Curaçao's rich Jewish history

Community once financed New York, Philadelphia and other synagogues.
RAHEL MUSLEAH SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

It's the sand that distinguishes Curaçao from most other Caribbean islands. Not the soft, white sand where you'd expect it – on its 42 gem-like beaches – but where you're most surprised to find it: covering the floor of its 272-year-old synagogue, Mikve Israel-Emanuel.

Curaçao's Jewish community can, in fact, trace its history in the sand. Its converso ancestors who fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal for the safe haven of the Netherlands remembered putting sand on the floor in Europe to muffle the sounds of secret prayer, and continued the custom in freedom. The sand connects worshippers even further back in Jewish history, to God's promise that Abraham's progeny would be as numerous as grains of sand and to the Israelites' 40-year desert wanderings.

Curaçao, however, is no desert. Its sand greets aquamarine water so clear you can see your toes (and many sea creatures, if you're so inclined). Willemstad, the capital, boasts a deep natural harbor that has made it a shipping and cruise centre welcoming 3,000 ships a year. The 38-mile-long, drumstick-shaped island, the largest of the Netherlands Antilles, is just north of Venezuela, fortunately outside the hurricane belt. On either side of St. Anna Bay, homes and shops are painted a man-made tropical rainbow: bubblegum pink, spearmint green, cobalt blue and a yellow as bright as the plumage of the ubiquitous Trupial birds that cunningly steal sugar packets from restaurant tables.

Punda (the Point), the older and main shopping area, and Otrobanda (literally, the Other Side) are linked by a 116-year-old floating pedestrian bridge supported by 15 pontoon boats, as well as a higher span for vehicle traffic. The town is on Unesco's World Heritage list; many of its buildings were owned by Jewish merchants who lived upstairs from their shops and warehouses, and one gable even retains the Hebrew date it was built.

The Jewish influence on Curaçao's development and economy has been so dramatic that my non-Jewish guide, Vico Rojer, commented: "I cannot separate my history from the Jewish past."

Settling in Curaçao

That past began in 1634, when the first Jew, Samuel Cohen, accompanied Dutch explorers to Curaçao as interpreter and Indian guide. But its history as a community dates to 1651, when the Dutch West India Company allowed a Jewish entrepreneur, Joao d'Yllan, to recruit 12 Jewish families to colonize the island. The arid earth and meagre rainfall did not support agriculture; instead, the settlers turned to commerce. A second group followed in 1659, sefer Torah in hand, said to be one of the 18 still kept in the synagogue's gleaming mahogany hechal (ark). The current building, completed in 1732 and established as Mikve Israel (Hope of Israel), is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere.

The synagogue's elegant yellow facade contrasts with its simple interior of thick coral and limestone walls, painted white, and mahogany pews, tebah (bimah) and banka (bench for synagogue officials and dignitaries). As in many Curaçao buildings, the walls are stricken with a corrosive "cancer" from the chemical salt called "salpetre" in the sea sand and lime mortar used in construction. But blue windows let in a flawless sky. Between four pillars that represent the matriarchs hang four brass, 24-branch chandeliers in the Dutch dolphin pattern. They are lit only on Kol Nidre and by special request for weddings, since they require dismantling, cleaning and replacing. The lighting alone takes two and a half hours.

In 1864, conflict between Orthodox and liberal congregants split the Snoa, as the synagogue is lovingly called. The Reform group established Temple Emanuel, but re-merged with its mother congregation in 1964, when the island's Jewish population declined. As a compromise, Mikve Israel-Emanuel affiliated with the Reconstructionist movement. The imposing steepled Emanuel building on Wilhelmena Plaza now houses offices of the Department of Justice.

An international hub

During Curaçao's glory days in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the synagogue was known as the "Mother Congregation of the Americas," financing and supporting communities in New York (Shearith Israel), Rhode Island (Touro), Philadelphia (Mikveh Israel) and throughout the Caribbean. Its members' generosity and courage extended to aiding non-Jews as well: Mordechai Ricardo assisted Venezuelan freedom fighter Simon Bolivar and his two sisters when they escaped to Curaçao. The sisters lived in one of Ricardo's houses, an octagonal building with a domed roof that is now a Bolivar museum and special events venue on the grounds of the Avila Beach Resort. Native products manufactured by Jewish merchants included Panama hats (Maduro family) and Curaçao liqueur (Senior family).

