Eyewitnesses to Change in Cuba

On Dec. 17, when President Obama and President Raul Castro of Cuba announced that the two countries, which have been at odds for more than 50 years, were taking steps to mend fences, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons heard about it in Havana, firsthand.

A Jewish Center group was with a cultural attaché at the United States Interests Section — which serves in lieu of an embassy, as the two countries have lacked diplomatic relations since 1961 — when the groundbreaking news, which could bring sweeping change to the lives of Cubans impacted by a longstanding U.S. economic embargo, was announced.

Shortly after, Rabbi Zimmerman recalled on Monday, the Jewish Center group was having lunch at a Havana restaurant when President Obama and President Castro appeared on television on a split screen to discuss the agreement.

“There were tears being shed; there was great, great applause,” the rabbi said. “They started to hug us, and to toast us as Americans. . . . People on the streets were talking about it, and there was this real sense of hope.”

Contributor’s Viewpoint: The Clock Starts for Cuba

The thaw came after a reported yearlong effort that included talks between the two countries held in Canada and efforts by Pope Francis, who encouraged the leaders of both countries to reach an agreement.

It turned on the release of a 65-year-old American who spent five years in a Cuban prison for bringing cellphones and other communications equipment to members of Cuba’s Jewish community. Alan Gross, a subcontractor working for the United States Agency for International Development, was sentenced to 15 years in jail following his arrest in 2008.

His release, and that of another, unnamed American described in news reports as a “highly important U.S. intelligence source,” who was held by Cuba for 20 years, was part of an exchange that included the release from an American prison of Cuban intelligence agents — three of the so-called “Cuban Five,” who were imprisoned on multiple charges stemming from efforts to infiltrate Cuban-American groups.

The State Department had long declined a swap for Mr. Gross’s release, saying his actions under the USAID program, to increase Internet access for citizens in a country where informationand online access is tightly controlled, were part of a Democracy-building effort. But Cuban authorities claimed Mr. Gross was part of a U.S. plot to destabilize the Communist government by creating a “Cuban spring.”

The deal paved the way for the restoration of diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Cuba after more than 50 years.

The U.S. began imposing sanctions on Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and nationalized more than $1 billion in American assets on the island. From 1962 on, an economic embargo has constrained American companies from doing business in Cuba and severely limited the amount of money U.S. citizens can spend there, as well as the amount of money individuals living in this country can send to relatives in Cuba.

The re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries will permit more exports to Cuba, including of American telecommunications equipment, which could make it easier for Cubans to stay in touch with friends and relatives in the United States.

It will ease travel restrictions, allowing a greater number of people — including government and religious officials, journalists, researchers, educators, performers, and humanitarians — to obtain the federal licenses needed for travel to Cuba.

Americans in Cuba will be able to use credit and debit cards there, as business between Cuban and American banks is now allowed, and returning travelers will be allowed to bring back up to $400 in Cuban goods, including $100 worth of alcohol or tobacco for personal use.

The overall travel ban to Cuba and the economic embargo, which require Congressional approval to lift, remain in place.

From the rabbi’s point of view, there are still a lot of questions regarding future changes to be wrought by the new political tack. “I remain hopeful,” he said. “The reality is, if you look at the Americas, we’re the only country without diplomatic relations. You can’t speak with each other without the avenues of communication.”

Jews in the U.S. have traditionally reached out to their counterparts in Cuba, the rabbi said, because of their limited numbers and because practicing Judaism there was, until a national policy change, considered subversive in an officially atheist state. Groups have visited “to bring the sparks, to help them to know that they are not alone,” Rabbi Zimmerman said.

The trip grew from the suggestion of a Jewish Center member who had gone to Cuba before, and the group of 19 or so travelers applied for a federal license allowing the “people-to-people” trip — “both to show our support for the very, very small Jewish community in Cuba,” the rabbi said, “and to get to know their issues and their needs, and whether we could help them.”

They brought with them Spanish-language copies of recently published books about Judaism and other gifts. With members of the Beth Shalom congregation, Havana’s largest synagogue, they celebrated the Sabbath and lighted candles for Hanukkah. The ritual was covered by a Reuters TV affiliate in Havana, Rabbi Zimmerman said.

The East Hampton group also traveled across the island, to Trinidad and Sancti Spiritus, and met with Jewish families and leaders. One family, Rabbi Zimmerman said, was educating three or four others in Judaism; the leader of another Jewish group described how he had declined to leave Cuba following Castro’s revolution, feeling an obligation to stay, Rabbi Zimmerman said.

“It was an extraordinary trip, especially being there at the time that Gross was released and President Obama made that statement that he wanted to move forward,” the rabbi said.

“The moment,” said Luly Duke, a Cuban-American East Hampton resident and founder of Fundacion Amistad, a nonprofit that promotes understanding between Cuban and American people through various cultural, humanitarian, and academic exchanges and programs, was “as historically significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.”

“I believe this will improve the life of the Cuban people,” she said in a statement issued following the two presidents’ announcements. The embargo has forced young, promising people to flee Cuba for a better life, she said, and made a number of those remaining unwilling to start their own families because of how difficult daily life is there.

Ms. Duke said that it is time, with the new perspective of members of the younger generation in both Cuba and the U.S., to move away from a policy based on long-ago events.

“As a Cuban-born woman, forced out of my country at a young age, I am wholly sympathetic to my generation’s hardships and mistrust of the Cuban government. But, as the president said, doing the same thing for 50 years and expecting a different result is foolish and serves no one, only our grief,” she wrote.

She said that she is “thrilled that the conversation between my two countries has begun during my lifetime,” but warned that it is only a beginning. The U.S., she said, should dismantle the embargo and remove Cuba from its list of countries that support terrorism. And legal and economic reforms are needed in Cuba, “a transition from a top-down government system to one that genuinely listens to its people. . . .”

The landmark policy shift also colored a cultural exchange trip to Cuba from which Philip Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and East Hampton resident, his wife, Monica Banks, and their two sons returned over the weekend.

The family toured the island. Mr. Schultz met with poets and writers, with whom he exchanged work, and Ms. Banks, a sculptor, met with members of the arts community. At dinner with the American consul general in Havana, the family really gained “a sense of what was going on and how special the time is,” Mr. Schultz said. The news was “just settling in,” he said, and Cubans often approached his family when they realized they were American. “They are so expectant now.”

The new policy announcement came 15 years after the first trip to Cuba by East Hampton’s Maidstoners softball team, which began as a lark but resulted in a long-term exchange program, numerous trips, and the adoption of Playa, a district in Havana, as East Hampton’s sister city.

In March 1999, the Maidstoners brought with them a banner depicting both countries’ flags and displayed it on a dusty softball field with a Cuban team. “The 40-Year Rain Delay Is Over,” it said, referring to the last time an American baseball team had played on the island, in 1959, before Fidel Castro took over.