Curacao’s Jews celebrate community’s 350th birthday
BY LINDA BROCKMAN Miami Herald May 9, 2001 When a glass breaks in the Caribbean island of Curacao, both Jewish and non-Jewish islanders shout the Papiamentu word beshimanto. It comes from the Hebrew word b’siman tov (“with good tidings”), which is said after the bridegroom breaks the glass.
Now the word has been integrated into Curacaoan culture.
Curacao’s Jewish community, which established itself 350 years ago, has also been integrated within the local culture of this island of the Netherlands Antilles. In 1651, a group of Portuguese Sephardic families settled there and formed Congregation Mikve Israel (“hope of Israel”) in the capital city of Willemstad. Last week in Willemstad’s downtown area, ancestors of those original Jews — along with a few hundred well-wishers from all over the world — celebrated 350 years in Curacao.
“Curacao is a Jewish vortex,” said Rabbi Michael Tayvah, spiritual leader at Mikve Israel-Emanuel (two Sephardic congregations in Curacao merged in 1964). “It sucks you in.”
Others have described the island — which the natives say is virtually void of anti-Semitism — as a “magnet” that draws them back. That same force that keeps Jews in Curacao also keeps Curacao in the Jews. There are 500 Jews living on the island. The majority, about 350, are of Sephardic descent.
“We have a saying here that translates to having your navel buried in the ground,” said Michele Russel-Capriles, whose family has been immersed in Mikve Israel-Emanuel and Curacaoan history for 10 generations. There is a Curacaoan custom, which Capriles followed when her daughter was born two years ago, of burying a child’s umbilical cord in the ground.
“It makes you a part of the soil,” she said.
The original 10 to 12 families, whose ancestors had escaped the oppression of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, had found safe haven in Amsterdam, and believed they could find the same political, religious and social freedom provided by the Dutch kingdom in Curacao. In 1732, the Jews of Curacao — the oldest continuous Jewish community in the Americas — built the majestic amarillo (yellow-colored) building which is still used today.
Adjacent to the snoa (synagogue in Papiamentu, the local language), is the Jewish museum that tells the history of the people and some of their unusual customs. For example, when Curacaoan Jews marry, instead of stepping on the glass, the bridegroom throws it against a silver tray to break it.
SAND FLOOR
The two-story Mikve-Israel Emanuel, with its blue stained-glass windows, dark mahogany paneling, and brass chandeliers, seats 600. The most unusual feature of the traditional structure — built with the pulpit, or tebah (Sephardic word for bimah), in the center — is the three inches of soft, white sand on its floor.
Each year, 20,000 pairs of feet (tourists and congregants) touch that sand, which is raked every week before services, said Rene Maduro, Mikve Israel Emmanuel’s president. But because of the volume of sand involved — eight cubic meters — it was replaced only once since 1982.
“It’s great,” joked Tayvah, “We don’t have to replace the carpet.”
While sweeping the floor is not a problem, the oldest congregation in the Americas does share many of the same issues and concerns as other affiliates of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF), Tayvah said.
“Recently the congregation voted to become fully in harmony with other JRF communities by allowing full ritual egalitarianism [at least for most of the services],” Tayvah said.
“We are small — only about 120 families live on the island while another 75 maintain memberships from abroad. We are trying to instill a sense of Jewish continuity in a remote location while preserving the connection to our Jewish past.”
NEW RABBI
Despite the “Jewish vortex” Tayvah mentions when speaking of his home for the last three years, the 39-year-old rabbi is leaving Curacao this summer to take on another position in the United States.
In the meantime, this island synagogue is looking for a new leader.
“It’s a great learning ground for a rabbi because he has the opportunity to be completely involved in the synagogue,” said Mireya Gonzalez, vice chairman of the 350th Anniversary Commemoration Committee, who developed a Hebrew School curriculum to teach students from age 3 to 13 about their Jewish history on dushi korsow (sweet Curacao in Papiamentu).
“The rabbi who comes here has to do everything for the congregation. He does not have an assistant or a study rabbi or a hazzan to help him with his chores. He has to teach at the Hebrew school [which has 40 students], edit the monthly bulletin, direct the choir, prepare the bar and bat mitzvah children, and hold adult education classes. He gets an experience that, I believe, he cannot get anywhere else.”
In 1963, under the leadership of Rabbi Simeon Maslin, Mikve Israel, which was then Orthodox, merged with Temple Emanuel, a Reform congregation. Today, the congregation is Reconstructionist.
