Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas)

Beracha Veshalom Vegmiluth Hasadim (1833) - the second-oldest synagogue in the western hemisphere with a sand floor; Danish-West-Indies Sephardic memory.

Modern locality anchor

Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas)

US Virgin Islands · City · 18.3°N 64.9°W

This anchor orients the sourced locality record. It is not a reconstructed historical position or border; the single map below provides geographic context.

View location

Where is Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas)?

Land geometry: Natural Earth 1:50m via world-atlas. Pins mark modern localities or representative regional anchors stored on Atlas place records, not historical borders and not reconstructed positions. · Sources & methods

THE COMMUNITY TIMELINE · EVERY NODE DATED

What happened to the Jewish community of Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas)?

1655–1833

Danish West Indies Sephardic era

1833–present

1833 synagogue; small community

Today

Tiny community; landmark synagogue.

LANGUAGES & COMMUNITY

What did Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas) sound like?

Ladino / Judeo-Spanish (Judezmo; Haketía)Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit)

Ladino / Judeo-Spanish (Judezmo; Haketía) is a language with its own grammar, literature, and history — not “broken” anything, and not a dialect of Hebrew.

AFTER · IN FULL COLOR

What survives today?

In Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas)

Tiny community; landmark synagogue.

St. Thomas Synagogue
synagogue · historic site
Built 1833; sand floor; National Historic Landmark.

SOURCES & REVIEW

Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (place entry)
Macmillan Reference USA · 2007
Vital Statistics: Jewish Population of the World (2024 country figures)
Jewish Virtual Library · 2024 · open source

Reviewed 2026-07-30

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