Jodensavanne
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How it came to be
Jodensavanne, Dutch for 'Jewish Savannah', is the site of a Jewish settlement on high ground above the Suriname River in northern Suriname. The Cassipora Creek Cemetery is the remnant of an older settlement founded in the 1650s, and the Jodensavanne settlement itself was founded in the 1680s. Set within Indigenous territory, these towns were inhabited, owned and governed by Jews who lived alongside free and enslaved people of African and Indigenous descent.
In 1664 a group expelled from Brazil and then from French Guiana arrived under David Cohen Nassy. The settlers were granted privileges including their own court and freedom of religion, the most extensive arrangement of privileges and immunities known in the early modern Jewish world. The ruins of the Beracha ve Shalom synagogue, built of imported brick in 1685, are believed to be the earliest synagogue of architectural significance in the Americas.
The settlers ran sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. The town declined in the 18th century as most residents moved to Paramaribo. More than 1,500 people came for the synagogue's centenary in 1785, but the settlement was destroyed by fire during a slave revolt in 1832. It was inscribed as a World Heritage site in September 2023.
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