Nadene Goldfoot
In September 1654, 23 Jews arrived in New Amsterdam, a colony belonging to a Dutch business, aboard the St Cathrien-the Jewish Mayflower. The Jews had come from Recife in Northeast Brazil, where they lived under Dutch rule. The Portuguese captured Recife from the Dutch and expelled the Jews. They were as bad as the Spanish who expelled Jews in 1492. It comprised 23 Sephardi Jews, refugees "big and little" of families fleeing persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition after the conquest of Dutch Brazil. It is widely commemorated as the starting point of New York Jewish and Jewish-American history. This Wikipedia resource said, "The Jews had sailed from Recife on the ship Valck, one of at least sixteen that left mostly bound for the Netherlands at the end of the Dutch–Portuguese War. Valck was blown off course to Jamaica and/or Cuba. St. Cathrien was boarded later, making it a 2-ship journey to safety and land.
The Diary of Asser Levy provides an opportunity to understand the big picture of European history in the context of Brazil, the western Caribbean, the Dutch colonies in America, and the Roman Catholic Church. The book is less than 100 pages and packed with a chronological memory over a period of twelve years.
People don't realize: All this happened:
“Just a few days before Rosh Hashonah, in September 1654, twenty-three storm-tossed, destitute Jews were deposited upon the wharf in the harbor of New Amsterdam.”
When the Jews arrived, the captain of the ship sued them for the money to pay for their passage. The local court sold their belonging and imprisoned two of the party. What had happened to Christianity, that religion of love that was so well promoted? There was none of that here for Jews who were lucky to find a boat for their group at of time of being expelled. They had even had an episode of dealing with Spanish pirates in their tiny boat.
Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of the colony, was not happy to receive the Jews. He described the Jews as "deceitful" and very "repugnant". Stuyvesant asked permission from the Dutch East India Company, who the colony belonged, to remove the Jews from the settlement. The board, which included several Jewish investors, refused and instructed the governor to allow the new Jewish settlers to remain in New Amsterdam.
The 23 Jews who arrived are not the first Jews to arrive in North America, but it is the first record we have of a group of men women and children arriving to make it their permanent home. They had been expelled from Brazil and had just heard of this new place, this Golden Medina, that might accept them. But, if it wasn't for the money flowing into New Amsterdam/New York from the Dutch East India Company that had some Jewish backing, they would not had been able to land. New York and people like Peter Stuyvesant were very anti-Semitic.
Petrus Stuyvesant is best known as New Netherland's longest, most influential, and last Dutch governor, having served until the English overthrew the colony's Dutch administration and renamed it New York in 1664. Stuyvesant helped make New Amsterdam more orderly and economically successful than it had ever been. Petrus Stuyvesant (c.1612-1672) was born in Friesland, one of the northernmost provinces in the Netherlands, to a middle-class family.
Surprisingly, Stuyvesant joined the West India Company (WIC) in 1632 or 1633. He began his WIC career on the Island of Fernando de Noronha, just off Brazil, but he left for Curaçao, a Caribbean Island where the Dutch had established a colonial settlement in 1639. The WIC soon promoted him to the role of Director there. It was during his time on Curaçao that he gained one of his most defining physical features, a wooden leg, when a Spanish cannonball crushed his leg as he led an attack on the island St. Martin.
Stuyvesant received a new assignment, Director General of New Amsterdam. He and his wife, Judith Bayard, arrived in August 1647. It sounds like the ocean was really a highway with heavy traffic between Brazil and New Amsterdam for a while.
When the Portuguese admiral Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in what is now Brazil in 1500, he was accompanied by at least one person of Jewish birth, Gaspar da *Gama, who had been kidnapped and forcibly baptized by the Portuguese in India three years before. In 1502 a consortium of *New Christians headed by Fernando de *Noronha obtained from King Manuel I of Portugal a concession to colonize and exploit the newly discovered land. The man business of the group was to export Brazil wood (from which the name of the new land was derived) to Portugal for the purpose of dyeing textiles.
There is good reason to believe that New Christians transplanted sugar cane from Madeira to Brazil in the early 16th century. New Christian foremen and workers are said to have been brought over from Madeira and São Tomé when the first sugar plantations and mills were established in Brazil around 1542. Believe me, they wanted to get out of Portugal and the prying eyes of the Spanish Inquisition that had also endangered their Jews.
