Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, Willemstad (1732)
Mikve Israel-Emanuel is the oldest continually active Jewish congregation in the Americas (since 1654). The wheels of the community were put in motion by Jaoa d’Yllan, a Portuguese Jew by way of Amsterdam who petitioned the Dutch West India Company
to send a group of settlers to the island. Most were Amsterdam Jews who
had fled the Iberian Peninsula in the aftershocks of the Portuguese Inquisition.
