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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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How to pursue justice: 5 lessons from the life of Stan Levy
At a time of so much division and injustice, when the temptation is to retreat into outrage or into ourselves, there is much to be learned in the life of our friend, Stan Levy.
Stan, who died Nov. 5 at the age of 84, founded Bet Tzedek Legal services and was a fixture in the Los Angeles legal, philanthropic and Jewish communities for close to 60 years. Ensuring fairness where it was absent was Stan’s calling, both as a lawyer and a rabbi.
How he set out to do that — the sheer range of his accomplishments — is daunting: an experienced concert promoter, a corporate general counsel and law firm partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, an ordained rabbi, the founder and spiritual leader of a thriving congregation, B’nai Horin, the founder of a transdenominational rabbinical and cantorial school, the Academy of Jewish Religion, and, for good measure, the visionary behind the founding of three of the community’s most important legal aid organizations — Bet Tzedek, Public Counsel and the Western Center on Law & Poverty.
But the lessons behind the list matter more.
The first lesson: pay attention to the people others don’t see. The 1970s were something of a heyday for legal services, the funding relatively more plentiful and far less controversial than today. But Stan saw something few others did. There were no free legal services in what was then the center of Jewish life in Los Angeles, the Fairfax District. He recognized the significant needs of Holocaust survivors, a group otherwise invisible to most, and other low-income individuals and families living in the heart of the Jewish community. And in 1974, he founded Bet Tzedek Legal Services.
From its start as a small legal clinic in 1974, Bet Tzedek now draws on more than 1,100 staff and pro bono attorneys, and helped more than 82,000 people of all backgrounds in 2025. In 1970, before he turned 30, Stan launched Public Counsel, now the largest pro bono law firm in the country.
The second lesson of Stan’s life: build the institution, then let it outgrow you. Along with co-founder Luis Lainer, Stan continued to be a board member of Bet Tzedek for more than 50 years.
There was no founder’s syndrome for him. At various times we both served as CEOs at Bet Tzedek. We never heard Stan say, “That’s not the way we have done it.” Instead, he encouraged us and embraced changes. After 50 years, he was younger and more restless than the rest of us.
The third lesson: learn from everyone — especially from your own tradition. Stan was known to quote the likes of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Muhammad Ali with equal fluency. His favorite quote from Heschel was, “An act of injustice is condemned not because the law is broken, but because a person has been hurt.” His favorite from The Greatest was, “Service to others is the rent I pay for my room here on earth.”
He was a Jewish leader deeply versed in Jewish learning — it’s not as common as you’d think. In 1968, Stan founded B’nai Horin, which translates as “Children of Freedom.” The congregation was never affiliated with a movement and remained welcoming to all, drawing hundreds to its High Holy Days services, b’nai mitzvah classes and Shabbat services.
In 2001, seeing the need for a seminary that would educate professionals like him who wanted to more deeply explore their Judaism, Stan co-founded the transdenominational Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles, which ordains rabbis, cantors and chaplains. Stan could passionately explain access to justice while drawing on Jewish history, tradition and teachings.
The fourth lesson: successful leadership is measured by the number of people you lift. The impact Stan had on our individual lives reflects the way he touched so many people. He guided our careers, helped guide us into leadership positions at Bet Tzedek, performed Mitch’s wedding and led shiva services for David’s parents.
When David launched The Justice Ball, a new era in legal aid fundraising events, it was Stan who negotiated the contracts for the famed musical acts who appeared. When Mitch launched the Holocaust Survivor Justice Network, a national pro bono program, Stan stepped away from his role as a law firm partner and ran the program across the country. He created an international network of more than 5,000 attorneys who have helped secure over $200 million in reparations for survivors. He was a founder who never hesitated to show up to do the work.
The last lesson he taught us may be the most important: Stan and his wife Lynda were inseparable, a power couple before there was such a thing. His sons, Jules, Aaron and Joshua, were the subject of so many of his stories. Stan could balance being a Renaissance Man with his greatest talent of all, being a Family Man. Neither suffered for the other; he had room in his heart for his passions and his loves.
The world is far from healed — though not for Stan’s lack of trying. His life points the way forward for all of us: find the people who’ve been overlooked, build something to serve them, bring everyone you can into the room — and then keep going.
Stan Levy, may your memory be a blessing.
The post How to pursue justice: 5 lessons from the life of Stan Levy appeared first on The Forward.
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A Philadelphia bike ride targeting Jewish-owned businesses on the eve of Kristallnacht anniversary spurs outrage from city and state leaders
(JTA) — PHILADELPHIA – A bicycle ride promoting the boycott of businesses in Center City Philadelphia that organizers claim are complicit in Israeli military actions is drawing scathing criticism from state leaders.
Jewish groups in the city are calling the ride blatantly antisemitic, noting that it targets Jewish-owned businesses on Nov. 8, the eve of the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” when Nazi rioters vandalized and burned German Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes, a major escalation of Nazi persecution of Jews.
Organizers insist the timing is coincidental, and in statements posted on their Instagram pages accuse their critics of being “cynical” and weaponizing antisemitism to target pro-Palestinian advocates.
The Instagram post advertising the event in Rittenhouse Square reads: “Ride around Rittenhouse with us as we show these Zionist business owners that we see them for the disgusting human beings they are.” It continues, “We’ll flag as many bikes as we can and show our solidarity with the Palestinian community and oppressed folk everywhere.”
State and city officials expressing outrage at the planned ride include Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, a Republican, and Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat considered a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
“As Mayor, I serve every Philadelphian under the explicit premise that freedom of speech and freedom from fear are not competing values,” Parker said in a statement. “No one should be targeted, threatened, or made to feel unwelcome because of their faith, identity, or background. Singling out businesses because their owners are Jewish is unacceptable and has no place in our city.”
A spokesperson for Shapiro, whose official residence was set ablaze on Passover last year by a man enraged by Israel’s conduct in Gaza, said the ride was clearly antisemitic.
“This bike ride, masquerading as a protest to advance the cause of justice, is nothing more than blatant antisemitism designed to intimidate and drive Jewish businesses out of our communities and there is no place for that in our commonwealth,” the spokesperson said.
Sunday said the restaurateurs were targeted because they are Jewish. “By explicitly targeting businesses because their owners are Jewish, the organizers are engaging in a form of discrimination that falls back on some of the oldest antisemitic tropes and tactics in history,” he said.
Hearing such support not only from political leaders but also from interfaith leaders throughout the city has left Philadelphia Board of Rabbis president David Levin “gratified.” “We’ve received broad-based support,” Rabbi Levin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The Jewish community obviously is finding it outrageous, but our civic leaders have stepped up with public comments.
“And my faith partners from other denominations have reached out to us in solidarity and support,” Levin said. “I’m delighted Philadelphia has lived up to its tagline as the City of Brotherly Love. We are feeling that.”
He called on those sympathetic to the businesses not to interfere with the bikers. “The worst thing we could do is find ourselves in a place where there’s confrontation and this thing escalates and people potentially put themselves in a position where they could get hurt,” Levin said.
“I’ve been sort of using the tagline ‘Keep the streets empty and the restaurants full,’” he said. “The best thing we can do in the days and weeks ahead is support these restaurateurs trying to make a living, and our community is turning out in droves.”
The organizers, Philly Bike On Your Left in collaboration with Philly Writers Against the War on Gaza, Boycott CookNSolo and Philly Solidarity Calendar, posted the invitation to join on Oct. 30 on Instagram.
“We call for a boycott because the owners materially and ideologically support the ongoing occupation and genocide of Palestinians,” Boycott CookNSolo, named for the restaurant chain owned by Israeli American celebrity chef Michael Solomonov, said. “Profits from their enterprises and from their fundraising efforts have been used to fund the occupation and to support pro-genocide interest groups in the U.S. and ‘Israel.’”
It is not clear why the organizers believe the businesses are tied to any “occupation,” or how they are “pro-genocide.”
Solomonov, who declined to comment, has been targeted in the past for fundraising for United Hatzalah, a first responder rescue group that works with a wide range of civil and government bodies in Israel and abroad, including the IDF. One such fundraiser came after the group said its resources were stretched thin due to their work to save lives and preserve the dead after the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly Hamas raids inside Israel. Other restaurant owners appear to have been targeted, according to protest organizers, for expressing support for Israel on social media after the attacks, which killed 1,200 people inside Israel.
