ABSTRACT
Many of the tombstones in Beth Haim Blenheim, the first Jewish cemetery in Curacao, feature carvings that illustrate something about the life or death of the deceased. In the years between the Revolutionary War and his death in 1805, Moses Michael Hays achieved great success as a business and civic leader in Boston, a city whose foundational Puritanism had once precluded all but the temporary presence of an occasional Jewish trader. Spanish and Portuguese Jews settled the island of Jamaica during its Spanish occupation as they were fleeing the Inquisition and participating in the economic opportunities of Atlantic trade. They were not free to practice Judaism under Spanish rule. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 both directly and indirectly impacted the Jews of the Atlantic World, especially those in the Caribbean. This Act directly affected those Jews like Alexandre Lindo, whose Jamaican company dealt in the slave trade.
