Rare colonial-era mikveh unearthed in Venezuela - Archaeology Israel News | Haaretz
The story is never fully written- this is the rough version
This is very exciting news coming out of "colonial" Venezuela. A mikveh is unearthed in Coro. The mikveh was connected to a house owned by a (probable) descendant of the famous Señor family. Rabi Abraham Señor was the Rav de la Corte, the official Jewish representative at court and a close adviser to the Catholic Monarchs. He and his entire family converted on the eve of the expulsion from Spain. However as Ruben Blades tells us in his epic "Pedro Navaja"- "la vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da la vida"- the story was not over with this much celebrated and bemoaned conversion. A few generations later we see the descendants of this family re-appear in Amsterdam under the family name of Coronel and embrace Judaism. It would not be surprising if these Señors made their way to Curaçao and eventually to Coro. Coro lies on the Carribean coast of Venezuela and when the South American nation became independant it became an attractive market for Sephardic merchants. Most of their descendants assimilated into the warm embrace of the tropics. There was one notable poet among the second generation of Sephadim in Coro, David Curiel. Edna Aizenberg wrote lyrically about this dissolute, profane and poetically gifted young man. (will include link)
Mordechai Arbel, as a young Israeli diplomat in the Carribbean found many of their descendants, or I should say they found him. I met him at a conference on the Jews of the Carribean and he told me that he was sent by the Israeli government to the Caribbean to find possible business connections for Israeli industries. As he went about and met people in the merchant community they would slowly disclose their Jewishness to him. he said the scene repeated itself throughout the Caribbean. I wonder what their Jewishness meant to these individuals so far removed from the Sephardim who found their way to the New World and built elegant synagogues and mikvehs?
I thank Laura Liebman for bringing this news to my attention- i am sure she will make some great discoveries about this new piece of the Caribbean Jewish puzzle.
