Credit: The author, Michael Woolf, New York Historical Society, NYC Parks, Tablet Magazine

[I have no skin in the game, no agenda to push. I don’t give a <deleted> about politics, nation-states or being seen as ‘appropriate’. If I acted my age, I’d be dead. But  the topics I write, research, compile and post are simply for my own entertainment and edification. History, culture and current events are fascinating topics. If you wish to be offended, please, be my guest. I’m not stopping you!

I simply try for a new way of seeing things, to provoke conversation, to lead us to new places instead of stuck where we are. Just ‘up with people’, ya know, sometimes, hey, 'up yours'. Take it or leave it. Enjoy.]

The notion of Jerusalem and Zion as a place of golden, spiritual wholeness bears no relation to the realities of the militarised State of Israel and Jerusalem police checkpoints in 2026. This Jerusalem is not the place mourned in Psalm 137. The  biblical representation of these places conflates them into one metaphorical entity: an idealised, dreamed landscape, a place out of time and space that exists only in the imagination yearning for spiritual  completion.

Through that notion, all Jews, even the Jews of Jerusalem, live within a  state of exile. These dreamed locations are symbolic worlds that reflect the myths and histories that shaped Jewish experience but, in reality, cannot be visited. That condition is a complex spiritual isolation from the Kingdom of God.

The Native American nation is, for example, a group of people historically displaced from both traditional governance and territory. Their situation may offer the nearest parallel with Jewish experience; the lands from which they were expelled include both territories and legendary constructions. Is this a curse with which Jews would wish to burden the Palestinians?

Perhaps, perhaps, this is why even Jews in Israel, have achieved a homeland, are still so deeply unsatisfied. It’s not easy to find the Kingdom of God.

If we had, there would be no more wars.

BACKGROUND

The Dutch colony of Recife in Brazil hosted the Americas’ first Jewish community, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, established in the 1630s. By 1645, nearly half the European population of Recife, some 600 souls, was Jewish.

The Portuguese reconquered Recife and brought along its Portuguese Inquisition. The Jews of Recife either returned to Amsterdam or fled to other Dutch Caribbean colonies.

However, 23 Sephardic Jews, men, women and children were blown off course on their way to Jamaica and were captured by Spanish pirates. Rescued by another trade ship, they were taken to Cuba.

In Cuba, having been stripped of their possessions by the privateers, the Jews succumbed to a heavy payment for passage and eventually boarded the St. Catrina, which historians would later refer to as "the Jewish Mayflower," which took them to the New Netherland colonial capital New Amsterdam, now known as Lower Manhattan.

For the record, the first documented Jew to set foot in North America was Prague-born Joachim Gaunse (or Gans) who was recruited by Sir Walter Raleigh. Gaunse arrived in 1585, serving as the metallurgist and mining engineer for the ill-fated English colony on Roanoke Island, and conducted soil experiments in Carolina.

Inaccurate depiction. The first Torah scroll

did not arrive in the colony until 1655.

The new Jewish community faced antisemitic opposition to their settlement from Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, as well as facing a monetary dispute with the captain of the St. Catrina, which required adjudication from the Dutch West India Company. Stuyvesant had seized the Jews’ meagre remaining possessions and had them sold at auction to pay their ship-fares. When this was not sufficient, he had two imprisoned for the debt.

The 23 were aided by Ashkenazi Jewish traders who had arrived just a month earlier. Their property was seized by the rescue ship’s captain for payment of freight and board. Solomon Pietersen, a Jew, appears in Court and says that nine hundred and odd guilders of the 2500 are paid, and that there are 23 souls, big and little, who must pay equally.

The new community founded Congregation Shearith Israel, which remains the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. Until 1825, it was the only synagogue in New York City.

Peter Stuyvesant was driven by religious prejudice, fear of economic competition and a desire to maintain a religiously homogeneous colony. He tried to expel the 23 Jewish refugees, labeling them "deceitful”, “hateful enemies and blasphemers” and “very repugnant“.

He sought to ban Jews from buying real estate, building a synagogue, and serving in the militia. Stuyvesant imposed special taxes on the Jewish population and restricted their trading activities, aiming to make it difficult for them to settle. His hostility was fueled by his devotion to the Dutch Reformed Church and a belief that Jews were "godless rascals" who were of no benefit to the colony.

A substantial number of shareholders in the Dutch West India Company were Jewish, outvoting its Governor in New Amsterdam.

OUT OF THE WOODWORK

In present-day New York, there’s a lot of stuff named for that antisemite Peter Stuyvesant. The neighbourhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant (home to Meir Kahane) in Brooklyn, Stuyvesant Square Park, Stuyvesant High School, Stuyvesant Apartments, Stuyvesant Cove Park and Stuyvesant Town come to mind.

Good thing the Stuyvesant Pear Tree, planted in 1647, predating the Jewish arrivals, gave up in 1867 or the chainsaws would be revving today.

In 2017, there was a movement to expunge Peter Stuyvesant from the New York City record entirely led by Shurat HaDin, an Israeli legal organization defending the IDF from war crimes charges, among other noble causes. Hm, how about the Stuyvesant statue at 2nd and 16th. Pete was anti-Semitic, anti-Quaker, anti-Lutheran, anti-Catholic, not to mention anti-Native American, the largest slaveholder in the New World and overseer of its largest slave auction, an all-around hater. I’m not giving the guy a pass but pulling down statues is for cancel-culture losers. Perhaps a precision strike, eh. Can’t change history.

One wag commented: “He’s flawed. We’re all flawed. Hey I’m flawed. Does that mean I’m not going to get a rest stop named after me on the Jersey turnpike?”

The real joke is, they wanted Stuyvesant replaced everywhere with Asser Levy, a pioneer of Jewish rights in the colony. (Remember him? Yeah, me neither.) Who made the biggest mark on everybody’s history?

After the failed effort in New York, a statue of Stuyvesant was removed from a school in the Dutch colony of Curaçao in 2018 following similar activism. Some consolation prize, eh? The Big Apple or a tropical rum drink…

And what about Christopher Columbus???

TL;DR

On 4/8/2026 at 2:27 PM, unblocktheplanet said:

Peter Stuyvesant was driven by religious prejudice

Did he start a cigarette factory?

7 hours ago, VocalNeal said:

Did he start a cigarette factory?

I won't say, lest the Israeli militants burn it to the ground!

Speaking of which, do any readers remember what a pleasure it was to walk through the Thai Tobacco Monopoly grounds with that beautiful fragrance of drying tobacco?