I have visited the teeming city of Madras (now called Chennai) on many occasions and had the pleasure of living in Kingston, Jamaica for a short while.
While searching for lovely Masala Dosai at vegetarian restaurants, the. last thing you would think would be the jewish history in this erstwhile citadel of British Raj.
In fact Madras has a rich Jewish History.
Wikipedia has a nice article on the various branches of the illustrious Henriques family (origin Spain, left for different parts of the world via Lisbon where they were prominent).
They were called Paradesi (foreign) Jews as were the "white" jews of Cochin who had arrived in Cochin from the Middle East in the first decades of 17th century at the port of Saude (Portuguese, after the church Nossa senhora de saude) now mistakenly called SAUDI!
The Henriques De Castro family included several prominent Sephardic Jewish Business men of Portuguese descent, they were called Paradesi Jews of Madras. They traded in diamonds, precious stones and corals, they had very good relations with the rulers of Golkonda, they maintained trade connections to Europe, and their language skills were useful. Although the Sephardim spoke Ladino (i.e. Spanish or Judeo-Spanish), in India they learned Tamil and Judeo-Malayalam from the Malabar Jews.
Notable members of this branch include
Samuel de Castro came to Madras from Curaçao and Founded of De Castro Trading house.
Fernando Mendes Henriques Established The Colony of Jewish Traders of Madraspatam
Last Jewish Business House of Chennai, Owned by Henriques De Castro Family existed till 2007
Henriques De Castro Transports
Henriques De Castro Industrial and management consultants
Isaac and Rosa Charitable Trust, Henriques De Castro family.
Members of the family include
- Isaac Henriques De Castro (9 June 1883 in Amsterdam-18 October 1944 in Auschwitz)
- Levi Henriques De Castro(12 March 1921 in Amsterdam-8 February 1978 in Chennai)
- Sarah Levi
- Davvid Levi
Holocaust Memorial of Isaac & Rosa Henriques Decastro, Translation
In loving memory of My beloved friend and his family
Who were murdered by Adolf Hitler, Germany.
Isaac Henriques De Castro Alias Isaac Anna (Brother), Isaac Anna was always ready to help us and considered to be one among us
Rosa Henriques De Castro Alias Rosa Anni (Sister In-law), Rosa Anni was named with a Tamil name, showing the love her parents had for Tamil people
“They Will Never, be Forgotten”
C N Annadurai Former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu
Luis de Torres (died 1493), perhaps born as יוסף בן הלוי העברי, Yosef Ben Ha Levy Haivri, ("Joseph the Son of Levy the Hebrew") was Christopher Columbus's interpreter on his first voyage and the first person of Jewish origin to settle in America.
While still a Jew, de Torres served as an interpreter to the governor of Murcia due to his knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Portuguese. In order to avoid the expulsion edict against the Jews of Spain, de Torres converted to Catholicism shortly before the departure of Columbus's expedition. Columbus hoped that the interpreter's skills would be useful in Asia because they would enable him to communicate with local Jewish traders, and he may also have believed that he would find descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
It is a great irony of history that the first european man to set
foot on Brasil, Jamaica, Cuba and who knows where else were
Jews!
Many of the Jamaicans wont believe you if you were to tell them
that the Jews were there before the Africans..
The number of Jewish residents increased from year to year; the were allowed to reside there on condition that they took the oath o allegiance before the governor. Thus in the year I668, Salomo Gabay Faro and David Gomes Henriques, two years later Abraha de Soza Mendes, and in I67I Abraham Espinosa and Jacob de Torr came from London. They all of them possessed the rights of English citizens. The English government, in order to increase the numb of industrious settlers on the island, instructed the governor, S Thomas Lynch, to absolve the new arrivals from taking the oat of allegiance, and to grant all inhabitants the freedom of thei religious worship..
The Jews in Jamaica and Daniel Israel Lopez Laguna Author(s): M. Kayserling
Source: The Jewish Quarterly Review , Jul., 1900, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Jul., 1900),
pp. 708-717 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1450701
The Jewish history of Jamaica gives a glimpse of the role
played by jewish migrants from Europe (originally conversos
or later Sefradim). The names are a roll call of who is who in
the ancient Sefardic world..
If you spend any time in Jamaica, the jewish names would
become familiar to you, they are all ancient sefardic or marrano
names
and one name that would be repeatedly mentioned would be
Henriques or Enriques who has a lineage as long as the history
of colonization of Jamaica.
There are not many active synagogues in the Caribbean, but
the two most beautiful ones are in Kingston Jamaica and
Willemsted in Curacao
Many things to note in this picture.
One of the few synagogues in the world with sand in the floor .
No seperation of genders in the people listening to the orator.,
in this case none other than the indefatigable Ainsley
Henriques, the leader of the community. The architect of the
synagogue was Rudolph Cohen Henriques, this structure is
more than a century old, but the synagogues had been present
in Jamaica for centuries.
I always had an interest in isolated or remote jewish
communities in the world .. Cochin in Kerala and Rangoon in
Burma are two favourite ones.. Singapore Marrakech Iquitos all
have special places in my heart. The place I stay in Havana
Cuba was built by a Jew before the triumph of the Cuban
Revolution!
Lakota Indians say MITAKUYE OYASIN meaning We are all
related. that has a different sentiment to the Jews.
