BEFORE GEORGE WASHINGTON; New Amsterdam's Refusal of Jewish Refugees

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

The Pilgrims' boat, the Mayflower,  took a turn in the Atlantic Ocean in 1620  and these people from England via living in Holland for years wound up in the New World on a Rock called Plymouth Rock, what would later be part of Massachusetts.  They wanted a new start in the world but weren't about to let the Jews have the same opportunity.

Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Netherlands became home to numerous Portugese merchants, as the region, and particularly the city of Amsterdam, became a center of world trade and shipping. Among these merchants were many Marranos (called Anusim today), who had been forced out of Spain by the Inquisition in 1492. They kept their Jewish identities a secret, but, by the end of the century, had formed a community in Amsterdam, a city that did not recognize religions other than Protestantism. The community was discovered, and its leaders arrested, in 1603. 

As a result, some of the newly-acknowledged Jews moved to the towns of Alkmaar, Rotterdam, and Haarlem, which extended them protective charters. The majority, however, remained in Amsterdam, and even founded a second community there in 1608.

Founded in 1602, the 1621 charter of the West India Company in Amsterdam''s  intended purpose  was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the Dutch colonization of the Americas.."The New Netherland area, which included New Amsterdam, covered parts of present-day New York, Connecticut,Delaware, and New Jersey."
                                                                       

In September 1654 the  boat, the Dutch St. Catrina,  with 23 Jews in it landed among these northern  colonies of New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw-Amsterdam) which  was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, which served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland .and at first were turned away because they were Jews.  Jews were hated by these English settlers.   The Jews were made up of  4 couples;  2 widows and 13 children:  (10 adults and
13 children) .  They had come from Recife, Brazil.  "These Brazilian Jews were the descendants of perhaps 5,000 Jews who had been living in Recife, most of them secretly, since the mid-1500s. The Dutch captured portions of Brazil from the Portuguese in 1624, and some neo-Christians openly returned to the practice of their Jewish faith. When Portugal recaptured Brazil in 1654, these Jews feared the introduction of the Inquisition and fled. They were probably on their way back to Amsterdam after a stop in Jamaica when their ship was attacked by a Spanish privateer who stripped them of their valuables. A return to Europe was now out of the question. The refugees then made a deal with the ship's captain, Jacques de la Mothe, to take them to New Amsterdam, which they thought would be a hospitable destination."

"From 1630 onward, the Dutch Republic came to control almost half of Brazil's area at the time, with their capital in Recife. The Dutch West India Company (WIC) set up their headquarters in Recife. The governor, Johan Maurits, invited artists and scientists to the colony to help promote Brazil and increase immigration. The Portuguese won a significant victory at the Second Battle of Guararapes in 1649. On 26 January 1654, the Dutch surrendered and signed the capitulation, but only as a provisory pact. By May 1654, the Dutch demanded that the Dutch Republic was to be given New Holland back. On 6 August 1661, New Holland was formally ceded to Portugal through the Treaty of The Hague."

The Portuguese had conquered Dutch Brazil in 1654, and this group had to emigrate because of this.  Not only were they told to leave, but they themselves feared the Spanish Catholic Inquisition from 1492, for it had never stopped seeking out Jews to punish on their racks or to burn them at the stake. These people had originally docked in Jamaica and Cuba, but the Spanish didn't allow them to stay there.  Their ship went on to New Amsterdam, which was later named New York.  .
                                                                           

b: 1612 in The Netherlands, governor from 1647-1664 of
New Amersterdam, a Dutch Colony-
working for the West India Company since about 1635. 

Peter Stuyvesant was the appointed director-general in 1646 of the West India Company. He was also the Colonial governor at that time and tried to have them expelled, also, and went so far as to write a letter to the directors of the Dutch West India Company dated September 22, 1654:

"The Jews who have arrived would nearly all like to remain here, but learning that they (with their customary usury and deceitful trading with the Christians) were very repugnant to the inferior magistrates, as also to the people having the most affection for you;  the Deaconry also fearing that owing to their present indigence they might become a charge in the coming winter, we have, for the benefit of this weak and newly developing place and the land in general, deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart, praying also most seriously in this connection, for ourselves as also for the general community of your worships, that the deceitful race---such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ---be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony to the detraction of your worships and the dissatisfaction of your worships' most affectionate subjects."  

Evidently these 23 did not have passports!  There were already 3 in New Amsterdam with passports that they couldn't get rid of.  These 23 were from Dutch Brazil, too.  

