Overview Timeline of Sephardic Jews in the Americas
Below is a very general timeline. I see three main themes in Sephardic history in the Americas:
(a) The Portuguese Restoration War, expelling the Dutch from Brazil, seeded Jewish communities across the Dutch and British Caribbean, and the first Jews in New York
(b) Later migrations of Sephardim from around the Mediterranean
(c) A largely Ashkenazi-created crypto-Judaism movement in the USA that is undermining and appropriating of Sephardic culture and identity.
The timeline:
- 1492: Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas. Jews expelled from Spain
- 1531: First recorded presence of New Christians in Mexico.
- 1590: The Mexican Inquisition begins targeting New Christians.
- 1624: Dutch capture Bahia, Brazil.
- 1636: Recife, Brazil becomes home to the first synagogue in the Americas.
- 1654: Portuguese recapture Brazil from the Dutch. Jews leave.
- 1654: First group of Jews arrives in New Amsterdam (later New York) from Recife, Brazil.
- 1658: Sephardic community established in Barbados.
- 1662: Sephardic Jews granted rights to settle in Curaçao by Dutch West India Company.
- 1685: Sephardic Jews expelled from French Caribbean colonies.
- 1735: Sephardic Jews establish a community in Saint Thomas (now U.S. Virgin Islands).
- 1739: Congregation Mikvé Israel founded in Curaçao.
- 1819: First synagogue in Argentina, Congregación Israelita de la República Argentina, founded by Sephardic Jews.
- 1820-1821. Inquisition abolished in the Spanish Americas (earlier in some places)
- 1848: Sephardic synagogue Beth-El built in Saint Thomas.
- 1891: Large-scale immigration of Sephardic Jews from Ottoman Empire to Argentina begins.
- 1900s: Sephardic Jews from Syria and Lebanon settle in Mexico City.
- 1910: Sephardic Jews from Turkey and Greece establish communities in Cuba.
- 1920s: Significant Sephardic immigration to Panama from Turkey and North Africa.
- 1940s: Sephardic Jews from North Africa settle in Venezuela.
- 1998. The sephardim.com website implies that many or most Iberian surnames are ‘Jewish’, underpinning the crypto-Judaism movement.
- 2009: Publication of ‘Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean’ created a new myth.
