History of Jamaica’s Jewish Presence 

 Jewish presence in Jamaica dates back to the Spanish occupation of the island in the 16th century. If those people of Jewish descent and identifying as Spanish or Portuguese practiced Judaism at all, it was likely in secret. However, after the English conquered the island and ousted the Spanish in 1655, the Crown offered 30 acres to those who would settle in Jamaica. At that time, along with 30 acres, settlers’ offspring born in Jamaica received all the rights and privileges of Englishmen. Jews, overwhelmingly Spanish Portuguese, qualified and they came from Amsterdam, London, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and New World colonies but rather than establishing plantations and cultivating sugar, most took up residence in Port Royal and involved themselves in commerce. New Christians and Crypto Jews, both native and immigrant, began practicing Judaism openly.

The 17th century Port Royal Jewish community lived and worshiped in Port Royal, but they buried their dead across the harbor in Hunt’s Bay. After an earthquake and tsunami destroyed much of Port Royal in 1692, a community formed in Spanish Town where they purchased land for a cemetery and built a synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Neveh Shalom. As the size of the Jewish community increased in the next century, congregations formed in Montego Bay and Kingston.

The earliest communities were Sephardi, but Ashkenazim trickled into Jamaica over the course of the eighteenth century. By 1796 the Ashkenazi community was large enough to warrant its own congregation, and the English and German Jews’ Congregation of Spanish Town erected its synagogue (Kahal Kodosh Mikveh Yisroeil) and established its cemetery.

Most Jewish men in Jamaica in the 17th and 18th centuries were merchants, traders, and retailers who lived with their families and enslaved in towns, but some lived in more rural areas where they ran plantations, farms, and animal pens. By the end of the 18th century, there were more than 1000 Jews on the island, constituting close to 8% of the population.

When Kingston became the capital in 1872, the Jewish community there grew, augmenting the numbers affiliated with the separate Sephardi and Ashkenazi congregations, which eventually merged in 1921 top form the United Congregation of Israelites (UCI), whose members continue to maintain the synagogue Sha’are Shalom and both active and historic cemeteries across the island.