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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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Trump Says No ‘Definitive’ Agreement With Netanyahu, US Talks With Iran to Continue
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach to shake hands at a joint press conference in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
President Donald Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday they reached no “definitive” agreement on how to move forward with Iran but he insisted negotiations with Tehran would continue to see if a deal can be achieved.
Netanyahu, who had been expected to press Trump to widen diplomacy with Iran beyond its nuclear program to include limits on its missile arsenal, stressed that Israel’s security interests must be taken into account but offered no sign that the president made the commitments he sought.
In their seventh meeting since Trump returned to office last year, Netanyahu – whose visit was more muted than usual and closed to the press – was looking to influence the next round of US discussions with Iran following nuclear negotiations held in Oman last Friday.
The two leaders spoke behind closed doors for more than two and a half hours in what Trump described as a “very good meeting” but said no major decisions were made and stopped short of publicly accepting Netanyahu’s entreaties.
Trump has threatened strikes on Iran if no agreement is reached, while Tehran has vowed to retaliate, stoking fears of a wider war as the US amasses forces in the Middle East. He has repeatedly voiced support for a secure Israel, a longstanding US ally and arch-foe of Iran.
In media interviews on Tuesday, Trump reiterated his blunt warning to Iran, while saying he believes Tehran wants a deal.
“There was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a Deal can be consummated,” Trump said in a social media post after the meeting with Netanyahu. “If it can, I let the Prime Minister know that will be a preference.”
“If it cannot, we will just have to see what the outcome will be,” Trump added, noting that the last time Iran decided against an agreement the US struck its nuclear sites last June.
TRUMP SAYS NO TO IRANIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS, MISSILES
Trump told Fox Business in an interview broadcast on Tuesday that a good deal with Iran would mean “no nuclear weapons, no missiles,” without elaborating. He also told Axios he was considering sending a second aircraft carrier strike group as part of a major US buildup near Iran.
Israel fears that the US might pursue a narrow nuclear deal that does not include restrictions on Iran‘s ballistic missile program or an end to Iranian support for armed proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, according to people familiar with the matter. Israeli officials have urged the US not to trust Iran‘s promises.
Iran has rejected such demands and says the Oman talks focused only on nuclear issues.
“The Prime Minister emphasized the security needs of the State of Israel in the context of the negotiations, and the two agreed to continue their close coordination and tight contact,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after Wednesday’s talks.
The two leaders had also been expected to talk about potential military action if diplomacy with Iran fails, one source said.
Iran has said it is prepared to discuss curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions but has ruled out linking the issue to missiles.
“The Islamic Republic’s missile capabilities are non-negotiable,” Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran‘s supreme leader, said on Wednesday.
Netanyahu’s arrival at the White House was lower-key than usual. The two leaders were shown shaking hands in a photo released by the Israeli Embassy. But unlike previous Netanyahu visits with Trump, a press pool was not allowed into the Oval Office. It was not immediately known why he received such low-profile treatment.
GAZA ON THE AGENDA
Also on the agenda was Gaza, with Trump looking to push ahead with a ceasefire agreement he helped to broker. Progress on his 20-point plan to end the war and rebuild the shattered Palestinian enclave has stalled, with major gaps over steps such as Hamas disarming as Israeli troops withdraw in phases.
“We discussed the tremendous progress being made in Gaza, and the Region in general,” Trump said after the meeting.
Netanyahu’s visit, originally scheduled for Feb. 18, was brought forward amid renewed US engagement with Iran. Both sides at last week’s Oman meeting said the negotiations were positive and further talks were expected soon.
Trump has been vague about broadening the negotiations. He was quoted as telling Axios on Tuesday that it was a “no-brainer” for any deal to cover Iran‘s nuclear program, but that he also thought it possible to address its missile stockpiles.
Iran says its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes, while the US and Israel have accused it of past efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
During a 12-day war last June, Israel heavily damaged Iran‘s air defenses and missile arsenal. Two Israeli officials say there are signs Iran is working to restore those capabilities.
Trump threatened last month to intervene militarily during a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests in Iran, but ultimately held off.
