JEWISH WORLD

8 JEWISH WORLD • APRIL 1 - 7, 2022 and other types of boats were among the vessels which, in Octo- ber 1943, helped spirit Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark to safety in Sweden. Jews who took lengthy voyages for much of pre-20th-century Jew- ish history traveled by schooner or one of its predecessors on the seas. Sailing ships of all sorts played a major role in Jewish history over the last several centuries – for immigration, commerce, and to a much smaller degree, piracy. “Jews have wandered the earth for thousands of years, a lot of it … on ships.” Reed says. “That’s how everybody got to the New World.” Appropriately enough, says Reed, Jews have been sailing the Hudson for at least 300 years. Paul Foer, a veteran sailboat tour guide and Jewish maritime histo- rian from Annapolis, agrees with Reed that Jews sailed in the wa- ters around NewYork City, “but [it was] mainly for commerce, because recreational sailing is fairly new on the maritime scene. [The] relation- ship between the vast number of Jews who arrived, then settled, in and around New York, which is of course a major port city, has always put huge numbers of immigrants in close contact with the sea and rivers surrounding NewYork.” Foer praises Reed for his plan to By STEVE LIPMAN A n Orthodox resident of Monsey, New York, is about to make it possi- ble for Jews to sail in the man- ner of Jewish travelers from the 17th-. 18th- and 19th centuries this spring, aboard a 77-foot-long schooner on the Hudson River. Nesanel Reed, an avid sailor for most of his 56 years, is the founder of Metrosails, a business that will begin offering kosher day tours and private cruises on the river and NewYork harbor by the intermedi- ate days of Passover in late April or by early May. “1830s working schooner,” is so named for its color, says Reed, not for the body of water through which the Israelite slaves escaped from an- cient Egypt. “The hull of this vessel is fire-engine red, [and] the boat used to be named ‘Red Witch.’ That wasn’t going to do for us.” “Us” includes Yitzy Geisinsky, Reed’s business partner and an inves- tor whomhemet at theCrownHeights Young Entrepreneurs Initiative. Reed and Geisinsky’s tailored the ship’s onboard activities – includ- ing lectures and shiurim on Jewish and maritime topics, mincha ser- vices during afternoon sails, and possibly Sunday morning “learning and davening, followed by a brunch cruise” – for what they call the “hei- mishe,” i.e., Orthodox community, especially its yeshivas, camps and other institutions. The vessel will house a wooden pushka donated by Kenosha’s Lubavitch shaliach. Reed says he is open to host- ing sheva brochos meals, “vort” engagement parties and bar mitzvah celebrations. He is on firm ground, so to speak, in launching a business that is anchored in the water, as ships, he says, are historically familiar territory to Jews. In April 1654, a group of 23 Sephardic Jews from Recife, a ma- jor Brazilian port city that was the NewWorld’s first organized Jewish community, boarded a ship there to escape pending persecution and expulsion. The country had re- cently been reconquered from the Dutch by Portugal, which establish the Inquisition in Brazil. The 23 Jews landed in what was then New His ship is the “Red Sea,” an extensively refurbished schooner powered by sails and a motor that he bought in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and then steered through the Great Lakes and Erie Canal to its ulti- mate destination, Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6. The Pier, says Reed, “is reserved for historical vessels.” Reed, a native of Pittsburgh, says Metrosails is New York’s only recreational cruise firm under Orthodox auspices, and the only owned by anyone that offers trips on a semi-traditional schooner – those of the past had no motor - a sailing vessel with two or more masts, which dominated the seas for several hundred years. The “Red Sea,” a replica of an Amsterdam (later, New York City) after reportedly being taken hos- tage by Spanish pirates near Cuba for a brief time. They became the nucleus of the first Jewish commu- nity to settle on the land that would become the United States. In 1733, the first 42 Jews to set- tle in Georgia came from Europe to what was then a British colony on the schooner William and Sarah. Two centuries later, during the time of the Holocaust, schooners Ahoy To The Hudson! Monsey resident to lead “haimish” cruises on schooner vessel COVER STORY “The Red Sea,” a replica of an 1830s schooner, is the rst recreational vessel to cater to Orthodox Jews. In the background is the New York skyline. Painting of “The Elizabeth Cohen,” a schooner owned by a Jewish merchant who used it to ship goods from Australia in the mid-19th century. It’s NewYork’s only recreational cruise rm under Orthodox auspices, and the only one that offers trips on a semi-traditional schooner. continued on page 22