Maslin, who was there through 1967, also initiated adult education classes and got the children and teens — now adults — involved in both their Jewish and Curacaoan heritage.
`CARDIAC JEWS’
Sheila Delvalle-Seibald was 11 in 1965 when she stood in front of Mikve Israel Emanuel’s chanukkiah (now on display in the Jewish Museum) with Rabbi Maslin and other teens and promised to continue the tradition with their children.
“So many of us are cardiac Jews,” said Seibald, whose father is a past president of the synagogue. “We say, `I feel that I am Jewish because my heart tells me so.’ Rabbi Maslin brought Judaism to a new level. He brought the religious meaning back to the youth.”
Seibald, 47, stayed in her native Curacao and has carried on that tradition with her own children. Now that her own daughter is college-age, Seibald will give her the freedom to make her own decision.
“They have to search for themselves. They are looking for a place to belong. There is an economic struggle on the island and limited career opportunities here .?.?. And if she stays here, who will she date?”
The synagogue faces the same problems as congregations in the United States — and then some. With a limited amount of eligible Jewish men and women on the island, it is more difficult to marry within the faith. However, the Sephardim are more tolerant of intermarriage, said one resident, who married a non-Jew.
While Curacaoan teens Christine Cheis and Daniela Cohen Henriquez are heavily involved in the local chapter of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, they said the numbers are small.
“Everyone is related, or we feel very close,” said Daniela, 17, BBYO past president. “But that’s what makes it the kind of place where I want to raise my own kids.”
LIKE SIBLINGS
Having grown up so closely, Jewish teens feel more like siblings than potential mates — especially, Daniela says, with only two Jewish high school boys in their age group.
Christine, 16, current BBYO president, feels she is more likely to meet a spouse when she goes to college, but she is confident that she will make an effort to return to Curacao.
“You never know who you’ll fall in love with,” said Christine, whose grandfather came to Curacao before World War II. “But I want to come back. I like it here. I know everyone. All of my friends and family are here.”
Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, guest panelist at a seminar called “The Threat to Survival of Small and Remote Jewish Community in the 21st Century and the Legacy That Can be Passed on to Future Generations,” summed up what makes a Jewish community survive and thrive in three elements: pride, devotion and learning.
“You have those here,” Plaut told the hundreds of residents, out-of-town relatives, delegates synagogues all over the world, scholars, cantors, rabbis, and journalists, which met at the World Trade Center last month in Curacao. “Those factors are alive and strong. That is how I know you have a future.”
EXODUS
Another challenge that has plagued the Jewish community of Curacao for the last few generations is the trend of its teens to go to college in the United States or Holland, and there, meet a future spouse. Many opt to stay in places such as New York, Boston or San Francisco.
Daniel Abady, 33, is the only one of three siblings who has returned. After high school, he attended Brandeis University, where he met his wife, Myriam, a native of Venezuela. Today the couple is raising their two children, with a third on the way, in Curacao.
“The majority don’t come back,” said Abady, who maintains his family’s retail clothing business. “A small percentage come back, but there are more opportunities in the United States than living here on a small island.”
He said he won’t pressure his kids to return. “I’m looking out for what’s best for them. They’ll have to go abroad to study. If they come back, God bless them. If they stay abroad, great.”
With Myriam’s Orthodox background, she felt more comfortable at the island’s Orthodox synagogue, Shaarei Tzedek. She and her husband — whose family have been at Mikve-Israel Emanuel for generations — maintain a duel membership.
“We want our children to be exposed to as much of the Jewish culture and education here as possible,” said Myriam, 31, who keeps kosher in the home. (Some local supermarkets carry kosher foods, but Danny often visits a kosher butcher in Miami Beach.)
GOOD AND BAD
The couple admits that the closeness of Jewish life in Curacao has both good points, and bad. While everyone knows each other, social opportunities for adults and children are limited.
After high school, Michele Russel-Capriles (Russel is her married name; Sephardic tradition is to put the maiden name last) had every intention of leaving the little island and making her way to the big city.
It wasn’t until she left that she realized that her home was a paradise.
“I brought a friend back from college and he said, `Look at the water. Look at the different colors of blue.’ Until you go away, you don’t realize. It took the experience of seeing my own island through different eyes .?.?. Curacao is a magnet. Once it’s in your system, you come back.”
Now her daughter is chasing iguanas in the backyard, just as she did as a child.
“There is such a carefree community here,” said Russel, who began a program in the Curacao school system to make the local non-Jews more aware of Curacao’s Jewish history. “You would never see that in the States. People don’t just drop in there. Here, they still do.”
