After the arrival of the first Jews in 1639, as part of the tobacco-growing Marshall Creek settlement, a
ketubah or Jewish marriage act, was recorded by a rabbi in 1643. The Marshall Creek settlement was eventually abandoned, as had other pre-1650 attempts at colonization (
See also History of Suriname). In 1652, a new group that migrated under the leadership of
Francis, Lord Willoughby came to
Suriname and settled in the
Jodensavanne area, not far from the then-capital of
Torarica. Many of these were part of a large-scale immigration of the
Jewish plantocracy of
Pernambuco, who had been instrumental in the innovation and industrialization of the cultivation and processing of sugarcane, including the use of
slave labor. Some of this knowledge had been transferred to the
Dutch West India Company during its
occupation of
Dutch Brazil. Yet more knowledge was carried by planters themselves fleeing before the
Spanish and
Portuguese Inquisition after the Portuguese
recaptured Pernambuco and dismantled the policies of the deposed Dutch regime. These refugee planters often retained enough capital to start new plantations in the colonies to which they fled. Historian Bert Koene writes, The Jews were a stabilizing factor in the Surinamese community. They had the mentality of long-term residents, unlike most of the other colonists, who went around with the idea that they eventually, after having earned enough money, would return to their fatherland. For the Jews the colony was really a safe place, free from persecution and social exclusion. Such a life was almost impossible to find elsewhere. According to the
Encyclopedia of Latin America, "Suriname was one of the most important centers of the Jewish population in the Western Hemisphere, and Jews there were planters and slaveholders." On August 17, 1665, the English formally granted Jews in Suriname freedom of religion including the right to build synagogues and religious schools, as well as an independent court of justice and private civic guard under their exclusive control, making the Surinamese Jews the only diaspora community with "complete political autonomy" prior to the foundation of
Israel in 1948. These rights were left undisturbed when the Dutch took over the colony in 1667. Of the Caribbean Jewish communities,
Suriname had the most sizable Black Jewish population. European Jews in Suriname converted both people they enslaved and the children of Jewish men and women of color. Incorporation of enslaved people into Judaism was so important that in 1767–68, Dutch Jew Salomon Levy Maduro published
Sefer Brit Itschak, which contained the names of seven ritual circumcisers in Suriname along with prayers for converting and circumcising enslaved people. Although initially most Afro-Surinamese people entered Judaism through conversion, by the end of the eighteenth century, many members of the Black Jewish community had been Jews from birth for several generations. By 1759, Afro-Surinamese Jews (sometimes referred to by scholars as "Eurafrican Jews") had formed their own brotherhood called
Darhe Jesarim ("Path of the Righteous"). Darhe Jesarim both educated
Jews of color and provided a place where Afro-Surinamese Jews could worship without the inequities and distinctions made in
Paramaribo's
Neveh Shalom and
Tzedek ve-Shalom congregations. In 1817, Darhe Jesarim was disbanded and its members were absorbed back into the city's two white-run synagogues. ==Identity==