“As Mr. Yakub continued to evangelise for converts, he advised his people who he would make the others work for them. (This promise got here to cross.) Naturally, there are all the time some folks round who want to have others do their work. These are those who fell for Mr. Yakub’s educating, 100 per cent.”—The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, chapter 55 of Message to the Blackman in America titled “The Making of Satan”
“Three blessings a Jewish man is obligated to wish each day: ‘(Blessed artwork Thou,) Who didn’t make me a gentile; Who didn’t make me a lady; and Who didn’t make me a slave.’”—Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 43b–44a
The story of the Jewish American expertise that almost all Jews wish to consider, and wish the world to consider, is considered one of nearly limitless historic victimhood. They insist that they fled anti-Semitic oppression in Europe, touchdown safely on Ellis Island lengthy after the Civil Warfare’s finish in 1865, and positively some did. By their laborious work, sturdy spiritual bonds, and reverence for communal schooling they succeeded towards all odds, changing into, as Isaiah exhorts, “a lightweight unto the world.” As their story goes, they altogether eluded the ugly enterprise of plantation slavery—however had they been right here, they guarantee us, Jews would have been main the abolitionists. In any case, their very own alleged enslavement to Pharaoh would have made them—of all of the teams of Caucasian folks—extra sympathetic towards Black struggling.
To a trusting, Bible-believing folks this Jewish self-portrait sounds believable and is per a Christian doctrine that sanctifies God’s Chosen Folks, the so-called Youngsters of Israel (Deuteronomy 7:6–11). However the individuals who at this time name themselves Jews have now collided with their very own Jewish students and historians who’ve offered a completely completely different and much more troubling story about American Jewish historical past and the central function of Jews within the biggest crime in world historical past—the Black African Holocaust.
For essentially the most half, People—white and Black—are completely unaware that when the trans-Atlantic slave commerce started within the 1500s, it was targeted on delivery enslaved Africans to the sugar plantations of South America and the Caribbean islands centuries earlier than increasing to the cotton fields of the American South within the mid-1700s. In all the historical past of slavery within the western hemisphere as many as 9 out of 10 stolen Africans had been shipped to these tropical climes—to not Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or South Carolina. The map beneath illustrates by the thickness of the arrows the relative proportions of Africans shipped to the New World, and, as proven, comparatively few made it into what was to turn into the USA.
And all throughout this unprecedented racial tragedy Jews declare they had been preoccupied in Europe, nowhere close to the scene of the crime. Dr. Robert Swierenga very straight challenges that oft-repeated Jewish alibi (emphasis ours):
“On the start of the USA in 1787 the Jews of the slave islands [Caribbean] outnumbered these in North America by 5 instances and should have equaled these in England. Surinam had fourteen hundred Jews and Curaçao fifteen hundred—each almost one half of the whole white inhabitants. Against this, all the United States in 1790 numbered lower than fifteen hundred Jews.”
In search of Non secular Liberty?
However doesn’t this early Jewish presence within the “slave islands” battle drastically with the prevailing picture of the Jews as freedom-loving spiritual refugees? That is the right time to have an grownup dialog concerning the trans-Atlantic slave commerce and the Jewish function in it, and we should begin by placing to mattress the childish notion endemic on this Jewish American fairy story that Europeans sailed throughout the ocean “in search of spiritual liberty.” Each college little one learns concerning the courageous and pious Pilgrims who sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620 “in search of spiritual liberty” from the tyrannical king of England. However the actuality is that the “Pilgrims” had been below contract with a personal enterprise named the Firm of Service provider Adventurers, which anticipated them to amass lumber, beaver and otter furs, and some other riches to be discovered or stolen. Thus, the “Pilgrims”—who referred to themselves as “separatists,” not as “pilgrims”—labored below contract to a personal enterprise whose buyers cared nothing about faith. Greater than a century earlier than these Separatists, a Spaniard named Christopher Columbus was privately financed for his notorious voyage of discovery in 1492, by a rich Jew named Luis de Santangel. In accordance with Simon Wiesenthal, in his e book Sails of Hope (p. 168), “However for this man, Columbus’s expedition would by no means have taken place.” A practiced slave seller, Columbus captured 600 of the aboriginal folks he encountered to public sale off again in Spain. And so it’s with the Jewish newcomers who had been in search of earnings in sugar, cotton, tobacco, and different riches of the New World. Jewish scholar Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi describes them:
“[T]hese Jews engaged in an nearly untrammeled vary of financial exercise, bore arms within the militias, owned land and ran plantations, and had been represented in native councils. They’d arrived on the closest level to full authorized equality potential for Jews previous to the emergence of the trendy nation-state.”
