Jamaica global model of Arab-Jew peace
Published:Wednesday | November 6, 2019 | 12:17 AMKaryl Walker/Gleaner Writer
The modern generation of Jamaica’s Jewish elite are beneficiaries of the legacy of sweat equity of their forbears, says Joseph M. Matalon, chairman of the ICD Group and one of the island’s most recognised Jewish business moguls.
Matalon, the son of clan patriarch Mayer Matalon, offered that historical analysis during the launch of the book Mayer Matalon: Business, Politics and the Jamaican Jewish Elite at the Liguanea Club in New Kingston on Monday.
“It is like any other immigrant population that they go into a new country. They have to try very hard to integrate, they have to try very hard to make their way. They knew the value of education and working very, very hard – things that required a minimum of capital and a maximum of hard work,” he told The Gleaner in an interview.
The younger Matalon also paid tribute to the fact that Jamaica was one of a few counries in the world where Jews and Arabs live in harmony.
Both ethnic groups trace their ancestry to Abrahamic heritage in biblical lore but have been engaged in bitter and bloody battles, primarily in the Middle East, which have boiled over across political lines and geographic borders.
“Despite all our residual problems that we have around our colonial history, there is no doubt in my mind that there is not another country in the world that is as integrated as the Jamaican society is,” he said.
Mayer Matalon’s parents migrated to Jamaica in the early 1900s after escaping persecution in Europe. There were among a second wave of Jews who found themselves in Jamaica after being hounded out of Portugal and Spain.
In the 1600s, there was also a wave of Jewish migration to Jamaica, sparked by persecution from the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, said Matalon, who is chairman of the RJRGLEANER Communications Group, parent to The Gleaner.
The autobiography of his father was penned by researcher Dr Diana Thorburn and took four years to complete. It is Thorburn’s first book.
It recounts Mayer Matalon’s rise from poverty through the ranks of the business class to become one of the country’s wealthiest and most influential sons who was respected by politicians on both sides of the fence. Mayer, who was born on March 3, 1922, died in 2012 one month shy of his 90th birthday.
The book also looks at Matalon’s philanthropy and social work and his contribution to the middle-class housing boom of the 1960s and ‘70s.