Читать книгу The Jewish People in America (Vol.1-7) - Peter Wiernik - Страница 16

Table of Contents

The community of Curaçao—Encouragement to settle is followed by restrictions—Plans of Jewish colonization—Trade communication with New Amsterdam—Stuyvesant’s slur—The first congregation—Departures to North America and to Venezuela—Barbadoes—Taxation and legal status—Decay after the hurricane of 1831—Jamaica under Spain and under England—Hebrew taught in the Parish of St. Andrews in 1693—Harsh measures and excessive taxation—Naturalizations.

Another early settlement on Dutch territory which is still in a flourishing condition is on the island of Curaçao, Dutch West Indies. It is probable that Jews from Holland were among the first settlers in the island under the Dutch Government, which captured it from Spain in 1634; but there is no definite record until 1650, when twelve Jewish families—De Meza, Aboab, Perreire, De Leon, La Parra, Touro, Cardoze, Jesurum, Marchena, Chaviz, Oliveira and Henriques Coutinho—were granted permission by Prince Maurice of Orange to settle there. Mathias Bock, Governor of the island, was directed to grant them land and supply them with slaves, horses, cattle and agricultural implements, in order to further the cultivation and develop the natural resources of the island. The land assigned to them was situated at the northern outskirts of the present district of Willemsted, which is still known as the “Jodenwyk” (Jewish quarter). But despite the favorable conditions under which they settled there, severe restrictions were put on their movements, and they were even prohibited in 1653 from purchasing additional negro slaves which they needed for their farms. By a special grant of privilege, dated February 22, 1652, Joseph Nunez de Fonseca (known also as David Nassi), who undertook to emigrate and take with him a large number of people under a Jewish patron named Jan de Illan, two leagues of land along the coast were to be given him for every fifty families, and four leagues for every hundred families which he should bring over. The colonists were exempted from taxes for ten years, and could select the land on which they desired to settle. They were also accorded religious liberty, though they were restrained from compelling Christians to work for them on Sunday, “nor were any others to labor on that day.” The project was, however, not carried out on any extensive scale.

It was only after the re-conquest of Brazil by the Portuguese in 1654, and the consequent expulsion and dispersion of the Jews from the territory which was now again forbidden to them, that their effective settlement in Curaçao began. The Brazilian Jews who came there in that period brought with them considerable wealth, and they laid the foundation of that prominence in the commerce of the island which they have since retained.

Shortly afterwards (1657) regular communications for the purposes of trade were established between New Amsterdam and Curaçao, and it was principally in the hands of Jews. An original bill of lading (in Spanish) and an invoice of goods shipped from Curaçao to New Netherland in 1658 and addressed to Joshua Mordecai En-Riquez, includes Venetian pearls and pendants, thimbles, scissors, knives, bells, etc. An illicit trade was also carried on with Isaac de Fonseca of Barbadoes, which tended to undermine the trade monopoly enjoyed by the Dutch West Indies Company. But Fonseca’s threat to abandon Curaçao and turn his trade towards Jamaica, kept the authorities from interfering.

Peter Stuyvesant (1592–1672), the Governor of New Netherlands, complained to the directors of the West India Company in the following year, that the Jews in Curaçao were allowed to hold negro slaves and were granted other privileges not enjoyed by the colonies of New Netherlands; and he demanded for his own people, if not more, at least the same privileges as were enjoyed by “the usurious and covetous Jews.”

The Congregation Mickweh Israel was founded in 1656 under the direction of the Spanish and Portuguese community of Amsterdam, and regular daily services were held in a small wooden building which was rented for the purpose. The Rev. Abraham Haim Lopez de Fonseca, who, according to one of the oldest tombstones on the Jewish burial ground in Curaçao, died Ab. 22, 5432 (1672), was the earliest hazzan or rabbi whose name has come down to us. The first regularly appointed Hakam was Joshua Pardo, who arrived from Amsterdam in 1674 and remained until 1683, when he left for Jamaica. A new Synagogue was erected in 1692 and consecrated on the eve of Passover of that year, the services being read by the Hazzan David Raphael Lopez da Fonseca (d. 1707). The building, which was enlarged in 1731, still stands.

In the last decade of the seventeenth century a considerable number of Jews left the island for the continent of America, many of them, including the Touro family, going to Newport. A number of Italian settlers who originally came from the Jewish colony of Cayenne, which was dispersed in 1664, went to Tucacas, Venezuela, where they established a congregation called “Santa Irmandade.”

