Paramaribo, Suriname, has an extensive community of Jews of Color, largely attributed to the intersection of the Jewish community and people of African ancestry during the slave trade. One Jew that made an impact within the Surinamese community was professional photographer Augusta Cornelia Paulina Curiel. Not much has been recorded about Curiel’s background, but it is known that she was of Jewish, African, and Dutch ancestry. She was born in Paramaribo in 1873 to a single mother and had one sibling, a sister named Anna.

Photography was seen as an intriguing work opportunity for Jews, as it didn’t require any previous study and allowed one to participate in the craft without needing permission from higher-ups in the community. Curiel ultimately became one of the first and most influential Jewish photographers in Paramaribo and ran a photography studio with her sister from 1904 to 1937. Curiel primarily photographed other Surinamese citizens, such as in the picture above, but she also took pictures of day-to-day life in Paramaribo. Curiel’s work was so impressive that she was eventually honored with the title of hofleverancier by Queen Wilhelmina in 1929. She even became Suriname’s first photographer for the royal house!

As you can see from the photograph pictured above, Curiel’s work allowed others to have a glimpse into the rich cultural diversity present in Paramaribo. Curiel was not an anomaly by being a Jew of Color who was active within the greater Surinamese community. Suriname has long been a hotspot for Jewish diversity, and Augusta Curiel is only one example of the artistic and academic excellence that Jews of Color provided in Paramaribo.

Works Cited:

“Analyzing Photographs.” Jews Across the Americas 1492 – Present, 2021, jewsacrossamericas.com/interactivities-5/image-analysis/beginning-image-analysis/analyzing-photographs/.

“Augusta Curiel.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 June 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Curiel.

Test your Knowledge of Rabbi Abel Respes’ Congregation

Source: Landing, Black Judaism, “Black Judaism in Philadelphia” (339-362)

“Rarely Kosher: Studying Jews of Color in North America” is about what it says on the tin. Gordon states that Jews of color have consistently been erased throughout Jewish studies, in part due to the complex history that the whole Jewish community has with race. Many academics only consider European Jews when doing scholarly research, which both leads and contributes to the misconception that all Jews are white. Despite this, there are large populations of Jews of color across the world. Gordon argues that the Eurocentricity of most research on Judaism causes Jews of color to feel isolated, excluded, and invalidated in their Jewish identity. Gordon encourages a more diverse (and more accurate) conception of Judaism, and speaks at length about institutions that he has helped found in order to tackle this problem. He sees these institutions as gateways to questions that attack the misconception of the homogeneously white Jewish community. Gordon also believes that the way in which the field of Jewish studies is approached needs to change from a homogenous framework to a more heterogeneous approach.

This article was a great read. Gordon speaks with passion and authority on a subject he is clearly familiar with, including personal anecdotes about his experiences as a Jew of color. He cites historical precedence, tracing the relationship between Jews and race from Judea onwards and pointing out that many historically famous Jews were people of color. The article is engaging and well thought out. However, I wish that Gordon’s thesis was stated more clearly. It’s easy to get a sense of his argument, but he does not declare his central argument in a way that is accessible to readers.

In his article “Rarely Kosher: Studying Jews of Color in North America,” Lewis Gordon discusses how Jews of color have been isolated and made invisible through modern investigations of Jewish history.  According to Gordon many scholars investigate Jewish culture through a European-centric lens, which ultimately results in many histories and discussions only recognizing Jews as white individuals. This results in many studies completely negating to recognize the existence of Jews of color, even though more modern research indicates there is a very large population of non-white Jews throughout the world, including those of African, Asian, Hispanic descent. Gordon condemns this form of research, as he argues that in only examining the Jewish population through a “white” lens, many groups of people are not accounted for and therefore not validated in their Jewish identity.  He uses African American, Latin American, and Caribbean Jewish populations as an example of this phenomenon, claiming that many Jewish individuals within these groups feel “hidden in proverbial plain site.” It is Gordon’s desire to encourage a more diverse examination of Jewish individuals, by creating a system that researches Jewish history through the lens of colonization and empire. Moreover, Gordon insinuates that in order for people to no longer assume that one group of Jews (i.e. those which are white) represents all Jews or their beliefs, the framework with which we study Jews must shift from a homogenous study to a more heterogeneous approach.

This article was extremely interesting to read. I appreciate that Gordon included personal anecdotes throughout his narrative, as it gave the readers a first-hand account of what it was like to exist in this framework as someone who was both Jewish and a person of color. I think that the structure of the article was laid out in a very efficient and effective manner. The content was easy to understand, and Gordon did a great job at articulating himself in a comprehensible and accessible manner.  However, I wish Gordon had included or elaborated more on his secondary scholarship to strengthen his position and argument. I also think that while this article did a great job at explaining the phenomenon as a whole, it lacked a really strong thesis (I felt like I had to circle back a few times to get a firm grasp on what his ultimate argument was).

