History of the Jews in Suriname

After the arrival of the first Jews in 1639, as part of the tobacco-growing Marshall Creek settlement, a ketubah or Jewish marriage act, was recorded by a rabbi in 1643.

Many of these were part of a large-scale immigration of the Jewish plantocracy of Pernambuco, who had been instrumental in the innovation and industrialization of the cultivation and processing of sugarcane, including the use of slave labor.

[3] A third group of Jewish immigrants came 1664, after their expulsion from the Pernambucan capital city of Recife and then French Guiana, led by David Cohen Nassy.

[4] According to the Encyclopedia of Latin America, "Suriname was one of the most important centers of the Jewish population in the Western Hemisphere, and Jews there were planters and slaveholders.".

[5] On August 17, 1665, the English formally granted Jews in Suriname freedom of religion including the right to build synagogues and religious schools, as well as an independent court of justice and private civic guard under their exclusive control, making the Surinamese Jews the only diaspora community with "complete political autonomy" prior to the foundation of Israel in 1948.

The community declined in the wake of the French Cassard expedition in 1712 and the levies he instituted, competition from beet sugar, and attacks by Maroons—slaves who had managed to escape from the plantations into the jungle, interacted with local Native American tribes, and now raided the holdings of their former masters as free men.

[10] Although initially most Afro-Surinamese people entered Judaism through conversion, by the end of the eighteenth century, many members of the Black Jewish community had been Jews from birth for several generations.

[9] One historian has suggested, however, that by the end of the eighteenth century the majority of Jews in Suriname may have had at least one African ancestor, even if they were considered white at the time.

[9] Famous Surinamese artists and figures with Jewish ancestry include Maria Louisa de Hart, Augusta Curiel, and Josef Nassy.

For example, in 1857, a German-Jewish journalist interviewed several African American women who worshipped at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York who had immigrated from Suriname.

During the 17th and 18th centuries forced inclusion was commonplace in both the Portuguese and High German Jewish communities and the rigid identity boundaries were often supported by legislation.

Expenses tended to increase as a result of: a hefty tribute levied by the Cassard expedition; the 1773 collapse of Dietz, a major Amsterdam sugarcane refinery, in the wake of the previous year's financial crisis in the United Kingdom; and the unsustainable accrual of real estate loans.

Security conditions deteriorated as a result of ongoing Maroon Wars, while the growth of Paramaribo as the colony's exclusive trading port, nearer to the coast, acted to pull Jews away from Jodensavanne.