation and other types of cooperatives, all of which in theory should benefit from the opening up of car sales.

Bert Hoffmann, a Cuba expert at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg said in an email that many businesses needed vehicles, but such high prices would make it difficult for most and cut into other business activity, stalling their overall development.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/03/us-cuba-reform-cars-idUSBREA020N320140103