eSefarad Noticias del Mundo Sefaradi
Our friend Josette Capriles Goldish announce us the publication and availability of his “Once Jews: Stories of Caribbean Sephardim”.
The book is fully annotated and is based on archival work in various Caribbean locations, the Netherlands, and the United States. The author was born in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles and is a descendant of Sephardim who have lived on the island since 1659. As such, the book benefits from her unusual access to private papers, memoirs, and letters.
The book is of particular interest to scholars and researchers of Sephardic Jewry, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The first part of the text presents the history of the steady disappearance of Caribbean Sephardim by following the migratory paths of individual Sephardic Jews of the nineteenth century in the Caribbean. During this era of political and economic upheaval, the region experienced waves of migration away from stagnant economies, revolutions, and religious intolerance. The Sephardic Jews of the Dutch island of Curaçao were active participants in this changing environment. They left Curaçao’s recessionary economy in search of better opportunities in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; Coro, Venezuela; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Barranquilla, Colombia; and many other Caribbean ports. Here they established themselves as retailers, traders, politicians, poets, industrial entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, each contributing in their own way to the economic and cultural growth of the countries that became their homes. Over time, they and their descendants fully assimilated into their host communities. An analysis of this assimilatory process is presented in the second part of the book.
The author is currently a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute in Waltham, Massachusetts.
This book can be purchased inthis link at Amazon.com or directly from the author by contacting her at jgoldish@brandeis.edu.
