| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 506 [1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Jamaica | |
| Languages | |
| English, Jamaican English, Jamaican Patois, Judaeo-Spanish, Hebrew | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Hershkovitch from Sanok Poland. |
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| Jews and Judaism |
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The history of the Jews in Jamaica predominantly dates back to migrants from Spain and Portugal. Starting in 1509, many Jews began fleeing from Spain because of the persecution of the Holy Inquisition. [2] When the English captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655, the Jews who were living as conversos began to practice Judaism openly. [3] By 1611, the Island of Jamaica had reached an estimated population of 1,500 people. [2] An estimated 75 of those people were described as "foreigners," which may have included some Portuguese Jews. [2] Many Jamaican Jews were involved in the Atlantic slave trade, both owning and trading in enslaved Black people. [2]
The first Jews came to the island during the Spanish occupation of the Island, 1494–1655. With the influx of Jews to Jamaica in the 17th century, multiple synagogues were constructed across the island in such cities as Montego Bay, Spanish Town, Port Royal, and Kingston. A synagogue built in Spanish Town, the Sephardic Kahal Kadosh Neveh Shalom ("Habitation of Peace"), was consecrated in 1704. Jews came from Spain and Portugal, having fled the Spanish Inquisition. During the Spanish Inquisition, the Spanish government required the Jews to leave the country or convert to Catholicism. [4] The punishment for disobedience was death. [4] To conceal their identity they referred to themselves as "Portuguese" or "Spanish" and practiced their religion secretly. At the time of the English conquest of the island in 1655, General Robert Venables recorded the presence of many "Portuguese" in Jamaica. Details pertaining to how many times or any of these Portuguese were Jews or New Christians is unknown. [3] Also, it is unclear how many of these possible New Christians converted to Judaism. [3] The Portuguese on the island were often persecuted by the Spanish and so many helped the English with their invasion. [3] The Jews were allowed to remain after the conquest and began to practice their religion openly. They were granted English citizenship by Oliver Cromwell, which was confirmed in 1660 by King Charles II of England. For many Jews, Jamaica became a safe place they could live in without fear of persecution. [2] Jews from Amsterdam, Bordeaux, and Bayonne moved to Jamaica, mostly residing in Port Royal. [3] Port Royal even had what was called a Jew Street. [4] In 1672 thirty-one Port Royal merchants petitioned the governor complaining of large numbers of Jewish retail merchants active on the island. [5]
Abraham Blauvelt was a Dutch-Jewish pirate, privateer, and explorer of Central America and the western Caribbean, after whom the towns of Bluefields, Nicaragua, and Bluefields, Jamaica, were both named. [6]
In 1719, the synagogue Kahal Kadosh Neve Tsedek was built. [2] It was originally planned to turn Jamaica into an agricultural powerhouse, but this plan failed. [3] However, for local merchants, Port Royal became a successful center for trade. [3] Port Royal became an attractive place to trade commodities such as gold, silver, porcelain, embroidery, and silk. [3] The Jews participated as well, particularly in the trade of silver and gold, and in money-changing. [3] This success, however, led to a backlash. English-Jamaican merchants accused Jamaican Jews of coin clipping, a method of shaving off precious metal from money and putting it back into circulation at face value. [3] Such accusations occurred many times. [3] This resentment led to the coalition of a Legislative Council that represented English-Jamaican merchants and planters in 1691. [3] For example, the Council petitioned to the Crown that Jamaican Jews were evading taxes. [3] Some have found these accusations to be false or exaggerated because the Jews did not play a large role in the economics of Port Royal. [2]
In 1815, a fire nearly destroyed all of Port Royal. [2] Many Jews left Port Royal for another Jamaican town called Kingston, where a new economy was flourishing with commercial success. [2] The Jews in Kingston provided four Mayors, many Justices of Peace, members of Parliament, and countless builders, dentists, doctors, teachers, lawyers, and actors. [2] The community of Ashkenazi Jews in Kingston were called "The English and German Congregation." [3] In 1787, they built a synagogue called Shangare Yosher. [3] There had been an Ashkenazi synagogue in the nineteenth century called Rodphei Zadek, but it was later united with a Sephardic congregation in 1850. [3] By 1720, 18 percent of the population of Kingston was Jewish. [3] For the most part, Jews practiced Orthodox rituals and customs. [3] The Jewish population was also part of the slave owning class and owned Black slaves, who were sometimes bequeathed to their synagogues in their wills. [7]
Among the Jewish community's religious leaders during the early 1800s was the Rev. Dr. Isaac Lopez (1780-1854). Born in Curacao, he came to Kingston where he served the congregation there, assisted for a time by Abraham Pereira Mendes who was later called to be the minister of the Montego community.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jewish population began introducing Progressive Judaism into their rituals. [3] Progressive Judaism had a combination of reform and conservative rituals. [3] Since the Inquisition made its way to many parts of the New World, Jamaica offered a type of haven for the Jews. [4] The Jews in Jamaica felt at peace with life even though they still faced certain restrictions such as not being able to vote or hold office. [3] In 1826, however, free people of color were on track to gain equal rights to others in Jamaica, and the Jewish community noticed the possible threat of being the only group in Jamaica without voting rights. [3]
Thus, the Jews decided to fight for their right through petitions to the English government. [3] They attained full political rights in 1831. The status of British citizenship enabled ownership of property by the Jews.