Pilgrims-people who had lived in Holland 

Their anti-Semitism was dripping from this letter.  To think that they themselves came from Holland, a far more broad-minded country than England ever was, and reacted like this was most disappointing to the 23 Jews after sailing for so long. England had expulsed Jews who were living there way back in 1290 and only allowed Jews to immigrate back in 1655, a year AFTER these Jews tried to land in the New World's New Amsterdam.  

Much to Peter Stuyvesant's surprise, among the directors of the Dutch West India Company were several influential Jews, who interceded on the refugees' behalf.  Company officials scolded Stuyvesant and ordered him in a letter dated April 26, 1655, to let the Jews remain in New Amsterdam, "provided that the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation."  

Isn't it amazing?  They were refugees and were not to get any help at all from the people of New Amsterdam.  What if they all were without funds and were starving? Among those 4 men had to have been enough money to keep 23 people alive until they could get on their feet and exist like the rest of the colony were.  They were traders. Evidently they had a rough go of it.  

" He had referred to Jews as a "repugnant race" and "usurers", and was concerned that "Jewish settlers should not be granted the same liberties enjoyed by Jews in Holland, lest members of other persecuted minority groups, such as Roman Catholics, be attracted to the colony."

Sometimes  it turns out that how you treat others comes back to you in kind.  "In 1664, King Charles II of England ceded to his brother, the Duke of York, later King James II, a large tract of land that included New Netherland. Four English ships bearing 450 men, commanded by Richard Nicolls, seized the Dutch colony. On 30 August 1664, George Cartwright sent the governor a letter demanding surrender. He promised "life, estate, and liberty to all who would submit to the king's authority." Stuyvesant signed a treaty at his Bouwerij house on 9 September 1664. Nicolls was declared governor, and the city was renamed New York. Stuyvesant obtained civil rights and freedom of religion in the Articles of Capitulation. The Dutch settlers mainly belonged to the Dutch Reformed church, a Calvinist denomination, holding to the Three Forms of Unity (Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, Canons of Dordt). The English were Anglicans, holding to the 39 Articles, a Protestant confession, with Bishops.

No other people have ever had to live through 1654 years of persecution and hatred and death for a false accusation of killing another's God.  That's where all this anti-Semitism comes from. For people who brought  justice to the world in the 10 commandments, they find they are excluded from such by others.   

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Colonial_America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Brazil
http://nychistory.blogspot.com/2010/08/return-to-establishment-of-shearith.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company
Plymouth Colony, its history & people 1620-1691

Chanukah on Thanksgiving: A Jubilee Year

Nadene Goldfoot
This is a very special year.  It's been 125 years since Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah coincided.  It won't happen again for a very long time.  We American Jews find we are a stew of heritages and food traditions, so our menu this year should be as commingled as our own DNA.  This year we're having turkey with our latkes and pumpkin pie served much later as it contains milk, so we'll have to figure out a non-milk dessert.  Apple pie will do.  Maybe we'll have pumpkin pie during the lunch hour to go along with yogurt the next day.  Since lasts for 8 days, we can always extend the tasty treats of Thanksgiving that long as well!

Thanksgiving is really  the celebration of Succah by Christian Pilgrims, though they may not have realized it.  Jews have had Thanksgiving offerings for over 4,000 years.  Sacrifice brought by an individual as a token of thanks to G-d  was observed in ancient days.  They were brought after traveling the seas or the desert, after recovery from illness, and after release from prison.  Pilgrims had a terrible time of existing for their first few years upon landing at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts-just wild land in those days.  When they finally, after several years, had a successful harvest, they invited their neighbors, the "Indians"-people that Columbus  thought were people of India, to a feast that lasted for 3 days.  Actually, the Indians had helped them to feed themselves by showing them how to plant a new veggie, corn.  Indians always planted the seeds with some fish they had caught, which was a great fertilizer.  No wonder the corn grew so well.  This was some party!  The Indians brought deer they had hunted to add to the menu and they had a wonderful time thanking G-d for the abundance of food they had provided for themselves.

Pilgrims, who were Englishmen who had moved to Holland because they disagreed with England's form of religion, had been very brave to decide to sail to this new land from Holland on the ship, the Mayflower.  It was Pastor John Robinson who told them to go ahead and forge the way.  In England, you had to follow the state's religion or else.  These were free-thinkers.  How lucky they were to travel to a new continent.  It was like being space ship travelers.  Where would they land?  They thought they were going to a warm place, like the south of North America, but their ship got off coarse, and here they were, in a much colder place.  No wonder so many died the first year.  They were not prepared.  Their harvest was plentiful in the following years!