ISRAEL WARY OF A WEAKENED IRAN REBUILDING
Tehran’s regional influence has been weakened by Israel’s June attack, losses suffered by its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, and the ousting of its ally, former Syrian President Bashar al‑Assad.
But Israel is wary of its adversaries rebuilding after the multifront war triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel.
While Trump and Netanyahu have mostly been in sync and the US remains Israel’s main arms supplier, they appear to be at odds on another key issue.
Part of Trump’s Gaza plan holds out the prospect for eventual Palestinian statehood – which Netanyahu and his coalition have resisted.
Netanyahu’s security cabinet on Sunday authorized steps that would make it easier for Israeli settlers in the West Bank to buy land while granting Israel broader powers in what the Palestinians see as part of a future state.
The decision drew international condemnation, and Trump on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to West Bank annexation.
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Gaza Peace Plan Stalls Amid Reports of US Allowing Hamas to Keep Some Arms, Israel Readying New Offensive
Israeli military vehicles drive past destruction in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border in southern Israel, Jan. 21, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The US-backed plan to end the war in Gaza appears to have hit major roadblocks, with Hamas reportedly being allowed to keep some small arms and Israel readying its military for a new offensive to disarm the Palestinian terrorist group.
According to a New York Times report, officials involved in the US-led Board of Peace have drafted a plan that would let Hamas retain small arms while giving up longer-range weapons, a move Israeli officials warn would let the terrorist group maintain its grip on Gaza.
The compromise could further strain the already fragile ceasefire, under which further Israeli military withdrawals from Gaza are tied to Hamas’s disarmament.
The draft plan reportedly calls for a “phased disarmament” of Hamas over several months, with heavy weapons “decommissioned immediately.” However, details remain unclear on where surrendered arms would go or how the plan would actually be enforced.
The initial framework would also require “personal arms” to be “registered and decommissioned” as a new Palestinian administration takes charge of security in the war-torn enclave.
Israel has previously warned that Hamas must fully disarm for the second phase of the ceasefire to move forward, pointing to tens of thousands of rifles and an active network of underground tunnels still under the Islamist group’s control.
If the Palestinian terrorist group does not give up its weapons, Israel has vowed not to withdraw troops from Gaza or approve any rebuilding efforts, effectively stalling the ceasefire agreement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) currently occupy 53 percent of the Strip, with most of the Palestinian population living in the remaining portion of the enclave under Hamas control.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the country will not accept anything less than the full demilitarization of Gaza, pledging to prevent Hamas from carrying out another attack like its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. The attack, in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people, kidnapped 251 hostages, and perpetrated rampant sexual violence, launched the war in Gaza, where Hamas had total governing control before Israel’s military campaign.
Under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, phase two would involve deploying an international stabilization force (ISF), beginning large-scale reconstruction, and establishing a Palestinian technocratic committee to oversee the territory’s administration.
According to media reports, the ISF could total around 20,000 troops, though it remains uncertain whether the multinational peacekeeping force will actually help disarm Hamas. Indonesia, one of the contributing members, announced this week that it could provide up to 8,000 soldiers.
Hamas has repeatedly rejected disarmament, with senior official Khaled Meshal most recently suggesting that the group has never agreed to surrender its weapons.
“As long as there’s an occupation, there’s resistance,” Meshal said during the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Sunday.
Amid rising tensions, Israel is planning to resume military operations in the Gaza Strip to forcibly disarm Hamas, with the Times of Israel reporting that the IDF is drawing up plans for a renewed major offensive.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that Hamas will be disarmed by force if it continues to violate the ceasefire and pose a threat to Israel’s security.
“If Hamas does not disarm in accordance with the agreed framework, we will dismantle it and all of its capabilities,” the Israeli defense chief said this month.
Since the ceasefire took effect last year, both sides have accused each other of violations. This month, Israeli officials said that Hamas “has violated the agreement and focused its efforts on restoring its military capabilities.”
If Israel undertakes a renewed offensive, it could be far more intense than the IDF’s previous operations in Gaza over the past two years of conflict, which were constrained by efforts to protect the hostages.
Israeli officials have insisted that Hamas terrorists will continue fighting as long as they have access to weapons.
Last week, the IDF announced that a Hamas terrorist responsible for a deadly 2004 double suicide bombing, which killed 16 Israeli civilians and wounded over 100, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip.