They had been in search of not “spiritual freedom” however the freedom to commerce on a global scale. Actually, after they had been first barred from buying Black slaves within the colonies they entered, the Jews thought-about it an act of “anti-Semitism.” The riches they sought couldn’t be extracted with out free and compelled African labor. And as Jewish retailers adopted their Yakubian directive—making others work for them—that is the place the Black–Jewish relationship within the West really begins.
Actually, there are scant references to the Jewish religion, Judaism, in any of the extant information of those early Jewish settlers. Nothing about Moses, Aaron, The Ten Commandments; no point out of the Ark of the Covenant; and nothing about being any “Gentle unto the Worlds.” If there have been no revenue in it, there was no “Jew” in it—and there was loads of revenue in Black slavery.
Surinam, positioned in northeastern South America, holds the excellence of getting the oldest Jewish group within the Americas, Jews having shaped a synagogue in 1665. British Jewish historian Dr. Cecil Roth tracks them in his Historical past of the Marranos: “The Jews of [Surinam] had been additionally foremost within the suppression of the successive negro revolts, from 1690 to 1722: these as a matter of reality had been largely directed towards them, as being the best slave-holders of the area.
And right here is the place—unbelievably—we discover the primary inkling of the Jewish faith. The very first revealed Jewish prayer of their New World paradise, was a prayer titled “Previous Hebrew Prayer in Time of Revolt of the Negroes,” by which the rabbi requested their God to present them power “to beat and destroy beneath their toes all merciless and rebellious Africans, our enemies who’re planning evil towards us….Amen.”
Roth continues: “These disturbances, along with the inroads of the local weather, led finally to the abandonment of the settlement, of which nothing however the wreck now stays.” Dr. Roth hits on a theme right here that could be tough for many to grasp. Not solely had been Jews current within the Americas lengthy earlier than the precise founding of the USA, however they had been “the biggest slave-holders” in one of many main locations of enslaved Africans. Additional, these identical “liberty-seeking” Jews truly went to battle towards the Africans that had escaped from Jewish plantations! Scholar Steven Sallie:
“There may be little dispute, nonetheless, that Jews had been very often in control of raiding adventures and the extreme punishing of the maroons [escaped slaves]. In response to the cruelty of some Jews, maroons very often attacked chosen Jewish plantations. These Jewish-African conflicts had been quite a few, effectively organized, and continued into the 1800s. Given their names, the leaders of the maroons tended to be Muslims.”
One should additionally be aware that the adorned students quoted above spoke of “Jews” as a collective, neither making any qualification concerning the time period that might restrict duty or culpability to “some” or “a celebration amongst” or “a portion of” the Jewish group. That is notably essential given the magnitude of the crime they’re describing—Black slavery.
Two main Jewish historic associations concur with, and elaborate on, this usually unknown side of the Jewish function in Black slavery. The American Jewish Historic Society (AJHS) is the oldest and most distinguished, having its founding in 1892. Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael was its longtime editor of its publications when he wrote in 1983 that within the Caribbean and South America,
“Jewish retailers performed a significant function within the slave commerce. Actually, in all of the American colonies, whether or not French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish retailers often dominated. This was no much less true on the North American mainland, the place through the eighteenth century Jews participated within the ‘triangular commerce’ that introduced slaves from Africa to the West Indies…”
“FREQUENTLY DOMINATED” and “performed a significant function” are the phrases Rabbi Raphael used nearly a decade earlier than the Nation of Islam revealed its never-refuted e book on Jews and the slave commerce, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 1. Drs. Swierenga, Sallie, Raphael, and Roth are all addressing a startling duality within the 500-year Black–Jewish relationship—that the Jewish self-image of a biblical folks craving for freedom straight contradicts the precise indisputable fact that the Jewish folks had been drawn to, and infrequently dominated the economies in, the very locations the place existed essentially the most brutal types of chattel slavery.
Supply: Encyclopedia Judaica
The American Jewish Archives (AJA) was based in 1947 by the “Dean of American Jewish students,” Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus, and is the repository of “ten million pages of documentation” on Jewish historical past within the Americas. Seems, the AJA has lots to say about these early “oppressed” Jews who migrated from Europe and by some means discovered unprecedented prosperity within the “slave islands.” In a number of articles the AJA casually makes a number of references to the interdependent relationship between essentially the most brutal types of slavery and the Jewish pilgrims: “[I]ndividual Jews could be discovered on nearly each island of the Caribbean previous to the abandonment of slavery within the mid-nineteenth century,” thus firmly linking slavery to the Jews’ very presence.
