26 October 2006
Jamaica's tiny Jewish community is to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Jews on the Caribbean island. Some 150 to 200 Jews live there today. Although he community has had no rabbi for 25 years and no kosher butcher for 50 years, on 9 November it will mark 350 years of Jews living in Jamaica and the opening of the Jamaican Jewish Heritage Center. The event will be held in the elegant, 100-year-old Sha'are Shalom synagogue in the capital Kingston. Governor-general Kenneth Hall and prime minister Portia Simpson Miller are expected to attend. The community will dedicate the center, which will be housed in a renovated building next door to the synagogue that has been used for the Kiddush after Shabbat services. As a multi-purpose building, the center will still hold some religions ceremonies and community gatherings. The center will house a permanent exhibition of Jamaican Jewish history, cases of Jamaican Judaica, archives, a reference department, theater and offices for the synagogue and community, most of whose members are in business. Jamaica played a part in founding and supporting the American Jewish community. A shipload of Jews on their way from Recife, Brazil to Holland in 1654 was waylaid by Spanish frigates.
