Published: March 12, 2018

Fernandes family in Suriname

Fernandesfamily, Suriname ca. 1908. At center are Isaac Daniel Fernandes, a Portuguese Jew from a planter family, and Klasina Elisabeth Vroom, descended from a family of manumitted slaves. Surrounding them are their eight children and a daughter-in-law. Courtesy of the Fernandes-Vroom family.

The Program in Jewish Studies, Department of Historyand Colorado Law welcome Professor Aviva Ben-Ur, who will present a public lecture titled “Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: The Eurafrican Jews of Suriname, South America.” This talk is part of the Jewish Studies Community Talks Series, made possible in part by a grant from Rose Community Foundation.

The lecture will take place from 7:30 to 9p.m. Wednesday, March 14, in the Chancellor’s Silver and Gold Room at University Club, 972 Broadway, Boulder. This event is free and open to the public. RSVPs are appreciated to cujewishstudies@colorado.edu.

鶹Ƶ the talk

Suriname, a Dutch colony established on the South American mainland in the 1660s, was among the largest slave societies of the hemisphere. Its Jewish community, founded during the same decade, was granted exceptional liberties, including religious tolerance, unrestricted economic opportunitiesand, most remarkably, the privilege to self-govern according to its own religious and secular laws. This political autonomy also empowered Jews to convert their slaves to Judaism, resulting in the rise of a sizeable class of people collectively known in the sources as “mulatto Jews” or “Jewish mulattoes.”

In her talk, Ben-Ur willaddressthe emergence of Eurafrican Jews, their legal status, cultural characteristics, social activismand their experience of Jewish autonomy in a colony where upwards of 96 percent of the population was unfree.

If you go

Who: Open to the public
³󲹳:“Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: The Eurafrican Jews of Suriname, South America”
³:Wednesday, March 14,7:30–9p.m.
³:University Club,Chancellor’s Silver and Gold Room
RSVP: cujewishstudies@colorado.edu

鶹Ƶ the speaker

Ben-Ur is professor in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and holds adjunct appointments in the Department of History and in the programs of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature.

She specializes in Atlantic Jewish history and slavery studies and is the author ofJewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651-1825(forthcoming with University of Pennsylvania Press);Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues of Suriname: Essays(Hebrew Union College Press, 2012) andRemnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries of Suriname: Epitaphs(Hebrew Union College Press, 2009), both co-authored with Rachel Frankel;andSephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History(New York University Press, 2009).

鶹Ƶ the series

A subscription series, Community Talks features nationally and internationally renowned scholars, authors, artistsand performers for themed public events with the goal of enriching community learning and expanding access to academic programming on Jewish culture and history.

Guarantee your spot at allCommunity Talks events by becoming a subscription member. Subscribers will receive sneak previews, exclusive offersand intimate dinners and salons with visiting speakers. To learn more and subscribe, please visit the Program in Jewish Studies online.