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Juan Bradman, Cuban-Jewish exile whose life inspired a novel, dies at 90
(JTA) — Juan Bradman was still in his twenties when he became a circuit judge in rural Cuba, traveling among the provinces.
But in1962, after the communist takeover by Fidel Castro, he and his wife Pola fled Cuba for the United States with their daughter Miriam, who had just celebrated her first birthday.
Years later, Miriam Bradman Abrahams would remember her parents’ story of exodus and exile in the forward to a novel inspired by their lives. “The Incident at San Miguel,” written by A.J. Sidransky, was published in March.
“They would leave behind all they knew for another climate, language and culture,” she wrote of her parents. “They could barely imagine the enormity of what faced them. This leaving and arriving, setting down roots and then suddenly having to pull them up to survive, has been part of Jewish DNA for millennia. It is the biblical story of Abraham, Noah, Joseph and Moses.”
Juan Bradman, who lived in Brooklyn, died Sept 23, at the age of 90.
In many ways, Bradman’s was an archetypal story of the more than 90% of Jews who, having found a refuge in Cuba from hardship in Europe, fled once again after Castro’s revolution. After leaving Cuba and putting down roots first in Yonkers, New York and later Brooklyn, Bradman refused to return to Cuba, harboring fears about his safety and his family’s in the country from which he fled. Yet he remained connected to the country by his brother, Salomon, who supported the revolution and chose to remain after the communist takeover.
Despite their political differences and years of estrangement, when the Cuban government opened travel for Cuban citizens to the United States in 2001, Juan sponsored Salomon and his wife for a month’s visit in Brooklyn. (Salomon died in 2012.)
A fictionalized version of their reunion, as well as Juan’s brief encounter with Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, are featured in ”The Incident at San Miguel.”
Bradman never lost his bitterness over Castro’s takeover of the country, which replaced the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista with years of deepening repression and economic malaise.
“Fidel was a ruthless Stalinist dictator with a charismatic personality,” Bradman told his daughter after Castro’s death in 2016. “He destroyed the island, running it as his own personal domain. I thank Castro for being the reason we came here. We would not have lived the same quality of life, had we stayed there. History should remember him as a tyrant rather than as a hero or savior. There is an end to everything, and I hope this is the beginning of the end of communism in Cuba.”
Juan Bradman was born on June 24, 1933, the son of Rifka and Yechezkiel Bradman. He and his wife Pola’s parents were refugees from Poland and Belarus. Bradman studied law at the Universidad de Havana before it was closed by the government; he later completed his law degree through the “back door,” according to his family. A stint as a lawyer at the National Bank of Cuba was cut short by political upheaval in Cuba, and in 1959 he was appointed a traveling judge for constituents in the Cuban countryside.
In 1962, he, his wife and daughter fled Cuba “with nothing but six cigars in his pocket, one suitcase of clothes, and a smuggled law degree,” according to a family obituary. “On arriving in Miami, Juan was questioned by immigration authorities to clear up a case of mistaken identity of a cousin with the same name.”
The family continued on to the Yonkers home of an aunt who served as their sponsor, and later settled in Midwood, Brooklyn. Unable to practice law in the United States, he earned a degree from Columbia University, and later a master’s degree in social work. After retiring as a social worker he trained as a docent at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, where he taught about the Holocaust and shared his immigrant background with visitors.
Bradman was an active member of his synagogue’s Men’s Club and served on the board of his children’s school, Yeshiva Rambam.
Survivors include his wife and his daughters, Sheila Feirstein and Miriam Bradman Abrahams.
In her forward to the novel based on her parents’ lives, Bradman Abrahams wrote about the ways their parents’ Cuban, American and Jewish identities shaped the lives of their daughters.
“My parents valued education above all else,” she remembered. “Brooklyn’s public schools were not the best back then. Our parents chose to enroll my sister and me in Jewish day school. How I think, speak and react today, what I cook and eat, how I communicate with my parents, my husband, grown kids, and community are a direct result of being tri-lingual and tri-cultural.”
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The post Juan Bradman, Cuban-Jewish exile whose life inspired a novel, dies at 90 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says ‘Extremely Cautious’ on Success of Nuclear Talks with US
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Iran and the United States have agreed to continue nuclear talks next week, both sides said on Saturday, though Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi voiced “extreme cautious” about the success of the negotiations to resolve a decades-long standoff.
US President Donald Trump has signaled confidence in clinching a new pact with the Islamic Republic that would block Tehran’s path to a nuclear bomb.
Araqchi and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff held a third round of the talks in Muscat through Omani mediators for around six hours, a week after a second round in Rome that both sides described as constructive.
“The negotiations are extremely serious and technical… there are still differences, both on major issues and on details,” Araqchi told Iranian state TV.
“There is seriousness and determination on both sides… However, our optimism about success of the talks remains extremely cautious.”
A senior US administration official described the talks as positive and productive, adding that both sides agreed to meet again in Europe “soon.”
“There is still much to do, but further progress was made on getting to a deal,” the official added.
Earlier Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi had said talks would continue next week, with another “high-level meeting” provisionally scheduled for May 3. Araqchi said Oman would announce the venue.
Ahead of the lead negotiators’ meeting, expert-level indirect talks took place in Muscat to design a framework for a potential nuclear deal.
