Notes Introduction 1. Converso translates from the Spanish word “convert” and refers to those who converted to Catholicism from Judaism in fifteenth-century Iberia or to the descendants of those who did. Conversos were also sometimes called Nuevo Cristiano , which means “New Christian.” Marrano comes from the Spanish word “pig” or “swine.” The word was used as a derogatory term for New Christians with Jewish ancestry. Marrano comes from the Arabic word muharram, which means “ritually forbidden,” stemming from the prohibition of eating pork among Muslims and Jews. 2. Sepharad is the Hebrew name for Iberia, the place of ancestral origin of Sephardic Jews. 3. Rosengarten and Stiefel, “Port Jews and Plantation Jews: Carolina-Caribbean Connections.” 4. Sarna, American Judaism: A History, 12. For Sarna each Jewish settlement constituted a “synagogue-community,” a term he uses to refer to congregants rather than to physical buildings. This one-to-one— a single congregation to a single house of worship—ratio remains, for the most part, a useful historical measure. 5. For example the official name of the Jewish congregation in Charleston, South Carolina, that dates from the eighteenth century is Kahal Kodesh (Holy Congregation /Community) Beth Elohim (House of God). Henceforth congregations will be referred to without the Kahal Kodesh prefix—for example Beth Elohim in the case of Charleston. 6. Meek, The Synagogue, 142–47. 7. Again Sarna’s one-to-one ratio (see above) is the best overall system of measurement . 8. Within this study “Surinam” is spelled in two different ways (Surinam vs. Suriname), reflecting the addition of the “e” to the name upon the country’s gaining independence in 1975. 9. See Sachar, Farewell Espana. 10. According to some family traditions of early Sephardic colonial families, some returnees to Judaism, such as Zipporah Nunes Machado Jacobs (1710–99), continued to use rosary beads while reciting Jewish prayers out of habit for years even after they had found refuge in the British and Dutch Empires. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese, 155; and Marcus, The Colonial American Jew, 1492–1776, 2:1020. 278 Notes to Pages 5–12 11. Angel, Remnant of Israel: A Portrait of America’s First Jewish Congregation, Shearith Israel, 52. 12. Studnicki-Gizbert, “La Nación among the Nations: Portuguese and Other Maritime Trading Diasporas in the Atlantic, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” 89. 13. See Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese, a publication that extensively studies this history. 14. The direction of “mizrach” is also used to indicate the direction of prayer within synagogues located west of Jerusalem by Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewry. 15. Barnavi, ed., A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present, 148–53. 16. Rupert, “Trading Globally, Speaking Locally: Curaçao’s Sephardim in the Making of a Caribbean Creole,” 109–17; and Marcus. The Colonial American Jew, 1492–1776, 3:159–60. 17. Cohen Paraira, “A Jewel in the City,” 41–68; and Wiznitzer, “The Synagogue and Cemetery of the Jewish Community of Recife, Brazil (1630–1654),” 129. 18. Swierenga, The Forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American Diaspora, 23–31; and K. K. Beth Shalome Collection, miscellaneous papers, 1789–1898. Beth Ahabah Museum & Archives, Richmond, Virginia. 19. See Sarna, American Judaism. 20. Congregation Shaar Hashamaim was also known in Portuguese as Porta do Ceu, which both translate as “Gates of Heaven.” Elkin, The Jews of Latin America, 40–44, 61–62. 21. Jick, The Americanization of the Synagogue, 1820–1870. 22. Ackermann, “The 1794 Synagogue of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim of Charleston : Reconstructed and Reconsidered,” 176. C H A P T E R 1: The Origin of the Atlantic World Synagogue 1. See Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, for a detailed discussion of this history. 2. “Rabbi” was the title bestowed on the sages of ancient Israel and ordained by the Sanhedrin. These sages also had authority to judge minor disputes related to Jewish law. “Rav” or “Haham” was also the title of an exceptional scholar, originating in the Babylonian academies. 3. Ladino, sometimes called Judeo-Spanish, is a Romance language, descended from medieval Spanish, spoken by Sephardic Jews with ancestral origins from Iberia. 4. Papiamento is a creole language derived from Spanish and Dutch, with elements of African languages, English, and Arawak. 5. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 111. 6. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 13. 7. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 13. 8. Sarna, American Judaism: A History, 106, argues that Touro Synagogue (then known as Jeshuat Israel...