Beautiful Barbados

We were there last summer.  Fascinating to see this work in progress!  Read the blog post about the Synagogue here.

The current edition of the Reform Judaism magazine includes a fascinating article about the history and restoration of the Nidhe Israel (the Scattered of Israel) synagogue in Bridgetown, Barbados. The synagogue was established in 1654 by Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition. They were joined in the 1660s by a number of Jewish families fleeing Recife, Brazil, where they were being persecuted by the Dutch. Sold in 1929 by the last surviving member of the original founders, the synagogue has now been restored and is now a Barbados protected site and an active synagogue. It houses a new interactive Jewish museum and a recently excavated mikveh, the oldest known in the Western Hemisphere.

The article chronicles the painstaking restoration project, which began in the 1960s and is still ongoing, since recent excavations of the parking lot unearthed the mikveh. The restorations included the adjacent cemetery, which holds crucial information for the reconstruction of the synagogue’s history, and details the efforts made to trace and recover the various ornaments and sacred objects that once belonged to the congregation:

Paul Altman also struggled to recover the synagogue’s eight brass chandeliers, which he traced to the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, the site of the former estate of Henry Francis DuPont. When he appealed to DuPont’s Jewish chairman and CEO, Irving Shapiro reiterated the museum curator’s rationale for denying the request: “If we were to return all our exhibits, we wouldn’t have a museum.” As a consolation, Shapiro told Altman, “We will let you copy them.” Altman pleaded with him, “If we copy them, why don’t we put the copies in the museum with a sign saying, ‘Originals returned by DuPont to the Nidhe Israel synagogue in Barbados.’ How often do you get an offer like that?” Still, Altman says, “It was a no go. The originals remain in the Winterthur and the facsimiles hang in Nidhe Israel.”

Altman had greater success in retrieving the mahogany representation of the Ten Commandments which had hung over the Torah ark. Lady Stella St. John, wife of the Barbados prime minister, had displayed the tablets above the swimming pool of Ilaro Court, their official residence, and graciously donated them back to the synagogue. As the Torah ark and reader’s desk no longer existed, Altman commissioned “a brilliant woodworker” to refabricate them in Barbados mahogany.

The article can be found at http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1464