Para · sugar, coffee, cacao, cotton, timber
Jodensavanne: 9,000 enslaved people around one village
Jodensavanne on the Suriname River in Para district was the centre of a Portuguese Jewish planter community that by about 1700 held some 9,000 enslaved people across its estates; the Beracha Ve Shalom synagogue was inaugurated in 1685 and the site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023.
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Sephardic Jews, fleeing the Inquisition and arriving via Brazil and Cayenne, were granted colonial privileges and a cemetery in 1665. The oldest settlement stood by the Cassipora creek and dates from the 1650s; about thirty years later its inhabitants moved two kilometres downstream to the site that became Jodensavanne in 1684. The brick synagogue Beracha Ve Shalom, Blessing and Peace, was inaugurated in 1685 and is the oldest surviving synagogue ruin in the Americas.
The surrounding plantations grew sugarcane, coffee, cotton and cacao. The scale is the point: at the end of the seventeenth century about 600 people lived at Jodensavanne itself, owning more than forty plantations on which over 9,000 people were held enslaved. A count from 1694 gives roughly 9,570 souls in the area, of whom 9,000 were unfree. By 1737, 115 plantations were in Jewish ownership.
Jodensavanne is not itself a plantation in the 1863 emancipation registers, because the settlement had been abandoned for thirty years by then: it burned in 1832, according to several sources during an uprising of enslaved people. The last synagogue service was held in 1860. After emancipation the surrounding Para estates became largely timber grounds, bought back by the freed population.
What stands is the ruin of the synagogue, brick foundations, old boat inlets and three burial grounds in the savannah forest: the cemetery by the Cassipora creek with 216 stones and its oldest grave from 1667, the Beth Haim cemetery at Jodensavanne with about 452 graves from 1685 to 1873, and an African and Creole cemetery of about 141 graves. The inscriptions are in Hebrew, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Aramaic.
The site has been a national monument since 2009 and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in September 2023 as the Jodensavanne Archaeological Site, reference 1680, after twenty-five years on the tentative list. It lies about 50 kilometres south of Paramaribo, reached by road via the Avobaka road and the bridge at Redi Doti, or by boat in about two hours. Published entry prices vary widely; ask Stichting Jodensavanne before you travel.
Frequently asked questions
How many people were enslaved around Jodensavanne?
At the end of the seventeenth century about 600 people lived at Jodensavanne, owning more than forty plantations holding over 9,000 enslaved people. A count from 1694 gives roughly 9,570 souls in the area, of whom 9,000 were unfree. By 1737, 115 plantations were in Jewish ownership.
Why is Jodensavanne on the UNESCO list?
The site was inscribed in September 2023 as the Jodensavanne Archaeological Site, reference 1680, under criterion iii: exceptional testimony within the Atlantic Sephardic diaspora to a Jewish community that functioned as a state within a state in a slave society from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.
Does Jodensavanne appear in the 1863 emancipation registers?
No, because the settlement had already been abandoned: it burned in 1832 and the last synagogue service was in 1860. The surrounding estates in Para district do appear in the registers; search there by plantation name through the emancipation papers at the Nationaal Archief.