Background image: 1957 wedding ceremony of my grandparents, Moses and Ena Sucholeiki.
Expressing History
“When you are static, you achieve nothing. But when you begin to move, you select one course and not the others, and pay the price of your decision and action [...] That is the meaning of functioning within history.”
—Gershom Scholem, interview in Ehud Ben Ezer’s Unease in Zion
—Gershom Scholem, interview in Ehud Ben Ezer’s Unease in Zion
The lives we lead today are shaped by both present and past. As Jewish, Cuban, and American, my own experience is but another step in a rich heritage, centuries in the making. In this second part of my project, I look back through over a hundred years of family history. This is the story of my ancestors, a lineage that spans multiple generations, continents, and languages.
As I embarked upon this timeline, I pondered this quote by Israeli philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem. The history that my family lived, and that I continue to experience, has no linear progression or certain conclusion. Rather, my ancestors “functioned within history”—they built history for themselves, creating new homes and new selfhood amid exile and discontinuity. Their story is an inherently “Jewish” one because it embodies survival and fortitude, longevity over geography and generations to forge a legacy rich in meaning.
At each entry of this timeline, I include pictures from our photo albums, tales past down from parents and grandparents, and quotations from works in our course to portray my family story—a heritage that continues to resonate meaning today.
As I embarked upon this timeline, I pondered this quote by Israeli philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem. The history that my family lived, and that I continue to experience, has no linear progression or certain conclusion. Rather, my ancestors “functioned within history”—they built history for themselves, creating new homes and new selfhood amid exile and discontinuity. Their story is an inherently “Jewish” one because it embodies survival and fortitude, longevity over geography and generations to forge a legacy rich in meaning.
At each entry of this timeline, I include pictures from our photo albums, tales past down from parents and grandparents, and quotations from works in our course to portray my family story—a heritage that continues to resonate meaning today.
c. 1890
Novogrudok, Belarus
This picture is of the Chirinskis, the family of my paternal great-grandmother. Their city of Novogrudok, Belarus (at the time in Poland), was home to a thriving Askenazi population at end of the 19th Century. The young woman second from the right is my great grandmother, Flora; at the center are her own parents, David and Heina. Facing economic insecurity and concern in the wake of neighboring Russian pogroms, the Chirinskis sent their younger children abroad in search of prosperity and a better life. In her twenties, Flora traveled by herself to Havana, Cuba, where she sought to build up a new life and send financial support back to her family.
The story of my great grandmother’s journey from Novogrudok to Havana re-evokes Anthony Russel’s expressions of home. Home, to Flora, was her homeland in Belarus. Yet in traveling to Cuba, she founded a new “house” for generations of family to come. My family’s Juban identity begins not just in Cuba but in Belarus, in this act of creation in the midst of geographic discontinuity. |
“Our houses have always been tenuous things, more elusive than stones, more enduring than brick, open-sided, permeable to the whims of divine clouds and seasonal rain.”
— Anthony Russel, Beys |
1902
Havana, Cuba
Havana, Cuba
The story of Solomon’s arrival in Havana resonates with a poem by Halpern, “The Street Drummer”. As I read Halpern’s lines I picture my own grandfather after arriving in Cuba, navigating the confusion of a then-foreign city and unfamiliar language as he set out on this new life.
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“So as if to break
The drum I bang And then I make The cymbals clang And round and round about I spin-- Boom! Boom! Din-din-din! Boom! Boom! Din!” —Moyshe Leyb Halpern, “The Street Drummer” My paternal great grandfather, Solomon Sucholieki, arrived in the bustling city of Havana, Cuba from Poland in search of a better life. Like Flora, Solomon encountered a new world in Cuba, separated from his old home not only geographically but also by language. A native Yiddish speaker, he endeavored to learn Spanish in order to assimilate into Cuba. This divide between the Old World and the New, a legacy of loss and renewed creation, also manifested itself in our family name. Solomon’s surname was initially a distinctly Polish one (we believe it was Sukolinski), but the customs officials in Cuba wrote his name in a Spanish phonetic spelling in his immigration papers. To the right is Solomon’s 1902 Cuban naturalization document, which bears the new name he would pass on to the next generation.
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c. 1935
Havana, Cuba
Havana, Cuba
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” — Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” The picture to the right is of my grandfather’s family, the Sucholiekis, posing in front of the Capitol Building of Havana. The young boy in the center is my grandfather, Moses. Behind him are my great-grandparents, Solomon and Anita, alongside a family friend.
