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Points of View
"New York was Still New Amsterdam, a Dutch ColonyWe are about to commemorate an important anniversary in American history. It was 350 years ago, at the end of July 1654, that the bark St. Catherine arrived at the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. The tiny, three-masted ship carried 23 passengers: four adult men, six women, and 13 children.Their journey from the southern Caribbean Sea had taken several months, with pirates intercepting them along the way and stopovers at Cuba, Jamaica and Martinique where Dutch colonists bound for North America joined them temporarily. Unlike the Dutch Calvinists, this particular group of travelers was distinguished by their poverty (their clothes were tatters and initially they couldn't redeem the personal belongings they had shipped) and family names (Lombroso, Mercado, Nunes, Faro, Levy, Dias).Dutch authorities, led by the governor, Peter Stuveysant, did not welcome them. Stuveysant, a nasty martinet who lost a leg in the Netherlands' conflicts with Great Britain, fretted the newcomers would become a burden when winter arrived.The senior ecclesiastical authority, Dom Johannes Megapolensis, complained to his elders in Amsterdam of "godless rascals" from a "deceitful race" who might encourage "abominable thought" and compromise the security of the colony. His concerns were realized in 1667 when the Dutch settlement, perched between the Battery and Wall Street on Manhattan Island, was lost in another war with the British, who renamed the outpost New York.The 23 passengers from the St. Catherine were, of course, not the architects of some imperial design. But they are noteworthy for other reasons. As their names suggest (and the insults directed at them confirm), the 23 were Jews, but probably not the first Jews to settle in North America. There may have been Marranos among the Spanish at St. Augustine in 1565, several in the Virginia colony after 1621, and a man named Jacob Barsimson living in New Amsterdam when the 23 arrived in July 1654.The 23 are important because they embodied the essence of the American Dream. Like every immigrant to this land, they carried with them the legacy of oppression. Somewhere in the old country they had suffered from fear and brutality, overlords who enslaved their ancestors and kept their people in poverty, night riders who raped and massacred, and "men of god" who sanctioned the whole mess.If not the 23 Jews aboard the St. Catherine, another 23 would have set out for New Amsterdam/New York long before the summer of 1654.Their journey had begun hundreds of years earlier when the Greeks and Romans destroyed the first commonwealth that proclaimed the transcendence of human rights. Their ancestors made stops in Babylonia and Byzantium before enriching the culture of Spain and Portugal for a millennium. And when the bigot monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella attempted to ensnare Jews they previously wanted to expel, some sought liberty in the frigid climes of Lithuania and Poland. Others created cities in Peru and Mexico -- until the Inquisitors again caught up with them. Then they moved again -- to Recife, a city of Jews in the jungles of Brazil between 1625 and 1654, in Surinam and the Guyanas, and by 1650 to the island of Curaçao just off the coast of Venezuela.Curaçao is a pleasant little island that has lost the battle to the neighboring island of Aruba for tourist dollars. But it once served as a major port for the Dutch West Indies Co. and Jews prospered in every aspect of its trade.The oldest synagogue in the Western Hemisphere stands here in Willemstad, its crystal white sand floor testifying to the need of New Christians/Marranos to offer their Hebrew prayers in a muffled voice for fear of provoking their enemies. The principal Jewish cemetery on Curaçao consists of hundreds of raised cenotaphs with exquisite carvings that tell the accomplishments of the Jews dating to the 17th century on that island.After all these years, one would think that here, in the middle of nowhere, Jews could stop running. But no, it is not possible. The cemetery is located on a poorly maintained dirt road off a major highway. The historical site is squeezed between two petroleum refineries that spew gas and smoke, hastening the weathering of the monuments not laid waste by vandals, flooding ground water and broken wine bottles. And so, the 23 Jews went from Curaçao to New Amsterdam in 1654. They fought for and won the right to live in and trade in the settlement, to meet and to pray to their god, to bury their dead, to bear arms and defend the community, to vote, pay taxes and hold office.While their experience in this country in the three centuries since has not been altogether idyllic, Jews note the accomplishments of humanitarians such as Emma Lazarus, Lilian Wald, and Henrieta Szold; composers such as Irviing Berlin, Paul Simon and Richard Rogers; scientists such as Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and Bela Schick; the athletes Sandy Koufax, Ron Mix and Sid Luckman; entertainers such as the Marx Brothers, Benny Goodman and Jack Benny; jurists such as Louis Brandeis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Felix Frankfurter; and writers such as Arthur Miller, Dr. Seuss, and Bernard Malamud. Then they thank God for guiding the 23 "big and little Jews" aboard the St. Catherine safely to New Amsterdam 350 years ago."