JEWS OF THE CARIBBEAN: One of the disadvantages of moving offices is having to sort through and throwing out accumulated papers. One of the advantages is the papers you find. I thought this was interesting.

From the New York Times, March 27, 2005:

...his bar mitzvah took place at the United Netherlands Portuguese Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel in Willemstad, Curaçao, the island north of Venezuela that is an autonomous part of the Netherlands and home to the oldest continuously operating synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. There, the blanket of soft white sand that coats the floor commemorates the clandestine means by which forcefully Christianized Jews in Inquisition-era Spain and Portugal continued to conduct Jewish prayers.

The shul has one of the three oldest Sifrei Torah in the world, dating from 1320,--and a rich history:

Subjected to forced conversion and the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, Sephardic Jews sought refuge among the relatively tolerant Dutch and on their even more liberal island outpost in the Caribbean, which Holland seized from Spain in 1634. Jews settled on Curaçao in 1651, three years before the first Jews reached America. They dominated the island's shipping and trade, and by the 18th century formed more than half of Curaçao's white population.

The community grew so wealthy that its contributions sustained fledgling Jewish communities in Colonial America. To this day, Yom Kippur services at Shearith Israel, a Sephardic synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and the oldest congregation in the United States, features a special prayer of gratitude to the Curaçao community.

Interesting stuff.
And I still have 2 more boxes of papers to go through.

Update: Soccer Dad notes that there is a more current article about 'Jews in the Caribbean': In Cuba, Finding a Tiny Corner of Jewish Life

Technorati Tag: Curacao and Mikvé Israel-Emanuel and The Inquisition and Sephardim.