This victory proved to be significant not just for the Jews of Jamaica but also elsewhere. [2] In 1832, Jews in London used the victory in Jamaica as reasoning for their own rights to such freedoms. [2] That same year in Canada, a similar story unfolded as Jews were granted same political rights as their Christian counterparts. [2]
Jamaica's Jewish population was never large. However, their contribution to the economic and commercial life of the nation has been significant.[ citation needed ]
Only 506 people are religiously practicing Jews in Jamaica and most Jews have migrated out of Jamaica. [8] While many are non-practicing, it is recorded that over 2,000 Jamaicans religiously identify as Jews.[ citation needed ]
Common Jewish surnames in Jamaica with mostly Portuguese origin are Abrahams, Alexander, Andrade, Barrett, Babb, Benjamin, Bent, Carvalho, Codner, D'Aguilar, DeCosta, De La Roche, Da Silva, De Souza, Pimentel, De Cohen, De Leon, Delisser, DeMercado, Eben, Fuertado, Henriques, Ibanez, Isaacs, Levy, Lindo, Lyon, Machado, Marish, Matalon, Mendes, Myers, Magnus, Nunes, Pimentel, Reuben, Rodriques, Sangster. Some of these surnames were then made to sound more English, in order to 'blend' with the British-Jamaican community. An example would be De La Roche being changed to Roach(e) and Eben /Ibanez changed to Ebanks.[ citation needed ]
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement opened a branch in Jamaica in 2014 servicing locals as well as a welcome centre for international visitors. [9]
The Shaare Shalom Synagogue in Kingston, first built in 1885, was the only synagogue in the country until 2014 when Chabad opened the second synagogue in Montego Bay. The congregation has its own siddur, blending together Spanish-Portuguese tradition and British Liberal and American Reform liturgy. The Hillel Academy, a private school founded by the Jewish community, today is non-denominational but still serves as a meeting place for the children of the Jewish community. A Jamaican Jewish Heritage Center opened in 2006 in celebration of 350 years of Jews living in Jamaica. At least 21 Jewish cemeteries also exist in the country. [10]
The History of Sephardic Jews in England consists of the Sephardic Jews' contribution and achievement in England.
The history of the Jews in Colonial America begins upon their arrival as early as the 1650s. The first Jews that came to the New World were Sephardi Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam. Later major settlements of Jews would occur in the port cities: Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah.
The history of the Jews in Latin America began with conversos who joined the Spanish and Portuguese expeditions to the continents. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 led to the mass conversion of Spain's Jews to Catholicism and the expulsion of those who refused to do so. However, the vast majority of conversos never made it to the New World and remained in Spain slowly assimilating to the dominant Catholic culture. This was due to the requirement by Spain's Blood Statutes to provide written documentation of Old Christian lineage to travel to the New World. However, the first Jews came with the first expedition of Christopher Columbus, including Rodrigo de Triana and Luis De Torres.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
The history of Jews in Charleston, South Carolina, was related to the 1669 charter of the Carolina Colony, drawn up by the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury and his secretary John Locke, which granted liberty of conscience to all settlers, and expressly noted "Jews, heathens, and dissenters". Sephardi Jews from London were among the early settlers in the city and colony, and comprised most of its Jewish community into the early 1800s.
