Synagogues in the Sun

During my stay in the Caribbean, I visited synagogues on three islands: Barbados, Curaçao and Jamaica. Each one was originally built by the Sephardim who were descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had fled the Inquisition for Amsterdam, went to Recife, Brazil for a short sojourn and continued on to the islands of the Caribbean in the mid-17th century. The grave stones in the cemeteries were fascinating with depictions of trees being cut down by a hand with an axe, heads of cherubs and even the skull and bones that we associate with pirates. Many of the inscriptions were in old Portuguese, Hebrew and in the case of Barbados, old English. The Friday night services on each of the islands  were different, the Bajan Shabbat service was modeled on what is now standard Conservative Ashkenazi ritual as all the Sephardim had either left the island or intermarried by 1929 and Polish Jews arrived in the 1930s taking over the community. The Jamaican service took place in a huge, white colonial style synagogue and seemed to be influenced by the British with its sermon from above and organ. Of all the synagogues, I was most fascinated by the one in Curaçao. It had included old Portuguese during parts of the service, was completely egalitarian and let women participated in the reading of the Torah, had what looked like a very successful Hebrew school for children and a nice museum. The pictures of the two grave stones were actually copies of the real ones in a cemetery that unfortunately is falling in disrepair due to its proximity to an oil refinery. It was sad to see the writing literally burned off the stones by the chemicals in the air. The pictures above were taken in Curaçao and include a view of the sand covered floor of the actual synagogue as well as two of the most interesting headstones. There is much more to be explored about the "Synagogues in the Sun" as I call them and I plan to continue this discussion in a blog specifically devoted to the topic. Look for it soon.