Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso

The Jewish community of Panama, the oldest in Central America, celebrates this month the 150th Anniversary of its founding.

The beginnings of Jewish history in the Americas are as old as the discovery of the New World, when Spanish Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1942 by Ferdinand and Isabella, arrived seeking refuge from the Inquisition. They would not be able to live openly as Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese controlled territories. Thus, it was in the Dutch, Danish, and British Caribbean isles that these Sephardic Jews would find a home.  It was from these settlements that the Panamanian Jewish community would grow.

In 1821 Panama became independent from Spain and was annexed to Colombia. Free of Inquisitional oversight, it now became possible for Jews to settle in the Isthmus. Some came during the construction of the first transcontinental railroad during the years of the California Gold Rush. A Benevolent Society was organized in 1852. Following an earthquake that devastated St. Thomas, V.I., in 1867, numerous Jewish families moved to Panama and, together with co-religionists who had arrived from Curacao and Jamaica, set the basis for organized Jewish life. Congregation Kol Shearith Israel, “The Voice of the Remnant of lsrael,” was founded in 1876 as the first synagogue in the city of Panama. Some years later, Kahal Kadosh Yangakov, the “Holy........

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