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Elihu Yale was a British-American colonial administrator, and philanthropist. Although born in Boston, Massachusetts, he only lived in America as a child, spending the rest of his life in England, Wales, and India. He became a clerk for the East India Company at Fort St. George, and eventually rose to the Presidency of the settlement. He was later removed from the post under charges of corruption for self-dealing and had to pay a fine. In 1699, he returned to Britain with a considerable fortune, around £200,000, mostly made by selling diamonds, and spent his time and wealth in philanthropy and art collecting. He is best remembered as the primary benefactor of Yale College, which was named in his honor, following a donation of books, portrait, and textiles under the request of Rev. Cotton Mather, a Harvard graduate. He had no male heir, and no descendants of his have survived past his grandchildren.
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 India dates back to antiquity. Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in the Indian subcontinent in recorded history. Desi Jews are a small religious minority who have lived in the region since ancient times. They were able to survive for centuries despite persecution and antisemitic inquisitions.
Paradesi Jews immigrated to the Indian subcontinent during the 15th and 16th centuries following the expulsion of Jews from Spain. Paradesi refers to the Malayalam word that means foreign as they were newcomers. These Sephardic immigrants fled persecution and death by burning in the wake of the 1492 Alhambra decree expelling all Jews who did not convert to Christianity from Spain and King Manuel's 1496 decree expelling Jews from Portugal. They are sometimes referred to as "White Jews", although that usage is generally considered pejorative or discriminatory and refers to relatively recent Jewish immigrants, predominantly Sephardim.
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 the Jews in the Netherlands largely dates to the late 16th century and 17th century, when Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain began to settle in Amsterdam and a few other Dutch cities, because the Netherlands was an unusual center of religious tolerance. Since Portuguese Jews had not lived under rabbinic authority for decades, the first generation of those embracing their ancestral religion had to be formally instructed in Jewish belief and practice. This contrasts with Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe, who, although persecuted, lived in organized communities. Seventeenth-century Amsterdam was referred to as the "Dutch Jerusalem" for its importance as a center of Jewish life. In the mid 17th century, Ashkenazi Jews from central and eastern Europe migrated. Both groups migrated for reasons of religious liberty, to escape persecution, now able to live openly as Jews in separate organized, autonomous Jewish communities under rabbinic authority. They were also drawn by the economic opportunities in the Netherlands, a major hub in world trade.
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,<Swetschinski, Daniel M. Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 2000</ref> 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.
There are many synagogues in the Indian subcontinent, although many no longer function as such and today vary in their levels of preservation. These buildings dating from the mid-sixteenth through the mid-20th century once served the country's three distinct Jewish groups—the ancient Cochin Jews, and Bene Israel communities as well as the more recent Baghdadi Jews.
The History of the Jews in Amsterdam focuses on the historical center of the Dutch Jewish community, comprising both Portuguese Jews originally from both Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi Jews, originally from central Europe. The two separate groups have had a continuing presence since the seventeenth century. Amsterdam has been called a Jerusalem of the West and the "Dutch Jerusalem". The Holocaust in the Netherlands devastated the Jewish community, with the Nazis murdering some 75% of the approximately 80,000 Jews at time present in Amsterdam, but the community has managed to rebuild a vibrant and living Jewish life for its approximately 15,000 present members.
Henriques is a Portuguese surname meaning Son of Henrique (Henry). The Henriques family has many branches, each with a somewhat different surname. In 16th century Portugal, dozens of New Christian families used the name singly or in combination with others, such as Henriques de Castro, Cohen Henriques Eanes, Henriques de Souza, Henriques de Sousa, Henriques Faro, Mendes Henriques, Gabay Henriques, Lopes Henriques, Gomes Henriques, Henriques da Costa, Henriques da Granada, Henriques Coelho, and many more. Once they left Portugal and reverted to Judaism, they took more Jewish first names and often inserted Jewish tribal designations, such as Cohen and Israel, just before "Henriques", such as Cohen Henriques and Israel Henriques.
William Gyfford was an English factor and Agent of Madras from 3 July 1681 to 8 August 1684 and the President of Madras from 26 January 1685 to 25 July 1687.
Emanuel Raphael Belilios, was a banker, opium dealer, philanthropist, and businessman, born in Calcutta, British India and active in Hong Kong. His father, Raphael Emanuel Belilios, was a member of a Jewish Venetian family. Belilios married Simha Ezra in 1855, and in 1862 he settled in Hong Kong and engaged in trade. His success saw him described in the British press at the time as "one of the merchant princes of the colony."
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.
Mint Street is one of the prime streets of the commercial centre of George Town in Chennai, India. The street is one of the oldest streets in Chennai and is believed to be the longest street in the city. Running north–south, the street connects Poonamallee High Road at Park Town in the south with North Wall Road–Old Jail Road Junction at Washermanpet in the north. Running parallel to the Wall Tax Road, another historical thoroughfare in the city, the street passes through thickly populated residential and commercial areas of the historical neighbourhood.
The Jewish Cemetery is a cemetery for the Paradesi Jews of Chennai, India. It is located off Lloyd's Road. The cemetery remains the only memoir of the once significant Jewish population of Chennai, which has now almost become extinct. Burials include the tombstones of 18th-century Jewish diamond merchants. The cemetery houses fewer than 30 graves, of which a handful are almost 300 years old.
The Anglo-Siamese War was a brief state of war that existed between the English East India Company and Kingdom of Siam in 1687–88. Siam officially declared war against the Company in August 1687. No peace treaty was ever signed to end the war, but the Siamese revolution of 1688 rendered the issue moot.
The Madras Synagogue is the only synagogue in Madras and it was built by Jacques (Jaime) de Paiva (Pavia) a Paradesi Jew of Madras. Madras Synagogue was also known as the Esnoga, or Snoge, Esnoga is synagogue in Ladino, the traditional Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardic Jews.
Isaac Sardo Abendana was a Dutch Jewish jeweller and diamond merchant of Madras, India. Originally from Holland, Abendana moved to India in 1702. Due to his skill in the trade, Abendana was widely consulted, including by most Madras trading companies and by his close friend, Thomas Pitt, the governor of Fort St. George.
Shalom Aaron Obadiah Cohen was a Jewish jeweler and community leader known for founding the Jewish community in Kolkata in 1798 and engaging in the jewelry trade.
References
- ↑ "THE PORTUGUESE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF MADRAS, INDIA, IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY". esefarad.com. 11 April 2010.
- 1 2 3 Muthiah, S. (3 September 2007). "The Portuguese Jews of Madras". The Hindu. Retrieved 6 October 2018.
- 1 2 Sundaram, Krithika (31 October 2012). "18th century Jewish cemetery lies in shambles, craves for attention". The New Indian Express. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 6 October 2018.