St. Thomas Synagogue, U.S. Virgin Islands

The synagogue's interior in a historic photograph. From the National Historic Landmark nomination for St. Thomas Synagogue.

St. Thomas Synagogue in the U.S. Virgin Islands — Beracha Veshalom Vegmiluth Hasadim, "Blessing and Peace and Acts of Piety" — is the second-oldest synagogue in the United States and one of five National Historic Landmarks in the territory. It was designated in 1997, with a plaque in Hebrew and English.

A congregation of the diaspora

In the 1400s Spain's monarchs pursued the Reconquista, a war of conquest and crusade against non-Catholics, and Jewish worship was driven underground, into basements used as makeshift synagogues. According to oral tradition, worshippers spread sand on the floors to muffle their footsteps. In 1492 Spain ordered all Jews who had not converted to leave. About half the Jewish population is estimated to have left, and the rest outwardly converted to Catholicism. The decree was enforced strictly in Iberia but less so elsewhere, and the Netherlands and the Caribbean became refuges for Sephardic Jews.

Spanish and Portuguese Sephardic Jews who had settled in the Caribbean founded the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas in 1796 and built the present synagogue in 1833. The congregation has worshipped continuously since 1796, and the synagogue still holds services.

The building

The synagogue combines Caribbean materials, Greek Revival and Gothic Revival styles, and traditional Jewish features:

• Walls of rubble masonry bound with a mortar of lime, sand and molasses and faced with calcified sandstone.
• Woodwork of mahogany, probably local, all original to the building.
• The Ark, holding six Torahs, facing the Bimah (pulpit) on the west wall, with the Ner Tamid, the Lamp of Perpetual Light, hanging before the Ark.
• Four Ionic columns framing the central square, representing the four mothers of Israel: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.
• Sand about an inch deep covering the central floor, in keeping with regional Sephardic tradition.

The synagogue today, with sand on the floor. National Park Service photo.

Sugar and slavery

St. Thomas's economy and society grew up around sugar plantations and the slave trade. Many members of the congregation were planters and slaveholders, enslaved people helped build the synagogue, and it was probably paid for with profits from the slave trade.

A symbol of persistence

From Jerusalem to Spain, Holland and the Caribbean, Jews of the diaspora searched for places to live and worship. The National Park Service sees the synagogue as a symbol of Judaism's endurance in the face of persecution and of the hope for religious freedom in the New World.

The entrance from the street in a historic photograph. From the National Historic Landmark nomination for St. Thomas Synagogue.

Sources

• National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program: "Saint Thomas Synagogue," part of a series for Jewish Heritage Month, drawing on the synagogue's National Historic Landmark nomination.