Jewish resilience in Barbados: The Nidhe Israel Synagogue

Considering that Jews were prohibited from living in Florida until 1763 little synagogue on Cordova Street is an anomaly.

By ROBERTA SANDLER
Nidhe Israel Synagogue 521 (photo credit: ROBERTA SANDLER)
Nidhe Israel Synagogue 521
(photo credit: ROBERTA SANDLER)
Broad Street, the main commercial center in Bridgetown, Barbados, is teeming with island vacationers and day-tripping passengers from cruise ships. As they amble in and out of the thoroughfare’s shopping malls and marketplaces, most of the tourists are unaware of Nidhe Israel Synagogue, mikve and museum, nestling on a side street called Synagogue Lane.
For visitors who stumble upon the complex or who have been advised to add it to their list of Barbadian tourist attractions, understanding the significance of the synagogue’s presence is not possible without knowing Barbados’s resilient Jewish history.
As early as 1628, at least one Sephardi Jew was living on the Caribbean island, which had been colonized by the British a year earlier (it remained a British colony until its independence in 1966).
In 1654, after a battle pitting the Dutch against the Portuguese, the Dutch Republic relinquished its ownership of the northern portion of Brazil, including the capital city of Recife. About 2,500 Dutch Jews living in the city fled Brazil’s Inquisition and sought refuge elsewhere. Many of them found safe haven in Holland. Some of them sailed to Curaçao, and some sailed to Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, the easternmost island of the West Indies.
When Raphael de Mercado arrived in Bridgetown, he, like many of his fellow Dutch Jews, brought his knowledge of windmill technology and sugar production. By sharing their methods with local planters, these Jews enabled sugar plantations to flourish throughout the island. Windmills powered cane-grinding machines on these plantations. By the close of the 17th century, there were more than 400 sugar mills in Barbados, and beyond the profits of the slave trade, Britain reaped huge financial benefits from the island’s sugar trade. (Per square mile, Barbados claims to have more windmills than any place in the world except for Holland.)
The island’s early immigrant Jews faced varying degrees of discrimination. The plantations were slave-driven, and Jews were restricted to no more than one slave apiece (this act was repealed in 1706). Unable to operate their own sugar plantations, many of the Jewish settlers became merchants.
In downtown Bridgetown, they put up stalls from which they sold fabrics, imported foods, tableware and other items. So many of them lived on Swan Street (parallel to Broad Street) that it became known as Jew Street.
To integrate into Barbadian society, some Jews changed their last names. Many of their Jewish descendants, bearing Christian surnames such as DaCosta, Shannon, Lindo and Pinto, married black women (Errol Barrow, the island’s former prime minister, claimed that he was descended from Barbadian Jews).
Barbados's earliest Jews were not permitted to worship in public, so they held services in private homes, but by 1654, Jewish immigrants had built a synagogue in Bridgetown, and they called their house of worship Kahal Kadosh Nidhe Israel.
The number of Jews living in the country during subsequent decades varies according to different sources. One source cites 184 Jews living in St. Michael’s Parish – the most populated of the island’s 11 parishes, and the location of Bridgetown – in 1680. Another source cites 260 Jews living in Barbados in 1681.
By 1750, out of a population of 10,000, Bridgetown was home to 800 Jews. For them, Nidhe Israel, one of the two oldest synagogues erected in the Western hemisphere (the other is Mikve Israel in Curaçao), was the epicenter of Jewish life. By 1820, the island’s Jewish community was enjoying prosperity and freedom, with all previous political and religious restrictions removed.
Unfortunately a hurricane blasted through Barbados in 1831. It devastated the island, killing 1,500 residents and destroying many buildings, including several churches and the original Nidhe Israel Synagogue. Thanks to the fundraising efforts of 90 local Jews, a new Nidhe Israel, built from rubble stone, was completed two years later on the site of the original.
On April 1, 1833, the editor of the Barbados Globe wrote about the eager turnout of “the people of the Hebrew Nation in Bridgetown” for the ceremonial opening of the new synagogue four days earlier. The 610-square-meter building was 11.2 m. high and had a balustrade parapet all around so that the roof was barely visible.
In his commentary, the editor described the synagogue: “The windows were lancet shaped and tastefully harmonized with the proportions of the building side that, covered with a Gothic hood, led to the gallery within; the whole of the exterior was lightly tinged of stone-colour and scored in blocks; the appearance altogether was classical and chaste...
“The interior [corresponded] with the outer appearance; a light and tasteful gallery occupied three sides of the interior supported by neat Doric columns. The Reader’s desk in the body of the edifice was sufficiently elevated to give a conspicuous view of the person officiating. From the ceiling was suspended at each corner in front of the gallery a single brass chandelier of eight lights, and in the centre, one of similar kind containing twenty-four.
“The area of the building was paved in alternate squares of black and white marble, and the ceiling, painted in relief, produced a most pleasing effect, as well from the artist-like manner in which it was executed as from the chasteness of its design. It was computed to hold about 300 persons.”
Ironically, by the time the new Nidhe Israel was built, the local Jewish population had declined. In 1848, the synagogue had only 38 congregants, about half of Barbados’s Jews. By 1900, the Jewish population had dwindled to 17. The country’s sugar-cane economy had long ago lost its vigor, and many of the island’s Jews relocated – mainly to England, South America and the United States, particularly Philadelphia.
