Early American Letters: Abigail Levy Franks

In the 1730s-40s, Abigail Levy Franks (1696-1756) wrote a series of letters to her family. Like many letters, these range from mundane to heart wrenching: in the letter below to her son Naphtali, she wrote of her shock and despair...

Synagogue: View from the Gallery

One of the standard features of the synagogues of the Jewish Atlantic World is a women's gallery: a balcony supported by columns on two or three sides of the synagogue. The concept of using a balcony for a women’s section comes from descriptions of...

Book Review: The Knell of Parting Day

A few years ago at the Conference for the Association for Gravestone Studies, some of us were lamenting that there weren't more books available on Jewish cemeteries. While a few old standards were available, they tended to be out of print, hard to find,...

Grave Matters: Converso Funerary Art

When Isaac Lopez was buried in 1762, he joined the remains of many of his extended kin and other members of the Yeshuat Israel [Salvation of Israel] congregation. The Hevra kadisha (Burial Society) of Newport washed his body and prepared it for burial....

Colonial Houses: Home of a Hero

Scharlooweg 55, also known as "Beau Senior," is one of the few houses to exist both in Curacao and in miniature form in the Netherlands in a small town called "Madurodam." Built in 1875 for the Senior family (one of the major Jewish families in Curacao),...

Holidays: Purim

The book of Esther was particularly popular amongst conversos on the Iberian Peninsula. Many conversos kept the fast of Esther even when they kept few other Jewish holidays or traditions. New Christian women tended to identify with Queen Esther: like...

Book Review: Purim and the Persian Empire

I am one of those freaks who reads Herodotus' History of the Persian Wars every year. Ok, not every year: this year I am on sabbatical, but of the past fifteen years, I have read it a good twelve times. We are about to change the syllabus for our...

Classroom Resources: Iberian Peninsula Crossword Puzzle

Looking for a way to reinforce students' understanding of key vocabulary words? Try a crossword puzzle! (Or you may just want to try it yourself to test your own knowledge!)Download the puzzle here or make your own at The Teachers Corner.net.Answer...

Classroom Resources: Gravestones 1

One of the goals of this website is to make more resources on early American Jews easily available to classroom teachers.Recently I visited the class of Holly Litwin at Portland Jewish Academy. Her fifth grade students were studying the American colonies....

The Adventuresome Traveler: Introduction

I traveled a fair amount as a child: my parents often worked in the tropics in countries like Bonaire, Panama, Australia, and Kenya. Occasionally we did things I wouldn't want to do today: for example, swim in the Panama Canal in an area inhabited by...

The Adventuresome Traveler: Suriname

Interested in taking a vacation to a Jewish Heritage spot off the beaten track? Try Suriname! This former Dutch colony used to be the Las Vegas of the colonial world, and was once an important sugar plantation community. Merchants from as far away...

Iberian Peninsula and the Birth of the Jewish Atlantic World

“When the Almighty speaks in such tremendous language, he must not speak in vain”--Dr. Beilby Porteous, 1777On the first of November 1755, an earthquake rocked and then destroyed the elegant port city of Lisbon, Portugal. At the time Lisbon was the...

Synagogues: Jamaica

The Jewish community of Jamaica recently held a conference on the Jewish Diaspora of the Caribbean (Jan. 12-14, 2010). I'll have more to say about this fabulous conference in future posts, but in the meantime, I wanted to highlight the architecture...