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Mordechai Ricardo and other Sephardic Jews from neighboring Caribbean islands helped finance Colombia’s War of Independence led by Simón Bolívar. One of the first acts of the newly independent government in 1819 was to grant the rights of residence and religious freedom to Jews. The first Jews were mostly Sephardim who came to Columbia from Curaçao, among them the Senior, Correa, and Salas families. As early as 1832, Abraham Isaac Senior established a Jewish cemetery and organized a minyan. Soon afterwards, Rabbi Moisés De Sola arrived as the first religious leader. In 1854, David Perei…