History of the Jews in Barbados

The history of the Jews in Barbados begins 1654, when Sephardic Jews arrived as refugees from Dutch Brazil at the then British island of Barbados. The refugees came from the Jewish communities of Recife and Bahia briefly Dutch northern Brazil and had to leave the country after the conquest of Dutch Brazil abandoned by the Portuguese - according to some sources on the run from the Inquisition, according to others, as they are considered allies of the Dutch were considered. British plantation owners in Barbados, which threatened even to fail with the cultivation of ginger and indigo, participated in this situation to contact the Jewish refugees and brought them so to Barbados. The Jewish refugees brought with them valuable knowledge about the cultivation and processing of sugar cane and coffee, which contributed to the development of the island as a major sugar producer.

Few of the Jews of Barbados themselves were plantation owners, as the cultivable land was already taken on the small island on their arrival or at the latest in the 1660s. The comers therefore settled mostly in the capital Bridgetown as merchants down, a small part of them in the northern city of Speightstown. Allegedly found today quite a few of the surnames of immigrant Jews from Brazil as a family name in today's Barbados, either white or colored descendants of Sephardic families or the descendants of their slaves who had taken the name of the families of their owners.

1667 there was a second Jewish wave of immigration. After the Dutch had conquered until then British colony of Suriname, wandered many local Jews from Barbados to retain their British citizenship. 1697 lived nearly 300 Jews on the island. 1668 the Jews of the island was forbidden to engage in long-distance or local trade or buy slaves. In addition, they were forced to move into a ghetto. 1802 all discriminatory laws against the Jewish population by the colonial government of Barbados have been lifted. Barbados was the first British colony on the Jews were given full political rights

Emigration and Jewish assimilation, however, ensured that the practicing Jewish population of the island had disappeared in 1929, when the last of the Jewish religion still practicing descendants of Brazilian immigrants should have to leave the island and were held no longer worship in the past by then still active synagogue. Jewish life began here again only when in the wake of persecution by the Nazis and the Holocaust 30 Ashkenazi Jewish families arrived as refugees from Eastern Europe. 1968, there were again 80 Jews in Barbados. Although small, the still existing Jewish community has taken steps, such as their heritage to maintain in the form of an active synagogue in 1987 again at a new location opened Nidhe Israel Synagogue in Bridgetown. The old synagogue now houses a museum and a library. In January 2008 the Nidhe Israel Museum was opened in the history of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews is told. Also in 2008, the courtyard of the original synagogue from the 17th century by historians and students of the University of the West Indies has been archaeologically investigated. Main focus of the house of the rabbi was examined, but there was also the intact mikveh from the 17th century to the fore, which was built over a spring.

Today, approximately 40 Jews live in Barbados.

Swell

• The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean: The Spanish - Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas ", p 197