A Conversion Story

Delia and Miguel Cukier married with minimal concern regarding their diverse religious backgrounds. Delia (a non-practicing Catholic) and Miguel (a non-practicing Jew) could have never been able to predict how much their future lives would be impacted by religion.

All questions in parenthese are mine.
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We got married in Miami. It was a beautiful small wedding, mostly family. My sister-in-laws had come down from Maryland and everybody was there.

(At this point you were Catholic and Miguel was a non-practicing Jew?)

Yeah, that’s right.

(What did your family think of him?)

They didn’t mind. They didn’t mind at all. They liked Miguel from the beginning very much. Miguel has always been very friendly. He had no problems whatsoever with my parents. They got along beautiful.

(Did you ever discuss the fact that he was Jewish with him, or it was really a non-issue?)

Oh, we discussed the fact that he was Jewish, but nothing—he didn’t have to do anything about it. I didn’t mind. He never told me that he would have wanted our children to grow up Jewish. Being that I was a non-practicing Catholic, I wasn’t going to put very much emphasis on anything either. So we raised our kids, really, you could say agnostics. They believe in God, period. That’s it. They never went to church. I never took them to church. I never gave them any, you know—I never taught them. I don’t know if I did wrong or not, but that’s the way I felt. I was totally divorced from the Catholic Church from way before.

(Did something happen to make you feel that way?)

Oh, a lot of things had happened through the years. The first thing that happened, I was still in Cuba at the school I used to go to. When you had a problem with teachers at the time, they kicked you out of class and you were supposed to stand outside of class, and of course, if a nun passed by and saw that you were kicked out, she did something about it. We had a history teacher at the time who was—I didn’t realize that she was that communist, but I guess she was. She was insisting that what Fidel Castro was doing was very good. And already there were things that you could see that they were not right with the government. And I said to her—I was always very outspoken, you know, I was not a very—I was a good person, I was a very good child, I behaved very well, but I didn’t keep my mouth shut. And I told her that I didn’t think that Fidel Castro was that good and that I thought he was a communist. And she kicked me out of class. So a nun passed by. She didn’t ask me why was I outside, she just asked me to go, and go to confession. So I went to confession and there was a priest there, and I said, “Look, this is what happened, and I do not repent for what I did. I’m just here because the nun told me to be here.” And he says, “Well, but you have to repent and you have to ask her forgiveness, otherwise I cannot give you absolution.” And I said, “You can keep it.” You know. I was not even fifteen yet, (laughs) and I was out of the fold. That started it. Then I started questioning everything.

From then on, I would read every single book that I could get. I would, you know—I started questioning. Why do I have to believe in a virgin Mary when that cannot happen physically? It’s impossible. You can conceive being a virgin, you know, in modern day, but you cannot give birth and continue being a virgin. And you have to believe that. Why do you have to believe that someone goes all the way up the heaven in a body form? (laughs) No way! You need a helicopter or something to help you. (laughs)

(What about your parents? Were they very Catholic?)

My father was never. My father would go to church for a wedding or for a family baptism or for something like that, and that was it. My mother was a Catholic, but she was never a fanatic. She never believed that you have to, you know, close your eyes to everything. She was really a very advanced person for the age she was, because my mother was quite old. My parents were old when they had me. But she had been a very modern person in the way she thought. For example, she was not allowed to go to university when she was young. The moment her father passed away, she said, “I am going to university.” She moved to Havana and she went to university. She got her doctorate. That’s something that at the time you didn’t do that that much, women especially. So you know, afterwards it was quite common that women were very liberated, but she would want to go to Europe, and my father would hate to fly. She would get together a group of her sister-in-laws, cousins, and everybody, and they would go to Europe and leave my father behind. That was something that you did not do in every circle. So you know, she was very liberated in that sense.

Then Miguel met Gustavo [Kraselnik, former Rabbi in El Salvador], and Gustavo was a character. We loved him dearly. (laughs) He talked to him during the wedding and he said to Gustavo that, being that he had been raised always as a Jew but never learning anything, not having the knowledge of what he really needed to know, that he would like to go to classes. Gustavo said, “Perfect! In August, when we come back from vacation, classes start. You can start coming.”

