Within the tiny South American nation of Guyana, two Jews get pleasure from a practice of tolerance – Repeating Islands


[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Seth Wikas for the The Occasions of Israel:

When Janet Jagan, an immigrant from america, made historical past by changing into Guyana’s prime minister in 1997, she was regarded as the nation’s solely Jew.

In reality, one other Jew had just lately bought an island off the coast of Guyana, and 25 years later, there are nonetheless at the least two Jews residing within the tiny South American nation. One is the purchaser of the aforementioned island — a Guyanese-British-Israeli guesthouse operator who has been working in Guyana for the reason that Seventies. The opposite is a former Madison Avenue advertising and marketing government from Chicago who till just lately ran the nation’s largest tour operator.

Each provide a window into three dynamics that outline Guyana: a authorities that embraces all faiths, an financial system based mostly on extractive industries and an expansive rainforest the nation hopes shall be a draw for its rising ecotourism business.

Guyana, an English-speaking nation of roughly 800,000, got here to worldwide prominence in 1978 as the positioning of the Jonestown bloodbath, during which greater than 900 followers of cult chief Jim Jones had been killed, both by suicide or homicide.

[. . .] It was an earlier extractive business that first introduced Raphael Ades to Guyana. Born in Tel Aviv in 1951 to an Italian-Jewish mom and a Syrian-Jewish father, Ades had a peripatetic childhood. The household moved first to Milan when Ades, who goes by Rafi, was 11, after his father Meyer entered the diamond commerce, then two years later to southwestern Germany. They landed in Pforzheim, identified on the time as Goldstadt due to the prominence of bijou and treasured stone buying and selling regionally.

However the household was not but settled: In 1967, Meyer took the household to London, the place Ades completed highschool and took his college entrance exams, excelling in all the languages he had picked up — English, French, Italian, German and Hebrew. As a psychology pupil on the College of London, Ades started serving to his father, who maintained an workplace in London’s diamond district, at work. His father contracted out the sprucing, and one of many polishers was Indo-Guyanese. “That day, my dad took out the atlas and began to learn up on Guyana,” Ades recalled. “‘That is someplace I need to go,’ he instructed me.”

Throughout a visit to go to an Israeli pal in Venezuela, Meyer went on a prospecting journey to Guyana, and registered the Guyana Diamond Export firm. When he suffered a coronary heart assault, Ades and his mom flew to Georgetown to be with him. Barely 21, Ades stepped in to take a bigger function within the enterprise. He flew with different diamond consumers into the agricultural mining areas, and discovered the operations had been producing 1000’s of carats of diamonds.

“I stayed in Guyana by the second half of 1972 and fell in love with the place,” Ades recalled. “I went to the [main] Stabroek market in Georgetown, seeing all the iguanas and macaws. When my dad recuperated, I began going again to Guyana myself.”

His mining enterprise thrived. In 1997, he purchased Sloth Island, a 160-acre outpost a few two-hour journey from Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, requiring an hour-long automobile trip by the small villages that dot the Atlantic coast, after which an hour’s boat trip down the widening Essequibo River, passing pristine forests lined with mangroves and Indigenous villages. [. . .]

The absence of Jews in Guyana is a notable lacuna in a rustic that in any other case boasts a broad vary of religions. Historical past information a colony of Dutch Jews who settled in northwestern Guyana within the seventeenth century to supply sugarcane, however the English destroyed that colony in 1666, dispersing the Jewish residents. Jews from Arab lands moved to Guyana within the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to flee persecution however then migrated elsewhere; Jews fleeing Europe got here in 1939 however didn’t settle lengthy sufficient to determine a sustained group.

[. . .] In response to the 2012 census, Guyana is about two-thirds Christian, 1 / 4 Hindu, and fewer than 10% Muslim, with smaller populations of Rastafarians and Baha’is. Guyana’s cities and cities are dotted with church buildings, mandirs and mosques, and the nation has enshrined freedom of faith in its structure. Christian, Hindu and Muslim holy days are nationwide holidays. [. . .]

On the event of the Hindu pageant of Diwali final month, President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, South America’s solely Muslim head of presidency, emphasised the nation’s inclusivity when he instructed the nation: “Beneath the One Guyana banner, our persons are coming collectively, rejecting the forces of division and hatred, and uniting within the pursuit of peace, progress and prosperity.”

The emotions have had sensible implications for the nation’s two Jews. In 2017, when a Guyana Tourism Authority group was slated to journey to Suriname for a convention on journey catering to Muslim vacationers, the Mauritanian organizer of the occasion protested the presence of Jewish individuals. There have been purported to be two: Ades, and Andrea de Caires, then head of the nation’s largest personal tour operator, Wilderness Explorers.

“I obtained a name from the Guyanese Tourism Minister at 1 a.m., who requested me if I used to be Jewish, and he defined the scenario. And I believed, this [antisemitism] remains to be occurring on the planet?” de Caires remembered.

The Guyanese tourism minister refused to abide by the ban, de Caires proudly stated, and instructed the Surinamese hosts and convention organizers: “If Jews aren’t allowed, then none of us are going.” The Surinamese, lengthy identified for his or her non secular tolerance, additionally refused to just accept the prohibition, and stated that every one individuals had been welcome (in Suriname’s capital Paramaribo, a mosque stands subsequent to a synagogue they usually share a parking zone). Each de Caires and Ades attended the occasion. [. . .]

“After we moved to Guyana, it by no means occurred to me there would by no means be a Jewish group right here. There’s a Jewish group all over the place,” de Caires remembered considering. “That was fairly startling.”

So once they moved from Karanambu in 2016 to work at (and ultimately lead) Wilderness Explorers in Georgetown, de Caires was dedicated to opening her house to Guyanese mates and neighbors with Hanukkah events and Passover seders. [. . .]

For full article, see https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-the-tiny-south-american-nation-of-guyana-two-jews-enjoy-a-tradition-of-tolerance

[Photo above: Andrea de Caires, left, shown with her husband Salvador, is one of two known Jews in the English-speaking nation. (Courtesy of de Caires) via JTA.]



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