The operation was part of a series of targeted strikes against terrorist operatives, carried out in response to an attack by gunmen on Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip, during which a reservist officer was seriously wounded.
Captured in 2004 and sentenced to prison, Basel Himouni was later released and exiled to Gaza in a 2011 deal, in which Israel exchanged 1,027 terror prisoners for captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
According to the IDF, since his release, Himouni “returned to recruiting attackers and directing terrorist activity.”
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Spanish Authorities Question Steel Workers Over Alleged Israeli Arms Sales, Sparking Outrage
Containers are seen in the Port of Vigo, Spain, March 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nacho Doce
Spanish authorities on Tuesday raided a steel factory near Bilbao, northern Spain, questioning staff over suspected violations of the country’s arms embargo on Israel – a move that has sparked outrage among local Jewish leaders and government officials, who denounced it as blatant intimidation.
According to the Spanish news outlet El Debate, police in Basauri – a town in Spain’s northern Basque Country – questioned staff at Sidenor Group, a steel manufacturer and trader, as part of a criminal investigation into alleged illegal arms sales to Israel.
José Antonio Jainaga, president of Sidenor, is accused of “smuggling and aiding in crimes against humanity or genocide by selling unauthorized batches of steel to Israel Military Industries,” according to the report.
However, Jainaga denied “any irregularity in the sales of steel to Israel” in testimony last year, asserting that the steel produced by Sidenor and exported to Israel was not “among the products subject to special control” by the Spanish government.
The Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM) group, a leading pro-Israel organization in Spain, strongly condemned the government’s latest actions as part of a “pattern of political pressure on economic actors for ideological reasons” and an “authoritarian drift and threat to democratic standards.”
“What should have been an administrative compliance process is increasingly perceived as a show of force by a government that has strayed from the standards of transparency, proportionality, and legal certainty promoted by the European Union,” ACOM wrote in a post on X.
“The combination of state intervention with a political climate that tolerates — and sometimes encourages — aggressive activism against Israel and its partners creates a scenario in which civil liberties and the legal security of companies and citizens are steadily eroded,” the statement read.
Spain under Sanchez: authoritarian drift and the threat to democratic standards
Recently, Spain witnessed an event that should alarm any international observer: the National Police conducted a raid on the headquarters of @sidenoraceros in Basauri, in Spain’s Basque Country,… pic.twitter.com/jAmEvcdUGa
— Acción y Comunicación sobre Oriente Medio – ACOM (@ACOM_es) February 10, 2026
ACOM also accused Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of turning the country into one of Europe’s most hostile toward Israel, alleging the move was meant to divert attention from corruption scandals within his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and from recent electoral setbacks.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Spain has launched a fierce anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state on the international stage.
In September, the Spanish government passed a law to take “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” banning trade in defense material and dual-use products from Israel, as well as imports and advertising of products originating from Israeli settlements.
More recently, Spanish officials also announced a ban on imports from hundreds of Israeli communities in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
Among all European Union members, Spain is the second country to take such action, following Slovenia — one of the bloc’s smallest economies — which became the first EU member to ban Israeli products in August, and potentially to be joined by Ireland, where parliament is currently working on a similar measure.
As a major trading partner, Israel exports roughly $850 million in goods to Spain each year — about half the value of Spanish exports to Israel — with products from the West Bank and the Golan making up only a small fraction of those shipments, according to the Israel Export Institute.
Last year, the Spanish government also announced it would bar entry to individuals involved in what it called a “genocide against Palestinians” and block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace.
Spain has also canceled a €700 million ($825 million) deal for Israeli-designed rocket launchers, as the government conducts a broader review to systematically phase out Israeli weapons and technology from its armed forces.
Amid this increasingly hostile stance toward the Jewish state, the Sánchez administration is facing mounting pressure from the country’s political leaders and the Jewish community, who accuse the government of stoking antisemitic hostility.
In December, Spanish authorities granted Airbus, the European aerospace and defense company, exceptional permission to produce aircraft and drones using Israeli technology at its Spanish plants – a move that reflects growing pressure from companies and domestic interests against the government’s push for trade sanctions on Israel over the war in Gaza.