The Jews of Barbados had begun performing acts of charity in the 1700s, including contributing to the rebuilding of a synagogue in St. Eustatius and the building of one in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as Congregation Mickve Israel in Philadelphia.
By 1925, there was only one practicing Jew in Barbados, and he could not maintain the synagogue. He sold the building (but not the adjoining cemetery) and gave the proceeds – plus many of the artifacts – to the appointed trustee, Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. Nidhe Israel was subsequently used as a law library and a warehouse.
In 1930 or 1931, merchant Moses Altman emigrated from Poland to Barbados with his wife and five children and was followed by about 40 Ashkenazi families.
In 1982, the Barbados government compulsorily acquired the synagogue and planned to demolish it and remove the graves in order to build a new Supreme Court on the site. Altman’s grandson, Paul, who was born and raised on the island, was determined to save the property. He met with then-prime minister Tom Adams, who was sympathetic to his request – with one caveat.
“If you can find the money to restore the building, we will give you the building,” he told Altman.
Appealing to individuals and organizations, Altman spearheaded a successful $1 million synagogue restoration project. The building was saved from demolition by individual donations and by contributions from the Commonwealth Jewish Congress in Britain and the American and Canadian Jewish Congresses. It was reconsecrated as a synagogue for use by the island’s practicing Jews – about 16 families.
Altman knew that a local woman had the two original lamps from the reader’s desk, but when he asked her for their return, she refused, saying that they were a family heirloom. A female Jewish acquaintance of Altman’s then came to the rescue. She visited the woman and recounted the true story of how, at the age of seven, she had accompanied her father to the synagogue on the day its contents were being sold. Tearfully he had made his little daughter promise to do everything possible throughout her life to reclaim the treasures that the synagogue was losing. Touched by the story, the woman handed the lamps to Altman’s acquaintance.
Where he was unable to reclaim synagogue items that had been dispersed, he had replicas made. The Barbados Museum had an original bench and a clock from the synagogue, both of which it returned.
The restoration included laying tiles on the floor (which was probably originally covered with sand), raising the ceiling, rebuilding the women’s gallery and reproducing the woodwork and wood furnishings.
Friday night services are now conducted by lay leaders, and during holiday periods, Jewish tourists attend services.
NIDHE ISRAEL’S adjacent graveyard contains several hundred tombstones. Many of them are horizontal and bear Portuguese symbols and inscriptions. The tombstone of David Raphael de Mercado is triangular and features a floral design and Moorish-influenced motifs.
Other tombstones include those of Deborah Burgos and Abraham Eliyahu da Fonseca Valle, who were buried there in 1658; Rachel Lopez (died 1723); Sarah Leah de Campos Pereira (died 1736); Dr. Abraham Nunes (died 1736); and Abraham Messiah (died 1792). The Ashkenazi tombstones stand upright and bear English transcriptions. Paul Altman’s father, Henry, is buried in the graveyard.
The one thing that nobody expected to find was what lay beneath part of the synagogue’s parking lot. In 2008, an excavation unearthed a stone step. Further digging revealed a stone staircase ascending to a serenely beautiful, spring-fed, full-immersion stone mikve that was probably built around 1651, predating the synagogue.
Next to the synagogue, there is a coral stone building, circa 1750, that may have served as a religious school. In 2008, it reopened as the Nidhe Israel Museum, which chronicles the Jewish contribution to Barbados via rare artifacts, interactive exhibits and glass display cases on the walls and embedded in the floor.
The museum offers this piece of information about the mikve: “One of the last ritual uses of this mikvah must have been the conversion of Louisa Dacarnasion prior to her marriage to Phillip Rubens.
On 2 February, 1851, Rabbi Cohen testified that ‘Louisa Dacarnasion was made a Jewess by me on the above date according to the Law of Moses and Israel and her name is now Sarah bat Abraham.’” Among the museum’s artifacts are the cast-iron gates that originally opened into the graveyard and a circa-1696 hanukkia bearing the names of three members of the Jewish community: Valverde, Kodes and Abraham. One exhibit includes a photo of former slave Nancy Daniels, who was a housekeeper for a Sephardi family in Bridgetown. She adopted the family’s surname and died at the age of 116 in 1871.
On a warm spring day in Bridgetown, which today has about 80,000 residents, it is raining, but that doesn’t stop Fred and Henriette Ensel from walking the short distance from their cruise ship (Celebrity Cruises’ Constellation) to Nidhe Israel. In Amsterdam, where the Ensels live, their friends told them to be sure to visit the synagogue and museum when the ship made port in Bridgetown.
Impressed by the ethereal beauty of the synagogue and mikve, the Ensels approach the museum’s manager, Celso Brewster, and ask him a few questions. Mindful of what she describes as “severe anti-Semitism” in Holland, Henriette Ensel seems surprised and dismayed that the synagogue has no security in place.
“Everyone is always surprised that we do not have armed guards at the synagogue gates,” Brewster says. “While I will not go as far as saying that we will never have need to have armed security – God forbid that we will ever need to – we do not have open anti-Semitism in Barbados. Barbados is home to several dozen religions. Most are respectful and tolerant to each other.”
Brewster makes one additional point: The synagogue is important because it is a reminder of what the Jews did for Barbados.
“Without their contributions,” he adds, “who knows what Barbados would be like today?”