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• A Tale of Two Jewish Cemeteries:Preservation of Jewish Historic Heritage in the Caribbean
• Ronald Gomes Casseres (bio)

It has been 370 years since the first Jews settled in Curaçao. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the island's Jewish community was the largest in the Americas with some 1500 Jews.¹ In 1789, notwithstanding a decrease in the number of Jews due to emigration and based on more accurate census figures, Jews still represented 14% of the free population and 30% of the white population.² Unlike in other centers of Jewish life, however, over the course of these more than three and a half centuries, more than six thousand Jews were interred in just two cemeteries, the historic Beth Haim Bleinheim and the contemporary Beth Haim Berg Altena.³ Study of the tombs concentrated in Curaçao's two Jewish burial sites thus provides a unique window onto the changing practices and customs of this Jewish community.

Cemeteries tell us more than who lived, who died, and when they did so. A study of cemeteries, referred to as bet ḥayims in Sephardic tradition, also tells us about how many of the interred lived their lives.⁴ The sepulchral monuments and inscriptions of Curaçao's cemeteries provide a glimpse of Jewish life, including the religious and social practices of those [End Page 575] resting there. This article will show how burial and naming customs of the Jewish community evolved and to some extent became more secular in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The historic Beth Haim Bleinheim, established in 1651, was the first Jewish cemetery in Curaçao. It lies in the former Joden Quartier, or Jewish quarter, where the first Jews settled and continued to live and own plantations well into the nineteenth century, located two miles from the capital and main city of the island, Willemstad. The establishment of a Reform bet ḥayim at Berg Altena two hundred years later in the outskirts of the city attests to the vehemence of the internal conflicts within this often contentious Jewish community. A third cemetery, also at Berg Altena, was founded in 1880, when Orthodox Jews moved to this neighborhood and wanted a new cemetery closer to where they resided. The two cemeteries at Berg Altena, the first part of a Reform community and the second an Orthodox community, were merged into one in the middle of the twentieth century.

BETH HAIM BLEINHEIM

Much has been written about the history of Curaçao's Jewish community and about the old cemetery, Beth Haim Bleinheim.⁵ Isaac Emmanuel's Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao is the definitive study of the cemetery and the genealogy of Curaçao's Jews.⁶ The book offers detailed descriptions of 225 representative epitaphs with associated biographies of the deceased, as well as fifty photographs of tombstones, or details thereof, all taken and recorded from 1936 to 1941. It also contains a detailed map and extensive descriptions of the cemetery, funerary art, and local burial societies, as well as a catalogue of the deceased buried in the 2570 graves that Emmanuel was able to identify (see figure 1).⁷ [End Page 576]

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Beth Haim Bleinheim overview.

Beth Haim Bleinheim is thought to have been founded no later than in 1659, although the oldest known inscription on a tomb at Bleinheim is from 1668.⁸ It is likely that there were burials in the period from 1651 to 1668, but if these tombs had ledger stones, they either did not survive or settled deep below the surface of the ground. Beth Haim Bleinheim is the oldest walled-in Jewish cemetery in the Americas and the oldest continually used Jewish cemetery in the Americas.⁹ After 1880, however, Beth Haim Bleinheim was used only sporadically. The last Sephardic Jew buried at Beth Haim Bleinheim appears to be Arturo Cohen Henriquez in 1950; his ancestors included several well-known last names in Curaçao's Sephardic history: Levy Maduro, Abinun de Lima, and Lopez Henriquez, in addition to his own Cohen Henriquez. The very last burial at Beth Haim Bleinheim was...

