Rabbis of Renown: The Ramchal

I am an unabashed fan of the Ramchal--Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707-1746). He is one of those authors whose works I return to again and again. Yet, I often feel like there are two Ramchals. There is the tzaddik who spawned the modern mussar (ethics)...

Keep This Classic Cemetery Open to the Public!

Beth Haim Ouderkerk is the most magnificent and important of the historic cemeteries in the Jewish Atlantic World. It is the birthplace of the unique Sephardic sepulchral tradition that spread throughout Hamburg, London, Newport, New York, and the Caribbean...

Masonic Jews

Phil Belinfante recently asked me about a gravestone of one of his Jewish ancestors that had masonic symbols on it. The gravestone was that of Judah Cappé (1799-1878) of St. Thomas. The stone lies in the Jewish Cemetery in St. Thomas and features...

Rabbis of Renown: Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal

Rabbi Carigal was born around 1729 and died in Barbados in 1777. He was one of the many emissaries that visited the American colonies from Europe and the Four Holy Cities in Israel (Safed, Hebron, Tiberias, and Jerusalem). These emissaries not only...

Family Portraits

Portraits of early American Jews tell us a lot about how Jews wanted to be seen and remembered. They also tell us about how Jews dressed and how they thought about family. Who was featured together in portraits? Where were the paintings hung? Over...

The Magic of Probate Records

Most of us don't just want to know the names of people in the past, we want to know who they were, how they lived, what mattered to them most, who they considered family. Probate records are one important key to unlocking these mysteries. Probate records...

Happy Mother's Day from Barbados

Happy Mother's Day from Barbados! Photos in are from Nidhe Israel Synagogue, Huntes Garden, St. Nicholas Abbey, Bridgetown, and other locations on the island. Music is the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in D Major, Czech Radio recording. All photos by...

Early American Mikvaot (Ritual Baths)

There is probably no less understood element of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jewish life in the American colonies than the ritual bath or mikveh. The ritual bath was an essential part of early modern Jewish society, and indeed remains so today...

Jewish Heritage Travel: The Gomez House

One of the great gems of Jewish American architecture stands just north of New York City near the Hudson River in Marlboro. Built in 1714, the Gomez Mill House was originally the trading post and home of Luis Moses Gomez. The house is the oldest Jewish...

Passover Recipes from the Caribbean

Surinamese Charoseth (from Dennis Ouderdorp)Dennis writes, "The basis of Surinamese Charoseth is always ground coconut and sweet red wine. From family to family and from generation to generation, there are variations in the recipe. My family had the...

Jewish Heritage Travel: Newport, RI

Newport is one of those towns of breath-taking beauty that everyone should visit at least once in their lives. At the end of the nineteenth century, anyone who was anyone in New York society had a "cottage" (mansion) in Newport. Today, the Newport Preservation...

Passover in the Colonies

What's wrong about self-pity, anyway? ...I told myself, "Pity should begin at home." So the more pity I felt the more I felt at home (Elizabeth Bishop, "Crusoe in England"). If I am ever tempted to "feel at home" in the weeks leading up to Passover,...