starting over: sefardic jews in New York

One of my first interests in New York was the people living in it. There are so many different kinds of people living here, it can make you really confused sometimes. And even being from São Paulo, which is a very multicultural city, NYC can be more distictive characters. Maybe in Brasil as people are more mixed, we don't feel this sense of foreigner people living there.
This made me remember an old story about a group of Sefardic Jews that came from Brasil (more especifically from Recife) to New York, at that time, New Amsterdan.
I've been searching for this information and found some interesting - although sometimes imprecise- information.
I will post here some Wikipedia information and maps, and some material from other sites too.






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam

"New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) was the 17th century Dutch colonial town that later became New York City. The town developed outside of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in the New Netherland territory (1614–1664) which was situated between 38 and 42 degrees latitude as a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic from 1624. Provincial possession of the territory was accomplished with the first settlement which was established on Governors Island in 1624. A year later, in 1625, construction of a citadel comprising Fort Amsterdam was commenced. Earlier, the harbor and the river had been discovered, explored and charted by an expedition of the Dutch East India Company captained by Henry Hudson in 1609. From 1611 through 1614, the territory was surveyed and charted by various private commercial companies on behalf of the States General of the Dutch Republic and operated for the interests of private commercial entities prior to official possession as a North American extension of the Dutch Republic in the form of an overseas province in 1624. (...)
"On August 22, 1654, the first Ashkenazic Jews arrived with West India Company passports from Amsterdam to be followed in September by a sizable group of Sephardic Jews, without passports, fleeing from the Portuguese reconquest of Dutch possessions in Brazil. The legal-cultural foundation of toleration as the basis for plurality in New Amsterdam superseded matters of personal intolerance or individual bigotry. Hence, and in spite of certain persons private objections (including that of director-general Peter Stuyvesant), the Sephardim were granted permanent residency on the basis of "reason and equity" in 1655.

What is still not clear to me is if these 23 jews that leave Recife were portuguese, spanish or dutch, as the term sefardic basically means they were iberic, but they could be from any of those countries, as Dutchland and Portugal were spanish possession until around 1640.

For those that read in portuguese, there are some other links, although lacks sometimes a more scientifical character to follow the journalistic language:

here the brasilian jews are shown as the founders of capitalism:
http://www.terra.com.br/istoedinheiro/367/estilo/recife_manhattan.htm
(despite of that is a beautiful text anyway)




this is somewhat nostalgic text about the jewish food and traditions that been lost as Lower East End been changing and old population been misplaced:
http://www.hebraica.org.br/cabecalho/MateriaCompleta.asp?idMateria=42

But I believe we should not go too far in their influence in the city's development, cause it was invaded by England at some point and regained again by the dutches to be exchanged by Suriname with England again, all this in around a century. Not counting the great fire that destroyed the city in 1776 (marked in the map below).