We woke to find a Dutch cruise ship looming over the roof to the north, and residents of Willemstad putting up tents and stalls all along the de Rouville Weg to lure the tourists who were about to descend.  We debated whether to head to the countryside to avoid both the onslaught and the probability of being mistaken for day-trippers ourselves.  But we really wanted to see the synagogue and the Jewish Museum.  So we took the ferry across the bay to Punda.  The ferry is right near the hotel, and the only other ways across are to drive over the Juliana Bridge (a bold stripe across the northern skyline), or to swim!  The famous Emma Bridge, which used to be steps from our hotel door, and swivel to let the ships go by, is completely torn down.  It’s supposed to be rebuilt by July, the kind lady at the Postal Museum told us later in the day.  But she rolled her eyes and shrugged in a way that anyone who’s lived through the Big Dig will recognize.

Before we go on, a few observations about aspects of Curacao we find less familiar.

1. Toilets that flush with a button top.  You have to hold the button down for a count of three, and the water leaps up like a spring before it pours down the bowl like Niagara.
2. There is no such thing as a no-smoking area. 
3. Greetings: “Bon Dia” and “Bon Nochi.”
4. Rainstorms that burst the clouds the second you look up and say “It’s about to rain,” and disappear just as suddenly.
5. Middle-aged black men who will look anywhere else—up, down, sidways—in order to avoid looking directly at Rona.  In an elevator, that’s quite the trick!  It makes me wonder who the Tourist Bureau thought they were marketing to, with that video.

In any case, PUNDA.   Even without the tourist invasion, it would have shouted “shopping.”  We left the Handelskade, the line of painted ladies we can see from our hotel room, immediately behind, and walked all the way to Columbusstraat before retracing our way to Hanchi Snoa, “Synagogue Alley.” 

The synagogue and its museum are all one compound.  In the courtyard is the mikvah, disused for years and recently rediscovered during renovations.  Around the courtyard is a baroque display of plaster casts of tombstones: Levites washing a priest’s hand on the stone of someone named Cohen, a ladder climbing to the heavens for the memorial to a man named Jacob.  (I later learned from a book I bought at the gift shop that the originals are badly eroded and in danger of disappearing.  Still, it’s an odd vestibule to a house of prayer!)

The synagogue architecture, though was comforting: the pews, windows, and ark reminded me of Temple B’nai Brith, while the layout looks like pictures I’ve seen of the Romanische shul where my parents got married.  Rona “belonged” there in a different way  I looked at one of the white pillars and saw the Hebrew name Rivkah on it.  I told her, “That one’s named after you.”  And sure enough, each pillar bears the name of one of the traditional Matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, in white on white.

In the museum, Rona saw a family picture in which one of the women could have been her cousin.  She recognized a Star of David necklace exactly the same as her mother wore, and a decanter styled in her mother’s taste, plus a musical Hanukkiah that played Maoz Tzur, “Rock of Ages”—she had grown up with its exact twin.  What really stunned Rona, however, was a yellowed Torah scroll, open, still perfectly legible.  It had been carried out of Spain in 1492.

We bought picture postcards at the Jewish Museum, then walked a few blocks to the Postal Museum to buy stamps, and the warm-hearted woman who buzzed us in as if the museum were her own little shop made us right at home.  We leafed through the collection.  Repeatedly, Curacao has issued special stamps to raise money for children’s services.  It reinforced the sense that the woman with the goat sculptures had given us, that either the government of Curacao, or the Netherlands, is not doing enough for children.  It shouldn’t be left to charity!

We had too much lunch (and not enough vegetables) at the Marché Bieu, the place our hostess at the Postal museum told us would offer “typical food that the people eat.”  It did: salty, fried, and cheap.  The afternoon was a washout: across the Wilhemina Bridge to Scharloo in a sudden rainstorm, looking for grand old houses on Scharloo Weg and being told by a serious-looking man, “Don’t go there.  No good.”  We couldn’t find the street anyway, so we backtracked to the riverfront and found the movie theater, a trendy restaurant Larry and Sara had recommended called Tu Tu Tango, and a place called Fundashon Kas Popular--I wondered what that is, and does.  It turns out it’s the Public Housing Foundation.  I find the community organizations everywhere!    One more venture into the neighborhood, and Rona grew increasingly tense at the sight of burnt-out buildings and very skinny men who looked like junkies.  We stayed long enough to find the old Ashkenazi synagogue, now Deloitte accounting offices with Jewish stars in their white iron gates.

I should mention that I’ve seen signs of a Jewish presence among the island’s elite, but I haven’t had any chance to look for a Jewish Curacao commitment to social change.  In the Jewish Museum, I saw an all-white dress with a gold locket representing the “Yaya,” the black mammy who was such a part of the life of wealthy families, including Jews.  The way the explanatory note went on about the Yayas being part of the family, I thought I was in South Carolina in 1956.  Very discomfiting!