Jews’ Bicentennial on St. Thomas Falls Victim to Hurricane Marilyn

When Hurricane Marilyn whipped St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands over the weekend, one of its many victims was the local Jewish community’s plans to launch its bicentennial celebration.

The celebration’s inaugural event, a dedication of a new Jewish museum on Caribbean Jewish life, was postponed last Friday as the hurricane was ripping through the region.

Instead of a smooth kickoff of the yearlong birthday celebration, which took five years of planning, the 800-member Jewish community of St. Thomas will welcome the Jewish New Year by trying to salvage its institutions as well as its festivities.

The extent of the damage to the community’s 200-year-old synagogue, the Hebrew Congregation, is unclear, according to the EHL Consulting Group, a Philadelphia firm that is handling public relations for the community’s bicentennial.

In what he called “a special message to the member of Jewish communities throughout North America,” the rabbi of Hebrew Congregation, Brand Bozman, said, “Hopefully, we will all resume normal activity in relatively short order.”

The rabbi, a native of Philadelphia, also said, “The entire Jewish community of the Caribbean, and especially the members of the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas, join me in asking you for your prayers and inviting you to visit us during the resumption of our bicentennial celebration.”

Before the storm, internationally known scholars and artists, including Rabbi Harold Kushner, poet Maya Angelou and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, were scheduled to take part in the gala.

The Hebrew Congregation synagogue building is believed to be the oldest in continuous use under the U.S. flag.

According to the population census, Jews were on St. Thomas from the time of the completion of Fort Christian in 1671, the official beginning of St. Thomas.

The indiscriminate hurricane reportedly injured some 185 people, killing eight. About 80 percent of the houses on the island were either lost or damaged.