The Jewish Community Of Early Colonial Nevis

"In the 1990s, Michelle Terrell set out to study the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in Charlestown, the capital of the former British West Indian colony of Nevis. Islanders led her to a spot that traditionally had been identified as the site of a seventeenth-century Jewish synagogue located near an alley named "Jews Walk," which led to a cemetery with headstones bearing inscriptions in Hebrew, English, and Portuguese. After four seasons of digging, Terrell had unearthed an ample number and intriguing assortment of archaeological remains - none of them ecclesiastical or characteristic of synagogues." "Terrell persisted in her efforts to pinpoint the true location of the vanished synagogue, working at odds with cherished oral traditions and with local political practices. Eventually, she was able to use archived land records to reconstruct the layout of the entire Jewish community and to identify her original excavation site as the location of a villa belonging to an English planter. She was also able to establish that the Nevis Jews were a vibrant and important enclave within the British West Indies, to compare their community to other colonial-period Jewish enclaves on other Caribbean islands, and to place them within the global context of the Sephardic diaspora. Her work challenges the views of past scholars who have portrayed the Caribbean islands as peaceful havens for Iberian Jews who fled the Spanish inquisition, suggesting instead that Jewish daily life in British colonial society was constantly challenged and under pressure." "Terrell's account of her documentary expedition provides both an astute professional appraisal of a Jewish Caribbean community and a lively personal record of her pursuit of multiple lines of evidence. Readers who view this saga over her shoulder will discover a portrait of how historical archaeologists do their jobs."--Jacket.

שנה

2004

שפה

English

הוצאה

University Press of Florida

מהדורות

1

עמודים

182

ISBN

9780813027869

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata