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Meet the 2 Jews of Guyana, a South American nation with a tradition of religious tolerance
(JTA) — When Janet Jagan, an immigrant from the United States, made history by becoming Guyana’s prime minister in 1997, she was thought to be the country’s only Jew.
In fact, another Jew had recently purchased an island off the coast of Guyana, and 25 years later, there are at least two Jews living in the tiny South American nation. One is a Guyanese-British-Israeli guesthouse operator who has been working in Guyana since the 1970s. The other is a former Madison Avenue marketing executive from Chicago who until recently ran the country’s largest tour operator.
Both offer a window into three dynamics that define Guyana: a government that embraces all faiths, an economy based on extractive industries and an expansive rainforest the country hopes will be a draw for its growing ecotourism industry.
Guyana, an English-speaking country of roughly 800,000, came to international prominence in 1978 as the site of the Jonestown massacre, in which more than 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones were killed, either by suicide or murder.
These days, though, the country is drawing attention for the recent discovery of oil off its coast. ExxonMobil announced the discovery in 2015 and promptly began developing Guyana’s oil resources. With over 11 billion barrels of reserves and producing over 350,000 barrels per day, Guyana is on track to produce more than 1 million daily barrels by 2030, potentially transforming one of South America’s poorest countries.
It was an earlier extractive industry that first brought Raphael Ades to Guyana. Born in Tel Aviv in 1951 to an Italian-Jewish mother and a Syrian-Jewish father, Ades had a peripatetic childhood. The family moved first to Milan when Ades, who goes by Rafi, was 11, after his father Meyer entered the diamond trade, then two years later to southwestern Germany. They landed in Pforzheim, known at the time as Goldstadt because of the prominence of jewelry and precious stone trading locally.
But the family was not yet settled: In 1967, Meyer took the family to London, where Ades finished high school and took his university entrance exams, excelling in all of the languages he had picked up — English, French, Italian, German and Hebrew. As a psychology student at the University of London, Ades began helping his father, who maintained an office in London’s diamond district, at work. His father contracted out the polishing, and one of the polishers was Indo-Guyanese.
“That day, my dad took out the atlas and started to read up on Guyana,” Ades recalled. “‘This is somewhere I want to go,’ he told me.”
During a trip to visit an Israeli friend in Venezuela, Meyer went on a prospecting trip to Guyana, and registered the Guyana Diamond Export company. When he suffered a heart attack, Ades and his mother flew to Georgetown to be with him. Barely 21, Ades stepped in to take a larger role in the business. He flew with other diamond buyers into the rural mining areas, and learned the operations were producing thousands of carats of diamonds.
“I stayed in Guyana through the second half of 1972 and fell in love with the place,” Ades recalled. “I went to the [main] Stabroek market in Georgetown, seeing all of the iguanas and macaws. When my dad recuperated, I started going back to Guyana myself.”
His mining business thrived. In 1997, he bought Sloth Island, a 160-acre outpost about a two-hour journey from Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, requiring an hour-long car ride through the small villages that dot the Atlantic coast, and then an hour’s boat ride down the widening Essequibo River, passing pristine forests lined with mangroves and Indigenous villages.
When Ades bought the property, it was mostly underwater. He brought in workers from neighboring villages to pump out the water, build up the sand and retaining walls and add structures. Sloths were already there, but he brought ocelots and monkeys from neighboring islands, as well as other birds. (The ocelots, he said, used to eat the electrical wires and open the fridge.)
Now anchoring Sloth Island is a blue and white guesthouse, a series of covered huts for dining and hammock relaxation and a wooden walkway for nature walks through partially cleared forest. Indigenous guides identify the numerous species of plants and birds. The pandemic has receded as a threat to business, and the island hosts tourists every weekend — though climate change is presenting new issues.
“There are many times that the river floods part of the island and I lose sand and soil,” Ades said. “We have to keep on pumping out water and repairing damage to the buildings when that happens.”
The year after he bought the island, his widowed mother, then living in Belgium, broke her hip. When she was well enough to travel she moved to Guyana to be with her son, dividing her time between Georgetown and Sloth Island. When she died in 2009, Ades was at a loss given the lack of a Jewish cemetery, synagogue, and minyan required to say the Mourner’s Kaddish. He was interested in burying her across from Sloth Island, on a hill in the mining town of Bartica just across the river. But a Jewish friend from France facilitated a connection with the Surinamese Jewish community, who prepared the body for burial in the cemetery adjacent to Paramaribo’s main synagogue.