In Scharloo, once outside the city limits, the Sephardim built magnificent homes in the Spanish-Italian style. Economic decline and subsequent emigration and intermarriage caused Curaçao's Jewish community to dwindle from 2,000 at its height in 1790 to 400 people today. Some of the homes have been renovated into offices and museums. Some remain abandoned, their paint faded.

"We are still trying to maintain and keep what our forefathers have done," said René Maduro, who served as synagogue president for 18 years and traces his family to Portugal, 1608. "But we are an isolated community fighting for its survival." To offset the dearth of local simchot, the Snoa is enticing tourists from abroad to hold weddings and b'nai mitzvah in its historic and unforgettable setting.

Ashkenazi Jews settled in Curaçao in the early 1920s, seeking opportunity and escaping pogroms in eastern Europe. They set sail for Latin America but got off in Curaçao, probably by mistake, said Ariel Yeshurun, Israeli-born rabbi of the 63-family Orthodox congregation, Shaarei Tsedek. Others joined the community after the Second World War. The congregation meets in a house in the Mahaai neighborhood and is anticipating the completion of its new building by next summer. Yeshurun speaks impeccable English; he spent four years in Toronto as a child and has a Kansas City-born wife.

Even the Sephardi Snoa holds mostly Ashkenazi services, conducted by Boston-born Rabbi Gerald Zelermyer, who retired from the Emanuel Synagogue in West Hartford, Conn., two years ago. A pipe organ from 1866, recently restored as a gift of the Dutch government, plays throughout. The Torah service continues to be chanted in original Curaçaoan melodies; Maduro recites the blessings for each person honored with an aliyah – in Portuguese.

Zelermyer's wife, Heske (Dutch for Esther), was born and raised in Curaçao but had not lived on the island since she left at the age of 16 to receive a European education in Holland. She later moved to Boston, where she met her husband. "I'm giving back to the people who brought me my wife," said the rabbi. "I can understand and love her more because of my experience here."

Love of the island

No one is more passionate about Curaçao than Heske Zelermyer. She attributes her love of the island not to her Curaçaoan mother, who traces her family back 14 generations to the Capriles family in Italy, but to her Dutch father, who was fascinated with Curaçao's every corner. Zelermyer intersperses personal stories with historical, geological and botanical trivia. One minute she is telling you about the manzanilla tree, with tiny, edible-looking but poisonous apples that warded off the French when they came to conquer the island. The next minute she regales you with the tale of her first known ancestor, a Jewish physician from Udine, Italy, named Joseph Capriles, who begged for atonement in the Office of the Inquisition in Malta for having converted to Islam, embraced Christianity in Trieste, moved to Tunis, converted back to Islam, made his way to Amsterdam and ended up in Curaçao as a Jew.

On the island's wilder western side, where she used to vacation as a child, she points out Dividivi trees whose branches are flattened sideways by the strong trade winds, the blue-tailed "blo-blo" lizard and the varieties of kadushi cacti. She remembers imagining the Christoffel Mountain as the back of a giant dinosaur and, even at age 60, takes child-like delight in the spurts of crashing white spray that shoot up like cannon-fire from the mouth of the inlet called Boca Pistol.

Zelermyer, who speaks fluent Papiementu, the colorful, alliterative and melodious local language, notes that Hebrew is part of the linguistic mix that grew naturally from finding a means to communicate among Curaçao's ethnic groups, now numbering about 50. Papiementu is 70 per cent Spanish, flavored liberally with Portuguese, Dutch, English, Italian, French, native Indian (the first inhabitants) and Luango (the West African tribe that was imported to Curaçao when it was a slave depot). "If a kid is poking his nose, you say, 'Are you searching for chametz?' " she explained. "If someone has a sombre face, you describe it as a 'kara di'Tisha b'Av.' If something breaks, you say, 'b'siman tov.' " The oldest Papiamentu document is a love letter written in 1775 by a Sephardi Jew. Most Curaçaoans also speak English, Dutch and Spanish.

