The Capitulation Protocol

(LoC) According to the terms of the capitulation protocol of January 26, 1654, Portugal decreed that Jewish and Dutch settlers had three months to leave Brazil. Approximately 150 Jewish families of Portuguese descent fled the Brazilian city of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco. By September, twenty-three of these refugees had established the first community of Jews in New Amsterdam.
Known as Sephardim (Jews of Spanish-Portuguese extraction), theirs was a complex saga. Continued