ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: What is special about the Yom Kippur service in Curaçao?
María Elena Cuartas y de Marchena was born in Havana, Cuba, grew up in Curaçao, and has lived in the Netherlands since 1975. Her mother was from a Sephardic family that left Spain at the time of the Expulsion and journeyed to Portugal, France and Amsterdam before finally settling in Curaçao, then Cuba and back to Curaçao. She spoke about this history at the 13th International Sephardic Conference held recently in Zamora, Spain.
In 1983 María Elena graduated from Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, with a degree in International Law and European Union Institutions. She worked for many years in different capacities in the Amsterdam city government before retiring in 2021 during the Covid pandemic: she was the Mayor’s Chief of Staff (2001-2013), Director of the Department of Diversity (2013-2019), and headed the research project to establish a National Museum of Slavery in Holland (2019-2021).
Now that she is retired, she devotes her time to painting, reading, and family and friends, as well as researching and studying her own Sephardic history, culture and religion. María Elena also contributes to the weekly online Jewish magazine “De Vrijdagavond” (“Friday Night”).
This week she is speaking with us about the history of the Jews in Curaçao, and its present-day Jewish community.