Preserving the past

Zelermyer laments the sickening juxtaposition of the Beth Haim, the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Western Hemisphere, with the oil refinery behind it. The fumes have corroded the inscriptions and carvings on the tombstones so that most are now unreadable. Faint outlines of skulls and crossbones are still
visible, as are biblical scenes that match the deceased's name: Mordecai on a horse on Mordechay Crasto's grave (1716), Jacob's ladder on the grave of Jahacob Correa (1714). The oldest of the 5,000-plus tombstones dates to 1668.

Reproductions of several of the markers are displayed at the Jewish Museum, adjacent to the Snoa, which features a wealth of ritual objects. A silver wedding tray (1728) reflects a distinctive custom: at the ceremony, held in front of the open hechal, the groom smashes a goblet – not by stamping it with his foot, but by throwing it onto the platter at his feet. The brown ink of a Torah scroll signals its age: it has been dated to 1320 and is said to have been smuggled out of Spain after 1492. A black pointer is kept solely for use on the fast day of Tisha b'Av. And then there's a silver filigree hourglass, presumably to time the rabbi's sermon.
More mundane objects mirror daily life: shoe hooks for buttoning and unbuttoning ladies' boots, a wooden form to set gloves back in shape after washing, hand-embroidered handkerchiefs and mother-of-pearl fans, the lace, flapper-type dress of a Curaçaoan lady of society and the white dress and apron of a Yaya, the nanny almost every Jewish family had. Family-tree posters tell the stories of long lineages.

The Maduro family's lineage, on paper nearly 33 feet long, is kept at the S.A.L. (Mongui) Maduro Library, a museum and reference library. It is housed in Rooi Catootje, one of the plantation houses (landhuizen) that dot the island. A "slave bell" outside was rung at daybreak to summon the slaves to tend the sheep and cattle and to work in the vegetable garden, orchards and maize fields. Slavery was abolished in 1863, 10 years after Salomon Maduro bought the house as a gift for his bride, Rebecca Coriel. It became the family's "country" residence. Their son, also named Salomon but nicknamed Mongui (nicknames were de riguer to distinguish children and grandchildren from their predecessors, since they were usually all given the same first names), was an avid collector of Judaica and Dutch Antilleana. The library is now run by 84-year-old Ena Dankmeijer-Maduro, Mongui's only child.

Artifacts and furnishings detail the Jewish Curaçaoan way of life: a Japanese porcelain bowl in which all Maduro babies were given their first bath; paper money that wealthy Jewish families in colonial times printed themselves; a back scratcher made from a real goat's foot, hoof intact; cases filled with black-and-white family photos. One family member, George Maduro, was studying in Holland when the Second World War broke out. He joined the Dutch cavalry, was captured and died in Dachau. In his memory, the family built a miniature "city" close to The Hague called Madurodam.

It feels like home

History aside, Curaçao offers many ways to enjoy the present, like indulging in exquisite and eclectic cuisine. Restaurants often oblige in preparing vegetarian versions of specialties like keshi yena (stuffed cheese) or Indonesian rijsttafel (rice table) if given advance notice. Rooms at the Avila Beach have kitchenettes, allowing you to buy fresh vegetables and fruit at the "floating market" and to cook up your own storm.

Many of Curaçao's residents and entrepreneurs have some Jewish ancestry, even if they themselves are no longer Jewish. Jacob Gelt Dekker, a Dutch businessman whose father is Jewish, built the Kura Hulanda (Dutch Garden) Hotel and Museum from a dilapidated neighborhood, turning 16 run-down homes into romantic Dutch Colonial hotel rooms within walking distance of the Snoa. The anthropological museum showcases African heritage and documents the slave trade. Herbalist and author Dinah Veeris (Green Remedies and Golden Customs), of black, Indian, Dutch and Jewish extraction, found wisdom in herbal medicines. In her herbal garden, Den Paradera (the Place Where You Feel at Home), guides explain the healing qualities of indigenous plants and trees.

For Jewish visitors, Curaçao is indeed, a place where you feel at home, its cultural diversity, natural beauty and Jewish heritage spelling nothing less than Bon Bini, Welcome.

Rahel Musleah is an award-winning journalist and author of Apples and Pomegranates: A Rosh Hashanah Family Seder. Visit www.rahelsjewishindia.com.

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