In the chapter “Introduction: Crossing Disciplines, Cultures, Geographies” from Sarah Phillips Casteel and Heidi Kaufman’s greater text Caribbean Jewish Crossings, Casteel and Kaufman highlight the misconception that many academics have regarding the distinction and perceived separateness of Jewish and Caribbean cultures, oftentimes resulting in the erasure of the Jewish-Caribbean perspective in academic texts. However, with the historical presence of the Jewish community throughout the Caribbean colonial world from the start of the seventeenth century as well as “the weaving together [of] African and Jewish narratives,” Casteel and Kaufman suggest that there are deeper historical and cultural ties between the Caribbean and Judaism (Casteel and Kaufman 2). The significance of this chapter lies in its ability to draw attention to a culture that has been largely ignored within Caribbean and Jewish studies, ultimately allowing for room where further intersection of these disciplines can take place. Casteel and Kaufman argue that Jewish American literary studies needs to be internationalized as a field in order to best represent the lived experiences of Jews from diverse backgrounds; in doing so, they emphasize the impact of Jewish culture on “narratives of Caribbeanness” (21). 

One of the strongest factors of Casteel and Kaufman’s support for their argument lies in their constant highlighting of Jewish historical presence within the Caribbean. In laying out a clear-cut, purely factual timeline illustrating Jewish involvement in the slave trade and plantation customs, it becomes difficult to suggest that intersection between Jewish and Caribbean cultures is impossible. Readers are forced to acknowledge the “historical movement of populations across geographies and oceans” that allowed for the intermingling of of Jews and Caribbeans and the subsequent impact of such a connection on wider Caribbean culture (9). Furthermore, Casteel and Kaufman use this sense of connection and shared diaspora as “one of the fundamental linking concepts that carries across Caribbean literary culture” (10). There is no doubt that Caribbean and Jewish histories diverge from one another, but they share “a common narrative” in their pursuit for a sense of belonging within a world defined so sharply by ideas of colonialism, racism, and divisiveness (22). Casteel and Kaufman further support this argument in their careful analysis of racialization within various Caribbean communities, displaying that an individual’s sense of ‘Jewishness’ remains difficult to define in the face of colonialism and the potential for Jews to be both victims and agents of empire. I also was very appreciative of how Casteel and Kaufman clarified their argument in constantly asserting that Jewish and African diaspora are able to remain distinct and different from one another while still intersecting. They masterfully detailed the complexities of Jewish-Caribbean history while still addressing the nuances of each respective culture. 

A weakness I identified while examining “Introduction: Crossing Disciplines, Cultures,  Geographies” could be traced to Casteel and Kaufman’s section concerning the essays and samples of creative writing present in Caribbean Jewish Crossings. I was delighted by their prioritization of a “pan-Caribbean approach” when considering the Jewish and Caribbean literary legacy, but the following analysis read less like commentary on the significance of these texts and more of a laundry list of stories and poems that could be found later in Caribbean Jewish Crossings. Rather than dedicating a lengthy portion of this chapter to what was essentially summary of creative writing and essays that were to appear later on in the text, Casteel and Kaufman might’ve found it productive to dwell on the significance of these pieces of literature and their greater influence within the Jewish-Caribbean literary canon. 

Despite this shortcoming, Casteel and Kaufman’s chapter manages to give a platform to to Jewish-Caribbean culture, ultimately allowing for greater discussion within Jewish American studies and a better recognition of marginalized communities that have otherwise been ignored in academia. Through the work of academics such as Casteel and Kaufman, we can continue to work towards the internationalization of Jewish studies and better consider the intersectionality of Judaism with wider Caribbean culture. 

Works Cited:

Casteel, Sarah Phillips, and Heidi Kaufman, editors. Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice. University of Virginia Press, 2019. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvq4bz53. Accessed 31 Mar. 2021.

Jack Mayesh wrote these lyrics to the popular tune “Missirlu,” originally a Middle Eastern melody. Although it tells the story of a man, the speaker, and his love who abandoned him, the feelings of isolation and sadness he expresses can be related to many different Jewish histories, from the Passover story to that of immigration in the first half of the 20th century. The speaker starts out as distinct from the addressee, but eventually the two almost merge, as he predicts that she will one day cry as he is right now.

The Paganini Hebraic Union Cemetery, located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, recently re-opened in October of 2019 after being closed for several years. This site is known as both “Zwi Migdal” or the “Cemetery of the impure,” as the individuals buried here either engaged in the brothel business or sex trafficking of women. The Jewish community sought to remove any identifiable characteristics of relatives or employees from these graves, and even employed the term “unclean” to those buried here in life and death.