Haiti's Jewish Remnant Keeps the Faith and Lends a Hand Amid the Crisis

By Gabrielle Birkner

Each year on Yom Kippur, Rudolph Dana locks himself in his Pétionville, Haiti home - protected by guard dogs and security personnel - and passes the Day of Atonement fasting, praying and reciting the traditional liturgy of repentance and forgiveness.

Up until about 10 years ago, Haiti’s tiny Jewish community would gather in a home on Yom Kippur and pray alongside a video recording of a Yom Kippur service that Dana’s brother-in-law, a cantor at a New Jersey synagogue, had mailed to him. But in recent years, the community has become too small and disjointed to warrant even such modest holiday gatherings.

When the catastrophic, 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook Haiti on January 12, Dana happened to be in Miami on business. Most, but not all, of the people who work for him survived the quake, but many of them lost loved ones.

Those who survived are, for the most part, homeless. Their homes have been either reduced to rubble or, like Dana’s house, suffered major structural damage, rendering them unsafe. The more fortunate Haitians are living out of their cars, and the less fortunate ones are sleeping outside on tarps, Dana said.

“All of the hotels and churches and places that people could gather have been destroyed,” he said. “It’s not like one is good, and the others are down; they’re all down or could collapse at any time. There is no more city.”

He has been in touch, via an Internet-enabled satellite phone that he kept in his Port-au-Prince propane distribution company, with many of his employees, who have managed to set up a makeshift office, outside of the badly damaged building that housed his company. These days, they’re not dealing in propane, but in rice, beans and cooking oil. Dana said he managed, through his business connections, to get a shipment of food staples, and that his company has been distributing meals - cooked with firewood - to some 300 people camped out near the office park.

Dana said he is not sure when he will return to the country where his grandparents settled at the turn of the 20th century, and where he was born and has lived for most of his life.

Dana’s deep Haitian roots are part of the country’s long Jewish history.

Back in 1492, Luis de Torres, Christopher Columbus’ interpreter, was the first known Jew to step foot on what is now Haiti. Brazilian immigrants of Jewish ancestry settled there in the 17th century, though many perished in the slave revolts at the turn of the 19th century that ultimately established Haiti’s independence from France.
Then came a small wave of Jewish immigration to Haiti from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt - the influx that brought Dana’s grandparents - during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. About 100 European Jews who came to Haiti fleeing the Nazis joined the island’s Jews during the 1930’s. The Haitian Jewish community peaked mid-century at about 300 members, many of whom left for larger, more established Jewish communities in the United States, Argentina and Panama.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Jews who grew up in and around Port-au-Prince remember how the community would import matzah for Passover and would gather, 50 to 60 people strong, for High Holy Day services. “Services were held in one of the largest homes,” said Vivianne Esses, 76, who lived with her family in Pétionville until she was 13.

Today, Haiti - a country of 9 million people where the dominant religions are Catholicism and Vodou - has an estimated 25 Jews. Most of them live in Pétionville, a relatively affluent enclave situated in the hills about Port-au-Prince. Some of the country’s Jews are among the wealthiest residents of the island nation, where about 80% of people live in poverty.

Haiti has no rabbi and no synagogue. Dana can’t remember the last time local Jews were able to gather a minyan. There is a Torah, which is kept in the home of Dana’s cousin, Gilbert Bigio, the Haitian business magnate and the de facto leader of the island’s Jewish community. Bigio owns the land on which Israel recently set up its military field hospital, according to Amos Radian, Israel’s Dominican Republic-based ambassador to the nations of the eastern Caribbean.

Radian, speaking with the Foward from the IDF field hospital, said that the Bigio family has been “the key for our success” in opening the hospital just hours after the Israeli army team’s January 15 arrival.

- Re-printed from the April 2010 Covenant

The above is an excerpt of an article from the Jewish Daily Forward. It shows that under difficult circumstances, and even amid chaos, Jewish communities reflexively reach out to each other and to the unaffiliated in order to preserve and nurture Jewish life. The “green shoots” of Outreach stand out in such desolation and inspire us. They also remind us of the power of Outreach in all communities and under all circumstances to draw close those in need of spiritual shelter.

Outreach - Outreach is all about inclusion and education. Contact Outreach Co-Chairs Anne and Greg Richards if would like to share your "Jewish Journey" for our Outreach column or want to learn more about Outreach.

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