Jews have been a recognized part of Jamaican cultural life since 1655, when Britain took power from Spain and welcomed Jewish immigration, though some date their presence here to Columbus’s second voyage to the Americas. Many were successful gold traders and sugar merchants.

Some, like Moses Cohen Henriques, (a crony of Captain Henry Morgan who once plundered the modern day equivalent of almost $1 billion from a Spanish galleon), were marauding buccaneers.

Two years ago, Anna Ruth Henriques, a descendent of Moses Cohen Henriques and the daughter of Ainsley Henriques, the paterfamilias of Jewmaican life, launched Jamaica Jewish Tours. The company sells custom itineraries that visit key spots in the island’s Semitic history, like the formerly Jewish-owned Appleton rum distillery and the Serge Island, Good Hope, and Hampden sugar plantations, and graveyards like the Jewish cemetery at Rowes Corner, a family sepulcher tucked among tangled Tarzan vines on the island’s southeastern coast.

Though today’s Jamaican Jewish population is fewer than 200, there are at least 21 Jewish burial grounds across the island.

For some, “heritage” in Jamaica might be synonymous with Rastafarianism. In fact, Rastafarianism is inextricably intertwined with Judaism: the religion’s messiah, the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, claimed descendance from King Solomon and it shares symbols like the Lion of Judah and kosher laws.

Great Huts, an eco-resort near Port Antonio, on the country’s northwestern shore, is built on this twinned heritage. Run by Paul Rhodes, a Jewish doctor from Brooklyn, it combines Judaic and Afrocentric qualities in its design and amenities (such as a kosher kitchen) and offers educational tours on topics like the Jewish role in Rastafarianism, Jewish pirates, and the Jewish diaspora in the Caribbean.

Source: The Forgotten Jewish Pirates of Jamaica | Travel | Smithsonian

UPDATED TO INCLUDE:

Geneticists Trace Jewish Roots of Bene Israel community in India

Bene Israel is a historical community of Jews in India. Its origins aren’t well understood — its oral history vague and speculative — but new genetic research confirms the group’s Jewish roots.

“Almost nothing is known about the Bene Israel community before the 18th century, when Cochin Jews and later Christian missionaries first came into contact with it,” researcher Yedael Waldman, of Tel Aviv University, said in a news release.

Waldman and a team of researchers from Israel and the United States used new genomic analytical tools to locate significant genetic markers among the DNA of 18 Bene Israel individuals.

The analysis confirmed the group’s Jewish roots.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA – Acknowledgment: J. Hester (ASU), M. Weisskopf (NASA / GSFC)

At the core of the Crab Nebula lies a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it’s actually the rightmost of two bright stars, just below a central swirl in this stunning Hubble snapshot of the nebula’s core.

Some three light-years across, the spectacular picture frames the glowing gas, cavities and swirling filaments bathed in an eerie blue light. The blue glow is visible radiation given off by electrons spiraling in a strong magnetic field at nearly the speed of light.

Like a cosmic dynamo the pulsar powers the emission from the nebula, driving a shock wave through surrounding material and accelerating the spiraling electrons. With more mass than the Sun and the density of an atomic nucleus, the spinning pulsar is the collapsed core of a massive star that exploded. The Crab Nebula is the expanding remnant of the star’s outer layers.

The supernova explosion was witnessed on planet Earth in the year 1054:

Chaco Canyon pictograph

Source: Astronomy Picture of the Day

A third collection of beauties from days past:

The structural oddity of the speech pattern of the Star Wars character Master Yoda is probably one of the most instantly recognisable of all TV and film characters, even to those unfamiliar with the Star Wars series of films themselves. But how well does this speech ‘oddity’ translate into the accompanying foreign language sub-titles, and can we learn about how the structure of language can add weight to the perception of a character?

Linguist Elaine Espindola, a researcher from the Department of Translation and Interpretation Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile has compared the script and sub-titles and believes they offer insights into the structure of languages.

Yoda’s speech idiosyncrasy is commonly reversing the grammatical rule that the subject of the sentence will comes before the verb, and the object comes after. One example would be “To fight this Lord Sidious, strong enough you are not.”, rather than ‘You are not strong enough to fight Lord Sidious’.

In the original scripted versions of the films and in the sub-titles, various techniques are used to present this analogous structure and that although these are not always the same thematic technique, they both serve to present the world view of the character.  One example of this is how Yoda will place the element he wants to emphasize and the initial place in a sentence – “Learn, you will.”

