Abe Esquenazi
Abe Esquenazi was born in Havana, Cuba, into a Sephardic Jewish family. His parents and relatives ran dry goods stores in Cuba, with his grandfather selling door to door. When the Castro regime came to power, life became impossible, as property, automobiles, and businesses were confiscated. In 1961, when Abe was four, his family left Cuba. His grandmother sewed cash into a belt to smuggle some money out, and the family endured tense moments with officials, including stories of guards arriving over a gifted toaster and the confiscation of his grandfather's new Buick. Some cousins of his parents still remain in Cuba.
After leaving Cuba, the family spent a couple of months in Jamaica and then a short period in Miami, where employment was scarce because of the influx of Cuban refugees. Given the choice between New York and Dallas, they chose Dallas and have lived there ever since. Abe spoke only Spanish when he arrived but learned English within two years and was sometimes used as an interpreter in school. He found the Dallas Jewish community very welcoming, becoming active in BBYO with dances at hotels and competitive sports, and maintaining friendships from those years to this day.
Retail has always been at the center of the family's life. Abe's father worked at Levine's, a dry goods store, before opening his own shop, which Abe named David's Store because customers always asked for Mr. Dave. The store, nearly sixty years old, served a busy shopping center near government housing projects and is still operating today as it adapts to online competition. The family also sold door to door. Abe's father passed away five years ago, and Abe now runs the business. He has a daughter who is a doctor in Houston, keeps a large extended family, speaks Spanish fluently, loves Cuban food, and enjoys working his small ranch with cattle and horses.
Full Transcript
okay my name is whitney watts and it's february 27 2020 and i'm interviewing abe eskenazi for the viva shalom one story to time project good morning um tell us about where you're from and how and why you came to live in dallas i was born in havana cuba while i was born in cuba and uh in 1961 my uh family left cuba they went to jamaica for a couple months and then we came to miami uh there was you know very little uh employment opportunity at that time in in miami because of all the you know the influx of uh cuban refugees in miami and
my family had the opportunity to well they were giving the opportunity by the uh the highest of either going to new york or dallas and uh they selected dallas so we've been in dallas ever since okay wow so um once you guys made the decision to leave cuba how were you feeling about that i was four years old so i didn't you know not a lot of choice yeah i didn't have any i don't have any recollection of it really okay um so obviously you said you were four and your memory was not as good but um what is your like greatest memory about being
in cuba about your time in cuba um just from what you know my parents have told you know told us that uh it was a very nice life it was uh you know a lot of opportunity and when the uh uh castro regime came in they would you know it was made life impossible they uh took your property they uh you know would confiscate your automobile if they wanted it uh uh they would one one party would tell you that you had to open your business another party would come and they would tell you that you had to close your business you know it just
became impossible to live a normal life there so most people that could you know left cuba at that time before beforehand it was a very nice it was a nice life there for what i understand i heard it's beautiful it's still beautiful yeah um talk about your feelings and first impressions of us and dallas obviously you said you were four but whatever you my first impressions of the uh of the united states um i didn't speak the language you know i spoke only spanish when i first came over i learned you know my my dad has always been in the retail business and you know
he had to work quite a bit my mother also worked we were you know we had a babysitter i guess for a while first grade i by that time you know two years being in the united states i learned english and um uh you know i could get by fine in school they would use me as an interpreter from time to time oh yeah that's helpful yeah um so this is dallas that you have your first impressions of like specifically okay because you said you were in florida and then yeah but we were there for a short period just like a few months um in
what ways was your family involved in the jewish community in cuba there was a what they called the deportivo you know i believe was what they called it it was a it was a it was a jewish country club more or less on the beach in havana and they were very active in that they were you know they belong to the synagogue and they you know observed all the jewish holidays and we weren't orthodox but they were observant okay well that's that's i didn't know anything about the jewish cuban community so this is very interesting to me there's actually a pretty extensive cuban juice yeah
it's still there there's still several synagogues and they're active and i know uh rabbi gershon went and visited the synagogue once in cuba or one of the synagogues in cuba and it's it's still it's still active not extremely active and you know they're short of resources but it's still there that's very interesting um describe your introduction to the dallas jewish community and how you're involved now i was i went to uh a high school where there were i think maybe half a dozen jews in that school so most of the most of the involvement in the jewish community was in the neighborhood you know bbyo
and i was very involved you know it was very active back then we had uh dances at the hotels and uh extensive competitive sports you know foot flight football basketball and to this day you know we we maintain a relationship with some of the different people that were you know that we were friends with in bby out guys and girls okay um this is actually really interesting describe um or how welcoming did you feel when you how welcoming did you find the community as a new immigrant again you're a child but anything you can recall it's helpful um i i don't recall so you okay
well what about when you got older very welcoming very welcoming you know i was you know very involved in byo and it was very nice i mean being jewish on top of being cuban my grandmother was married to her second husband was cuban and he talks about his immigration experience oh really everyone's got kind of a different story um what differences if any do you recall between jewish customs in cuba and jewish customs in dallas well we're sephardic and there are ashkenazi jews as well there's like half and half you know and as far as uh even in miami now you know they have the
uh the different synagogues and but you know we were more the uh the foods were a little bit different uh you know being sephardic it's just a little bit a slightly different uh style in you know services and food you know the the pulpits in the middle like you know in a sephardic synagogue and the congregation surrounds the pulpit uh the ashkenazi they're up on you know so yeah different prayers a little bit you know different tunes sephardic it's supposed to be very you know more uh uh about middle eastern uh influence you know very a lot of nice melodies and things like that that's
