Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World: a Social and Architectural
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Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World Sponsored by the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World of the College of Charleston Money, Trade, and Power Edited by Jack P. Greene, Rosemary Brana-Shute, and Randy J. Sparks The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World Edited by David P. Geggus London Booksellers and American Customers James Raven Memory and Identity Edited by Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks This Remote Part of the World Bradford J. Wood The Final Victims James A. McMillin The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Edited by Peter A. Coclanis From New Babylon to Eden Bertrand Van Ruymbeke Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World Edited by Margaret Cormack Who Shall Rule at Home? Jonathan Mercantini To Make This Land Our Own Arlin C. Migliazzo Votaries of Apollo Nicholas Michael Butler Fighting for Honor T. J. Desch Obi Paths to Freedom Edited by Rosemary Brana-Shute and Randy J. Sparks Material Culture in Anglo-America Edited by David S. Shields The Fruits of Exile Edited by Richard Bodek and Simon Lewis The Irish in the Atlantic World Edited by David T. Gleeson Ambiguous Anniversary Edited by David T. Gleeson and Simon Lewis Creating and Contesting Carolina Edited by Michelle LeMaster and Bradford J. Wood Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World A Social and Architectural History Barry L. Stiefel With the Assistance of David Rittenberg Foreword by Samuel D. Gruber THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS © 2014 University of South Carolina Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208 www.sc.edu/uscpress 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stiefel, Barry, author. Jewish sanctuary in the Atlantic world : a social and architectural history / Barry L. Stiefel. pages cm. — (The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61117-320-8 (hardbound : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61117-321-5 (ebook) 1. Sephardim—America—History. 2. Jews—America—History. 3. America— Ethnic relations. I. Title. E29.J5S75 2013 973'.04924—dc23 2013027981 To all my teachers Who is wise? One who learns from every person, as it is said: From all my teachers I grew understanding. Ben Zoma, Sayings of the Fathers, 4:1 This page intentionally left blank Contents Illustrations viii Foreword xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1 The Origin of the Atlantic World Synagogue 10 CHAPTER 2 Jews and Conversos during the Age of Discovery 51 CHAPTER 3 Jews under Protestant Dominion before 1675: Brave New World 95 CHAPTER 4 Jewish Prosperity in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1675–1775 120 CHAPTER 5 Jewish Enfranchisement in the Protestant Atlantic World after 1775 154 CHAPTER 6 Jews and Non-Caucasians in the Atlantic World 191 Conclusion 202 Appendix: Survey of Atlantic World Synagogues 219 Glossary 273 Notes 277 Bibliography 313 Index 339 Illustrations Figures The hechal at the Portuguese Synagogue of 1675 in Amsterdam 12 The tebah at the Portuguese Synagogue of 1675 during the holiday of Rosh Ha-Shanna 13 A schematic of the open central aisle plan 15 A schematic of the theater-style plan 15 A schematic of the central bimah-tebah plan 16 A schematic of the open double aisle plan 17 The engraving of the Joseph ben Meir ibn Shoshan Synagogue 18 Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia Synagogue, renovated as a church, artist unknown 19 Reprint from 1802 of Daniel Stalpaert’s c. 1662 plan for Amsterdam 37 An eighteenth-century view of Mr. Visserplein Street in Amsterdam 38 Haham Jacob Juda Leon (1602–75) 38 Map and index of the Atlantic World synagogues 48 Bilingual Latin-Hebrew map Hispania et Africa pars Occidentalis, c. 1700 55 Representatives of Spain’s Jewish community before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella 60 An auto-da-fé and Jew 71 Title page of a Book of Prophets 100 Haham Menasseh ben Israel (1604–57) 101 Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) 105 The floor plan of the Esnoga and its dependencies 121 Jodensavanne, Surinam, as it appeared c. 1800 123 The brit milah, or circumcision 131 The pidyon ha-ben, or redemption of the firstborn son 132 A Dutch Sephardic wedding ceremony 133 The mikvah, a small pool of water fed from a spring or groundwater well 133 Cleaning the home for the Passover holiday 134 Illustrations ix The Passover seder 135 Sukkoth, also known as the Feast of Booths 135 Shmira is the vigil for the deceased held just after death and before burial 136 A Jewish burial 137 Front entrance to London’s New Synagogue 144 The front elevation of the Portuguese Synagogue (I) 219 Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue (I) 220 Close-up of the painting Governor Robinson Going to