I returned from Cuba with a heavy heart and deeper sense of wanting to do something to help bring Alan home.  While his physical health is holding up, the anger and frustration he feels as a result of the deceptions and falsehoods that both sides have subjected him to is clear.  The confinement is taking a toll on him and his family.

Alan is located in a building on the grounds of the  Carlos Finlay Military Hospital complex in Havana. I took a taxi there from the El Presidente Hotel last Thursday afternoon.    Greeted by four men, a guard, a doctor, an official from the Ministry of the Interior, and a translator, they asked if I had a cell phone or camera.  I was asked to leave two bags of books, magazines, foods, vitamins and Bev Mushinsky's 5 lbs of Alan's favorite caramel peanut brittle on a table near the door to the waiting room while I met with him.  His jailors created a comfortable space with two couches and a table with refreshments. Alan explained that normally the room is used for meetings with doctors.

We met for about an hour and forty minutes.  He told me about his two roommates, both Cubans. One had fasted with him on Yom Kippur.   Alan performs a Shabbes ritual every Friday night in front of photographs of family and friends. He inquired about folks back home and gave me a couple a bracelets he made out of plastic bottle caps.  He fashions these bracelets as gifts for friends and visitors, so that outside his cell, he is not forgotten.

Having learned about the recent swap of Gilad Shalit for more than 1000 imprisoned Palestinians, he felt that the US and Cuba could do the same for him and the Cuban Five, five Cubans convicted of spying and serving sentences in the US from 15 years to life.  Alan saw a photo of the September vigil coordinated by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington in a Mexican newspaper.  He hoped that future vigils would focus on the humanitarian aspects of his release.

Alan was convicted and sentenced to a fifteen year term not so much for giving electronic equipment to some Jewish Cubans but because he was working for a company under a USAID contract, under a program designed to help undermine the Cuban government . While other contractors bring in similar equipment - illegal under Cuban law - only Alan has been arrested.  In December, he will have been held for two long years.

I feel that we must bear witness to Alan's plight by keeping him in our prayers, by making regular calls to Obama, Clinton and Members of Congress, by attending vigils both at the Cuban Interests Section and also at the State Department as well as the White House.  I'm hoping that a committee of Friends of Alan Gross can be convened soon to learn how to support him and his family. 

As my time was running out I asked Alan to join me in singing Min HaMetzer from Psalm 118.  "From out of the place of confinement I call to God. Answer me with an encompassing relief."   Holding each other's hands tightly we sang. 

May we find the courage to speak truth to power and bring Alan home soon.

Reb David