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Brief History of the Curaçao Jewish community

Curaçao’s Jewish community was established in 1651 by twelve Sephardic families who had fled the Inquisition and the forced conversion to Christianity in Spain and Portugal. Here, on this Dutch island and with gratitude to the Dutch Royal House of Orange, they found religious freedom. 

That original community was expanded with the arrival of some seventy additional Sephardic colonists in 1659. Among the first colonist families were several whose names still resound today among members of our Jewish community. Among these families was also the Touro family after which the oldest synagogue in the United States, the Touro synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, is named. They soon consecrated their burial ground near their plantations in the Joden Kwartier, or Jewish Quarter, which was located on the north-western coast of the Schottegat bay in an area occupied today by the oil refinery. The oldest gravestone at Beth Haim Bleinheim dated back to 1668. These first colonists also founded their first house of worship, likely a family home or a shed attached to a house, in the fields near their plantations.

The expanding Curaçao Jewish community consecrated their first city synagogue in 1674. The location of that building is not known but it must have been within the walled colonial city of Willemstad. They soon outgrew that building and moved to new quarters in 1690 and then again in 1696. These were probably all family homes, which were converted for worship service use. The first building specifically constructed as a Jewish house of worship in Willemstad was consecrated in 1703 on the very site where you are now standing. As the needs of the community grew, so too its synagogue had to expand. The 1703 building was demolished in 1730, making room for the building you see in front of you. This synagogue, our Snoa, was consecrated in 1732. The interior, which you will soon behold, models the “Esnoga”, the Portuguese-Israelite Synagogue of Amsterdam, our mother synagogue, which is only 57 years older than our own.

The Mikvé Israel congregation was founded in 1651, its name, “Hope of Israel”, reflecting the messianic fever that reigned in that period among especially Spanish & Portuguese Jews who fled the Iberian peninsula to find religious freedom in the Americas. You likely noticed that we refer to our synagogue as the Snoa.  The word “Snoa” comes from the word “Esnoga” as the Amsterdam Synagogue is called or from the word “Sinagoga” in Portuguese which is a major component of our local vernacular Papiamentu.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, two hundred years after its establishment, a schism resulted in more liberal thinking members leaving the congregation and founding their own Reform community, Temple Emanu-El. Their house of worship is found a couple of blocks south of the Snoa, built in an architectural style which reflects the house of worship at that time of New York City’s Reform Congregation Emanu-El after which it would be named. One hundred years later, in 1964, the two Sephardic congregations merged and became today’s Mikvé Israel-Emanuel which is affiliated with both the Reconstruct Judaism Federation and the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Mikvé Israel-Emanuel is one of very few Liberal Jewish communities around the world which continue to identify itself and major parts of its ritual as Sephardic.

About half of the Snoa’s current membership can trace their ancestors to the early settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Mikvé Israel-Emanuel today is an egalitarian congregation which follows Liberal Jewish ritual. Its Shabbat morning Torah service maintains many of the traditions of its Spanish & Portuguese past. These include prayers still said in Portuguese, including a prayer for the health of the Dutch King and Queen and our Governor; until the middle of the nineteenth century Portuguese was the common language of the Curaçao Sephardic Jewish community.

Ashkenazi Jews began immigrating to Curacao from Eastern Europe during the late 1920s, mostly from a border area between today’s Romania and Russia. Some also came from Poland. In 1932 the Ashkenazi Jews founded a social center (Club Union) and their own sports club. A permanent synagogue did not come until much later, in 1959. It was called ‘Shaarei Tsedek’, Gates of Righteousness, and was located in a villa at Scharlooweg 39-41, near the center of Willemstad. Until 1959 services were conducted in different locations. Many of the Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe came from very traditional homes, and from the outset new congregation maintained services in the Orthodox ritual. In the mid-1980’s, the Ashkenazi Congregation moved to hold services in the former home of a member of the congregation, located in the residential neighborhood of Mahaai. In 2006 a long-awaited dream finally became true with the consecration of a new shul, an architectural masterpiece, in the Mahaai residential neighborhood. Today the Orthodox Shaarei Tsedek is a vibrant Jewish community affiliated to the Chabad Movement.

Today, there are fewer than 200 Jewish families living in Curaçao, which translates into approximately 300 Jews.

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