Jewish Atlantic World Database Now on the Web!

The Jewish Atlantic World Database is now open and free to use! In the collection, you will find over 5,000 images related to Jewish life in early America.  The database includes both photos of material culture (gravestones, ritual baths, synagogues, houses, furniture, etc.) and archival documents (probate records and land evidence) from many of the key ports where Jews settled in North America and the Caribbean, as well as several crucial ports from which they immigrated (Amsterdam, London, Hamburg).  Also included in the database are samples of non-Jewish (and later Jewish) artifacts to allow students to better assess what made Jewish life distinctive.  Keywords allow visitors to connect artifact to other items related to the same individual, family, ethnic group, location, port town, or theme.  Right now you can browse or search, or look for records by the individual's name.  Soon we hope to have a complete list of family names to browse as well.  You will also find resources to help you analyze the objects in the database or to use in the classroom.  Looking for something or someone and can't find it/them?  Let me know, as we are still adding items to the database each week!  Here are some important colonial Jewish families you will find in the database: Lopez, Henriquez, Senior, Curiel, Gomez, Hoheb, Hart, Rivera, Maduro, Seixas, and many many others.

This collection began when I was doing research for Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life.  In this book, I am interested in the ways in which colonial American Judaism was as much an embodied religion as it was a textual or faith-based practice.  That is, I argue that we should think of colonial American Jews as a “people of the body” as well as a “people of the book,” and I look to the ways that everyday objects helped define and create Jewish identity. By sharing the images used to create this book, I hope to enable students, scholars, and family historians to trace the paths that early American Jews (and their objects) took, as well as to gain a richer sense of their everyday lives.

If you would like to learn more about the religious life of early American Jews and the objects they used, please feel free to order a copy of Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life from ISBS or Amazon.com. Purchase of the book is optional, however; this website is freely available to the public as an educational, not-for-profit tool for teaching and learning.

Landhuis Klein Santa Marta (ca. 1700), Curacao. Home of Aaron Levy Maduro (1709-19); Jacob Joshua Naar (1819-56), and Joseph Jacob Henriquez (1856-62)

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 crocodiles, or get stuck in the mud in a game park near an electric fence designed to keep the wild animals in. Mainly we had fun.

Today I usually travel for work. Sometimes my research takes me to air conditioned libraries and archives; other times it takes me to far-away places where I am studying historical objects for my work, like gravestones, synagogues, houses, and ritual baths. I consider myself an "adventuresome but not stupid" traveler: that is, I don't mind going to unusual places, but I don't tend to take unnecessary risks. I don't mind luxurious hotels, but that isn't where I tend to stay: I am often on a budget, though not one so extreme that I will stay in a complete dive. I also keep kosher, so I often have an eye towards what there is to eat when you get there.

If you are interested in traveling in the footsteps of early American Jews, this column will give you some insights into where to go, where to stay, and what to bring. Want to hear about a particular place? Here are some places I have done research recently: Suriname, Curacao, Jamaica, Newport, Panama, and Amsterdam.