The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portuguese Jews emigrated to a number of European cities outside Portugal, where they established new Portuguese Jewish communities, including in Hamburg, Antwerp, and the Netherlands, which remained connected culturally and economically, in an international commercial network during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The community of Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam, was of major importance in the seventeenth century. The Portuguese Jews in the Netherlands did not refer to themselves as "Sephardim", but rather as "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation." The Portuguese-speaking community grew from conversos, Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal, who rejudaized under rabbinical authority, to create an openly self-identified Portuguese Jewish community. As a result of the expulsions from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, as well as the religious persecution by the Inquisition that followed, many Spanish and Portuguese Jews left the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, in search of religious freedom. Some migrated to the newly independent Dutch provinces which allowed Jews to become residents. Many Jews who left for the Dutch provinces were crypto-Jews. Others had been sincere New Christians, who, despite their conversion, were targeted by Old Christians as suspect. Some of these sought to return to the religion of their ancestors. Ashkenazi Jews began migrating to the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century, but Portuguese Jews viewed them with ambivalence.
Isaac Aboab da Fonseca was a rabbi, scholar, kabbalist, and religious writer. In 1656, he was one of several elders within the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam and for a time in Dutch Brazil before the Portuguese reconquest. He was one of the religious leaders who excommunicated philosopher Baruch Spinoza in 1656.
Moses Cohen Henriques was a Dutch pirate of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin. Operating in the Caribbean, the total haul of his raids on the Spanish is estimated to be about 1 billion USD in today's value.
The Portuguese Synagogue, also known as the Esnoga, or Snoge, is a late 17th-century Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam, completed in 1675. Esnoga is the word for synagogue in Judaeo-Spanish, the traditional Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardi Jews.
The history of the Jews in Mexico began in 1519 with the arrival of Conversos, often called Marranos or "Crypto-Jews", referring to those Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism and that then became subject to the Spanish Inquisition.
Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located in Charleston, South Carolina, in the United States.
The Jewish immigration to Puerto Rico began in the 15th century with the arrival of the anusim who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second voyage. An open Jewish community did not flourish in the colony because Judaism was prohibited by the Spanish Inquisition. However, many migrated to mountainous parts of the island, far from the central power of San Juan, and continued to self-identify as Jews and practice Crypto-Judaism.
Kahal Kadosh Sha'are Shalom, also known as the United Congregation of Israelites, is a historic synagogue in the city of Kingston on the island of Jamaica.
Jewish pirates were seafaring Jewish people who engaged in piracy. While there is some mention of the phenomenon in antiquity, especially during the Hasmonean period, most Jewish pirates were Sephardim who operated in the years following the Alhambra Decree ordering the expulsion of Iberia's Jews. Upon fleeing Spain and Portugal, some of these Jews became pirates and turned to attacking the Catholic Empire's shipping as both Barbary corsairs from their refuge in the Ottoman dominions, as well as privateers bearing letters of marque from Spanish rivals such as the United Netherlands.
The history of the Jews in Curaçao can be traced back to the mid-17th century, when the first Jewish immigrants began to arrive. The first Jews in Curaçao were Sephardi Jewish immigrants from the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. These immigrants founded Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, the oldest continuously used synagogue in the Americas. The first Jew to settle in Curaçao was a Dutch-Jewish interpreter named Samuel Cohen, who arrived on board a Dutch fleet in 1634. By the mid-1700s, the community was the most prosperous in the Americas and many of the Jewish communities in Latin America, primarily in Colombia and Venezuela, resulted from the influx of Curaçaoan Jews.
"Pallache" – also de Palacio(s), Palache, Palaçi, Palachi, Palacci, Palaggi, al-Fallashi, and many other variations (documented below) – is the surname of a prominent, Ladino-speaking, Sephardic Jewish family from the Iberian Peninsula, who spread mostly through the Mediterranean after the Alhambra Decree of March 31, 1492, and related events.
The recorded history of the Jews in Angola stretches from the Middle Ages to modern times. A very small community of Jews lives in Angola mostly in the capital city of Luanda with a handful scattered elsewhere of mixed origins and backgrounds. There are also a number of transitory Israeli businesspeople living in Angola.
The Lindo family was a Sephardic Jewish merchant and banking family, which rose to prominence in medieval Spain.
The history of the Jews in the Canary Islands dates to the 15th century, when converted Jews moved to the islands from the Iberian Peninsula and continued practicing their religion in secrecy. The contemporary Jewish community is small and is mostly composed of Sephardi Jews who migrated to the islands in their mid-twentieth century and their descendants.
