Böcker av Aviva Ben-Ur

First book-length treatment of the history of Sephardic Jews in America

Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society explores the political and social history of the Dutch colony of Suriname-a place where Jews, most of Iberian origin, established the largest Jewish agricultural community in the world and enjoyed various liberties, including the right to convert their slaves to Judaism.

In the 1660s, Jews of Iberian ancestry, many of them fleeing Inquisitorial persecution, established an agrarian settlement in the midst of the Surinamese tropics.