“That’s the last time I was in a synagogue, in 2010, after my mother passed,” Ades recalled.
A view of Raphael Ades’ resort on Sloth Island. (Seth Wikas)
The absence of Jews in Guyana is a notable lacuna in a country that otherwise boasts a broad range of religions. History records a colony of Dutch Jews who settled in northwestern Guyana in the 17th century to produce sugarcane, but the English destroyed that colony in 1666, dispersing the Jewish residents. Jews from Arab lands moved to Guyana in the late 19th and 20th centuries to escape persecution but then migrated elsewhere; Jews fleeing Europe came in 1939 but did not settle long enough to establish a sustained community.
Janet Jagan was an anomaly: Born Janet Rosenberg in Chicago, she married a Guyanese man in the United States and moved with him to Guyana in 1947. Her father Cheddi Jagan was trained as a dentist but entered politics as Guyana gained independence from Great Britain, serving as the first premier of the semi-independent colonial government in the early 1960s and then as the country’s fourth president in the 1990s. When he died in 1997, Janet Jagan was sworn in as his replacement and then won a term of her own later that year. She died in 2009.
According to the 2012 census, Guyana is about two-thirds Christian, a quarter Hindu, and less than 10% Muslim, with smaller populations of Rastafarians and Baha’is. Guyana’s cities and towns are dotted with churches, mandirs and mosques, and the country has enshrined freedom of religion in its constitution. Christian, Hindu and Muslim holy days are national holidays.
“We embrace all faiths and are always looking to build bridges across communities,” Mansoor Baksh, a leader within the country’s Islamic Ahmadiyya movement, told JTA. Omkaar Sharma, a member of the country’s Hindu Pandit Council, said something similar: “We have a long tradition of co-existence and celebrating each other’s holidays. It’s what makes Guyana special.”
On the occasion of the Hindu festival of Diwali last month, President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, South America’s only Muslim head of government, emphasized the country’s inclusivity when he told the nation: “Under the One Guyana banner, our people are coming together, rejecting the forces of division and hatred, and uniting in the pursuit of peace, progress and prosperity.”
The sentiments have had practical implications for the country’s two Jews. In 2017, when a Guyana Tourism Authority group was slated to travel to Suriname for a conference on travel catering to Muslim tourists, the Mauritanian organizer of the event protested the presence of Jewish participants. There were supposed to be two: Ades, and Andrea de Caires, then head of the country’s largest private tour operator, Wilderness Explorers.
“I got a call from the Guyanese Tourism Minister at 1 a.m., who asked me if I was Jewish, and he explained the situation. And I thought, this [antisemitism] is still going on in the world?” de Caires remembered.
The Guyanese tourism minister refused to abide by the ban, de Caires proudly said, and told the Surinamese hosts and conference organizers: “If Jews aren’t allowed, then none of us are going.” The Surinamese, long known for their religious tolerance, also refused to accept the prohibition, and said that all participants were welcome (in Suriname’s capital Paramaribo, a mosque stands next to a synagogue and they share a parking lot). Both de Caires and Ades attended the event.
“When I arrived at the conference, the Surinamese minister of tourism welcomed me, and the director general of Guyana’s tourism ministry gave me the microphone to open the conference. We [Rafi and I] went in with our heads held high,” de Caires said.
De Caires has lived in Guyana since 2010 but her path to Guyana took a different route from Ades’. Born Andrea Levine in Chicago as the granddaughter of a rabbi, she traveled extensively as a child with her physician father, who taught her the importance of creating a Jewish home.
“Judaism was always a part of my life — we celebrated the holidays, lit candles on Friday night, but my father would often say, ‘Going to temple doesn’t make you Jewish,’” Caires said.
De Caires moved to New Jersey and trained as a jeweler, working with clients that included Tiffany’s. She transitioned to working at Bloomingdale’s in sales and then management, and then she moved on to the cosmetic company Borghese, where she became vice president of sales and marketing.
“I got caught up in Madison Avenue, a single mom of three kids, and then I met Salvador,” she recalled. “And I knew there was no point in pursuing a relationship if I wouldn’t move to Guyana.”
Salvador is Salvador de Caires, her Guyanese husband whom she met through her sister. Visiting Guyana for the first time in 2008, she fondly recalled her first visit to the Karanambu Lodge in the country’s south, a former cattle ranch that is now a conservation hub sitting at the center of Guyana’s forests, rivers, and savannahs. The most accessible route is via airplane from Georgetown and then four-by-four vehicle. While based at the lodge, de Caires continued to take conference calls for her New York-based career, while learning more about Guyana and the business of running a tourist destination off the beaten path. She and Salvador moved permanently to Guyana in 2010 to take over the day-to-day management of the lodge.
“When we moved to Guyana, it never occurred to me there would never be a Jewish community here. There’s a Jewish community everywhere,” de Caires remembered thinking. “That was pretty startling.”
Andrea de Caires is shown with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali. (Courtesy of de Caires)
So when they moved from Karanambu in 2016 to work at (and eventually lead) Wilderness Explorers in Georgetown, de Caires was committed to opening her home to Guyanese friends and neighbors with Hanukkah parties and Passover seders.
“The first year we had a Hanukkah party, our invitation went out for latkes and black cake (a traditional Guyanese dish), and we had government ministers, ambassadors and local friends over,” she recalled. “I told the story of the holiday and we lit the candles.”
It wasn’t the first time de Caires had been single handedly responsible for the fostering Jewish traditions in Guyana. She recalled an incident in 2012 when a Colombian-Jewish tourist came to Karanambu Lodge during Passover and asked her to make matzah brei. Under a thatched roof, she was able to make the holiday delicacy for her visitor.
For Ades, too, it is hosting that makes him most appreciate his chosen home in Guyana.
“I will always remember Feb. 1, 1963, the day we left Israel. We had always planned to return,” he said. “But I’m still here. Between then and now I have lived in so many places, and Guyana has been my home for a very long time. One of the best parts of my week is meeting new people who come to Sloth Island — people of different backgrounds from around the world. It is wonderful to welcome them all.”
De Caires plans to share her Jewish traditions once again next month, hosting another Hanukkah party for her Guyanese friends and neighbors. And with the worst of the pandemic in the rearview mirror, both Ades and de Caires are looking forward to booming tourist seasons. De Caires and her husband are also ready to begin a new professional chapter: They recently accepted new positions with a Guyanese conglomerate to develop its tourism operations at a riverine resort.
Does de Caires feel like she has lost something by establishing roots in a place without an established Jewish community?
“If I left here, that would mean there’s one less person to support others [including Jews],” de Caires replied. “I think it’s interesting Rafi and I are both in tourism — you need to have a lot of tenacity, but it’s important that we welcome others to this beautiful country.”
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The post Meet the 2 Jews of Guyana, a South American nation with a tradition of religious tolerance appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Two Argentine Jewish Tourists Assaulted in Milan as Antisemitic Incidents Surge Across Italy
A protester uses a pole to break a window at Milano Centrale railway station, during a demonstration that is part of a nationwide “Let’s Block Everything” protest in solidarity with Gaza, with activists also calling for a halt to arms shipments to Israel, in Milan, Italy, Sept. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Two young Argentine Jewish tourists were violently assaulted in Milan by a group of North African migrants after being targeted for wearing kippahs, in one of the latest antisemitic attacks amid a relentlessly hostile climate toward Jewish communities across Europe.
According to Italian media reports, the two 19-year-old Argentine tourists were attacked late Sunday night outside a 24-hour supermarket in Milan, a city in the northern part of the country, at Piazzale Siena after leaving the store when a group of about 10 people approached them.
After spotting the kippahs worn by the two young men, the attackers began shouting antisemitic insults, including “f**king Jews,” before violently assaulting them, leaving one of the victims with a broken nose.
Authorities and emergency responders were quickly dispatched to the scene following the attack, with police and paramedics providing assistance before transporting the two victims to a local hospital.
Local law enforcement has now opened a criminal investigation into the assault, reviewing surveillance camera footage and analyzing cell phone data from areas surrounding Piazzale Siena.
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) strongly condemned the incident, describing it as a sign of rising antisemitic hostility and calling for renewed efforts to safeguard Jewish communities across Europe.
“This disturbing incident highlights the very real dangers Jews continue to face in public spaces across Europe simply for expressing their identity. Antisemitic violence must be confronted with the utmost seriousness,” EJC said in a statement.
“Authorities must ensure that those responsible are swiftly identified and brought to justice. No one in Europe should fear being attacked for being visibly Jewish,” it continued.
Two young Jewish tourists from Argentina were violently assaulted outside a supermarket in Milan after being identified as Jewish by their kippahs.