Source: Learn much you can, from Yoda’s spoken and subtitled discourse

And, from a galaxy far, far away:

Students from Johns Hopkins University built an adjustable prosthetic foot designed to allow female amputees to wear a variety of shoes, from flats to sky high heels.

Video by Reuters

Source: Students build adjustable prosthetic foot for high heels — ScienceDaily

And here’s an album of fancy foot (and leg) wear:

Salk Institute scientists have found preliminary evidence that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other compounds found in marijuana can promote the cellular removal of amyloid beta, a toxic protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

While these exploratory studies were conducted in neurons grown in the laboratory, they may offer insight into the role of inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease and could provide clues to developing novel therapeutics for the disorder.

“Although other studies have offered evidence that cannabinoids might be neuroprotective against the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, we believe our study is the first to demonstrate that cannabinoids affect both inflammation and amyloid beta accumulation in nerve cells,” says Salk Professor David Schubert, the senior author of the paper.

The researchers found that high levels of amyloid beta were associated with cellular inflammation and higher rates of neuron death. They demonstrated that exposing the cells to THC reduced amyloid beta protein levels and eliminated the inflammatory response from the nerve cells caused by the protein, thereby allowing the nerve cells to survive.

“Inflammation within the brain is a major component of the damage associated with Alzheimer’s disease, but it has always been assumed that this response was coming from immune-like cells in the brain, not the nerve cells themselves,” says Antonio Currais, a postdoctoral researcher in Schubert’s laboratory and first author of the paper. “When we were able to identify the molecular basis of the inflammatory response to amyloid beta, it became clear that THC-like compounds that the nerve cells make themselves may be involved in protecting the cells from dying.”

Source: Cannabinoids remove plaque-forming Alzheimer’s proteins from brain cells — ScienceDaily

In 1978 I joined Rock Against Racism and, as many of us with previous radical backgrounds did in the era of COINTELPRO, I did not put my real name on the membership list.

Brick Lane, 1978

My girlfriend at the time (my first punk gf) and had a game where we would make up “punk rock” names. I think she put down the name of that skinny Irish girl, “Anne O’Rexia.”

I had recently seen generic Stannous Fluoride toothpaste at Safeway and since we had just watched Dr Strangelove and, playing on Sterling Hayden’s great whole ‘precious bodily fluids’ riff as Col. Jack D Ripper I picked “Stan S. Flouride” while intending to use my real name (Kevin) in person.
But one of the founders was Kevin Sweet and there was a Stan Szaf-something (i.e. ‘Stan S). So I became “Stannous Flouride” (recognizing the second time I wrote it down that I was misspelling fluoride.*)

Not long after I was published in DAMAGE magazine under that name, got into Herb Caen’s column, and pretty quickly many more people knew me as Stan than as Kevin.

I’m wearing a Rock Against Racism button in this picture. It’s almost impossible to see but it’s the same kind shown in the 3 following images

*Coincidentally Klaus Flouride of the Dead Kennedys started using that stage name and misspelling it the same way at about that time. Leading us to create the tale that we were identical twins.

Syd Shelton pictures of Rock Against Racism take us back to when the National Front marched with confidence and racism was rife.

Anti – Racist Skins , Hoxton, 1978

Militant Entertainment Tour, West Runton Pavilion, Cromer Norfolk,1979

Militant Entertainment Tour, West Runton Pavilion, Cromer, Norfolk,1979

Carnival 2, Brockwell Park, Brixton, 24 September 1978: “Elvis Costello and the Attractions headlined the event. The rest of the line-up included Aswad, Misty in Roots and Stiff Little Fingers. Sham 69 were billed to play but due to death threats in reaction to their anti-racist stance, pulled out. Jimmy Percy, the lead singer, did appear and made a brave, passionate anti-racist speech to the Carnival crowd. I was on stage between Aswad and Elvis Costello’s sets and was reloading my cameras with film when Jimmy charged past me and grabbed the mike. I quickly sorted out my film and he turned away from the stage, his face stressed with emotion, and I hoped I had got the shot. I don’t see myself as a ‘decisive moment’ moment kind of photographer but this was one of those and I was itching to get into the darkroom to see if I had got it.” – Syd Shelton

Syd Shelton has a great collection of photos here: Rock Against Racism: Photographs Of The Music Revolution |

“The name of the game is change: Look’s 16th Annual New Car Preview.” (July 1959)

“Detroit’s 1960 look. Sneak preview of the new models.”

This particular example being a Dodge Polara convertible.

Enlightening comments as usual on Shorpy: Shorpy Historic Picture Archive :: The 1960 Look high-resolution photo