Abraham Donald Lavender was a professor of sociology at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, where his special areas of interest include ethnic relations, Judaica, political sociology, urban sociology, the sociology of sexuality, and social deviance. He was editor-in-chief of Journal of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Crypto Jews, and had served as president of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies.
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.
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.
The Coming Street Cemetery is located at 189 Coming Street, in Charleston, South Carolina. This Jewish cemetery, one of the oldest in the United States was founded in 1762 by Sephardi Jews and is the oldest Jewish burial ground in the South. Burials in the Coming Street Cemetery are now restricted to the few vacancies in the adjacent family plots. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located in Charleston, South Carolina, in the United States.
Temple Sinai, also known as Congregation Sinai, whose official name is the Sumter Society of Israelites, is an historic Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 11-13 Church Street, on the corner of West Hampton Avenue, in Sumter, South Carolina, in the United States.
Beth Elohim may refer to the following Jewish synagogues:
Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome was the first synagogue built in Richmond, Virginia; it was also the first Sephardic Kahal in Virginia. The creation of this community was a natural outgrowth of early immigration to North America and it was one of the first six synagogues built in British Colonies which would become known as United States of America. Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome received its charter to operate 3 years after the Virginia General Assembly passed the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.
Few Jews arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, in its early years. As an immigrant port of entry and border town between North and South and as a manufacturing center in its own right, Baltimore has been well-positioned to reflect developments in American Jewish life. Yet, the Jewish community of Baltimore has maintained its own distinctive character as well.
Gustavus Poznanski (1804–1879) was cantor and religious leader in Congregation Beth Elohim, Charleston, a pioneer of Reform Judaism in the Antebellum South.
Moses Cohen Mordecai (1804-1888) was an American businessman, politician, and parnas. He was the owner of the Mordecai Steamship Line, which he used to import fruit, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. He also served as a member of the South Carolina Senate. He became "the most prominent Jewish Charlestonian of the 1850s and 1860s." During the American Civil War, he supported the Confederate States of America, and his ships were used by the Confederate States Navy. He retired in Baltimore.
Grace Peixotto, was an American brothel owner. She owned the "Big Brick" in Charleston, South Carolina.
Solomon Cohen Jr. was a lawyer, prominent in Savannah, Georgia, where he was also postmaster, the state's first Jewish senator, a district attorney, a real-estate developer and banker. He established the first Jewish Sunday School in Georgia.
Mordecai Myers was an American politician and landowner in Savannah, Georgia, in the 19th century.
Solomon Cohen Sr. was a distinguished merchant and prominent citizen of both Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, in the 18th and 19th centuries. He was also a slave owner.
Racism in Jewish communities is a source of concern for people of color, particularly for Jews of color. Black Jews, Indigenous Jews, and other Jews of color report that they experience racism from white Jews in many countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Kenya, South Africa, and New Zealand. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews also report experiences with racism by Ashkenazi Jews. The centering of Ashkenazi Jews is sometimes known as Ashkenormativity. In historically white-dominated countries with a legacy of anti-Black racism, such as the United States and South Africa, racism within the Jewish community often manifests itself as anti-Blackness. In Israel, racism among Israeli Jews often manifests itself as discrimination and prejudice against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, African immigrants, and Palestinians. Controversially, some critics describe Zionism as racist or settler colonial in nature.
David L. Lopez was a prominent builder, industrialist, slave owner, and defender of the Confederacy who lived in Charleston, South Carolina.
Emma Mordecai was an American educator, a slave owner, an outspoken supporter of the Confederacy and the values of the Old South, and an active member of the Jewish community in 19th-century Richmond, Virginia. While some members of her family had converted to Christianity, amidst a climate of antisemitism in the Civil War-era South, Mordecai remained an observant Jew her entire life. She devoted most of her life to educational and religious causes, founding the Jewish Sunday school at Congregation Beth Shalome of Richmond.
