18469: Esser: Haiti's few Jews shun politics (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx_at_joimail.com

JTA Global News Service of the Jewish People
AROUND THE JEWISH WORLD

As Haiti burns, its few Jews choose business over politics

By Larry Luxner

PETIONVILLE, Haiti, Feb. 11 (JTA) - At the once-elegant El Rancho
Hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince, aggressive young men peddle
exotic African sculptures next to the taxi stand, and colorful
Haitian paintings decorate the reception area.

Yet it's hard not to notice the black, wrought-iron menorah smack in
the middle of the lobby.

"My father was Jewish," explains manager Elizabeth Silvera, as she
sips a cup of coffee in the hotel's nearly empty restaurant.

Like many members of Haiti's mixed-race elite, Silvera - a practicing
Catholic - is proud of her family's tenuous ties to Judaism in a
country dominated by Catholicism and voodoo beliefs.

Haiti today has no more than 50 Jews out of a total population of 8.5
million. Most of the Jews who used to live here have fled to the
United States, Panama and elsewhere in recent years in the face of
crushing poverty and worsening violence.

In the past week, more than 40 people have been killed and hundreds
injured in protests aimed at toppling President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.

Aristide is a former priest who spent four years in Israel studying
theology and speaks six languages, including Hebrew. He already was
overthrown once before, in 1991, but returned to the presidency three
years later under the protection of U.S. Marines.

Despite Aristide's overwhelming popularity among the 80 percent of
Haitians living in abject poverty, charges of corruption and election
fraud have tainted his presidency and stalled most of his large-scale
programs to improve the country's collapsing infrastructure and
health-care systems.

The anti-Aristide violence - and the government's equally bloody
response to it - have marred Haiti's international image as its marks
the 200th anniversary of the slave rebellion that led to its
independence from France.

"The country is very poor and there's no business here, so the Jews
don't stay long," said David Ades, an intellectual who works in real
estate and writes political articles for Le Nouvelliste, a daily
newspaper in Port-au-Prince.

Ades, 71, is a Sephardi Jew whose father came from Syria and his
mother from Egypt. He recently returned to Haiti after more than 20
years in Brooklyn.

"After my divorce, I figured the best thing for me was to go back to
my roots," said Ades, whose two sons still live in New York. "I was
always part of the community, but I never had a Jewish education."

Not much is known about Haiti's Jewish history except that Luis de
Torres, the interpreter of Christopher Columbus, was the first Jew to
set foot in Haiti, in 1492.

The first Jewish immigrants came from Brazil in the 17th century,
after Haiti was conquered by the French. These Marranos were all
murdered or expelled - along with the rest of the white population -
during Toussaint L'Ouverture's slave revolt in 1804.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a synagogue in Jeremie,
a city along Haiti's southern peninsula that was home to many
mixed-race families of Jewish origin. There also are vague historical
references to Jewish tombstones in the port cities of Cap Haitien and
Jacmel.

Gaston Michel, a local tourism official in Jacmel who claims Jewish
roots, says, "The Jews in Haiti had to hide their Judaism. You
couldn't go to school if you weren't Catholic."

By the end of the 19th century, however, Sephardi Jews began arriving
from Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. In 1937, Haitian officials - like
their counterparts in the neighboring Dominican Republic - began
issuing passports to Eastern European Jews fleeing the Nazis.

Many of those grateful Ashkenazim stayed until the late 1950s.

Gilbert Bigio, the community's de facto leader, says that at one time
as many as 300 Jews lived in Haiti.

"Every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, our house was completely full,"
recalled Bigio, who noted that until recently all religious
ceremonies were held at his home.

But attendance for the High Holidays has gradually dwindled along
with Haiti's Jewish population.

"The last Jewish wedding here was my daughter's, eight years ago, and
the last brit mila was that of my son, 30 years ago," he says.

Bigio, 68, lives in a big, beautiful house in Petionville, one of the
few upscale neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. Behind the well-guarded
house is a luxurious swimming pool and a gazebo for outdoor parties.

Like most Jews who remain in Haiti, Bigio is considered extremely
wealthy in a country where about 50 percent of the population is
illiterate and 76 percent of children under age 5 are underweight or
suffer from stunted growth.

"I don't think there's resentment against people who are rich here,"
says the retired businessman, who speaks English, French and Haitian
Creole. "If you know how to manage success, people admire you instead
of hate you."

Other prominent Jewish families include the Weiners, who are involved
in coffee exports, and the Salzmanns, who fled Austria right before
the Holocaust and remain in Port-au-Prince.

These and other families helped build Haiti's modern infrastructure
and stayed on during the brutal Duvalier dictatorship, which ended in
1986 when Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier was overthrown and exiled
to France.

"Haiti wasn't always a poor country," Bigio said. "When Haiti had 3
or 4 million people, everything was beautiful. But between 1950 and
today, the population has nearly tripled. We suffer because Haiti
hasn't developed like all other countries around us, especially the
Dominican Republic."

"If most of the Jews left," he added, "it's because they were hoping
to live in a developed country, where their children could marry
among themselves."

A case in point is Bigio's wife Monique, who wasn't born Jewish -
though she converted to Judaism long ago with the help of a visiting
rabbi from Miami.

While he isn't a religious man, Bigio is especially proud of the
Torah scroll he keeps in his study - the only Torah in Haiti.

"My uncle came from Aleppo, Syria, in 1896, and my father 20 years
later, during World War I," he told JTA. "They were escaping the
Ottoman Empire, and at that time there was a French law created by
the Justice Ministry that would give French citizenship to the
minorities in this region of the world."

The family prospered in the export of cotton, cacao and campeche wood.

"Most of the Jewish families in Haiti were in the textile and retail
businesses," he said. "We're also in industry and trading. We have a
small steel mill, we distribute edible oils and we work a little in
banking."

Bigio also is the honorary Israeli consul in Haiti, which explains
the enormous Israeli flag in front of his house - as well as his
bulletproof Mercedes SUV.

A few Israelis live in Haiti, including noted photographer Daniel
Kedar, whose wife, Maryse Penette, is the country's former tourism
minister. There also are a few Jews scattered among the staff of the
U.S. and French embassies in Port-au-Prince.

But no active synagogue exists in the capital city - home to nearly
all of Haiti's Jews - or anywhere else in Haiti, for that matter.

"Making a minyan is difficult," Bigio said. "Even when there was a
bigger community, we always prayed at someone's house. It seemed that
the Jews came to Haiti but did not intend to stay, so they didn't
build anything."

Asked if he's ever experienced anti-Semitism in Haiti, Bigio laughed.

"On the contrary, the Haitians have a lot of respect for the Jews and
a lot of admiration for Israel," he said, pointing out that Haiti
voted for the U.N. partition of Palestine and the creation of Jewish
state in 1947. "Aristide has a lot of affection for Israel, he speaks
Hebrew, and relations between Israel and Haiti have always been very
good."

Bigio says Haiti annually imports $20 million worth of Israeli goods,
ranging from telecom equipment to Uzi machine guns. There's also an
organization in Port-au-Prince called Club Shalom formed by Haitians
who have studied in Israel, thanks to scholarships provided by the
Israeli government.

Bigio declined to discuss politics or offer a Jewish perspective on
the current revolt against Aristide.

"Our principle, which we respect daily, is to not mix in Haitian
politics," he explained. "Even after three generations, we are
considered foreigners. So we believe that to have good relations with
the government, we have to step aside. We take care of business, and
let them take care of politics."

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