Through the Sands of Time: A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands

337 Pages·2003·2.236 MB·English

by  Judah M. Cohen

Through the Sands of Time

T H R O U G H T H E
Sands of Time
d
A History of the
Jewish Community of
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
Judah M. Cohen
Brandeis University Press
waltham, massachusetts
Brandeis University Press
An imprint of University Press of New England
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cohen, Judah M.
Through the sands of time : a history of the Jewish community of
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands / Judah M. Cohen.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(Brandeis series in American Jewish history,
culture, and life)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn 1–58465–341–8(cloth : alk. paper)
1. Jews—Virgin Islands of the United States—Saint Thomas—
History. 2. Jews—Virgin Islands of the United States—Saint
Thomas—Social life and customs. 3. Saint Thomas (V.I.)—Ethnic
relations. I. Title. II. Series.
f2105.c64 2004
972.97'22—dc22 2003020486
This book was published with the generous support of Ms. Kathryn
Petersen and the St. Thomas Hebrew Congregation.
Brandeis Series in American
Jewish History, Culture, and Life
Jonathan D. Sarna, Editor
Sylvia Barack Fishman,Associate Editor
Leon A. Jick, 1992 Sylvia Barack Fishman, 1995
The Americanization of the Synagogue, A Breath of Life: Feminism in the
1820–1870 American Jewish Community
Sylvia Barack Fishman, editor, 1992 Diane Matza, editor, 1996
Follow My Footprints: Changing Sephardic-American Voices: Two Hun-
Images of Women in American Jewish dred Years of a Literary Legacy
Fiction
Joyce Antler, editor, 1997
Gerald Tulchinsky, 1993 Talking Back: Images of Jewish Women
Taking Root: The Origins of the Cana- in American Popular Culture
dian Jewish Community
Jack Wertheimer, 1997
Shalom Goldman, editor, 1993 A People Divided: Judaism in Contem-
Hebrew and the Bible in America: porary America
The First Two Centuries
Beth S. Wenger and Jeffrey Shandler,
Marshall Sklare, 1993 editors, 1998
Observing America’s Jews Encounters with the “Holy Land”:
Place, Past and Future in American
Reena Sigman Friedman, 1994 Jewish Culture
These Are Our Children: Jewish
Orphanages in the United States, David Kaufman, 1998
1880–1925 Shul with a Pool: The “Synagogue-
Center” in American Jewish History
Alan Silverstein, 1994
Alternatives to Assimilation: The Re- Roberta Rosenberg Farber and Chaim
sponse of Reform Judaism to American I. Waxman, editors, 1999
Culture, 1840–1930 Jews in America: A Contemporary
Reader
Jack Wertheimer, editor, 1995
The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Murray Friedman and Albert D.
Transformed Chernin, editors, 1999
A Second Exodus: The American Move-
ment to Free Soviet Jews
Stephen J. Whitfield, 1999 Ori Z. Soltes, 2003
In Search of American Jewish Culture Fixing the World: Jewish American
Painters in the Twentieth Century
Naomi W. Cohen, 1999
Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American David Zurawik, 2003
Jewish Leadership The Jews of Prime Time
Barbara Kessel, 2000 Ava F. Kahn and Marc Dollinger,
Suddenly Jewish: Jews Raised as editors, 2003
Gentiles California Jews
Jonathan N. Barron and Eric Murphy Naomi W. Cohen, 2003
Selinger, editors, 2000 The Americanization of Zionism,
Jewish American Poetry: Poems, 1897–1948
Commentary, and Reflections
Gary P. Zola, editor, 2003
Steven T. Rosenthal, 2001 The Dynamics of American Jewish
Irreconcilable Differences: The Waning History: Jacob Rader Marcus’s Essays
of the American Jewish Love Affair with on American Jewry
Israel
Judah M. Cohen, 2003
Pamela S. Nadell and Jonathan D. Through the Sands of Time: A History of
Sarna, editors, 2001 the Jewish Community of St. Thomas,
Women and American Judaism: Histori- U.S. Virgin Islands
cal Perspectives
Seth Farber, 2003
Annelise Orleck, with photographs by An American Orthodox Dreamer: Rabbi
Elizabeth Cooke, 2001 Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Boston Mai-
The Soviet Jewish Americans monides School
Ilana Abramovitch and Seán Galvin, Amy L. Sales and Leonard Saxe, 2003
editors, 2001 “How Goodly Are Thy Tents”:
Jews of Brooklyn Summer Camps as Jewish Socializing
Experiences
Ranen Omer-Sherman, 2002
Diaspora and Zionism in American
Jewish Literature: Lazarus, Syrkin,
Reznikoff, and Roth
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments ix
Invitation: Why St. Thomas? xiii
Introduction: On Writing a Synagogue Narrative xix
chapter1 Gathering 1
chapter2 Growth: 1796–1831 19
chapter3 Rebuilding: 1831–1833 43
chapter4 A Battle of Reforms: 1833–1848 51
chapter5 Development: 1848–1867 87
chapter6 The Hebrew Reformed Congregation: 1867–1875 112
chapter7 Changing of the Guard: 1875–1914 142
chapter8 Struggle: 1914–1946 164
chapter9 A Revival from America: 1946–1967 195
epilogue Sifting through the Sands of Time 221
Notes 227
Bibliography 273
Index 297
Illustrations appear after page 86

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
I am immensely lucky to have had the support and interest of many people
from the moment I first expressed interest in researching the history of the
Jewish community of St. Thomas. Without them, this book would have been
merely an experiment in futility.
This project began as my undergraduate senior thesis at Yale. Funded by
a Richter Summer Research Grant, and supported by Rabbi Bradd Boxman,
who was then spiritual leader of the congregation, I conducted my first sum-
mer of research in 1994. David Brener and Katina Coulianos (and her fam-
ily, husband Douglas and children Lane and Nathan) immediately took me
under their respective wings in St. Thomas, providing me housing and board
throughout this time and enlightening me with their deep dedication to pre-
serving and cataloging the congregation’s history. Beverly Smith, librarian for
the Von Scholten Collection at the Enid M. Baa Public Library, graciously
provided me ready access to the books and microfilms I requested, and pro-
vided many valuable suggestions to guide me in my research. What I wrote
as my senior thesis, created under the advisorship of Paula Hyman and read
by Eli Lederhendler, would become an early draft of chapters 4, 5, and 6. I
am grateful to all for their invaluable assistance in sending me on my way.
After graduating, I spent a year researching in archives throughout Europe,
the Caribbean, and the United States. Thank you to the librarians, archivists,
and scholars (in many cases, these designations can be used interchange-
ably) who provided me so much help as I tried to piece together a widely
flung history: Jeanette Bastian, head librarian of the Enid M. Baa Public Li-
brary; Carol Wakefield at the Whim Plantation Archive in St. Croix; Kevin
Proffitt at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio; Michelle Feller-
Kopman at the American Jewish Historical Society, then in Waltham, Massa-
chusetts; Susan Tobin, curator of the Archives at New York’s Spanish and Por-
tuguese Synagogue Shearith Israel; Joseph Schwartz at the National Archives
II in College Park, Maryland; Ellis Lopes at the St. Eustatius Historical So-
ciety; and the staffs of the New York Public Library Jewish Division (New
York City), the University College of London and Jewish Historical Society
of England (London, England), the University of Southampton Archives and
Manuscripts (Southampton, England), the Gemeendearchief Amsterdam,
ix