"My Fingers for War: A Prayer for Jewish Militiamen in Colonial Suriname"
Eli Rosenblatt
Affiliated Scholar, Northwestern University
Sometime in the middle of the 18th century, a rabbi in Suriname hand wrote a Hebrew supplicatory prayer for the Jewish militia in Suriname, which at that time pursued Maroons, rebel slaves of African descent, bent on the destruction of white-owned plantations and an end to the slave system. This prayer and other Surinamese Jewish sources will be reviewed for what they can tell us about Jewish culture, antisemitism, and racism in the early Jewish Atlantic.
Nancy Gelman
(847) 491-2612
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