A contingent of 285 Sephardic Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition in Brazil arrived in Barbados in 1654 under the protection of Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Protestant English Parliament at the time. The restored Nidhe Israel synagogue in Bridgetown is the oldest in the Western hemisphere.. This community thrived for 200 years, but then vanished in the 19th century when the sugar cane economy collapsed. In the 1930s, a group of Ashkenazi Jews fleeing the Nazi Inquisition arrived, and their descendants are the core of the current community of 50 souls.
Neal Rechtman, American writer and historian, will lead the presentation.
