Cape Verdean-Jewish seder: A link to the past

THE THIRD ANNUAL Cape Verdean-Jewish Passover seder, which took place at St. Patrick’s Church in Roxbury, Mass., April 16, is quickly becoming a traditional event.

This year 140 people attended from throughout New England. The seder celebrated not only the traditional Passover liberation from Egypt but the relatively unknown history of the Jews in the Cape Verde Islands. It was organized at the initiative of Joel Schwartz who, as program manager with the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, works with Cape Verdeans.

While most Cape Verdeans are Catholic, due to more than 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule, many have Jewish ancestry. Some of their descendents eventually immigrated to this country. I am the great, great grandson of Isaac Benoliel, a fur trader who immigrated to Cape Verde from Morocco.

The room in the Boston church was full and the participants had the opportunity – in English, Hebrew and Creole (the dialect of Cape Verde Islands) – to share their families’ stories. There was an exchange of knowledge and memories among the different generations. For the third consecutive time, Gardéria Benros, a well-known Cape Verdean of Jewish descent, attended with her daughter.

Also attending the seder was Gershom Barros, a prominent member of the Orthodox community in Providence, a descendent from a Cape-Verdean and a Narragansett American-Indian; married to a Russian Jew, he brought his daughter, Haruva, who enjoyed conversing and learning from others.

The 10 Cape Verdean islands, which became the independent Republic of Cape Verde, in 1975, are located about 300 miles off the coast of Senegal, West Africa. Originally settled by the Portuguese in the mid 1400s, it became a refuge for some of the Jews fleeing the Inquisition. Many were forced to convert to Christianity and became known as conversos.

There was a much later wave of Jewish immigration around the middle of the 19th century from Morocco and Gibralter. This group, mainly single men, engaged in commerce, trading, shipping and administration. They immigrated for economic opportunity and eventually assimilated into the Portuguese-African population; over time much of their offspring lost Jewish customs and rituals and became Catholic. However, they kept their memories of Jewish backgrounds, along with many Jewish surnames. There is even a town named Sinagoga, although there is no vestige of a building.

Carol S. Castiel, currently director of public affairs programming for the Voice of America, came from Washington D.C. to attend the seder and publicize and raise funds for a Jewish heritage project. She first learned about the Jews of Cape Verde through her previous job in the 1980s as coordinator for a scholarship program for Portuguese-speaking Africa. Many of her students bore Jewish surnames and told her about the existence of several small Jewish cemeteries throughout the archipelago.

In the early 1990s, she visited Cape Verde; her visit coincided with a resurgence of interest in Jewish roots on the part of its descendants, who were pressing for restoration of the dilapidated cemeteries.

For more information, visit www.jewsofcapeverde.blogspot.com.

Carol Castiel and Marylyn Graff contributed to this report.