The prosperity of those who remained in Curaçao went on increasing in the eighteenth century. A benevolent society was established in 1715; five years later they responded liberally to an appeal for aid from the Congregation Shearith Israel of New York, and in 1756 met with an equal generosity a similar appeal from the Jews of Newport. By 1750 their numbers had increased to about two thousand. They were prosperous merchants and traders, and held positions of prominence in the commercial and political affairs of the island. By the end of the century they owned a considerable part of the property in the district of Willemsted; and as many as fifty-three vessels are said to have left in one day for Holland, laden with goods which for the most part belonged to Jewish merchants.

A new congregation, which called itself “Neweh Shalom” and occupied a tract across the harbor from Willemsted, was organized about 1740, and its Synagogue in the “Otrabanda” was consecrated on Ellul 12, 5505 (1745). It was established chiefly in order to save those who lived there from crossing the water on the Sabbath to attend divine services, and for a time it was regarded as merely a branch of the older congregation and as under its direction. This led to a series of disputes which culminated, in 1749, in an open breach. It was settled by the intervention of Prince William Charles of Orange-Nassau, in a decree dated April 30, 1750, in which the original jurisdiction of the older congregation, subject to the regulations of the Portuguese community of Amsterdam, was sustained. The arrangement lasted for the following one hundred and twenty years, when the younger congregation became independent (1870).

The increase in numbers and material well-being continued during the nineteenth century, but the community was not without internal dissensions. It was due to one of these controversies between the Parnassim and the ministers that a society called the “Porvenir” was founded in 1862. In the following year it developed into a Reform Congregation under the name “Emanuel,” whose new Synagogue, in the quarter “Scharlo,” was dedicated in 1866. About three years before a moderate change in the direction of reform was introduced into the liturgy of the oldest congregation.

The congregations of Curaçao now have more than one thousand members, nearly four-fifths of it belonging to Mickweh Israel. The Jews are among the leading citizens of the island, in business, as well as in the professions; they occupy executive and judicial positions, and are well represented among the officers of the militia. Almost all of them, like in Holland itself, are true to their religion, and there are probably less apostasies and intermarriages than in any other free community in which the emancipation of the Jews has been fully carried out in theory as well as in practice.

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The Jewish settlements in the British West Indies also enjoyed long periods of increase and prosperity; but they declined when the English colonies of the North American continent, and later, the United States, offered a wider field of activities and better opportunities under conditions which were so similar to those prevailing in the older places as to make the change of residence a matter of very little inconvenience. The oldest settlement under the English flag in the West Indies was probably on the island of Barbadoes, where, it is believed, Jews came first in 1628. On April 27, 1655, Oliver Cromwell issued passes to Abraham de Mercado, M. D., Hebrew, and his son, Raphael, to go to Barbadoes to exercise his profession. In 1656 the Jews were granted, upon petition, the enjoyment of the privileges of the laws and statutes of the Commonwealth of England and of the Island relating to foreigners and strangers.

In April, 1661, Benjamin de Caseres, Henry de Caseres and Jacob Fraso petitioned the King of England to permit them to live and trade in Barbadoes and Surinam. Their petition was supported by the King of Denmark, which tends to prove that they must have been men of considerable importance. In the report made by the Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, to whom it was referred, it is stated that the whole question of the advisability of allowing Jews to reside in and trade with his majesty’s colonies “hath been long and often debated.” The merchants of England were opposed to the admission of Jews, because of their ability to control trade wherever they entered, and because they would divert it from England to foreign countries. The planters, on the contrary, favored their admission and accused the merchants of aiming to appropriate the whole trade to themselves. The commissioners refrained from deciding the general question, but advised that these three highly recommended Jews, who had behaved themselves well and with general satisfaction in Barbadoes, should be granted a special license to reside there or in any other plantations.

The Jewish community was soon increased to a considerable extent, partly by the arrival of former members of the dissolved colony of Cayenne (1664). It is recorded in the minutes of the vestry of St. Michael’s Parish (July 9, 1666) “that the Jews inhabiting this Parish do pay the quantity of 35,000 pounds Muscovado sugar, to be levied by themselves and paid to Senior Lewis Dias and Senior Jeronimo Roderigos, who are hereby ordered to pay it to the present church wardens.” The order is repeated in October, 1666, and again in 1667; and in that year another order making the levy for the year 20,000 pounds was issued. In 1669 the order in January was for 14,000 pounds, and in March for 16,000. In 1670 it was again for 16,000, but the Jews sent in a petition declaring the amount to be excessive. This had the effect of reducing the amount of the tax to 7,000 pounds in 1671 and to “half of what was levied last year” in 1672. For the following five years it was mostly 7,000 pounds a year, “levied for their trade.” In 1680 it is 8,500 pounds, apportioned among forty-five Jews, some being made to contribute only twelve pounds, several others as high as 792 each, with David Raphael de Mercado heading the list with 1,075 pounds. (See list of names in “Publications,” XIX, pp. 174–75.)

