Sephardim with Inner African Ancestry

Every Sepharade community where the Caribbean Sea laps a shore had some members who were of inner African descent. Many were the offspring of enslaved Africans, some came direct from the Iberian peninsula, some few others had their Jewish heritage from West Africa in communities suppressed as long ago as the 12th century by the al-Muribitûn and the al-Muwahhidûn and the 15th century by al-Maghili who instructed the Sudanese royalty across the entire Sahel that "it is a meritorious act to destroy a synagogue." Nonetheless, the Inquisition uncovered lançados smuggling sidduriym clear down to Angola.

Suriname is probably the model of history and relations between white and coloured Sepharadiym in the Americas. I use coloured (colourlingen) because this is the term the community chose for themselves. They eschewed the then current local terminologies of:

black	-	both parents Afrikan
karboeger	-	3 grandparents Afrikan
mulatto	-	1 parent Afrikan
mestice	-	1 grandparent Afrikan
castice	-	1 great-grandparent Afrikan

From the founding of the colony until the 18th century they enjoyed almost full rights and recognition but the growing attitude of indignation displayed toward Africans throughout the Americas soon had its toll. Hascamoth from the mahamad began to severely curtail the rights of inner African Sepharadiym both in the Old World and the New World, especially their womenfolk.

Things came to a head in Suriname after the coloured Sepharadiym attempted to register as a seperate legal religious entity Darhe Jesarim. Abraham Bueno de Mesquita sued for them to remain part of the Sephardi Portugueza Nação. This happened when the coloured Sepharadiym, led by Reuben Mendez Meza, wanted to bury their parnas Joseph de David Nassy with reserved honors. (Incidently a Josef Nassy of this lineage, pictured at right, was interned at Tittmoning during WWII).

From that point, inner Africans were neglected by the Sepharade community to the effect that all their offspring, whether having an Iberian mother or father or not, assimilated into the non-Jewish Black community. In fact, Iberian ladies who married Africans or coloureds were reclassed from yahidiym status to congreganten. Iberian gentlemen throughout the Caribbean ceased to send their coloured sons abroad for education.

Laws on converting slaves to Judaism or else selling them to gentiles within a year were rescinded or reinterpreted out of existence. But well before that happened in the bush of Suriname four Djuka villages were founded by such inner African Sepharadiym slave converts. The inhabitants of these semi-autonomous villages were known as "Jewish Marrons". Their first settlement dates to 1663 when Sepharadiym sent their slaves to the bush to avoid paying a head tax on them. When asked to return after the departure of the tax collectors, they quite sensibly refused. The Jewish Marrons are still noted for employing a little Djo-tongo (the Hebrew, West Atlantic, Indo-European criole) and having b*riyth milah or zabed habath for their children.

Nonetheless, in the city or the bush, inner African Sepharadiym cherish their heritage though congregating for Kippur is nearly all that is left of it for most. Their own Jewish jargon, Djo-tongo, is a long dead criole submerged within Papiamento.

Throughout the Caribbean coloured Jews went into eclipse. Most assimilating into non-Jewish society. Where it was possible to still do so with dignity, a few remained attached to Sepharade communities. Some of these migrated to the United States and formed the core of the African American Jewish communities. Constitutions of Sepharade synagogues in the southern United States showed some officially barred inner Africans from membership. Left to their own devices, African Jews of the United States and African Jews from the Caribbean fell into founding a Jewish community of their own. But they were not shunned by the northern Sephardi communities, particulary Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel (where today an African American Jew serves as sh*liahh ssibur on Shabbath before nishmath).

Maryland claims Mathias da Sousa as it first Jewish settler, a Portuguese Jew, and in a document of the Maryland State Archives dated 1639, described as a "molato." Another colony's first Jew of record is as early as 1668. A New England court record reveals a "mulata Jue" named Sollomon brought up on charges of violating Xian Sunday by journeying on that day. Centuries later the Cardozo family has a branch started by Isaac Nuñez Cardozo and Lydia Williams, a zamba (half African half Native American). This branch of the family are not practicing Jews.

The two decades on either side of the turn of the 20th century (1880-1920) saw Jewish publications noting African American Jews in Chicago, Montreal, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Reading, Newark, and New York where one left a third of his estate to Shearith Israel.