Boycott CookNSolo also said that drawing attention to the Kristallnacht timing was “a cynical take that is not only offensive to the historical victims of Nazi persecution but an intentional distraction from the actual pogroms currently taking place in the West Bank and the wholesale destruction of life and livelihood in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.”
Schlesinger’s Deli owner Allan Domb, one of the targeted owners, said he was heartened by the broad support he received.
“It’s upsetting to see this level of hatred against four business owners for no reason,“ said Domb, a former Philadelphia city councilman. “It’s blatant antisemitism. But the positive side is, the amount of support from Philadelphia and outside of Philadelphia has been amazing.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A Philadelphia bike ride targeting Jewish-owned businesses on the eve of Kristallnacht anniversary spurs outrage from city and state leaders appeared first on The Forward.
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Pro-Israel conservatives blast JD Vance for blaming Israel after GOP midterm losses
(JTA) — Conservative pro-Israel voices are lashing out at Vice President JD Vance after he linked the Republican Party’s massive midterm losses to the country’s relationship with Israel and the war in Iran.
Vance on Wednesday said that “the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone” and listed four strategies to bring back voters: end the war in Iran; focus on the cost of living and inflation; put America first and “change our relationship to Israel.”
Eric Levine, a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he doesn’t “recall seeing a single exit poll in which any voter identified ‘change our relationship with Israel’ as a factor in their voting decision.”
“It makes you wonder why he would make such a claim,” Levine added.
Conservative radio personality Sid Rosenberg, a Jewish New Yorker and friend of President Donald Trump, slammed the vice president and cited his “constant calls for a ceasefire” as the reason why the conflict with Iran has persisted.
“Vance is a disloyal, agenda driven problem for our party moving forward,” Rosenberg wrote on X, urging Trump to replace him as chief Iran negotiator with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a favorite of Rosenberg’s and other Jewish conservatives for the 2028 GOP presidential nod.
Rosenberg has long criticized Vance for not being “strong enough on Israel” and has demanded that Vance distance himself from Tucker Carlson, a right-wing commentator who condemns U.S. military aid for Israel and who has been accused of amplifying antisemitic tropes.
In September, Rosenberg accepted an invitation to meet with Vance at the White House, as the vice president attempted to make overtures to the Jewish community following a series of controversial remarks about Israel. Following the meeting, Rosenberg reported that he and Vance “hit it off,” adding that the two men would likely have “many more meetings about very substantial things” in the future.
“He is willing to listen,” Rosenberg said at the time. “I don’t think by any stretch that JD Vance hates Israel, hates the Jewish people.”
Jonathan Greenberg, director for combatting antisemitism at Defending Education and a former staffer for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, told JTA earlier this week that he viewed Vance’s comments as “nonsense.”
“The same Islamist-communist alliance that’s infiltrating our schools and teaching our kids to hate America is the same alliance that Israel is fighting,” said Greenberg, who ran for state office in Illinois as a Republican in 2012 but is now unaffiliated.
“The idea that we’re going to take an ally in that fight and feed them to the same ogre that’s coming after us makes absolutely no sense to me,” he added. “I think the vice president’s wrong.”
CUFI Action Fund, a nonprofit branch of the pro-Israel advocacy group Christians United for Israel, described the vice president in a statement as “clearly, demonstrably and unambiguously wrong.”
“In a list of the top four reasons the Republicans lost, the Jews were effectively blamed twice if you can hear that pitch of dog whistle,” the statement said, referring to Vance’s fingerpointing to both Israel and the war in Iran.
“This war should’ve been over months ago, and if the vice president wants someone to blame for that, he needs only look in the mirror,” the organization said, alluding to the argument that Vance’s proposed concessions to Iran helped spur the war instead of ending it. “The Vance-Carlson movement, which we call woke rightism, is as loud as their candidates are weak.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Pro-Israel conservatives blast JD Vance for blaming Israel after GOP midterm losses appeared first on The Forward.
