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JTA
EST 1917

pirates of the caribbean

  If you’ve ever wondered, amid the frenzy over the musical Hamilton, “But what’s the Jewish angle?” have we got the story for you. Consider this about America’s favorite 18th-century illegitimate statesman: As a boy, he attended the Caribbean equivalent of a Solomon Schechter Jewish day school. Speculation about Hamilton’s heritage has floated in and out of popularity for years – […]

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Jamaican Jews number less than 200 these days, but that wasn’t always the case. The first Jews arrived in Jamaica following the Spanish Inquisition in 1494. Nearly 500 years later, in 2007, a nonprofit called Caribbean Volunteer Expeditions (CVE) started transcribing epitaphs and recording cultural trends in grave sites and found at least 21 Jewish […]

The oldest continually active Jewish congregation in the Americas? Hint: check your margarita glass. Congregation Mikve Israel Emmanuel in Curacao — home of the liqueur of the same name — holds the honor, having served the island’s Jewish community since roughly 1654. The wheels of the community were put in motion by Jaoa d’Yllan, a […]

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