History of the Jews in Curaçao
The history of the Jews in Curaçao can be traced back to the mid-17th century, when the first Jewish immigrants began to arrive. The first Jews in Curaçao were Sephardi Jewish immigrants from the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. These immigrants founded Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, the oldest continuously used synagogue in the Americas. The first Jew to settle in Curaçao was a Dutch-Jewish interpreter named Samuel Cohen, who arrived on board a Dutch fleet in 1634. By the mid-1700s, the community was the most prosperous in the Americas and many of the Jewish communities in Latin America, primarily in Colombia and Venezuela, resulted from the influx of Curaçaoan Jews. In the 20th century Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe immigrated to Curaçao, establishing their own traditions and a school. As of 2013, the Jewish population is around 350. History In 1492, the Jews of Spain, after years of persecution and forced conversion to Catholicism, were expelled en masse. Initially, they sought refuge in nearby Portugal but eventually spread throughout Europe into other places with larger Jewish populations, like Belgium, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Holland. So many of the Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal had settled in Amsterdam, that by the year