June 5, 2014

What??? There are Jews in Jamaica? Well, yes! We – I’m one of them – are mostly descended from Sephardic Jews who fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition beginning in the late 15th century, traveling to the New World as conversos, also known as ‘hidden Jews.’ In other words, Jews have been on the island a long time, say just over 500 years, the first allegedly arriving with Columbus on his first voyage to the island in 1494. Columbus, it is said, was a man of ambiguous origins, possibly Italian, possibly Basque, and very possibly a converso.

This notion that Columbus was a Jew is supported by his request to have Jamaica gifted to him by the Spanish Crown and whereby the Inquisition would not be allowed. His requests allowed Jews to thrive, and the island was the only colony under Spanish rule where this occurred. Columbus was also granted governorship rights to all his discovered lands. However, disputes arose and his son, Diego, spent most of his life fighting to maintain those rights. A compromise was reached whereby Diego’s son Luis received the title admiral of the Indies, the island of Jamaica in fief, and the title ‘Marques de Jamaica.’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Jamaica subsequently passed on to Luis’ daughter who would marry into the Portuguese house of Braganza. This brought about the first migration of Jewish Sephardim to the island, coming from Portugal around 1530. (Joseph Sabay) However, soon after, Spain and Portugal unified, and Jamaica came under threat of the Inquisition, threatening Jews on the island. It was a hairy existence, so when the opportunity arose to rid Jamaica of the Spanish, the Jews seized it. They aided the English in capturing the island in 1655, the deal sealed by a Jew named Acosta who negotiated the Spanish surrender. In return, the English allowed Jews to practice their religion freely. This meant they could build synagogues, establish cemeteries, and make Jamaica their permanent home. As word spread, more Jews arrived from all over Europe, including Ashkenazis. By the 1800s, there were eight synagogues on the island and over 2500 Jews. Imagine the history, the legacy, the influence these Jews had on Jamaica… More on that later.

Colonialism, slavery, and natural disasters took their toll on the population. At the advent of the 20th century, there was but one synagogue left on the island. I grew up in that synagogue in Kingston, Synagogue Sha’re Shalom. The community counted approximately 1200 Jews, many of them my relatives, in the early part of my childhood. By the late 1970s, that number halved. Political strife in the newly minted island nation caused many to flee under the threat of communism, violence, and a collapsing economy. The history that so many Jamaican Jews took for granted having lived without religious persecution for over 300 years was now at risk of disappearing quietly into nothingness as there was little recorded about it.

My father, Ainsley Henriques, took up the charge. He began researching Jewish family histories, starting with his own dating back to the Inquisition. In my teen years, he started a Jamaican Jewish genealogical database that now, thirty years later, houses over 20,000 names, including those of Harry Belafonte and Malcolm Gladwell. Yes, they are descendants of Jamaican Jews(!) My father’s obsession with the preservation of Jamaican history resulted in his appointment as Director of the National Heritage Trust of Jamaica, a role he embraced with every cell of his being as his love of his Judaism and his personal history was very much matched by his love of his country and the history of all its inhabitants, whether of African or English or even Chinese descent.

Ainsley Cohen Henriques

During his tenure at the National Heritage Trust in the early 1980s, an American man walked into his office one day with a copy of an old treasure map and a request for ‘research funding’ to decipher the map. This man was Ed Kritzler, best described as a New York Jewish cowboy with a passion for Jamaica where he’d resided for over 30 years. As a Jew himself and a bit of a swashbuckler, Eddie had found material at the National Archives of Jamaica suggesting that there were privateers (English-government-endorsed pirates, thus operating legally in plundering ships) who were Jewish. He’d found a name on the treasure map, Moses Cohen Henriques, to whom the map appeared to belong. Records showed that Moses had made his fortune attacking and looting Spanish galleons in the 17th century, pulling the largest heist in history, capturing the Spanish silver fleet ‘worth $1 billion in today’s money,’ to quote Ed. Moses’ success was so great that he became an advisor to Henry Morgan, the notorious privateer who then became Governor of Jamaica.

“Give me the pirate’s name again,” my father said.

“Moses Cohen Henriques, or Moishe,” Ed answered eagerly.

“I’m a Cohen Henriques,” Ainsley stated, sitting back and folding his arms across his belly.

Ed’s face lit up. “Oy vey!! You must be his relative!”

Thus, the beginning of a lifelong friendship and the eventual publication of Ed’s book, “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean”.

Eddie, a great storyteller with an enormous heart housing the soul of a 10-year old boy beginning his first adventures, also became my friend. I read the first draft of his manuscript and begged him to skip eating a raw onion a day on those afternoons where I shared with him my notes.

“For god sake and mine, eat an apple instead,” I said on more than one occasion, breathing through a wad of tissues.

“Oi! Next time,” he’d answer.

Then, when his book tour began in New York City, I dutifully came along to every reading at the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue, the 92nd Street Y, the Harvard Club and more, as an ‘exhibit,’ so he could show me off with a flourish as a real-live descendant of the most famous of Jewish pirates.

My father’s and Eddie’s obsession with their overlapping subjects meant that every conversation was about Jamaican Jewry. Immersed in an informal classroom when with either of them, their enthusiasm and information infiltrated me. The facts were astounding:

~ Its the oldest continuous community in Jamaica;

~ The oldest cemetery, Hunt’s Bay Cemetery, on the island is Jewish, the earliest recorded gravestone dating back to 1672;

~ The first Jamaican Ambassador to the U.S. was a Jew, Sir Neville Ashenheim;

~ Two Jewish brothers, Jacob and Joshua deCordova, established the first newspaper on the island, the Jamaica Gleaner, in 1834;

~ The first Jews to arrive in the U.S. came via Jamaica on their way from Recife, Brazil, and founded the Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in the City of New York, in 1654;

Ed has now passed away to his pirates’ kingdom; My father has fed me the fuel of his torch though has yet to hand it over, may it be many years yet. I have enlisted him to join me though in the more extensive of my tours as an honorary speaker as he truly is a Jamaican living national treasure.

     Sunset over Hunt’s Bay Cemetery  Gravestone, Savannah-la-Mar Cemetery

    Gravestones, Synagogue Sha’re Shalom

   Patrick Mudahy, of Synagogue Sha’are Shalom   Stained Glass Window, Synagogue Sha’are Shalom

So join me and my tour partner, Lyndalee Burks of Jamaica Tour Society, as we bring to life this amazing history of Jewish Jamaica on both organized and custom tours, held a half-dozen times a year, and on one-day tours we will be starting in the Fall.  www.JamaicaJewishTours.com