Church (c. 1740) 223 The exterior of the Portuguese Synagogue (II), often called the Esnoga 225 The interior of the Portuguese Synagogue (II) 226 Berakha ve Shalom Synagogue of Jodensavanne 231 The ruins of Berakha ve Shalom Synagogue of Jodensavanne 231 Front elevation of Bevis Marks Synagogue 234 Interior of Bevis Marks Synagogue 234 Front elevation of Neve Shalom Synagogue of Spanish Town, Jamaica 236 A redrawing of a building depicted in the painting titled the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue 238 The thumbnail sketch of Shearith Israel Synagogue (I), built in 1730 240 The “Little Synagogue” at Shearith Israel (V), built in 1895 214 Mikve Israel Synagogue, also known as the Snoa, built in 1732 244 Interior of the Snoa, looking toward the tebah 245 Front elevation of Zedek ve Shalom Synagogue, Paramaribo, Suriname 248 Interior of Zedek ve Shalom Synagogue exhibit at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel 249 The ruins of Honen Dalim Synagogue 251 A historic illustration of the Shaar Ha Shamaim Synagogue (II) 252 The front elevation of Touro Synagogue, built 1759–63 254 Interior of Touro Synagogue 255 Exterior of the Great Synagogue of Gibraltar 259 Hechal of the Great Synagogue of Gibraltar 260 The courtyard of Etz Chaim Synagogue in Gibraltar 263 Beth Elohim Synagogue of Charleston, c. 1812 265 Interior of Beth Elohim Synagogue of Charleston 265 Flemish Synagogue of Gibraltar 268 Abudarham Synagogue of Gibraltar 270 Beth Shalome Synagogue, Richmond, Virginia 271 x Illustrations Tables Table 1. The known synagogues of the Atlantic World between 1636 and 1822 49–50 Table 2. The Sephardic Synagogues built in the Dutch Empire before the Patriot Revolt in 1787 139 Tables 3 and 4. The synagogues built in the British Empire before the American Revolution in 1776 144–145 Tables 5 and 6. The breakdown of formal Jewish congregational life accord- ing to tradition, or minhag, in the United States, up to 1838 179–180 Foreword In April 2007 I joined scores of people to attend a special service at the Snoa—the venerable synagogue of Curaço, built in 1732, home to Congrega- tion Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas, where no Sabbath or major holiday has gone uncelebrated in 278 years. In- side, through the arched entrance portal with the inscription from Psalm 26, B’makhelim abarekh ha-shem (“In the congregations I will bless the Lord”), all 144 candles were burning in the three large chandeliers and the sconces attached to the four big columns. In the past twenty years I have visited many of the “Jewish sanctuaries in the Atlantic World” described by Barry Stiefel in this book, including the well- known synagogues of Amsterdam, London, Newport, and Charleston. But when I was at the service in Curaçao held to commemorate the 275th anniver- sary of the dedication of the building, I felt the strength of the historical con- tinuum of Judaism in the New World, and the richness of the traditions of the Atlantic Jewish communities. Through their language, liturgy, and architec- ture, these communities—originally exclusively Sephardic—reach back to a distant past. In their establishment in circumstances of freedom and tolerance, however, they are the foundation on which modern American Judaism is built. The survival of the Snoa represents centuries of a culture of tolerance and cooperation of the sort Jews have rarely enjoyed elsewhere in the world. The great columns and the wooden ceiling vaults recall those in the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam (known as the Esnoga), the “mother” congregation of Curaçao’s Jews, who first settled “on the island” in 1651, making Willem- stad the oldest surviving Jewish community in the Western Hemisphere. It was the erection of the monumental Amsterdam Esnoga in 1675, celebrated with a week’s festivities that recalled the rededication of the Temple at the time of the Maccabees, that signaled a new age of opportunity for Diaspora Jews, and it was in the successful colonies established by Jews from Amster- dam, and later London, that this freedom was most fully realized over the next 350 years. The foundation of Jewish liberty and opportunity in the United States—a country where George Washington emphatically pronounced to the Sephar- dic Jewish congregation of Jeshuat Israel (better known as the Touro Syn- agogue) in Newport, Rhode Island, that government “to bigotry gives no xii Foreword sanction, to persecution no assistance”—this foundation has its strong roots in the tolerance and support provided to Jews by Dutch Protestant reformers in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, capital of Europe’s first modern republic, and then in the Dutch colonies. And yet this is a history that today remains distant and continues to dim for most American Jews, who are mostly Ashkenazic, not Sephardic, and who trace their roots to central and eastern Europe, not to the world of Atlan- tic Judaism.