Antonio Rodrigo Rigio, Abraham Levi Regio, Lewis Dias, Isaac Jerajo Coutinho, Abraham Pereira, David Baruch Louzada and other Hebrews who were made free denizens by His Majesty’s letters patent, petitioned in 1669 about the refusal to accept the testimony of Jews in the courts of the colony. The governor, in forwarding the petition, says, that “they had not been exposed to any other injuries in their trade or otherwise.” But the privilege granted was only for cases “relating to trade and dealing.” Special taxes continued to be imposed at various times until 1761, when all additional burdens were lifted, and afterward the Jews were rated and paid taxes on the same scale as other inhabitants. All political disabilities were removed by act of the local government in 1802, and by act of Parliament in 1820.

The number of Jews in Barbadoes was never as large as that of Surinam. In 1681 the total Jewish population of the island was 260. They went on increasing slowly, the great majority living in Bridgetown (where the first Synagogue was erected, probably prior to 1679) and a small number in Speightstown. In 1792, at the beginning of the period of the greatest prosperity of the community, the congregation of Bridgetown had 147 members, and 17 pensioners were supported. The name of the congregation was “Kehol Kodesh Nidhe Israel,” and its ministers were all selected by the vestry of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in London.

The decline of the Jewish community of Barbadoes dates from the great hurricane in 1831 which devastated the island, and also destroyed the Synagogue. Though a new edifice was erected and dedicated in 1833, and even a religious school was established several years later, the members kept on leaving the island for the United States, most of them going to Philadelphia. In 1848 there were only 71 Jews left. In 1873, those remaining petitioned for relief from taxation of property held by the congregation. The census of 1882 showed 21 Jews, and the number was still smaller at the end of the nineteenth century.

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When England conquered the largest of its West Indian possessions, the island of Jamaica, in 1655, a considerable number of Jews, known as “Portugals,” were living there. They dared not profess Judaism openly, or organize themselves into a congregation; but they were less in danger on account of their faith than in any other Spanish colony. The proprietary rights of the island was vested in the family of Columbus until about 1576, when it passed to the female Braganza line, and these exclusive rights exempted the island from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and prevented it from being included in the bishopric of Cuba. The British were careful to distinguish between the Portuguese Jews and the Spaniards, with the result that the Jews at once began to establish and develop the commercial prosperity of the colony. Sir Thomas Lynch, governor of Jamaica, writing in March, 1672, to the Council for Trade and Transportation, mentions, as points in favor of the Jews that “they have great stocks, no people, and aversions to the French and Spaniards.”

Several years before that time Jacob Joshua Bueno Enriques, a resident of Jamaica for two years, petitioned the King for permission to work a copper mine, and that he and his brothers, Josef and Moise, “may use their own laws and hold Synagogues.” In 1668 Solomon Gabay Faro and David Gomez Henriques were recommended by the King to the governor to remain and trade in Jamaica as long as they behaved well and fairly. There were considerable increases by arrivals from Brazil, later from the withdrawal of the British from Surinam, by direct immigration from England and even from Germany. But there must have been also considerable emigration of Jews, for at the end of the seventeenth century the number of Jews in Jamaica is figured at eighty. While the inclusion of Hebrew in the curriculum of the free school which was established in the Parish of St. Andrews in 1693—the earliest known instance of the teaching of Hebrew in an English settlement in the New World—may be taken as a concession to the Jewish inhabitants, there was no lack of harsh and galling measures. In 1703 the Jews were prohibited, under penalty of five hundred pounds, from holding Christian servants. In 1711 they were prohibited, along with mulattoes, Indians and negroes, from being employed as clerks in any of the judicial or other offices.

The struggle of the Jews of Jamaica against heavy taxation forms an interesting chapter in their history at the beginning of the eighteenth century. (See “Publications” II, p. 165 ff.) In 1700 a memorial was presented to Sir William Beeston, Governor-in-Chief of the Island of Jamaica, against the excessive special taxation of four assemblies, and against “being forced to bear arms on our Sabbath and holy days ... without any necessity or urgent occasion (which is quite contrary to our religion, unless in case of necessity, when an enemy is in sight or apprehension of being near us).” The reply by the governor and council begins with the admission of the truth of the statement about taxation; but a counter-claim is advanced that “their first introduction into this island was on the condition that they should settle and plant, which they do not, there being but one considerable and two or three small settlements of the Jews in all the island. But their employment is generally keeping of shops and merchandise, by the first of which they have engrossed that employment, and by their parsimonious living (which I do not charge as a fault in them) they have thereby means of underselling the English; that they cannot, many in them, follow that employment, nor can they in reason put their children to the Jews to be trained up in that profession, by which the English nation think they suffer much, both in their own advantages and what may be made to their children hereafter.”