THE WEST INDIA COMPANY REPLY TO PETER STUYVESANT, APRIL 26, 1655
Honorable, Prudent, Pious, Dear, Faithful [Stuyvesant] . . . We would have liked to effectuate and fulfill your wishes and request that the new territories should no more be allowed to be infected by people of the Jewish nation, for we foresee there from the same difficulties which you fear. But after having further weighed and considered the matter, we observe that this would be somewhat unreasonable and unfair, especially because of the considerable loss sustained by this nation [the Jewish community], with others, in the [Portuguese re-]taking of Brazil, as also because of the large amount of capital which they still have invested in the shares of this company.
Therefore after many deliberations we have finally decided and resolved to apostille [to note in the margin] upon a certain petition presented by said Portuguese Jews [January 1655] that these people may travel and trade to and in New Netherland and live and remain there, provided the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community [in the future poor Jews would not be supported by the Manhattan churches], but be supported by their own nation. You will now govern yourself accordingly.
Jews found they were not welcome in Europe where they had been living in Italy and Germany after 70 CE. They were a people that needed to be emancipated, being they were under restrictions that civilians of other countries were not under. They were 2nd class citizens, if you can even use the term, citizen for them in both the West and the East, being they were 2nd class or Dhimmis in Arab countries as well. In fact, they received better treatment in the Arab countries. They became known as the Wandering Jew.
Emancipation only came with Napoleon's victories, and at that, changes occurred for the Jews very slowly. Yet Jews had great skills; a people who believed in education being their writings such as the Torah, were studied by them by most all their males, whether they be rabbis or Talmud scholars; being a scholar was the height of their social system, and they happened to have the intelligence needed for it.
Some Jews became lenders of money and a few of the clients of some turned out to be Royalty of a country. Jews could deal with the math involved, in figuring percents, etc. Most countries at this time had citizens who neither could read, write or do any math.
Before the emancipation, most Jews were isolated in residential areas from the rest of the society; emancipation was a major goal of European Jews of that time, who worked within their communities to achieve integration in the majority societies and broader education. Many became active politically and culturally within wider European civil society as Jews gained full citizenship.
They emigrated to countries offering better social and economic opportunities, such as United Kingdom and the Americas. Some European Jews turned to socialism in Russia and others to Zionism, immigrating to Palestine which was under the Ottoman Empire at that time .
The unfair, prejudicial treatment of Jews was when Jews were subject to a wide range of restrictions throughout most of European history. Since the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, Christian Europeans required Jews and Muslims to wear special clothing, such as the Judenhut and the yellow badge for Jews, to distinguish them from Christians. The practice of their religions was often restricted, and they had to swear special oaths. Jews were not allowed to vote, where vote existed, and some countries formally prohibited their entry, such as Norway, Sweden and Spain after the expulsion in the late 15th century.
Jewish involvement in gentile society began during the Age of Enlightenment. Haskalah, the Jewish movement supporting the adoption of enlightenment values, advocated an expansion of Jewish rights within European society. Haskalah followers advocated "coming out of the ghetto", not just physically but also mentally and spiritually.
Emancipation offered Jewish people civil rights and opportunities for upward mobility, and assisted in dousing the flames of widespread Jew-hatred (though never completely, and only temporarily). This enabled Jews to live multifaceted lives, breaking cycles of poverty, enjoying the spoils of Enlightened society, while also maintaining strong Jewish faith and community.[41][42] While this element of emancipation gave rise to antisemitic canards relating to dual loyalties, and the successful upward mobility of educated and entrepreneurial Jews saw pushback in antisemitic canards relating to control, domination, and greed, the integration of Jews into wider society led to a diverse tapestry of contribution to art, science, philosophy, and both secular and religious culture.
New Amsterdam, and its next step of becoming the USA, has been the only country in this world who has not deemed Jews to be 2nd class citizens where they longed for emancipation and the chance to be on equal footing with their neighbors. One must realize that it gave people more security than Palestine had to offer during the same period.
Resource:
https://www.mcny.org/petrus-stuyvesant#:~:text=Petrus%20Stuyvesant%20is%20best%20known,than%20it%20had%20ever%20been.
https://www.historycentral.com/TheColonies/lettertostuvesant.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_emancipation
http://www.am-sur.com/am-sur/brasilien/EncJud_juden-in-Brasilien01-NL-Brasilien-ENGL.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_arrival_in_New_Amsterdam
https://encyclopedia.nahc-mapping.org/shipjourney/1654-sainte-catherine
https://www.philipsemanorhall.com/blog/jews-in-colonial-new-york
Book: The Settlers by Meyer Levin (a historic novel)--excellent
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