Jonathan Schorsch
Universität Potsdam
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Jonathan Schorsch
“A skilled, engaging and readable study, leaping boldly beyond its seemingly thin documentary basis of last wills and testaments. While attending innovatively to domestic life, Mirvis admirably situates this largest colonial English Jewish community amid its transatlantic context: the Portuguese Jewish diaspora, the city of Bayonne, which supplied much of its population, cross-empire commerce, Enlightenment influences, tropical Caribbean exigencies, and the slave system.” (from Amazon)
by Stanley Mirvis·You?
An in-depth look at the Portuguese Jews of Jamaica and their connections to broader European and Atlantic trade networks Based on last wills and testaments composed by Jamaican Jews between 1673 and 1815, this book explores the social and familial experiences of one of the most critical yet understudied nodes of the Atlantic Portuguese Jewish Diaspora. Stanley Mirvis examines how Jamaica’s Jews put down roots as traders, planters, pen keepers, physicians, fishermen, and metalworkers, and reveals how their presence shaped the colony as much as settlement in the tropical West Indies transformed the lives of the island’s Jews.