The governor then proceeds to explain that the Jews themselves requested that “they might on any occasion be taxed by the lump,” and that because of their controlling of trade, especially of the retail trade, the Assembly have thought it but just that they should pay something in proportion more than the English. He continues: “As for their bearing of arms, it must be owned that when any public occasion has happened or an enemy appeared they have been ready and behaved themselves very well; but for their being called into arms on private times and that have happened upon their Sabbath or festivals, they have been generally excused by their officers, unless by their obstinacy or ill-language they have provoked them to the contrary.”

Traces of retrogression are also discernible in a document which was presented in 1721 to the Jamaica House of Representatives, entitled: “A petition of Jacob Henriques, Moses Mendes Quixano and David Gabai on behalf of themselves and the rest of the Jews now resident in this island ... praying that the House will take into consideration the great disparity there is between the numbers, trade and substance of the Jews now resident in this island in this and former times, and to mitigate the assessment of tax to be laid upon them.” But it seems that there was an improvement and an increase of the community about the middle of that century; for not less than 151 of the 189 Jews in the British-American Colonies whose names have been handed down as naturalized between 1740 (under the act of Parliament of that year) and 1755 resided in Jamaica.

Among the leading Jewish families which contributed most signally to the development of Jamaica’s trade are: de Silva, Soarez, Cardozo, Belisario, Belinfante, Nuñez, Fonseca, Gutterect, de Cordova, Bernal, Gomez, Vaz and Bravo.

Kingston was from the time of its foundation (1693) the principal seat of the Jewish community; an earlier Synagogue which is mentioned in 1684 and 1687 was probably situated in Port Royal. There were also settlements in Spanish Town, Montego Bay, Falmouth and Lacovia.

Here also, like in most other Dutch and English colonies, the local authorities were less liberal than the home governments, especially in matters of taxation. The assistance of the crown was necessary to abolish all special taxation, and also to check such attempts as were made during the reign of William III. to expel the Jews from the island. There is a record (see “Publications” XIX, p. 179–80) of a Mr. Montefiore who made an application to be admitted as an attorney in Jamaica in 1787, and produced a certificate of his admission in the Court of King’s Bench, in London, in 1784; but the above-mentioned anti-Jewish law of 1711 was cited to disqualify him from acting as attorney in Jamaica. It is believed that the man who met with this refusal was Joshua Montefiore (1762–1843), an uncle of Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885).

The community was in a flourishing condition in 1831, when all civil disabilities were finally removed, and the Jews immediately began to take a leading part in the affairs of the colony. In 1838 Sir Francis H. Goldsmid (1808–78) was able to compile a long list of Jews who were chosen to civil and military offices in Jamaica since the act of 1831, which was used by him as an argument in favor of removing the Jewish disabilities at home.

Alexander Bravo was the first Jew to be chosen as a member of the Jamaica Assembly, being elected for the district of Kingston in 1835. He later became a member of the council and afterward receiver-general. In 1849 eight of the forty-seven members of the colonial assembly were Jews, and Dr. C. M. Morales was elected Speaker in that year. Phinchas Abraham (d. 1887) was one of the last survivors of the body of merchants who contributed to the prosperity of the West Indies (see Jew. Encyclopedia s. v.).

The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Kingston, situated on Princess street until the time of its destruction by the great fire of 1882, was consecrated in 1750. It was replaced by a new edifice on East street in 1884. The English and German Synagogue was consecrated in 1789, a third (German) was merged with the first in 1850. The Synagogue of the “Amalgamated Congregation of Israelites,” which was consecrated in 1888, was destroyed by the earthquake of January, 1907. The United Congregation now worships at the East street Synagogue, which was enlarged for the purpose. The English-German Congregation consecrated a new Synagogue in 1894. There is also a Hebrew Benevolent Society and a Gemilut Hasodim Association which is more than a century old.

Among the rabbis of Jamaica were: Joshua Pardo who came there from Curaçao in 1683; his contemporary, the Spanish poet, Daniel Israel Lopez Laguna; Hakam de Cordoza (d. in Spanish Town, 1798); Rev. Abraham Pereire Mendes (b. Kingston, 1825; d. New York, 1893); Rev. George Jacobs; Rev. J. M. Corcos, and the present rabbi of the English-German Synagogue on Orange street, Rev. M. H. Solomon. The two Synagogues in Kingston are the only ones in the colony, which has about two thousand Jews, or nearly ten per cent., of the white population of Jamaica.