Within the plantation colony of Surinam the AJA factors out that Jews “fared effectively, due to the abundance of slaves and plantations…” Rabbi Dr. Raphael provides that
“Slave buying and selling was a significant function of Jewish financial life in Surinam, which was a significant stopping-off level within the triangular commerce. Each North American and Caribbean Jews performed a key function on this commerce: information of a slave sale in 1707 reveal that the ten largest Jewish purchasers spent greater than 25 p.c of the whole funds exchanged.”
A more moderen evaluation of Surinam’s Jews by Dr. Aviva Ben-Ur solely solidifies this linkage and provides to the horrors:
“The freedom Jews loved…was inextricably intertwined with violent coercion….African slaves had been routinely tortured on the village’s roadsides or alongside the fence enclosing the synagogue sq..”
The AJA hits on a theme that’s repeated again and again: “the abolition of the slave commerce in 1819 and the formal emancipation of slaves in 1863 made plantations unprofitable and so decimated Jewish commerce that [the Jews] all however disappeared.” Acknowledge the import of that assertion: the liberating of the Black slaves “DECIMATED” and “DISAPPEARED” the Jewish group.
Jews had a presence on the island of Barbados in about 1628 and historian Stephen Fortune wrote that “the reputed prosperity of the Jews contrasted with the inexcusable and disgraceful plight of the slaves.” Jews flocked to this hell on earth, and right here once more the AJA sounds the uniquely Jewish chorus: “Sadly, financial despair ensuing from the earthquake and the emancipation of slaves led to the emigration of lots of the island’s Jews.” They pose the liberating of African slaves as a catastrophe equal to that of an earthquake—inflicting the “unlucky” Jews to completely flee.
The Encyclopedia Judaica (EJ) stories that the island of Curaçao was referred to as the “Mom of the Caribbean Jewish communities,” but Jewish students describe the island as a distribution middle for the slave commerce— “a big slave depot.” The AJA affirms that “The slave commerce helped Curaçao to prosper, and her Jewish group grew quickly,” even constructing a synagogue “for the comfort of the plantation homeowners who lived exterior of the town.” Actually, Jews owned 80 p.c of Curaçao’s plantations, and Jewish slave merchants had been answerable for distributing the slaves from Curaçao to the Spanish American ports all through the Caribbean and South America. In 1765, the Jesurun household owned a report variety of 366 Black folks; the closest Gentile had 240 slaves. In a single documented case in 1701, the Jewish Senior brothers organized the cargo of 664 Africans; 205 perished en route to Curaçao. And historian of the island Johan Hartog confirms a well-known Jewish theme—that the Jewish group suffered a “steep decline” the identical 12 months that the slave commerce was curtailed.
When Jews settled in Haiti, the Encyclopedia Judaica admitted, they “specialised in agricultural plantations [but] with the slave revolts on the finish of the 18th century, Jews progressively deserted Haiti for different Caribbean islands or for the USA (New Orleans, Charleston).” Right here once more Jews should not sticking round for Black freedom; nor had been they a part of the method of reaching it. As quickly as emancipation turns into a actuality, Jews abandon Haiti for slavier environs.
Jamaica additionally had a sturdy Jewish colony, writes the AJA (p. 151): “The expansion of the sugar trade enlarged the Jewish immigration and various Jews turned plantation homeowners.” The EJ boasted that “Jews with agricultural plantations managed the sugar and vanilla industries, and …had been the leaders in international commerce and delivery.” In its part on “Sugar”—the product most answerable for the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Africans—the EJ places Jews on the epicenter:
“The Jews of Brazil weren’t essential as proprietors of [sugar] mills however slightly as monetary brokers, brokers, and export retailers. When Brazil got here once more below Portuguese rule within the second half of the seventeenth century, many Jews emigrated to Surinam, Barbados, Curaçao, and Jamaica, the place they acquired giant sugarcane plantations and have become the main entrepreneurs within the sugar commerce.”
After which it reveals the opposite, now predictable, Jewish actuality: “The abolition of slavery within the British dominions (1833) lowered the financial system and scattered the Jews.” Word right here the AJA writes that freedom for enslaved Blacks “scattered” the Jews.
A lot of these Jews “scattered” to the North American mainland, says the AJA: “The top of slavery within the Caribbean noticed Jews from the islands arriving nearly each day…” Many ended up within the colony of Georgia, described as “affected by the trustees’ idealistic insistence on no slaves or liquor…” Because the AJA frames it, “no slaves” meant Jewish “struggling.” Actually, the refusal of the leaders of Georgia to allow Black slavery triggered a Jewish exodus from the colony! By 1740 solely three Jewish households had been left. They bounced, in keeping with Rabbi Marcus, as a result of “Negro slavery was prohibited, the liquor visitors was forbidden.” Jew Abraham De Lyon stated he left for “the need of Negroes…whereas his white servants value him greater than he was capable of afford.”
