Jews in The New World

There are tales that Jews came over with Columbus.  Pretending to be Catholic to escape the  Inquisition many Jews joined ships sailing away from Spain.  Iberian Jews often posed as New Christians from Portugal, the one settler group that did not require proof of Catholic ancestry.

The first Portuguese to set foot in Brazil was Gaspar da Gama, a cristão-novo (New Christian), i.e. a  Jew who had been baptized, maybe forcibly, and who later went along with Pedro Alvares Cabral discovering what is now Brazil, in 1500.

Jews settled in Brazil as New Christians or Conversos, names designated to describe Jews (or Muslims) who converted to Catholicism, most of them forcibly.

The Inquisition in Europe kept the New Christians under close surveillance and condemned to death in the bonfire anyone who, being baptized, persisted secretly in the practice of his/her former religion. Emigration to to Brazil was survival.

In 1630, the Dutch conquered portions of northeast Brazil.  As the Dutch permitted the open practice of any religion, Jews migrated. In 1636, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue was built by the Jewish settlers in Recife, the capital of Dutch Brazil. The synagogue remains in the same location to this day and is the oldest synagogue in the Americas.

In 1653 Oliver Cromwell took power in England and welcomed Jews considering them “good and useful spies”. Many Jews migrated to Jamaica so that by 1660 it had become the Jews’ principal haven in the New World and the United Congregation of Israelites was established, which exists to this day.

One of the clandestine facts of history is that Jews were instrumental in the success of  Piracy.  In coded correspondence with converso merchants in the Spanish colonies, Jews in Jamaica were able to ascertain what ship was sailing when, its cargo, route destination and what contraband it might carry. 

Financing pirate excursions, gaining first dibs of the booty, created a symbiotic relationship between the Jews of Jamaica, (primarily Port Royal) and the government of England which was engaging in a kind of sea guerrilla war against the Spanish.

Although there was great prejudice against the Jews, it paled when compared to the fact that an estimated four million pounds of silver was sent to England; more wealth than all the other of the other colonies combained.

By the 1700s, although Jamaica was a centre of slave distribution, few Jews were involved. As they were the only importers of other commodities Jews had a virtual monopoly on all dry goods.

Hence before Jews looked to America as the ‘land of the free’, they looked to Brasil and Jamaica.