History of the Jews in Puerto Rico of them fled to Miami, Florida; however, Puerto Rico also received a large influx of Jewish emigres from Cuba. Abe Fortas, who was an associate judge for the United States Supreme Court, and the son of Orthodox Jews, was a friend of Luis Muñoz Marin and frequented Puerto Rico often during Roosevelt's, Kennedy's, and Lyndon B. Johnson's administrations. He participated in the drafting of the Constitution of Puerto Rico and gave Luis Muñoz Marin and his administrators legal advice whenever called upon. According to Abe Fortas's biographer Laura Kalman, "Puerto Rico engaged Fortas. It became the one cause to which
History of the Jews in Puerto Rico until his death in 1959. In 1952, Puerto Rico achieved U.S. commonwealth status and officially became the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Spanish: "Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico"). That same year a handful of American Jews established the island's first synagogue in the former residence of William Korber, a wealthy Puerto Rican of German descent, which was designed and built by Czech architect Antonin Nechodoma. The synagogue, called Sha'are Zedeck, hired its first rabbi in 1954. After the success of the Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro in 1959, almost all of Cuba's 15,000 Jews went into exile. The majority