BRIAN HAMM Searching for Hope in the New World

n 1636, the first public synagogue in the New World was built in Recife, the largest city in the Dutch colony of New Holland (also known as Dutch ). Within a few years, the Jewish Ipopulation of the colony exceeded a thousand souls. Yet, less than a decade after the establishment of this synagogue, disaster struck. In 1645, the Portuguese planters of Dutch Brazil rose up in rebellion, and within a matter of weeks, the Dutch were clinging to a mere handful of fortified bases; the rest of the colony had been lost. Many Jewish fortunes vanished in the uprising, as sugar exports plummeted and planters refused to pay back their Sephardic creditors. This calamity was compounded by increased inquisitorial persecution against conversos in Spain and Spanish America, as well as by the fall of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the conversos’ chief protector at Spain’s court, in 1643. Since the economic vitality of the Jewish commu- nity in was overwhelmingly based on trade to Iberia (and by extension, to Iberia’s New World colonies), the repercussions of these catas- trophes were felt almost immediately on the shores of the Amstel.

In the wake of such disasters, many Jews in Amsterdam found signs of hope in colonial Spanish America. One source of that hope came from those conversos martyred by the Inquisition in Peru and New Spain, who publicly witnessed to the “Law of Moses,” despite suffering the cruelest tortures. 17 Frankel Institue Annual 2019

In these martyrs, many Sephardim saw a reflected completed, the gathering of the tribes—and thereby, image of themselves. One symbol of this association the redemption of all Israel—must therefore be very was the phoenix. For many Sephardic poets and near at hand. writers, those who had perished in the inquisitorial Or so the illustrious hoped. But Menasseh was flames would be divinely resurrected and rewarded; not content just to watch for signs of hope; he also similarly, as former conversos who had escaped from worked actively to ensure that the prophecies would their sufferings in Spain to be “resurrected” as an remain fulfilled. As indicated above, in the aftermath authentically Jewish community, the image of the of the 1645 uprising against Dutch Brazil, the Jewish phoenix reborn out of its own ashes unsurprisingly synagogues of that colony rested on increasingly became a central icon of their collective identity. unstable foundations. As evidenced by Montesinos’s In 1644, another source of hope arrived in the form arrival, however, there also appeared to be plenty of of Antonio de Montesinos. This Portugueseconverso Portuguese conversos in Spanish America seeking to declared that he had encountered some members live as faithful Jews. Sometime around 1646, with all of the lost tribe of Reuben in the rural backcountry of these circumstances in mind, Menasseh and other of South America. These Reubenites had sent him leading Jews in Amsterdam financed a slave-trading to deliver an apocalyptic message of liberation: the voyage from Holland to Guinea to Venezuela. Spanish would soon be overthrown, and Montesinos The leader of this expedition was Luis Méndez and his kinsmen would be quickly freed from their Chávez, a Portuguese Jew who sought to smuggle “bondage.” For many listeners, this discovery into Spanish America not only a boat full of slaves seemed to portend the inauguration of a new but also a miniature library of over a dozen Jewish messianic age. Most famously, in his Esperança de apologetical and liturgical books given to him by Israel [“The Hope of Israel”] (1650), Menasseh ben Menasseh. The unmistakable purpose was to Israel took Montesinos’s revelation as evidence that instruct conversos about Judaism, and to facilitate Isaiah’s prophecy (11:11-12) about the dispersal of the proper observation of the various religious the tribes of Israel and Judah throughout all parts festivals throughout the year. To this end, Méndez of the world had been fulfilled. For Menasseh, the Chávez also brought a sakin, tefillin, and tzitzit. “tribes of Israel” in America were those discovered Once these items were discovered by local officials by Montesinos, while the “tribes of Judah” were in Venezuela, Méndez Chávez was sent to the those Jews openly worshiping in synagogues in Cartagena Inquisition to stand trial. In his testimony, Dutch Brazil. Because this dispersion had been Méndez Chávez described being kidnaped by a 18 Frankel Institue Annual 2019

The title page of Menasseh ben Israel’s Esperança de Israel (1650). Samuel Ben Israel Soeto [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

During his trial, Méndez Chávez gave inquisitors the names of six of his financial sponsors, all of whom were Amsterdam merchants who enjoyed many ties to Brazil and the Caribbean. In future years, many of these men would emerge as key players in the expansion of the Sephardic diaspora to Curaçao, Jamaica, Barbados, and . What is perhaps most interesting about the Méndez Chávez affair is how it was one of the earliest attempts at Sephardic colonization after the 1645 uprising. This broader project of Sephardic colonization is usually dated to the late 1650s and 1660s, when Jewish communities were officially established across the circum-Caribbean. However, the case of Méndez Chávez demonstrates that the origins of this trans-Atlantic endeavor actually predated the 1654 fall of Dutch Brazil by several years. Furthermore, even though no Jewish commu- nities were established in Spanish America until the Dutch ship while sailing to from Brazil. nineteenth century, it is nevertheless clear that the The Dutch, he claimed, took him to Amsterdam, region was of great significance to the seventeenth- where he was coerced by the Jews to be circumcised century Sephardim both economically and religiously. and to live as a Jew. He also protested that all the In this doubly clandestine voyage, Méndez Chávez books and liturgical instruments were not his, but thus not only brought books from Menasseh ben belonged to other Jews who had died earlier on the Israel and enslaved Africans from Guinea, but voyage. The inquisitors remained unconvinced, and also carried with him the hopes of many who eventually sentenced Méndez Chávez to a sentence looked to the New World for economic and spiritual ● of reconciliation, which included two hundred redemption. lashes, wearing the sambenito (a humiliating penitential garment) for three years, and exile from the Indies for six additional years.