“The presence of experts was beneficial … we will return to our capitals for further reviews to see how disagreements can be reduced,” Araqchi said.
An Iranian official, briefed about the talks, told Reuters earlier that the expert-level negotiations were “difficult, complicated and serious.”
The only aim of these talks, Araqchi said, was “to build confidence about the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.”
Trump, in an interview with Time magazine published on Friday, said “I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran,” but he repeated a threat of military action against Iran if diplomacy fails.
Shortly after Araqchi and Witkoff began their latest indirect talks on Saturday, Iranian state media reported a massive explosion at the country’s Shahid Rajaee port near the southern city of Bandar Abbas, killing at least four people and injuring hundreds.
MAXIMUM PRESSURE
While both Tehran and Washington have said they are set on pursuing diplomacy, they remain far apart on a dispute that has rumbled on for more than two decades.
Trump, who has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran since February, ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers in 2018 during his first term and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.
Since 2019, Iran has breached the pact’s nuclear curbs including “dramatically” accelerating its enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% level that is weapons grade, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week Iran would have to entirely stop enriching uranium under a deal, and import any enriched uranium it needed to fuel its sole functioning atomic energy plant, Bushehr.
Tehran is willing to negotiate some curbs on its nuclear work in return for the lifting of sanctions, according to Iranian officials, but ending its enrichment program or surrendering its enriched uranium stockpile are among “Iran’s red lines that could not be compromised” in the talks.
Moreover, European states have suggested to US negotiators that a comprehensive deal should include limits preventing Iran from acquiring or finalizing the capacity to put a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile, several European diplomats said.
Tehran insists its defense capabilities like its missile program are not negotiable.
An Iranian official with knowledge of the talks said on Friday that Tehran sees its missile program as a bigger obstacle in the talks.
The post Iran Says ‘Extremely Cautious’ on Success of Nuclear Talks with US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Palestinian Leader Abbas Names Likely Successor in Bid to Reassure World Powers
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, April 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas named close confidant Hussein al-Sheikh as his deputy and likely successor on Saturday, the Palestine Liberation Organization said, a step widely seen as needed to assuage international doubts over Palestinian leadership.
Abbas, 89, has headed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) since the death of veteran leader Yasser Arafat in 2004 but he had for years resisted internal reforms including the naming of a successor.
Sheikh, born in 1960, is a veteran of Fatah, the main PLO faction which was founded by Arafat and is now headed by Abbas. He is widely viewed as a pragmatist with very close ties to Israel.
He was named PLO vice president after the organization’s executive committee approved his nomination by Abbas, the PLO said in a statement.
Reform of the PA, which exercises limited autonomy in the West Bank, has been a priority for the United States and Gulf monarchies hoping the body can play a central role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Pressure to reform has intensified since the start of the war in Gaza, where the PLO’s main Palestinian rival Hamas has battled Israel for more than 18 months, leaving the tiny, crowded territory in ruins.
The United States has promoted the idea of a reformed PA governing in Gaza after the war. Gulf monarchies, which are seen as the most likely source of funding for reconstruction in Gaza after the war, also want major reforms of the body.
CALL FOR HAMAS TO DISARM
Israel’s declared goal in Gaza is the destruction of Hamas but it has also ruled out giving the PA any role in government there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he opposes the creation of a Palestinian state.
Hamas, which follows a militant Islamist ideology, has controlled Gaza since 2007 when it defeated the PA in a brief civil war after winning an election the previous year. It also has a large presence in the West Bank.
At a meeting of the PLO’s Central Council on Wednesday and Thursday that approved the position of vice president without naming an appointee, Abbas made his clearest ever call for Hamas to completely disarm and hand its weapons – and responsibility for governing in Gaza – to the PA.
Widespread corruption, lack of progress towards an independent state and increasing Israeli military incursions in the West Bank have undermined the PA’s popularity among many Palestinians.
The body has been controlled by Fatah since it was formed in the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993 and it last held parliamentary elections in 2005.
Sheikh, who was imprisoned by Israel for his activities opposing the occupation during the period 1978-89, has worked as the PA’s main contact liaising with the Israeli government under Abbas and been his envoy on visits to world powers.
The post Palestinian Leader Abbas Names Likely Successor in Bid to Reassure World Powers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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3rd Round of Nuclear Talks Between Iran, US Concludes in Oman
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – The third round of talks between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program has concluded on Saturday, US media reported.
The two sides are understood to have discussed the US lifting of sanctions on Iran, with focuses on technical and key topics including uranium enrichment.
On April 12, the US and Iran held indirect talks in Muscat, marking the first official negotiation between the two sides since the US unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term.
The second round of indirect talks took place in Rome, Italy, on April 19.
All parties, including Oman, stated that the first two rounds of talks were friendly and constructive, but Iranian media pointed out that the first two rounds were mainly framework negotiations and had not yet touched upon the core issues of disagreement.
According to media reports, one of the key issues in the expert-level negotiations will be whether Washington will allow Iran to continue uranium enrichment within the framework of its nuclear program. In response, Araghchi made it clear that Iran’s right to uranium enrichment is non-negotiable.
The US, Israel and other Western actors including the United Nation’s nuclear agency reject Iranian claims that its uranium enrichment is strictly civilian in its goals.
The post 3rd Round of Nuclear Talks Between Iran, US Concludes in Oman first appeared on Algemeiner.com.