very interesting um what cuban cultural traditions have you maintained um speak spanish fluently you know love cuban food you know and just a connection with the latin community in general you know oh yeah the jewish latin american history is very i always found that to be interesting um what are some that you no longer follow did i no longer follow like traditions or um nothing that i can really think of you know pretty much maintained about the same um growing up there was actually a cuban a cuban community jewish and non-jewish and they would have you know regular functions at the hotels the fairmont hotel
had a uh a lot of cubans in the management and the catering and uh we could get special you know pricing on we had very very nice parties there's a a good cuban band called tropicana that was you know here in dallas and you know very nice function new year's eve you know things like that very nice yeah celebrations yeah always good yeah great bar mitzvahs oh yeah um since coming to dallas how has your family grown i have a daughter she's a doctor she's living in houston right now my sister has two children one is there one is in houston the other one is
in kansas my my mother you know is active in several different you know she stays very much on top of finances and she's very active and we have in relatives in general in we have like uh i think about 80 different real estate you know cousins second cousins we've got about 80. i have a small ranch with cattle and horses that i really enjoy and uh just the you know working the land it's it's a favorite pastime of mine i worked in several different businesses but right now my father passed away five years ago and i'm running the family business which is a men's retail store okay david's store okay i want to talk to you about that um do you did your whole family come over from cuba or do you still have family in cuba we have some relatives cousins of my my parents are still there okay um that's really interesting your family's in retail i'm
doing my dissertation on jewish retailers in the south and shaping racial identity oh really so i don't know if you want to tell any more about your family history sure or if you want to talk about um cuba cuban jews anything you want to add is helpful to the to the sure well my fault you know my father when he came to dallas he uh was looking for for work in retail because they had a store in havana that's what they were there in dry goods my grandfather would sell door-to-door and but my dad you know would run the store itself and then my uncles
also had stores so when they came to dallas he eventually wound up working at levine's which is a dry goods store that you know was originally bought over by the sale corporation and there's still a few livings left my dad ventured away from me he was uh he ventured away and opened up opened up his uh his own store and he in fact asked me what i thought that you know you should name the store and since i always had to work since i was like you know six years old i always had to go to the store with my dad you know whether it
was levine's or whatever and everybody would always come into the store he was very personable and people would always ask for mr dave you know for david and you know they always came and asked for dave so when he opened the store he asked me what's the name as well name it david's store that way people know where you're at now you know since you know her levine's so that's demonstrated david's store and they also sold door-to-door i was under los moritos which is the wars you know locomotives corporation which is still active today uh they sold door to door primarily in west allis west
allis and around the left field area and it was my my my grandfather my father's uncle who did that until he was in his 90s he was selling door-to-door my father's brother-in-law he would sell door-to-door then eventually he just you know he stopped doing that he came to the store anyway they they supplemented the the uh credit business you know out on on the streets you know with the store itself and that store is you know it's about 60 years old almost 60 years old it was in a shopping center that was owned by the city of dallas it was run by the dallas housing
authority and just behind where they were in the same general area where the store was were a lot of government housing projects so it was a booming business at one point uh you know you had a captive audience of people that didn't have cars and they needed clothing and you know whatever electronics and so it was a it was a you know very prosperous time in that shopping center the store is still there you know we're we're hanging in there and uh we're trying to accommodate the new you know the new ways of selling like with amazon you know ebay so we're we're moving along
yeah i mean i think these family department stores really transformed retail and shopping and the american economy on so many levels so and when you go in and you do the research and you find out like all these innovative features that people adopted you're like wow you see how that's threaded through to like current shopping experiences so that's very interesting yeah um do you want to talk about your what you started sure yeah this is um this is a photograph of my well my dad's in there he's a he's i don't know if you can see it but that's him right there and that's his
grandparents and my that's my great-grandfather and uh it basically talks about you know like the title says cuban jews start all over in dallas you know when they left cuba they basically came here with nothing now we my my parents and my my uncle and aunt were the first ones to leave cuba and my uh grandmother actually took my sister's belt and she sewed uh cash inside her belt so when we came to the united states ultimately we would have some money you know and it was a you know they were very stressed about the fact that she had you know money in her in
her belt and at one point she had to go to the bathroom and one of the uh communist guards you know said i'll take her you know so my mother was you know very alarmed about you know the that they could discover the cash and uh my uh my you know when you left you had to list everything that you were leaving behind and apparently when my uncle was gonna leave i heard something about the fact that he he had gifted a toaster to a girlfriend of his or something like that when they discovered that he had given away the toaster without the government's permission
they uh get you know they caused the big ruckus over that i forgot all the details but they showed up in the house with you know these are like past neighbors and friends you know who are not part of the communist regime they showed up at the house with you know machine guns which they probably didn't even know how to use you know over a toaster or something of that sort i don't i have to you know check my resources again or my right you know but that's kind of what i understand my grandfather bought a brand new buick very nice beautiful car and he
took that car from havana he would go visit my parents in in actimisa and when the neighbor saw this beautiful car he decided that that car was an anti-revolutionary car and that they were going to take the car so they took the car nothing you can do about it right um have you been back or has anyone your family back to you i haven't been back i'm thinking about possibly going back um my brother actually went two years ago to cuba yeah and he said it's view it's naturally it's beautiful as beautiful as you could ever imagine but probably being there so early on there
are a lot of like kinks in their travel yeah i mean yeah so okay well if there's anything else you'd like to add okay well thank you