Dr. Behar was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in New York City. She is the Victor Haim Perera Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellows “Genius” Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A storyteller, poet, educator, and public speaker, Ruth frequently visits and writes about her native Cuba and is the author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba andTraveling Heavy: A Memoir in between Journeys. Her debut novel for young readers, Lucky Broken Girl, is the story of a Cuban-Jewish immigrant girl.

In recent years, the Jews of Cuba have become a source of fascination to numerous travelers who have gone to the island. Why is this community at once so exotic and so endearing to outsiders? As a member of the Jewish Cuban diaspora herself and a longtime scholar of and writer about the community, Dr. Behar will speak about the history and current situation of the Jews of Cuba. She will discuss the role played by the various Jewish diasporas to the island, the perspective held by Jewish Cubans toward the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the role of the Jewish community in Cuba today. She will end with a reflection on the process of writing a novel for young readers from the perspective of a Jewish-Cuban girl.

This is the third in a six-lecture series. The subject is Cuba: Our Neighbor in Transition. The next lecture in this series will be October 12, 2017. The title is The Folkloric Music of Cuba-Clave is the Key!