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A Record of the Jews in Jamaica

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  • Subtitle:  From the English Conquest to the Present Time
  • Author:  Jacob A. P. M. Andrade
  • Publisher:  The Jamaica Times, Ltd., 1941 – 282 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/42015210
  • Availability:  out of print and hard to find at any price; recommend finding in a library

Review

Jacob Andrade spent the better part of two decades collecting sources for this absorbing work.  Traversing much of the island himself, he consulted archives, wills, cemetery inscriptions, deed registers, synagogue records, and personally conducted oral history interviews with older Jamaican Jews.  The resulting book is a mine of descriptive and historical information about Sephardim and Ashkenazim on the island, including verbatim copies of many important documents, biographies of prominent citizens, and a detailed account of local cemeteries.

Unfortunately, the quality of the final product is marred by several deficiencies in the way it was prepared.  Users will find that the formatting is confusingly minimal, so that it is sometimes unclear when a quotation ends and Adrade's prose resumes.  Although the chapters are somewhat scattershot, there is no table of contents to serve as a guide, and in an even greater omission there is no index.  Still, the sheer value and detail of the material contained in this volume cannot be overlooked, making it an essential source on Jamaican Jewish life.

Contents – not available in the book itself

The coming of the Jews to Jamaica
Early struggles for equal rights
Rights and privileges as British subjects
Jews justify their admission to full citizenship
The history of our synagogues
English & German Jews' congregation of Kingston
[Conflicts over ritual, and between congregations]
Officers and other facts re: the United Congregation
Jewish cemeteries and institutions
Jewish loyalty and public work
Appendices:
   German Jews who achieved naturalization
   Presentation of a platter to Moses Delgado

   Notable Jamaican Hebrews
   Jewish physicians and surgeons

    1
    5
  15
  27
  38
  55
  63
  86
  99
113

145
146
148
174
Jewish militiamen and officers
Extracts from wills
Deeds and assembly votes for synagogue land
Orders of service for synagogue consecrations
Inventory of Neveh Shalom appurtenances
List of interments in various cemeteries
Documents re: synagogues on the island
Notes related to the Ketuba
Deeds for Jewish cemeteries
Jews serving as Masons and as teachers
Jews who served in the Great War
Jewish population by city, 1881-1921
Genealogy of the Corinaldi family
Hahamim of Jamaica
Benevolent act of two Christian gentlemen

176
178
194
197
199
201
239
251
252
267
269
279
280
281
281

Images

The plates from this book can be viewed online for free as part of the Reed Digital Collections