CHAPTER VIII.
THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH WEST INDIES.
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