Both sides of my paternal family worked for the goal of financial security in Cuba. Solomon provided for his family through his management of a department store. My family’s endeavor to succeed in Cuba reminds me of the immigrant hopes conveyed in Lazarus’ “The New Colossus”. But while Emma Lazarus’ poem portrays New York as a haven for immigrants, it was Havana, Cuba that represented a new world of promise for my own family in the early 20th Century. Following the US Immigration Act of 1924, Latin American countries, Cuba among them, served increasingly as destinations for European Jewish immigrants who were turned away from the United States. |
As an interesting side note, my grandfather’s last name featured a spelling change to “Sucholeiki” due to a typo in his birth certificate. This is the surname that I now bear today.
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c. 1940
Novogrudok, Belarus
Novogrudok, Belarus
“Why did it happen to us? Hundreds of thousands of individuals who were not guilty of any crime, including weak old people, women and children, perished with this question on their lips. All of them dreamed of posing this question out loud, of receiving an answer, so as to learn what they were guilty of, if anything, and to disprove the absurd accusations which rained down on their heads like a hail of bullets.”
— Lidia Maximovna Slipchenko, “Mass Murder in Odessa” |
The violence and tragedy of the Holocaust deeply affected my family, the deaths of close loved ones among the over six million Jews murdered. The city of Novogrudok, home to the family of my great grandmother Flora, was once home to a thriving community of over 10,000 Jews. All but 550 were murdered during the Holocaust (Yad Vashem). Amongst those murdered were all of my great grandmother’s family left in Europe, except for a single great aunt, Dina, who survived.
While the Holocaust is a story of loss and tragedy for my family, it is also one of unlikely survival and endurance. My great aunt Dina escaped the massacre of Jews in Novogrudok by fleeing to a nearby farm, where a gentile family, the Kabaks, took her in and hid her from the Germans during the war. After the war, a son of that family, Frank Kabak, converted to Judaism and married Dina. They later moved to Cuba, where they were welcomed as close family. The image above is of a synagogue in Novogrudok taken in 1939, sourced from the website of Yad Vashem. Dina and her family may have attended this very temple before tragedy struck in the Holocaust. The picture to the right is of Dina, Frank, and their son Elias, taken during a family reunion in Cuba. |
1957
Havana, Cuba
“A Jew is not expected to have Spanish as a mother tongue, nor to be from Latin America. But in the Cuban Jewish milieu that I have known firsthand, these uncommon expectations exist in a common reality, a Cuban-Jewish sense of identity, of being-in-the-world”.
—Ruth Behar, “Juban America” To the right are pictures of the 1956 wedding of my grandparents (my "Abuelito" and "Abuelita"), Moses and Ena Sucholeiki, in Havana. Below is a family passover celebration with my grandparents, great-grandparents, and extended family. By the 50s, Havana had become a locus of home for my paternal family, a realized dream of security and prosperity. Here, my family’s Jewishness and Cuban home coalesced as one into a common identity, a sentiment of selfhood expressed in Ruth Behar’s “Juban America”.
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1961
Miami, United States
Miami, United States
My little bird’s been exiled,
Driven from her tree, I wander round, like in a dream: Where is a home for me?” — Zelda Knizhnik, "My Husband's in America" 1959 witnessed the Cuban Revolution. In the midst of this turmoil, numerous members of the Cuban middle-class, including my grandparents, lost all of their possessions to seizure by the state. Faced by this sudden catastrophe, my grandparents, great-grandparents, and several extended relatives were compelled to leave Cuba and seek a new life in the United States. They left everything behind in their homeland of over a generation, carrying only the clothes upon their backs as they were ferried by boat to Miami in 1961. The pictures to the left are those of my grandparent’s naturalization forms when they first arrived in the United States. Pictured alongside is a 1959 ferry carrying Cuban refugees to Miami during the Cuban Revolution, similar to the one that transported my own ancestors as they departed their former home. The exile of my grandparents reminds me of the longing and searching in Zelda Knizhnik’s poem, "My Husband's in America". The U.S. was a wholly foreign country for my grandparents; when they arrived on the shores of Miami they did not yet speak English. The confusion and yearning for home in Knizhnik’s piece resonates with what they, too, likely felt during this sudden upheaval in their lives. |
1970
Jacksonville, United States
Jacksonville, United States
In the years following their departure from Cuba, my grandparents and extended family endeavored to learn English and build a new life in the United States. My grandparents never quite adopted English as their own--in the words of my father, “their hearts were still in Cuba”. Nonetheless, they worked tirelessly in spite of all that was lost, striving so that their own children could live a secure life. Pictured is my grandmother Ena alongside my young father, Irving, and Uncle David at their new home in Jacksonville, Florida.
