Ocean Pew

The interior of Barbados's Nidhe Israel synagogue.

"Consider the irony: A foreign visitor celebrates his bar mitzvah on Shabbat Shekalim in a synagogue that was itself saved from the wrecking ball by a massive round of shekel-collecting; a synagogue, moreover, that is perched on an island at the easternmost edge of the Caribbean (no desert, but no Jerusalem, either) where the mere act of enumerating the Jewish population—800 Sephardim in 1750, 40 Ashkenazim in 2010, no Jews at all in 1930—reminds us of just how convoluted the history of our wandering people can be..."

Click here for entire Tablet Magazine article.

See also:  Speightstown’s Jewish Past