History of the Jews in Venezuela

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since March 2007.

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. This article has been tagged since March 2007.

The history of Jews in Venezuela most likely began in the middle of the 17th century, when some records suggest that groups of marranos lived in Caracas and Maracaibo. Although many scholars say there is no evidence yet discovered to prove that a Jewish community existed in Venezuela as early as the 17th century, Venezuelan popular belief claims that groups of marranos went from Caracas to the city of Tucacas in 1693, and vanished without leaving behind any records. However, due to Venezuela's geographic proximity to countries that did have organized Jewish communities, such as the Dutch colony of Curaçao, it can be assumed that Jews from Curaçao traveled to Venezuela to trade. After the disappearance of Jews from Tucacas, Jews did not begin to settle permanently in Venezuela again until the middle of the 19th century.

At the turn of the 19th century, Venezuela and Colombia were fighting against their Spanish colonizers in wars of independence. Simon Bolivar, considered Venezuela's liberator, found refuge and material support for his army in the homes of Jews from Curaçao. Jews such as Mordejai Ricardo and brothers Ricardo and Abraham Meza offered hospitality to Bolivar as he fought against the Spanish, thus establishing brotherly relations between Jews and the newly independent Venezuelan republic. Several Jews even fought in the ranks of Bolivar's army during the war. The ties between Jews in the Dutch island colonies and Venezuela increased more dramatically between 1819-1821 after its new constitution called for religious freedom. In 1820, the first Jewish family settled in the town of Coro, which has a Jewish cemetery with tombstones dating back to 1832. Other Jewish communities began springing up in Caracas and Puerto Cabello in the 1840s. In 1844, groups of Jews from Morocco came to the town of Barcelona and, in 1875, they were granted permission to establish a Jewish cemetery.

In 1827, a group of Jews emigrated from the tiny island of Curacao to the nearby mainland port city of Coro, Venezuela. Twenty-eight years later, violent rioting drove the entire Jewish population – 168 individuals – back to Curacao.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the Venezuelan Jewish community was in dire need of a permanent place of prayer. Assimilation proved to be a large problem for the fledgling community. The Portuguese Jewish immigrants who came to Venezuela by way of Curaçao had a loose-knit communal life, and religious tolerance and acceptance of Jews was not continuous throughout the country. These three factors contributed to the growing assimilation of the community and, by the end of the 19th century, the Dutch portion of Venezuelan Jewry had all but disappeared. Small Jewish communities could be found in towns such as Port Hair, Villa de Cura, Carupano, Rio Chico, Maracaibo, and Barquisimeto. It was not until the arrival of North African and eastern European Jews in the 1920s and 1930s, however, that the Jewish community began to fully develop.

According to a national census taken at the end of the 19th century, 247 Jews lived in Venezuela as citizens in 1891.^{[citation needed]} In 1907, the Israelite Beneficial Society, which became the Israelite Society of Venezuela in 1919, was created as an organization to bring all the Jews who were scattered through various cities and towns throughout the country together. Jewish prayer and holiday services took place in small houses in Caracas and towns like Los Teques and La Guaira. By 1917, the number of Jewish citizens rose to 475, and to 882 in 1926.^{[citation needed]} Jewish immigration from Eastern and Central Europe increased after 1934, but, by then, Venezuela had imposed specific restrictions on Jewish immigration, which remained in effect until after the 1950s.

By 1943, nearly 600 German Jews had entered the country, with several hundred more becoming citizens after World War II. By 1950, the community had grown to around 6,000 people,^{[citation needed]} even in the face of immigration restrictions. With the fall of dictator Perez Jimenez in 1958, more than 1,000 Jews immigrated to Venezuela from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Salonica, Turkey, and even from Israel. An unknown number of Jews also immigrated from other Latin American countries, which raised the size of the community to more than 15,000 Jews by the 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

Currently, there are more than 35,000 Jews living in Venezuela^{[citation needed]}, with more than half living in the capital Caracas. Venezuelan Jewry is split equally between Sephardim and Ashkenazim^{[citation needed]}. All but one of the country's 15 synagogues are Orthodox. The majority of Venezuela's Jews are members of the middle and upper classes^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] See also

• List of Venezuelan Jews
• Israel-Venezuela relations