From their very own archival paperwork essentially the most lettered Jewish students have painted an alarming portrait of the earliest of their founding fathers. In each case examined, Jewish “liberty” and prosperity had been completely depending on Black slavery, and as soon as Black “liberty” was achieved the Jewish world imploded and the Jews fled. The Encyclopedia Judaica summarizes properly:
“A normal decline of the Spanish-Portuguese communities within the Caribbean set in through the nineteenth century. Rising competitors in agricultural merchandise, the abandonment of the plantations by the Afro-American laborers as a result of abolition of slavery, assimilation, and emigration had been the primary causes of this decline.”
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote that after being certain in Europe for 1,000 years, “they had been unfastened (free) to journey over the earth and deceive the folks.” Additional, “They’ve been right here now over 400 years. Their worst and most unpardonable sins had been the bringing of the so-called Negroes right here to do their labor.”
Jewish students have thus affirmed that nobody higher matches Mr. Muhammad’s description of the touring deceiver and “unpardonable” slave-making sinner than the Jew.
NOTES
See additionally Michael Hoffman, Judaism Found (2008), p. 375.
Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 60:3.
Robert Swierenga, The Forerunners: Dutch Jewry within the North American Diaspora (Detroit: Wayne State College Press, 1994), p. 36.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam: The Place of Curaçao and the Caribbean in Early Trendy Jewish Historical past,” American Jewish Historical past, vol. 72, no. 2 (December 1982), p. 190.
Yda Schreuder, Amsterdam’s Sephardic Retailers and the Atlantic Sugar Commerce within the Seventeenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 70. Additionally, Steven S. Sallie, “The Function of the Semitic Peoples within the Enlargement of the World Financial system By way of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Commerce: A Literature Extraction and an Interpretation,” Journal of Third World Research, vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall 1994), p. 173.
“Miscellaneous Gadgets Referring to Jews of North America,” Publications of the American Jewish Historic Society, vol. 27 (1920), pp. 223–24.
Sallie, “The Function of the Semitic Peoples,” p. 173.
https://www.americanjewisharchives.org/about/jacob-rader-marcus/
Malcolm H. Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim within the Americas,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer season 1992), p. 142.
Allan Metz, “These of the Hebrew Nation…The Sephardic Expertise in Colonial Latin America,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer season 1992), p. 226.
Marc Lee Raphael, Jews and Judaism in the USA: A Documentary Historical past (New York: Behrman Home, 1983), p. 24.
Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society (Philadelphia: College of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), p. 76.
Stephen Alexander Fortune, Retailers and Jews: The Wrestle for the British West Indian Caribbean, 1650-1750 (Gainesville: College Presses of Florida, 1984), p. 109.
Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim within the Americas,” p. 143.
Lavy Becker, “A Report on Curacao,” Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, December 5, 1969.
Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Battle and Alternative in ‘Europe’s Different Sea’: The Journey of Caribbean Jewish Settlement,” American Jewish Historical past, vol. 72, no. 2 (December 1982), p. 236.
Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim within the Americas,” p. 147; Emma Fidanque Levy, “The Fidanques: Symbols of the Continuity of the Sephardic Custom in America,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring/Summer season 1992), pp. 184–85.
Marc Lee Raphael, Jews and Judaism in the USA: A Documentary Historical past (New York: Behrman Home, 1983), p. 24.
Isaac S. and Susan A. Emmanuel, Historical past of the Jews of the Netherland Antilles (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1973), p. 77.
Johan Hartog, Curaçao From Colonial Dependence to Autonomy (Aruba, Netherland Antilles, 1968), p. 276.
Second Version, Quantity 4, p. 473.
Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim within the Americas,” p. 151.
Second Version, Quantity 4, p. 474.
See additionally James C. Boyajian, “New Christians and Jews within the Sugar Commerce, 1550–1750: Two Centuries of Growth of the Atlantic Financial system,” in The Jews and the Enlargement of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, eds. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), p. 476.
Stern, “Portuguese Sephardim within the Americas,” p. 164.
Jacob Rader Marcus, Memoirs of American Jews 1775-1865, vol. 2 (New York: KTAV Publishing Home, 1974), p. 288.
Edward D. Coleman, “Jewish Retailers within the Colonial Slave Commerce,” Publications of the American Jewish Historic Society, vol. 34 (1938), p. 285.
Second Version, Quantity 4, p. 470.
Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 104, 267; “Is There a Thriller God?” Pittsburgh Courier, Aug. 18, 1956.