Sukkot is also a harvest festival.  Sukkot lasts for 7 days with the 8th day being a special one called Shemini Atzeret.  This is the celebration remembering how the 600,000 with Moses, having been liberated from slavery in Egypt by him, had to live in little booths-like structures, similar to tents-while they traveled for 40 years to their Promised Land, Canaan-land of Moses's ancestors. We celebrate it by building our own booths to live in and decorating it with our harvest foods, for it's also a harvest festival.  We must have had to wait for the time when we were actually in Canaan, and like the Pilgrims, finally got to plant and harvest our own food and had a similar Thanksgiving meal.  That's because for the 40 years they traveled to get there, they had to exist on Manna.   One of the Dead Sea Scrolls containing a number of prayers were found to open with the words, "I thank Thee, O Lord."  We remember and give thanks at every meal we have.  A prayer is said before and after a meal.

These Pilgrims were very religious people, coming to this new land for this very reason, having freedom for themselves of religion, and were familiar with Hebrew and the "Old Testament".  They knew all about Sukkot.

Chanukah, our holiday that usually coincides with Christmas, is also a holiday of freedom.  Judea had been occupied by the Syrian Greeks and they  had tried to stop Judaism by forcing people to believe in their multi-gods of their religion.  They took over and occupied our Temple.   The Greeks wanted us to stop following our Torah because of its G-dliness.  They were pragmatic materialists in their Greek culture and this left no room for our special relationship with G-d. They had figured rightly that our strength as a people came from Torah, not from our muscles.  

 This 8 day holiday (we really know how to celebrate with many days, don't we?) is commemorating the victory of Judah the Maccabee over Antiochus Epiphanes.  The Maccabees were able to re-dedicate the Temple and the altar by cleaning it out, removing any idols put there by the enemy and relighting the eternal light with a cruse of the needed oil they found stashed in the Temple.  .  They had to send a runner to get some more. This oil continued to burn for 8 days until the runner came back, and is considered a miracle because there was really only enough for about one night.

Perhaps after sitting there for a long stretch it had become very concentrated.   It was a great and much needed miracle.  If the Maccabees hadn't been successful, Judaism could have been stamped out and we all would be bowing to Greek gods today.  Chances are that there wouldn't be any Christianity as you know it or any Islam, either.  That's because history is like a set of dominoes whereas when one falls it pushes the next down and so on.  One historic fact is built upon another fact that preceded it.  This is where we get into time machines and going back in time but not changing anything.  If you do, you might find out you were never born in the first place.

Turkey is traditional for Thanksgiving.  It almost became America's national bird, but the eagle won out instead.  However, the Indians, who we now refer to as Native Americans, delighted us at that first meal by bringing in many turkeys to cook for the dinner besides all their deer to eat.  I wonder if they were ever faced with so many veggies to eat?  We know they had corn.

We eat potato latkas because it is a potato dish that is fried in oil, and oil is the central theme in our Chanukah story.  Anything fried in oil is used such as donuts (suf-gan-iote.)  These are delicious donuts with jelly in the center.  Yum!  Latkes are a grated potato and onion with egg and a little matzo meal to hold it together and fried like a pancake.  Served golden brown with either apple sauce or-for a milk meal-with sour cream and red jam, they are scrumptious!  Great party food!

5 large potatoes, peeled, 1 large onion, 4 eggs, 1/3 C matzo meal, 1 t salt,  Mix and fry in 1/4 C oil.  
A modern dish:  Ground flaxseed and water combined to make an eggless binding agent in vegan Cauliflower-chive Latkes.  from Jennie Cook.
Zucchini pancakes-used instead of potatoes.  

So bring on the hoe-doo (turkey) and the latkas for November 28th, with Chanukah beginning at sundown on the 27th and Thanksgiving on the 28th and Shabbat on the 29th.  We're in for a lot of feasting this year!  Oh yes, don't forget to light your Chanukah candle on your menorah.  We are to realize through all this fun that the world in which we live is not an end in itself, but exists to serve a higher spiritual purpose.  Our candles are illuminating the darkness.  We have to rid the world of ignorance, negativity, hatred and greed.  We are to light the lights of knowledge, generosity, hope and love.  

