CREOLE JEWS -- Copyright -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of fi gures and tables -- Glossary -- I Introducing Jewishness, creolization and the colonial domain -- Memories of bygone days -- Connecting Judaism, creolization and colonialism -- Browsing through history: On periodization and archival research -- Outline -- Some notes on terminology -- PART ONE Forging a community -- II A colonial Jewish community in the making Patterns of migration and places of settlement -- Port of origin: Amsterdam -- Dynamics and dimensions of a small-scale Jewish community -- The birth of a Jewish community in Suriname -- Growth -- Colonial adventures, poor migrants and the Amsterdam connection -- Decline -- Places of settlement -- Jodensavanne: Heart of the Portuguese Jewish planters' community -- The multi-ethnic environment of Paramaribo -- III Making a living in the colony Social context, economic activities and cultural life -- Economic activities -- The fate of the Jewish planters' class -- Reorientation: Making a living in an urban colonial environment -- A community losing ground: Economic hardship and declining finta revenues -- Socio -cultural life in the colony -- Societies and lodges -- Informal interactions and cross-cultural contacts -- IV Colonial confi gurations and diasporic connections Patterns of rule, civil status and religious authority -- Authority and citizenship -- Political structures in Suriname's plantocracy -- Controlling the community: The Jewish privileges -- Negotiating civil rights (1816-1825) -- After 182 5: Between marginalization and political domination -- The limi ts of tolerance -- Diasporic connections -- The Chief Commission of Israelite Affairs -- Negotiating the Askamoth -- Dutch rabbis in Suriname -- How a community was forged -- PART TWO Cultivating differences, localizing boundaries.

V Echoes of the otherLocating Jews and imagining Jewish difference in Suriname -- Perspectives on Jewish whiteness, dominance and colonial 'otherness' -- The 'white man': A Maroon's perspective -- Echoes of the 'other': The image of the cruel Jewish planter -- The Surinamese Jew as colonial 'other'? A painting by P.J. Benoit (1839) -- 'White but Jewish': Locating Jews in Suriname's colour system -- Shem's legacy: An undefi ned status in the age of colonial expansion -- Confronting Jewish difference: The case of the civil guard -- From 'white' to 'native': Jews and the census -- VI Spaces of death, mirror of the living The cemetery as a site of creolizat -- Spaces of death, mirror of the living -- A tour of Suriname's Jewish cemeteries -- Cassipora and Jodensavanne cemeteries -- Jewish cemeteries and creole grave markers in Paramaribo -- Critical events at Surinamese Jewish cemeteries -- The burial of th e coloured Jew Joseph de David Cohen Nassy -- 'Bad' Jews at the Be th Haim? The burial of Isaq Simons (1825) -- Creating a precedent: Mr Pinto and Mrs Pinto-Fernandes (1891) -- Dario Saavedra (1911): Allegro and andante -- Inappropriate ceremonies? The burial of Coenraad Samuels (1913) -- Sarah's Hofje -- The cemetery as a site of creolization? -- VII New World identifi cations, Old World sensibilities On eliteness, religiosity and social status -- Colonial elites and religious superiority -- Negotiating an elite status -- Good Jews -- Making and breaking boundaries -- Forced inclusion and community control -- Marrying the other (I): High German-Portuguese mixed marriages -- Belonging and widowhood: The story of the widows Da Fonseca and Levij Hart -- Blurring boundaries an d prevailing notions of difference -- Reluctant overtures -- In search of authenticity and differentiation -- Colonial nostalgia.

VIII Black, white, Jewish? Colour, Halakha and the limits of Jewishness -- Racialized boundaries: The shifting status of coloured Jews -- Coloured Jews and Halakh a -- The story of the Darhe Je ssarim -- Marrying the other (II): Wh ite-coloured mixed marriages and dissolving colour lines -- The last boundary: Jews and non-jews, coloureds and Christians -- Defining Surinamese Jewishness: Between colour and Halakha -- IX Conclusion The Creole, the colonial and the metropole -- Delimiting 'white' creolization -- The colonial and the diaspora -- Creole Jews or European whites? The semantics of colonizers and Creoles -- Bibliography -- Index.