WI:Jewish State in the Americas

Is this at all possible?



Originally i intended on asking whether or not we could replace Mormons with Jews in Deseret, but although i shall still consider that be thought of, as a Jewish state within the US, i was also wondering if it was possible to expand on the idea of a mass exodus of Jews into the continental Americas at anytime and founding their own country/nation state, perhaps even as an agreement between other countries maybe?
 

Meerkat92

Banned
Jewish Newfoundland? I mean, it's a pretty worthless rock anyway, just the kind of place Britain wouldn't mind getting rid of to save money.
 
Ooh, glad to hear they finally came out with "Pin the Zion On the Eurasia: Americas Editions". Although if you really wanted to you could possibly have a Jewish majority pop up on a moderately sized caribean island which later becomes independent.
 
There would need to be some prophesied motivations or something to motivate jews on an exodus into some desert or uninhabited region in the Americas.

The closest we got to a mass exodus of jews to a particular region of the US was new york IOTL. I think a quarter of the cities pop. was jewish by the mid-century.

I don't see why there would be a need to go to a remote region or even form a country where there would be no historical or religious ties to that region? unlike israel.
 
This may be a little ASB, but I'm thinking of a scenario based on the idea of religious dissidents from England winding up in New England. What if Spain adopted a more tolerant policy towards Jews until the 16th century, and then gave them a choice of moving to the colonies or converting. Maybe some would choose the colonies? Would they be at all interested in converting the natives the way the Christians were??
 
There was an attempt in the 1820s by Mordecai Manuel Noah to create a Jewish homeland in New York on Grand Island in the Niagara River. Maybe that gets more traction, but it's a long way from encouraging migration to an independent country.
 
Although if you really wanted to you could possibly have a Jewish majority pop up on a moderately sized caribean island which later becomes independent.
According to Edward Kritzler's Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean there was
an attempt with Jamaica.
If I remember the book correctly it actually did have a (semi-secret)
Jewish majority early on, while it was still Spanish.
 
This may be a little ASB, but I'm thinking of a scenario based on the idea of religious dissidents from England winding up in New England. What if Spain adopted a more tolerant policy towards Jews until the 16th century, and then gave them a choice of moving to the colonies or converting. Maybe some would choose the colonies? Would they be at all interested in converting the natives the way the Christians were??

I think the idea that ther could be a more tolerant Spain is probably ASB. But what if there was a stronger Granada? If an Islamic state could be maintained in Southern Spain until 1650 then the options for the Sephardic jews may be significantly different than North Africa / the Levant / the Netherlands. Maybe a Jewish state akin to Pennsylvania if the Marano expulsions were delayed and instead of looking to the Ottomans they looked to Netherlands and England instead?
 
The Brazilian slavery abolitionist André Rebouças proposed that Brazil should give a piece of its territory to the Jews. Not merely a place to them to settle, but an independent country. Rebouças was a friend of Emperor Pedro II, a well-known friend of Jews. Unfortunately for the Jewish cause, the Brazilian monarchy was overthrowned in 1889: Pedro II was sent to die in exile and Rebouças was self-exiled and went to Africa, where he lived until his suicide, trying to help Africans aflicted by famine. He was a good man, an idealist. There was no place for him in the gloomy new Brazilian republic.
 
This may be a little ASB, but I'm thinking of a scenario based on the idea of religious dissidents from England winding up in New England. What if Spain adopted a more tolerant policy towards Jews until the 16th century, and then gave them a choice of moving to the colonies or converting. Maybe some would choose the colonies? Would they be at all interested in converting the natives the way the Christians were??

Not possible, even if Spain was more tolerant towards the Jewish. The Catholic kings saw the Americas as a chance to perform a "grand social experiment". They wanted to create a purely christian society from zero, without any presence of other religions, heresies nor disbelief. With this project in mind, even if they had not forced the conversion of the jewish, practising jews wouldn't have been allowed as emmigrants (and probably neither would converts).
 
Sometimes I get the feeling I have missed ticking the box that takes me
off everybody's ignore lists... :(

There were plenty of conversos in the New World.

The Columbus family, whose property Jamaica basically was, had a special
deal with the Spanish crown keeping the Inquisition off the island.

(Again, I have no other source than Kritzler.)
 
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