I started by asking myself, \u201cHow is the story of Egypt abstracted?\u201d There are many ways this can be done, some of them deeply personal or mystical. But in the spirit of the assignment, I decided to look at the story as the myth of a community repressed to its core and finding a spiritual liberation which allows them to externalize their identity into expression.<\/p>\n
I browsed randomly until I came across the story of the Jews of Cura\u00e7ao<\/strong>. Kyu-ra-sow<\/p>\n # liquer, a story of oranges<\/p>\n The story of C begins with Samuel Cohen, who arrived as a translator on the Dutch fleet which conquered the island from the Spanish in 1634. Jewish families began to arrive in the 1650s and established what is now the oldest synagogue in the Americas.<\/p>\n Most of the families to arrive in this generation had fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions to Amsterdam, and from there moved to the Americas. They were part of a social trend that was to become known as the \u201cport Jewry\u201d, which were mostly Sephardic Jews that found their freedom in the milieu of port and shipping trade that was beginning to stretch across the world. Although it was still technically illegal to practice Judaism in some of these ports, particularly the French Catholic ones, local authorities differed in their application of these rules and the reception of Jews depended on the prevalence of antisemitism among the locals.<\/p>\n What makes the story of C interesting for me, is that for the Jews who fled the Inquisition, Amsterdam was only the beginning of liberation. It is not clear to me why they left. I assume some combination of seeking opportunity but also seeking more freedom. The Netherlands were only relatively a haven for religious freedom. Jews in the Netherlands were encouraged to practice their religion and were allowed (for example) to study medicine, but they were still prevented from many professions and trades.<\/p>\n Thus the story of the 1650 C Jews is a long one, beginning with absolute persecution in Iberia, moving into partial freedom in Amsterdam, then prevailing through physical hardship in their creation of a new home in C. This parallels the story of Egypt that begins with hardship, continues into freedom, then evolves through further difficulties in the quest towards a promised land.<\/p>\n The stories also parallel in another interesting way. The Jews who escaped slavery did not see the fruits of their effort. They could not see 40 years ahead to witness a new homeland. And they certainly could not see thousands of years ahead to see the flourishing of a global Jewry.<\/p>\n So too, the Jews of C would never have envisioned the prominence of their community. Over the next 200 years, it would be a centre for Carribean Jewry and boast one of the richest and most successful Jewish communities of the region. Jews would become 1\/3 of the population, and dominate society to such an extent that the entire island’s commerce would be shut down for Jewish holidays, including Passover. By 1800 the community would be involved in the fight for the independence of Venezuela and Colombia from the same Spanish from whom many of the C’s ancestors had fled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I started by asking myself, \u201cHow is the story of Egypt abstracted?\u201d There are many ways this can be done, some of them deeply personal or mystical. But in the spirit of the assignment, I decided to look at the story as the myth of a community repressed to its core and finding a spiritual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,154,207,167],"tags":[180],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-google-drive","category-history","category-judaism","tag-180"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":895,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/05\/12\/echoes-in-the-green-smoke\/","url_meta":{"origin":1172,"position":0},"title":"Echoes in the green smoke","author":"Pala","date":"May 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: This post was found in 'Draft' mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 12\/05\/2016 I first heard this story while smoking a thick reefer, bathing in a hot water spring in the interior\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1687,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/05\/09\/gariwerd-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1172,"position":1},"title":"Gariwerd","author":"Pala","date":"May 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: This Essay was found as a 'draft' entry in Everything2 and is published here with minor changes. BTW, if you are already here, check out the links in the second line of the title, below. 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That\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1689,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/09\/30\/the-story-of-thales-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1172,"position":3},"title":"The story of Thales","author":"Pala","date":"September 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: In September 2010, Shai begins the first phase of his intellectual journey with an\u00a0essay\u00a0dedicated to the Greek mathematician, astronomer and pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales of Miletus. This the first of\u00a080 essays, written between September 2010 and July 2015, dedicated to analysing the thoughts and writings of the great ancient\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":381,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/08\/01\/the-eyes-of-the-beholders-tng\/","url_meta":{"origin":1172,"position":4},"title":"The Eyes of the Beholders (TNG)","author":"pastfarpoint","date":"August 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The Eyes of the Beholders is the number thirteen of the TNG books, and is written by A.C. Crispin. The plot begins quite traditionally with the Enterprise ordered to investigate an area of space from which a number of ships have gone missing. Some sort of field soon captures the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Detail from \"The Eyes of the Beholders\" cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/the_eyes_cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1213,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/09\/29\/untitled-document\/","url_meta":{"origin":1172,"position":5},"title":"Untitled Document","author":"Pala","date":"September 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By the late decade, he was an architect for a new data trawler innovate, designed to ease the congestion in cross-domain strategy development. These projects had stalled for weeks and were the major advantage of the Democrat party, which held them their single greatest advantage in the \"Wise Decisions polls\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sadotI-seder","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"metadata","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/metadata?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}