The attackers first hurled antisemitic insults before punching the victims, leaving one with a broken nose.
This disturbing… pic.twitter.com/Ch0IzlgWt4
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) March 4, 2026
Amid heightened tensions tied to the recent US-Israeli joint military campaign against Iran, Walker Meghnagi — president of the Jewish community of Milan — called on authorities to strengthen protection for Jewish schools and synagogues.
“We must remain vigilant. We have asked the prefect to increase surveillance around our schools and places of worship, as well as to safeguard our freedoms, but we cannot isolate ourselves,” he said.
“We are Italians and deserve to be respected as such. We are a free people, and we will not hide — we must stand firm in defense of our freedom,” Meghnagi continued.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Italy has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to newly published figures, antisemitism in Italy surged to record levels in 2025, reflecting a broader climate in which Jews and Israelis across Europe have faced harassment, vandalism, and targeted violence.
In Italy, the Milan-based CDEC Foundation (Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) confirmed that antisemitic incidents in the country almost reached four digits for the first time last year.
Of 1,492 reports submitted through official monitoring channels, the CDEC formally classified a record high 963 cases as antisemitic, according to the EJC and Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), the main representative body of Jews in Italy.
By comparison, there were 877 recorded incidents in 2024, preceded by 453 such outrages in 2023 and just 241 in 2022.
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New York Judge Overturns Disciplinary Sanctions for Columbia University Students Who Occupied Hamilton Hall
Protesters gather at the gates of Columbia University, in support of student protesters who barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall, in New York City, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
A New York state judge has overturn disciplinary sanctions imposed on a group of anti-Israel protesters who illegally occupied Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and interned janitorial staff while destroying property to protest the Israel-Hamas war, raising concerns that colleges may be deprived of the power to punish severe misconduct perpetrated by students who claim to be advancing progressive causes.
Twenty-two current and former students, all of whom contested their punishments anonymously, may soon walk away without being held accountable following Judge Gerald Lebovits’s ruling last Friday that Columbia’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious.” Lebovits went further, citing the students’ concealment of their identities with masks and keffiyeh scarves as evidence that the university lacked evidence to determine that they were actually in Hamilton Hall despite that they had been arrested on the scene by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
“In the disciplinary proceedings against the 22 Columbia students, the sole evidence that they were present in Hamilton Hall during its occupation was a report reflecting that petitioners had been arrested,” he wrote. “No evidence was offered in the disciplinary proceedings of actions taken inside Hamilton Hall by any particular student, as opposed to the conduct of the group of occupiers as a whole.”
Lebovits, after arguing that the group should not be disciplined even as he described their infractions, then argued that illegally occupying Hamilton Hall is “decades-long tradition.”
He continued, “Others might see the occupiers’ actions as manifestations of an ugly hatred against Jews, using rhetoric about Gaza mainly as a pretext. But the task for this court is not to decide between these perspectives, or to opine on the moral or political issues implicated by the actions of the parties to this proceeding.”
In a statement shared with The Algemeiner on Wednesday, Columbia University noted that Lebovits’s vacating the disciplinary sanctions does not take effect for 30 days, during which time university lawyers may pursue other legal avenues.
“The order does not take effect for at least 30 days, and no student who was disciplined for the occupation of Hamilton Hall can return to campus at this time,” a university spokesperson said. “Columbia is considering all of its options, including seeking a stay of the order and appealing the decision.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, in April 2024, anti-Israel agitators occupied Hamilton Hall, forcing then-university president Minouche Shafik to call on the NYPD for help, a decision she hesitated to make. During a search of the scene, the NYPD found a number of disturbing items, including “gas masks, ear plugs, helmets, goggles, tape, hammers, knives, ropes, and a book on TERRORISM [sic].” Police also found signs which said “death to America” and “death to Israel.”
During the same period, a group that calls itself “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD) commandeered a section of campus and, after declaring it a “liberated zone,” lit flares and chanted pro-Hamas and anti-American slogans, according to numerous reports. When the NYPD arrived to disperse the unauthorized gathering, hundreds of students reportedly amassed around them to prevent the restoration of order.
“Yes, we’re all Hamas, pig!” one protester was filmed screaming during the fracas, which saw some verbal skirmishes between pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist partisans. “Long live Hamas!” said others who filmed themselves dancing and praising the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian terrorist organization.