For many of my relatives that moved to Florida, the hopes for a rebuilt future in the United States contrasted starkly with the realities of this new life. My great-grandfather Solomon, who once owned a department store in Cuba, now labored to make a living in Miami peddling souvenirs in the corner of a local Macys. But like my grandparents, he never gave up his endurance and defiance. My ancestors’ fortitude in the face of loss and disappointment resonates with A-WA’s song "Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman", which expresses the strength of the artists’ own great-grandmother navigating similar uncertainty as an immigrant to Israel. |
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1986
Xi'an, China
Xi'an, China
My mother’s own experience with Judaism is equally meaningful and unique. Xiaocheng Li-Sucholeiki—my Mama—was born in Xi'an, China. To the right is a 1986 picture of my mother along with my maternal grandparents, Nai Nai and Ye Ye, and Uncle Peng at her university campus in Xi'an.
My mother traveled to the United States in 1993 to seek a continued education and job. The United States offered her, like it did to my paternal ancestors, the hope of opportunity in a life anew. She met my father when working as a graduate student and came to adopt Judaism after they married. My mother’s journey is an inherently Jewish one because it, too, transcends land, language, and time. The new selfhood she built in America, informed by both a meaningful Chinese heritage and the Jewish faith, is in turn passed down to me. When Tair Haim, artist of the band A-WA describes the fortitude and strength of her great grandmother, her depiction of courage reminds me of my own mother. The life I lead today is indebted to my mother's industry and will to succeed in America, in spite of the unfamiliarity she at first faced in this new country. |
"She was a feminist before she even knew what a feminist was… She was so strong. Her journey was so courageous and she didn't have any help from anyone. But thanks to her… our future and our present are better. We have a better life."
—Tair Haim, interview with NPR |
1997
Boston, United States
Boston, United States
“Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said. Again
Say to the wind, Come forth and breathe afresh, Even that they may live upon these slain, And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.” — Emma Lazarus, “The New Ezekiel” My father and mother (“Papa” and “Mama”) married in 1997 in Boston Massachusetts. Here are my parents and grandparents joined together at this wedding celebration, a union both spiritual and jubilant. Remembering this continued growth of my family in the United States evokes a poem by Emma Lazarus, “The New Ezekiel”. In her piece, Lazarus expresses a revitalization of Judaism in the United States through the forging of a new, American-Jewish experience. I see this rebirth, too, in the Jewish heritage of my own family--a legacy that lived on in America and grew yet the richer, informed by new occasions of joy like my parents' wedding ceremony. |
2002
Winchester, United States
My grandmother, Abuelita Ena, holds me as a baby in my childhood home of Winchester, Massachusetts. As I look back upon this photo with my grandmother, I realize this start of my life is but a piece of a heritage generations in the making. Expressing my family story through this project, I feel a tumult of different emotions: relived joy in pictures of weddings and family gatherings, sadness for departed loved ones, like my grandmother now laid to rest, and pride in the meaningful history they created. And I also feel deeply thankful for the perseverance of my ancestors, for the diligence, work ethic, and courage of my parents and grandparents in building a better life for future generations. When I read the lyrics of “Oh Williamsburg!”, I found this same sentiment in Yom Tov Erlich’s song. My parents built a home of identity and security for me--just as my grandparents had created a “house” for them, and as my great-grandparents had labored yet another generation before. As I move into the future, I will continue to create this home, carrying on that legacy in my life to come.
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“Williamsburg,
The main thing is this: We should have a lot of Jewish pride, From our little ones.” — Yom Tov Ehrlich, “Oh Williamsburg!” |
Site Navigation
Expressing Spanish and English as Juban languages through poetry and textual connections.
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Recounting family history through story and pictures and exploring relations to works from our course.
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Food as a Juban heritage: Transcribing family recipies and cooking traditional Cuban dishes.
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Bibliography:
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