History of the Jews in Haiti

The history of the Jews in Haiti is a rather long and complex one, as it stretches from the very beginning of the European settlement on the new island.

As of 2013, the Jewish population is around 25 predominately in Port-au-Prince.

In 1492, the first Jew to ever set foot in Haiti was Luis de Torres, an interpreter for Christopher Columbus. After Haiti was taken over and colonized by the French in 1633, many Dutch Jews (whom many were Marrano) emigrated from Brazil in 1634 and became employees of the French sugar plantations and further developed the trade. In 1683, the Jews were expelled from Haiti and all of the other French colonies, due to the Code Noir (Black Code), which not only restricted the activities of free Negroes, but forbade the exercise of any religion other than Roman Catholicism (it included a provision that all slaves must be baptized and instructed in the Roman Catholic religion), and in turn ordered all the Jews out of France's colonies. However, despite the Black Code, a limited number of Jews remained in French trading companies as leading officials, including foreign citizens (Dutch, Danish, or English) or holders of special residence permits (lettres patentes). These Jews specialized in agricultural plantations. Portuguese Jews from Bordeaux and Bayonne settled mainly in the southern part of Haiti (Jacmel, Jérémie, Léogâne, Les Cayes, Petit-Goâve, and Port-au-Prince) and Jews from Curaçao settled in the northern part (Cap-Haitien, and Saint Louis).

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