Beyond the occupation of school property, Columbia has produced some of the most indelible examples of antisemitism, pro-jihadist sentiment, and extreme anti-Zionism in American higher education since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. Such incidents include a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
In July, interim then-university president Claire Shipman said the institution would hire new coordinators to oversee antisemitism complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Shipman also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups while delivering a major blow to the anti-Zionist movement on campus by vowing never to “recognize or meet with” the infamous organization CUAD, which had serially disrupted academic life with a number of other unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
However, Columbia University has retained a professor, Joseph Massad, who celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — where the Palestinian terrorist group sexually assaulted women and men, kidnapped the elderly, and murdered children in their beds — allowing him to teach a course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaking to The Algemeiner in January, Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Asaf Romirowsky said that Massad’s remaining on Columbia’s payroll is indicative of the university’s hesitance to enact meaningful and lasting reforms.
“Joseph Massad is a notorious tenured antisemite who has spent his career at Columbia bashing Israel and Zionism, a poster child for BDS and a scholar propagandist activist. Furthermore, he has shown his true colors time and time again defending Hamas and calling the 10/7 barbaric attack on Israel ‘awesome,’” Romirowsky said.
Noting that Columbia’s own antisemitism task force said in a December report that the institution employs few faculty who hold moderate views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he added, “By allowing Massad to continue teaching and spreading his venom, Columbia is only codifying the dearth of knowledge as it relates to the Middle East. It should take the finding of the report and act upon it by getting rid of the tenured radicals they allowed to hijack the institution.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom Likens Israel to ‘Apartheid State’
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a press conference, accompanied by members of the Texas Democratic legislators, at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, California, US, Aug. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday ignited controversy after suggesting it is “appropriate” to describe Israel as an “apartheid state” and questioning the future of US military assistance to the Jewish state during an event to promote his new memoir.
Speaking during a book event in Los Angeles with “Pod Save America” host Tommy Vietor, Newsom said that recent policies pursued by Israel’s current government have made the term increasingly common in international discourse. While framing his comments as reluctant, the Democratic governor said it “breaks my heart,” but argued that the trajectory of Israeli leadership leaves the United States with “no choice” but to reconsider aspects of its longstanding support such as providing military aid.
“I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately – sort of an apartheid state,” Newsom said in reference to New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman.
“It breaks my heart because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don’t think you have a choice but to have that consideration,” Newsom said.
The remarks place Newsom among the most high-profile American elected officials to publicly entertain the apartheid label — a characterization Israel has consistently rejected as false and inflammatory. Israeli officials across the political spectrum have long argued that such comparisons distort the complex security, legal, and historical realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while ignoring the equal rights afforded to Israel’s Arab citizens and the ongoing security threats facing the country.
Newsom reportedly directed much of his criticism at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, describing its policies in the West Bank and toward Palestinians as contributing to growing international unease. His comments come amid continued tensions in the region, including the future prospect of Israeli military operations against Hamas in Gaza and ongoing military conflict with Iran and its regional proxies.
Newsom also directed criticism toward the current war in Iran, accusing Jerusalem of pushing the White House to pursue military conflict with Tehran. The California governor suggested that Israel should not be trusted to lead a successful campaign against Iran, given Jerusalem’s failure to topple Hamas in Gaza. He also suggested that Netanyahu bamboozled US President Donald Trump into pursuing a war against Iran.
“They couldn’t even – I mean, we’re talking about regime change?” he said, “For two years, they haven’t even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel. So, this is, I mean, you know, I wanna be careful here, but, you know, in so many ways, that influence in the context of the conversation of where Trump ultimately landed on this is pretty damn self-evident.”
Trump was asked at the White House if Israel dragged the US into conflict with Iran and rejected the notion.
“I might have forced their [Israel’s] hand,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”
In Jerusalem, officials have frequently pushed back against the apartheid accusation, noting that Israel is a multiethnic democracy with an independent judiciary, free press, and Arab representation in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. Critics of the apartheid claim also point to the repeated rejections by Palestinian leadership of past peace proposals that would have established a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Newsom’s statements arrive at a sensitive moment in US-Israel relations. As the 2028 Democratic primary begins to set in motion, progressive voices within the Democratic Party have increasingly called for conditioning or reducing military aid to Israel. Newsom, widely viewed as a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, now appears to be navigating that internal party divide.
In a recent podcast appearance with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Newsom rejected the argument that Israel has committed a so-called “genocide” in Gaza and expressed support for the country’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorism.
Netanyahu has said in several interviews over the past few months that he intends to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.