Resource:  Oregonian newspaper 11/13/13, page L-foodday+Living, when Thanksgiving, Hanukkkah collide by David Firestone and Susan Brenna NY Times
Your Chanukah Guide from Chabad
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Islam's Influence in Holland

Nadene Goldfoot
"Fifty years ago, very few Muslims lived in the Netherlands, but Islam was the most widespread religion in the Kingdom of the Netherlands as a whole. Until 1949, the Kingdom included what is now the Republic of Indonesia, with its predominantly Muslim population, while Suriname, which has a Muslim minority of mainly Indian origin, did not gain its independence until 1975. The first Muslims to settle in the Netherlands itself were Moluccans who left Indonesia in 1951, after it had become an independent republic"  Today Indonesia is the most populated Muslim majority country with 228,582,000 people of which 86.1% are Sunni Muslims.
.
Holland has had Muslims living there since the 16th century, especially from Turkey and Morocco as part of the Ottoman Empire traders, but lately have received many more from other Muslim majority countries.  In 2011 the population of the Netherlands was 16,696,000.

By January 1,  2005 there were 108,728 Twelver Shiites living in the Netherlands. They had 43,525 Iraqis,  36,683 Afghanis and 28,522 Iranians.

By 2006 there were 850,000 Muslims living in Holland.  38% were Turkish .  40,000 were Pakistanis, 34,000 were Surinamese, and 31,000 Afghanis and 27,000 from Iraq.

The census on October 24, 2007 showed that Holland's population was 5% Muslim.  By 2009 they had 825,000 Muslims or 6% of the population.

Jews have lived in Holland since the Roman conquest of 70 CE.  In 1946 25,000 to 30,000 were living there.  By 1980 the population had grown to 41,000 to 45,000.

According to Holland's information from 2005, 48% of the Dutch population profess no religion, 27% are Roman Catholic,   17% are Protestants, 5% are Muslims, 2% are of other religions which Jews would be one of them, and 1% are Hindus.  Jews make up 0.02 of the world population, but about 2% of the USA population.

Having this background, we can now understand a little more that there are currently more people with neo-Nazi views in the Netherlands than the number of Dutch collaborators with the Nazis during WWII.  Dr. Gerstenfeld just wrote an article that was published in the major Dutch news site Dagelijkse Standaard  saying this.  He continued with the fact that about 5 million Dutch have a satanic view of Israel.  A study asked people if they believe that Israel is conducting an extermination plan against Palestinian Arab and 39% polled said yes.  He said that millions of Dutch are back in the Middle Ages of mentality.  What is happening is that verbal harassment and physical attacks are on the rise against Jews.  "Cancer-Jew, dirty Jew, Jews to the gas. All the vulgar words you can imagine are whispered and shouted at us as we pass people by,” Benzion Evers, son of a rabbi in Amsterdam said. "There are physical threats as well, ranging from pushing and shoving to fist fights."

Netherlands Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs said, “People often insult me in public. It can happen almost anywhere, such as at the train station in Rotterdam or in the center of Amersfoort, the town where I live. For instance, someone may shout at me ‘Yehoud’ —  a negative term for a Jew in Arabic. When I walked home from our synagogue a few years ago, a child of about 10 years old shouted out ‘Dirty stinking Jew.’

Anti-Semitic incidents in 2010 amounted to 124, with 113 reported in 2011.  That was a drop of 9%, but vandalism and assaults rose.  

There have also been frequent attacks on circumcision of which both Muslims and Jews are affected.  People become anti-Israel they say, from their friends' opinions.  Left-wing groups held a Kristallnacht ceremony, which commemorates the night the Germans broke all the windows of Jewish shops.     A few days ago, a higher court fined a religious Jew who didn't carry his identity card on the Sabbath.  (They don't carry anything, no purse, etc.) A lower court had found him not guilty.

Geert Wilders is a young Dutch parliament member who is trying to stop the Islamisation of the Netherlands and stop the immigration of Muslims from Muslim countries.  He says he doesn't hate Muslims but hates Islam.  He is one who has traveled to both Islamic states and Israel.  He is known for telling about the dangers of jihad,  and has called for a hard line against what he called the "street terror" exerted by minorities in Dutch cities.   There is much widespread Muslim anti-Semitism going on.

I'd say that Muslims to Jews here is about 3:1, and Jews are easily identified if they are orthodox.  Muslims attacking orthodox Jews is also happening at an alarming rate in France.  Both countries seem to be losing the battle of fighting anti-Semitism.  Jews have 2 choices; move to Israel or wear non-distinctive clothing till they get into their synagogue.  They may have to go incognito.  They are living in a dangerous environment.  The protection of their life is important.  Keep pushing for government assistance in fighting anti-Semitism but be prepared to be without it.  .

