JEWISH PEOPLE OF BARBADOS TODAY AND THROUGH HISTORY

The Jewish People of Barbados Today and Through History

The entire history of the Barbados since its beginning in 1628, is intertwined with it's Jewish community.  Records reveal the presence of Jews on the island as early as 1647 (R. Ligon).  In 1654 Oliver Cromwell overturned King Edward I’s 1290 Edict of Expulsion when he personally authorized the relocation to Barbados of 300 Sephardic Jews who were fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition in Brazil. 

Some of the wealthiest people of the 17th and 18th century – sugar tycoons – are buried in our cemeteries, along with Jewish pirates and the most travelled rabbi in history up to the invention of railroads, a Sephardic Ḥa-ḥam named Rafael Hayyim Isaac Carigal. This community thrived here for almost 200 years, but then vanished in the early nineteenth century as the cane sugar economy collapsed. The synagogue building, rebuilt after a hurricane in 1831, was sold by Edmund Baeza, the last remaining Sephardi Jew in Barbados, to a law firm in 1927. 

In the 1930’s a handful of Ashkenazi (European) Jews who were fleeing the Nazi Inquisition found refuge in Barbados, and their descendants in 1985 interceded with the government of Barbados to save and restore the synagogue. With the help of the Barbados National Trust and using archival photographs, contractors built an exact replica of the 1831 sanctuary.  

The restored Nidhe Israel Synagogue was rededicated in 1987, one of the oldest such buildings in the Western Hemisphere.  Today, the synagogue is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a popular tourist attraction, with a museum that houses a collection of artifacts and documents related to the history of Jews in Barbados, including Torah scrolls, prayer books, and synagogue fixtures like candelabras and reading lamps. The synagogue is now regularly used by the Barbados Jewish Community to welcome the Sabbath on Friday nights during the tourist season. 

We provide below a basic outline Jewish history in Barbados.  For more comprehensive information, we suggest as a starting point a pair of books by former Barbados resident Simon Kreindler that chronicle both the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities, Peddlers All and The Sephardi Jews of Barbados.

Barbados Historical Markers

 1627 - Barbados claimed by the British.  No aboriginal population.  

1654 - 300 Sephardic (Spanish/Dutch) Jews arrive from Recife, Brazil on ships bearing a complete sugar factory.  In flight from the Portuguese Inquisition, these Jews are admitted to Barbados by the British leader Oliver Cromwell - the first legal settlement of Jews anywhere in the British domains since they were expelled by King Edward 1 in the year 1290. 

1739 - Wedding at Speightstown synagogue ends in dispute with neighbors, triggering only pogrom in Barbados history. Synagogue is burned to ground, Jews are chased by a torch-lit mob.

1750 - Sephardic Jews account for 800 out of a total (white) population of 12,000. Over 400 sugar-processing windmills dot the landscape of Barbados.

1820 - The cane sugar economy collapses as beet sugar becomes available in Europe.

1831 - Hurricane destroys Barbados.  Over 1500 people die, 800 structures are destroyed including the Nidhe Israelsynagogue. 

1833 - The Nidhe Israel synagogue is rebuilt by an optimistic but dwindling Jewish community.

1851 - The last Sephardic wedding is conducted in the synagogue.

1927 - The last remaining Sephardic Jew in Barbados, Edmund Baeza, sells the synagogue building to private parties and it falls into disrepair.

1930s - A few dozen European Ashkenazi Jews, fleeing the Nazi inquisition, arrive in Barbados as refugees, almost all working as peddlers and retail merchants.

1985 - The grandchildren of the 1930's Ashkenazi refugees intervene to prevent the demolition of the old Sephardic synagogue as part of a government redevelopment scheme.

1987 - The BJC raises funds to restore the Nidhe Israel Synagogue to its original 1833 specification, and the government cedes he property to the Barbados National Trust.

1992-1999 - Cemeteries are restored by students of the archaeology depart of the University of West Indies at Cave Hill and Alan Millner, a English stonemason and restorer.

2006 - Museum opens.

2007 - Original Mikvah (baño to the Sephardim) is discovered under a car park adjacent to the cemetery.  Excavation takes two years and the restoration is completed in 2009.