中文翻译：

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两个犹太公墓的故事：加勒比地区犹太历史遗产的保护

以下是内容的简短摘录，以代替摘要：

• 两个犹太公墓的故事：加勒比地区犹太历史遗产的保护
• 罗纳德·戈麦斯·卡塞雷斯（简介）

自第一批犹太人在库拉索岛定居以来已有 370 年历史。十八世纪中叶，岛上的犹太社区是美洲最大的，约有 1500 名犹太人。¹ 1789 年，尽管犹太人人数因移民而减少，但根据更准确的人口普查数据，犹太人仍占自由人口的 14% 和白人人口的 30%。²然而，与犹太人生活的其他中心不同的是，在这三个半世纪的时间里，六千多名犹太人被埋葬在两个墓地中，即历史悠久的贝斯海姆布莱因海姆墓地和当代的贝斯海姆伯格阿尔特纳墓地。^{3 因此，}对集中在库拉索岛两个犹太人墓地的坟墓的研究为了解这个犹太社区不断变化的习俗和习俗提供了一个独特的窗口。

墓地告诉我们的不仅仅是谁活着、谁死了以及他们什么时候死的。对墓地（在西班牙系传统中被称为“bet ḥayim ”）的研究也告诉我们有多少埋葬者过着自己的生活。⁴库拉索岛墓地的墓碑和铭文让我们得以一睹犹太人的生活，包括那些安息在那里的人的宗教和社会习俗[结束第 575 页]。本文将展示十九世纪末和二十世纪犹太社区的埋葬和命名习俗如何演变，并在某种程度上变得更加世俗。

历史悠久的贝斯海姆布莱因海姆 (Beth Haim Bleinheim) 建于 1651 年，是库拉索岛第一座犹太墓地。它位于前乔登区（Joden Quartier）或犹太区，第一批犹太人在这里定居并继续生活并拥有种植园，直到十九世纪为止，距离该岛的首府和主要城市威廉斯塔德有两英里。两百年后，改革派哈伊姆 (Reform bet ḥayim)在城市郊区的伯格阿尔特纳 (Berg Altena)建立，证明了这个经常引起争议的犹太社区内部冲突的激烈程度。第三个墓地也位于 Berg Altena，建于 1880 年，当时正统犹太人搬到这个社区，并希望在离他们居住地更近的地方建造一个新墓地。Berg Altena 的两个墓地，第一部分是改革社区，第二部分是东正教社区，在二十世纪中叶合并为一个。

贝丝·海姆·布莱海姆

关于库拉索岛犹太社区的历史和贝丝·海姆·布莱因海姆 (Beth Haim Bleinheim) 老墓地的历史已有很多著作。⁵艾萨克·伊曼纽尔的《库拉索犹太人的宝石》是对库拉索犹太人墓地和家谱的权威研究。⁶该书详细描述了 225 个具有代表性的墓志铭以及相关死者传记，以及 50 张墓碑照片或相关细节，全部拍摄于 1936 年至 1941 年。书中还包含详细地图和对墓地的详细描述、丧葬艺术和当地丧葬协会，以及伊曼纽尔能够识别的 2570 个坟墓中埋葬的死者的目录（见图 1）。⁷ [第 576 页完]

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查看完整分辨率图 1。

贝丝·海姆·布莱因海姆概述。

贝丝·海姆·布莱因海姆 (Beth Haim Bleinheim) 被认为最晚建于 1659 年，尽管已知最古老的布莱因海姆坟墓铭文是 1668 年的。⁸很可能在 1651 年至 1668 年间曾有墓葬，但如果这些坟墓账石上，它们要么没有幸存，要么沉入地表深处。贝丝·海姆·布莱因海姆 (Beth Haim Bleinheim) 是美洲最古老的有围墙的犹太墓地，也是美洲最古老的持续使用的犹太墓地。⁹然而，1880 年之后，贝丝·海姆·布莱因海姆 (Beth Haim Bleinheim) 只被零星使用。最后一位埋葬在 Beth Haim Bleinheim 的塞法迪犹太人似乎是 1950 年的阿图罗·科恩·恩里克斯 (Arturo Cohen Henriquez)；他的祖先包括库拉索岛西班牙裔历史上几个著名的姓氏：利维·马杜罗、阿比农·德·利马和洛佩斯·恩里克斯，以及他自己的科恩·恩里克斯。贝丝·海姆·布莱因海姆 (Beth Haim Bleinheim) 的最后一次埋葬是……