Miguel asked me if I was interested, and I said, “Yes, very much so.” I was always interested in learning about Judaism. I had read a lot about it, but I really didn’t know a lot. We started going to classes with Gustavo, and a whole world opened up. Then Gustavo left and I had to teach myself. I taught myself how to read Hebrew. I taught myself everything about Judaism. When he started getting a group together, people asked him [Rabbi Danny Zang] why wasn’t I in that list of people that were going to convert, and he told two or three people that I was not interested in converting, that I was only interested in learning. So these people told me.

And I said to Miguel, “Let’s go and ask for an appointment with him and ask him why is he saying this.” And I asked him and he said, oh, he had never said that. And I said, “How very strange, because so and so and so said you did. If you ask me if I’m interested, I’m very much interested in converting to Judaism, but I’ve never thought that I knew enough. I’m not well prepared because I have taught myself most of what I know. I learned a lot with Gustavo.” And he says, “OK, very well, I will include you in the list of people that want to convert.”

So when conversion came around, the time that we were gonna have the bet din here, we took the exam. I thought I had really prepared myself very, very well for it, and I asked him to give me his opinion with the exam first, with the list of questions he had given us to answer. He never gave me the list of questions back, which I had filled out every single one of them to the best of my abilities. And with the exam either. So I really don’t know if I failed or passed. (laughs) But I was converted. I try to go as much as possible Fridays and Saturdays and do the best I can. Sometimes it’s a little bit difficult with Miguel, because he’s still someone that doesn’t (laughs) need very much, but to me it’s really satisfying to go on Saturday mornings, not only on Friday, and I do like to go to classes. And I’m planning starting to go to classes again with Pablo [Pablo Berman, current Rabbi in El Salvador], which is I think a fantastic rabbi. I think he’s a very good person, as a person, not only as a rabbi. He really knows what he’s doing and apparently his classes are very good. I haven’t attended any yet. But as a person, you can talk to him. You can feel that he understands what you are saying. He has questions that he asks you that you know that he’s interested in helping in any way that he can. And that’s—I think it’s going to be fantastic for the community.

(Tell me, when you were converted, they bathed you—I mean, you had to go into the mikvah, right?)

Mm-hmm.

(Which I understand is—?)

Lago Ilopango [Lake Ilopango]. (laughs)

(It’s a lake here. I think it’s very, very appropriate. How did that feel?)

(laughs) It was very strange in a way that we had been—you know, first we had the questions with the rabbis. We had gone one at a time with the three rabbis there that came. One of them was [Rabbi] Gustavo [Kraselnik]. The other one was [Rabbi] Danny Zang and the other one, I’m sorry, but I can’t remember his name. I think he was from Costa Rica. He’s Argentinian, also, I think, but he was at the moment in Costa Rica. I’m not too sure. But he was very nice. And they ask you questions and they ask you a lot of things.

(Is it like a test, or it’s more they just want to make sure—?)

It’s more, you know, asking your intention, if you’re really into it. Of course, they asked me a question that, thank God, I was able to answer, because I got very nervous. (laughs)

(This is in front of everyone?)

No. It’s a private thing. And then we went into the “mikvah,” but of course, being the lake, everybody was in the swimsuit. It was, I think, the boys first, no, the girls first and then the boys and we would go and just, you know, all of us went in and went under the water and came back and came out. We had the blessings and that was it. It was strange. I’ve never been in a real mikvah. So it would be an experience to be in one. (laughs)

(Right. But was it an important experience?)

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That night we had, you know, the blessings at the synagogue, and it was really nice. It was—people were really welcoming then. They had been welcoming from the beginning, but then you were one of them. You were really part of the community. So that was very nice.

(And your parents were—?)

My parents were deceased already, yes.

(What do you think they would say?)

I think they would applaud me. My father was a free thinker. He had absolutely no ties to the church. And my mother, as I said, was an extremely open-minded person. She said, “You know, if you’re a good person it doesn’t matter if you’re a Catholic or you’re a Muslim or you’re a what. You have to be a good person in front of the eyes of God and that’s it.”

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC