In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

e p i l o g u e Sifting through the Sands of Time In the summer of 1975, my parents decided to go on an adventure. My father, after years of teaching in the Boston area, wanted to join the National Forestry Service; but the agency had placed a freeze on hiring , requiring him to look elsewhere for employment. It was in this spirit that he came across a classified ad for a teaching position in Charlotte Amalie, USVI. My father applied for the job, and was granted an interview; while he was in the area, he also interviewed for a second opening at a private school in Frenchman’s Bay. Eventually he was offered this second job. At the time, my parents found little difficulty in uprooting their lives in Boston for what they saw as an attractive lifestyle on a beautiful tropical island that, surprisingly enough, also sustained an old synagogue and active Jewish community. My mother soon procured a position at the same private school as the special education instructor for the primary grades. Fully set up, they moved down to the island with their two-year-old son, tentatively expecting to spend an exceptional year or two there. They encountered a synagogue that, just the year before, had undergone a large-scale renovation and rededication: the back foyer became an enclosed space, storage was added above; and, presumably in deference to contemporary aesthetic norms, the plaster was stripped off the sanctuary’s interior. A new rabbi, Stanley Relkin, had just been hired, beginning what would become a fifteen-year tenure on the island. Few older Sephardic members remained. The newest congregants, meanwhile, generally came from the United States. Lured by business prospects, sheer interest, or, like my parents , an adventurous spirit, they came to experience the weather and fabled atmosphere, chronicled in travel brochures across the United States. The congregation was blossoming into a full-fledged member of the Amer221 ican Jewish Reform movement. Programs, committees, organizational styles, prayer books, and youth activities had been instituted by a succession of Reform rabbis and active lay-leaders, serving to link the congregation’s culture and practices to that of American Reform Judaism.1 Yet even in the midst of this transformation, the St. Thomas synagogue and its congregants took on the unique task of embodying, preserving, and displaying a Sephardic heritage and legacy that had given the synagogue its historic significance. The sanctuary —a beautiful gem of Caribbean architecture visited daily by tourists of all faiths and nationalities—complemented two historic cemeteries housing generations of the congregation’s past members. Consequently, the congregation took on the role of curator. As it privately forged ahead with its day-to-day operations, the synagogue took pains to present publicly its own collective past. From 1975 to 1977, much of my family’s social life revolved around the Hebrew Congregation. We would go to services almost every Friday night, where I would play in the sand floor; and whenever the historic ark was opened, I would run up to the Torahs and stand there as the rabbi took my hand. On Saturday mornings, my parents took responsibility for two of the congregation’s Hebrew School classes, walking the students from lessons at our house downhill to a short service in the sanctuary. We celebrated the holidays together: I was dressed up in costume for Purim, for example, and competed for prizes at the synagogue’s communal reading of the Book of Esther. My father, moreover, became a member of the board in his second year, and entertained with the rest of the officers ways of inducing more onisland Jews to join the congregation. After two years of island life, replete with its droughts, hurricanes, overblown government, security issues, and unpredictable shipping patterns, we moved up to New Jersey; but my parents remained off-island subscribers to the synagogue, and continued to receive the congregation’s newsletter three times per year. With each update, we learned of the congregation’s continued growth. In 1983, the synagogue commemorated the 150th anniversary of its sanctuary ’s completion with an island-wide celebration. Reform movement president Alexander Schindler came to speak during the event, as did Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden III (namesake and great-grandson of the St. Thomas–born African nationalist), Columbia University African-American Studies professor Hollis Lynch, and Norma Levitt, President of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods. Letters of congratulations were sent from descendants of...

Share