If this seems improper to do, remember what happened in the Spanish Inquisition when it was the government who had the ruling that you either had to be Catholic or leave the country.  Those Jews that couldn't pick up and go chose to be hidden Jews, and went underground with it.  During time spent with others, they pretended to be Catholics but practiced Judaism in the privacy of their home with their Kosher laws, Friday night meals, and prayers in Hebrew.  They handed down their history to their children.  It seems ridiculous that in this day and age something similar is happening in these two countries, and that Jews have to accept verbal and physical abuse just to get to their house of worship.  That's why Israel is so important to us.  It is our Jewish home, a place of life in a world of intolerance.  Jews in the Inquisition didn't have this luxury.  They had to make very difficult and dangerous choices.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_Netherlands
http://quip.deds.nl/archief/culture/Islam%20in%20Nederland.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/netherlands.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Netherlands
http://www.holland.com/us/press/article/facts-figures-about-the-netherlands.htm
Arutz Sheva news@israelnationalnews.com
http://www.dw.de/anti-semitic-incidents-spark-public-debate-in-the-netherlands/a-15023408
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11019
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/06/18/3098341/anti-semitic-incidents-drop-in-netherlands-report-finds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders

1938 Desperation: For Jewish National Homeland Entrance But Denied

Nadene Goldfoot
Hitler was in the act of persecuting Jews in the 30's who had become the scapegoat of the ills of Germany.   It was a time when small Jewish children weren't even allowed to play in parks with other children.  On the doors of schools was painted:  "Cursed be the Jew."


President Franklin D. Roosevelt called up an international conference at Evian, France for July 1938 which was called a humanitarian gesture of concern for Jewish victims of the Nazis but had no solutions for reducing emigration barriers of these people.  Jews had been standing in lines in Vienna and other cities trying to leave and escape the Nazi persecution without success.

Austrian Jews seemingly overnight were stripped of their security rights and all their property in most cases.  By the end of April 1938 more than 500 Jews had committed suicide.  They saw the Jews in Vienna and other cities turned down by all the foreign consulates one after the other.  No country would take them in.  Only a few countries had quotas that hadn't yet been filled while many wouldn't allow Jews in at all because they did not have baptism certificates.  .

32 countries could not bring themselves to help out the Jews and Palestine, according to the British who held the mandate of rule there stated that "only limited immigration could even be considered."  They said that its absorptive capacity of Jews" had been pronounced to be full."  Truth was that they did not want Jews to enter, and they were the ones holding the mandate with the responsibility to develop the Jewish Homeland, and they were doing everything possible to keep Jews out.  Such people as Anthony Eden, Britain's Foreign Secretary from 1935-1938 and innumerable other positions  was most anti-Semitic.  His secretary noted in his diary in 1943 that he is immovable on the subject of Palestine.  He loves Arabs and hates Jews.  Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who shaped so much of British policy from 1937-1940 told his cabinet that " if we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs."  So at a time when Jews needed their own land desperately, they could not enter what was designated to be  the Jewish Homeland save but a few.  Thus, 6 million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust.

Chaim Weizmann was kept out of the Evian meeting because Jews had no state to represent them and only states were invited to the meeting.  He couldn't even speak in a private meeting there because Great Britain protested against it.  The United States was not about to change their laws at this crucial point in time to allow more than their usual restricted amount of Jews into the country.  The USA quota of Jews per year  from Germany and Austria combined was 27,370 and that was not changed.

Peru also had strict quotas for Jews entering their country.  They also had a ban on doctors and lawyers out of fear of an invasion by intellectuals.   They praised the USA for their quotas on Jews and said that this guided their immigration policies in Peru.  The rest of the countries followed suit.  The one exception was Santo Domingo who offered to take in 100,000 refugees, and Holland and Denmark, who decided to let in refugees without restrictions.  We know what happened to Holland's Jews towards the end of the war with "The Diary of Anna Frank."  Denmark was then invaded by the Nazi in 1940 so Jews were under attack then.  The Danes managed to help many of them escape to Sweden.  Only 645 Jews made it to Santo Domingo  though 5,000 visas were issued.

Resource:  Book:  From Time Immemorial-the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters p. 333-334
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sosua.html

Anti-Semitic Attacks in Europe from Arabs

Arabs are attacking Jews in Holland and Germany. At a recent program of Jewish dancers, 5 Arab youths started stoning the dancers before they even started dancing. The attackers ranged from age 9 to 19. One German youth also was in the group of stone throwers.

In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other cities in Holland, Moroccans were attacking any Jews they spotted. Jewish men have to cover their kippas (yalmulkas-head coverings) with hats to avoid detection, but this in itself could be a giveaway.

It looks like we Jews are have become fair game for some Muslims from various countries. It's a religious war.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/dutch-police-may-use-decoy-jews-to-stop-attacks/1?csp=obnetwork

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-06-24-arab-attack-jewish-germany_N.htm?csp=YahooModule_News