I got a rare chance to do some reading over Shabbat, and devoured the first two chapters of Aviva Ben-Ur’s “Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651-1825.” Take-always so far:1) This is my favorite kind of history, in which previously “received” beliefs about the factual past of a community are questioned and reevaluated, upending some of them. Ben-Ur even puts some of her own writing under the microscope, questioning her past conclusions.2) Chapter 1 is devoted to the myth of the Jodensavannah as a paradise ideal and proto-Zionist place of shining Jewish self-rule. She shows that in fact, the village was largely empty the majority of the time, and its Portuguese Jewish communal owners mostly eked out a tough living and had trouble making ends meet. She also makes a plausible argument that the majority of the village’s residents were enslaved Africans, including slaves owned by the Sedaka whose bodies were branded with the initials of the synagogue “BVS.” It can be tough to fairly morally assess a community of our own ancestors, but I have a raw emotional sympathy when Catriel Ceballos recently used the expression “places of evil” to describe Portuguese synagogues from the period of Caribbean slavery. In Suriname at least, Ben-Ur describes acts that took place at or near Beraha Veshalom that are objectively evil.2) The second chapter assesses whether the Jewish legal privileges were unique in history and held unquestionably, both of which have been claimed by community members and historians. Her research brings much-needed nuance to that question, showing that the privileges were hard-won, difficult to uphold, and actually paralleled in other parts of the world.Looking forward to the rest of the book, whenever that can happen between work and the kids.