Itongadol.- 17 young Jewish descendant converts from Cuba will have their Bar Mitzvah on December 21st, David Prinstein, Casa de la Comunidad Hebrea\’s vice president, said. "To close the year we will have a special Havdalah where we will give teudot zehut (certificates) to each regularized person. All the community will reaffirm its relationship with the Jewish life", he expressed.
"This year we celebrate a year of regularization (through a conversion process) of a hundred of Jewish descendants from La Havana. We will have a Bar Mitzvah for 17 young boys from 15 to 21 years old that didn´t have the opportunity to do it before because they weren\’t converted. It was pending for them because they have a very high level of communitary participation and they are really looking forward to it", he added.
All these boys made a regularization course and went through a court composed by different Latin American rabbis. "Besides, we have a Bar Mitzvah program, in which they prepare for a year. It will be a moment in which the whole community will reaffirm its relationship with the tradition, habits and compromise of keep on working to strengthen the Jewish life here. There are a few of youngsters that haven\’t regularized their situation and couldn\’t do their Bar Mitzvah, which shows a growth in the strong community\’s fight to keep the Jewish flame alive", he said.
Prinstein added that they also celebrated 28 weddings under a jupah with the rabbi Samuel Steinhendler, who goes to Cuba every two months from Chile, since 22 years, to work in the preparation and education of the entire community.