Alan Gross, a 65-year-old U.S. foreign aid worker freed from a Cuban prison on Wednesday, was arrested in Cuba in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years for importing banned technology and trying to establish clandestine Internet service for Cuban Jews.
Alan Gross is almost out of hope.
Jewish leaders have called on the Cuban government to release Jewish U.S. government contractor Alan Gross, jailed for more than a year, for time served. Leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Monday issued their humanitarian appeal to the Cuban government following the completion of Gross\’ two-day trial over the weekend. A verdict has not been released but is expected within the next few days.
Melinda Lopez\’s \”Sonia Flew,\” which opens at the Laguna Playhouse on Sept. 16, depicts the parallel struggles of a Cuban girl in 1961 and a half-Jewish, half-Cuban American boy just after Sept. 11.
Writers as varied as Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott have written of the exotic beauty of Jewish women. But what about Jewish men?
Since traveling to Cuba several times with her mother, who organizes relief missions for Cuban Jews through her travel agency, Daniella Gruber has returned home changed by the experience.
Tourist Cuba is a bit like a time-machine ride through a Cold War theme park. Vintage Detroit autos rumble past charming Havana hotels refurbished to their pre-revolutionary glory. Posters for featured movies at a film festival keep company with ones that blare slogans like, \”La Revolucion Siempre,\” or the revolution always.
Yet, when Roe Gruber and her daughter took a Havana apartment for a month last summer, the Tustin residents were able to escape the tourist cocoon. They learned new skills, like coping with Third World shortages by offering bribes for tomatoes and theater tickets.
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