(Nassy, David de Isaac Cohen). Geschiedenis der Kolonie van Suriname [“History of the Colony of Surinam”]

authoritative History of the Jews of surinam. David de Isaac Cohen Nassy (1747-1806), a descendant of David Nassy, who founded the Jewish community of Surinam in 1664, served for a time as president of the Regenten (Board) of the local Jewish community. Nassy published in French in 1788, “Essai historique sur la colonie de Surinam,” with especial emphasis on the so-called “Joden Savanne” [Jewish Savanna]. Three years later, there appeared in Amsterdam the present Dutch rendition of Nassy’s work, deemed indispensable to the study of this fascinating chapter in Jewish history. Besides his involvement in the communal affairs of the Jewish community of Surinam, Nassy has the distinction of having authored the first medical work by an American Jewish physician. During a brief sojourn in Philadelphia between the years 1792-1795, he had occasion to battle the yellow fever that plagued the city, which he recorded in a memoir (Philadelphia, 1793). The story of the Jewish colony of Surinam, Dutch West Indies, is truly remarkable in the annals of Jewish history. Some ten miles up-river from Paramaribo lay the legendary “Savannah of the Jews” (Joden Savanne). The Jewish inhabitants, of Spanish-Portuguese stock, possessed high status and enjoyed a remarkable degree of autonomy. The Sephardic community of Surinam felt itself closely bound to both Amsterdam (the mother of the earliest synagogues in the Americas) and New York’s Shearith Israel. This was due to both tradition and family ties, as well as the bonds of commerce. Indeed, the New York Congregation annually invoked blessings upon the smaller Central American community during the solemn service ushering in the Day of Atonement, in gratitude for Surinam-Jewish support in building their Mill Street Synagogue in 1730. In 1832 the synagogue at Joden Savanne was destroyed by fire. Soon after, the emancipation of the slaves, as well as the inroads of the climate, led to the abandonment of the Jewish colony. Today, nothing remains but overgrown ruins. See EJ, Vol. XII, cols. 843-4; Vol. XV, cols. 529-531; D. and T. de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World (1955), p. 117; C. Roth, A History of the Marranos (1932), pp.291-2; Wolf and Whiteman, The History of the Jews of Philadelphia (1957), pp. 193-4 and pl. 24.