Jewish flashback

Dr Karl Watson with the Barbados Museum & Historical Society’s journal, which carries an article relating to Jews in Barbados. (Heather-Lynn Evanson)

By Heather-Lynn Evanson | Tue, January 31, 2012 - 8:00 AM

THE “SCATTERED” of Israel “returned” for dozens of people when the Barbados National Trust (BNT) placed another jewel in the island’s historic crown on display on Sunday.

The 1650s Jewish Synagogue, its Mikvah (ritual bath) and the Nidhe Israel Museum threw open their doors as part of the BNT Open House programme.

Visitors and locals took the opportunity to wander through the graveyard with its ancient tombstones and carved iconography; they sat in the beautifully restored synagogue with its delicate chandeliers and intricately carved woodwork and listened to its history.

They also descended into the recently rediscovered Mikvah – the Jewish ritual bath which has been, and is still being, fed by an underground spring – and heard Dr Penny Bowman explain the role it played in the lives of Orthodox Jews.

Bowman detailed the bath’s rediscovery, pointed out the original steps leading into the Mikvah, and told stories of modern day Jews who still visit the bath for ritual purity.

The visitors also took advantage of the opportunity to enter the Nidhe Israel Museum, with its unearthed and, in some cases, reclaimed artefacts.

Dr Karl Watson later regaled them with the history of the island’s Sephardic Jews and their flight from Brazil in the 1600s; the difference between their grave stones and those on the graves of the Ashkenazi Jews (the raised tomb stones, with a Star of David, represent the Ashkenazi, while the flat tomb with an icon of the Hand of God or the Tree of Life belong to Sephardic Jews); modern day last names that speak of a Jewish heritage and tales of sex and lust that as Dr Watson put it, “Proved that fact was sometimes stranger than fiction”.

He told them the Sephardic Jews who came to Barbados were descendants of those who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal in the very early 16th Century and said that while they were slave owners they were not slave traders.

Watson also revealed their role in the development of sugar production on the island.

Meanwhile Paul Altman, who was responsible for the restoration of the property, further told the rapt audience that braved the threatening weather, that the restoration of the synagogue which had been due for demolition, was important to him because his parents, grandparents and other family members were buried in the graveyard.

“The story that is told in the museum is the important story of what we have here; the story and the connection between the Jewish community and Barbados; the story of sugar, the story of trade and the fact that if we hadn’t captured that story and put it there for everyone to see, it would only be a story,” he later said.