RESOURCES

 

Please consider the following as guidance to help you research the Jewish history of Barbados. This page is for reference and is not meant to be comprehensive.

Here in Barbados the best physical presentation of the history of the Jews in Barbados is to be found at the Museum, www.synagoguehistoricdistrict.com.  Hours are 9 am – 4 pm Monday through Friday.  To arrange a guided tour from a member of the Barbados Jewish Community.

To learn more about the current Jewish community’s events and programs, visit the Barbados Jewish Community Facebook Page. or our website Calendar

Additional Information About the History of Jewish Barbados

Digital Resources

Resources on the history of Ashkenazi Jews in Barbados

Kreindler, Simon. Peddlers All: Stories of the First Ashkenazi Jewish Settlers in Barbados. Toronto: Simon Kreindler, 2017.  Website: www.peddlersall.com

Newman, Joanna Frances. “Nearly the New World: Refugees and the British West Indies, 1933-1945.,” 1998.

Foreign press, 1985-2015. Various articles about the Synagogue Restoration Project activities during the process of the site’s restoration process that also touch upon the life of the Barbados Jewish community during those years. These documents have been digitized as part of the Barbados Synagogue Restoration Project Digital Collection and can accessed here. (Click on “Thumbnails” (page 1 and 2) to see an overview or on “Page Images” or “Page Turner” to click through).

Resources on the history of Sephardic Jews in Barbados

Arbell, Mordechai. “Barbados.” In The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean: The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2002.

Ben-Ur, Aviva. “The Rise of Jewish Merchants Capitalists in the Caribbean: The Triangulation of Barbados, Jamaica and Curaçao.” In A Sefardic Pepper-Pot in the Caribbean, edited by Michael Studenmund-Halévy. Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2016.

Bowden, Martyn. “Disasters, Revolutions, and Discrimination in an Era of Economic Depression 1766-1796: The World of the Sephardic Jews of Bridgetown, Barbados.” The Journal of the Barbados Museum & Historical SocietyLXII (December 2016).

———. “Houses, Inhabitants and Levies: Place of the Sephardic Jews of Bridgetown, Barbados, 1679-1729.” The Journal of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society LVII (December 2011).

———. “Levels of Discrimination and the Making of the Swan Street Jewish District in Bridgetown, 1725-1766.” The Journal of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society LXI (December 2015).

Gallery, Wyatt, Stanley Mirvis, and Jonathan D Sarna. “Barbados.” In Jewish Treasures of the Caribbean: The Legacy of Judaism in the New World, 2016.

Leibman, Laura Arnold, and Sam May. “Making Jews: Race, Gender, and Identity in Barbados in the Age of Emancipation.” Jewish American History 99, no. 1 (2015).

Miller, Derek. “‘A Medley of Contradictions’: The Jewish Diaspora in St Eustatius and Barbados.” Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects, January 1, 2013.

Schreuder, Yda. “A True Global Community: Sephardic Jews, the Sugar Trade, and Barbados in the Seventeenth Century.” The Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society L (December 2004).

Shilstone, E. M. Monumental Inscriptions in the Burial Ground of the Jewish Synagogue at Bridgetown, Barbados. Transcribed with an Introduction by E.M. Shilstone. Pp. xxxiii. 205. American Jewish Historical Society: New York, 1956.

Studenmund-Halévy, Michael. “More than Images: SefardiSpulchral Iconography in the Jewish Cemetery in Bridgetown, Barbados.” In A Sefardic Pepper-Pot in the Caribbean, edited by Michael Studenmund-Halévy. Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2016.

Watson, Karl. “Shifting Identities: Religion, Race, and Creolization among the Sephardi Jews of Barbados, 1654-1900.” In The Jews in the Caribbean, edited by Jane Gerber. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2014.

———. “The Sephardic Jews of Bridgetown.” In Beyond the Bridge: Lectures Commemorating Bridgetown’s 375th Anniversary, edited by Woodville Marshall and Pedro Welch. Barbados Museum & Historical Society and The Department of History and Philosophy, UWI, Cave Hill, 2005.