Northward Expansion

 

Portrait of Henri II

Portrait of Henri II

From the mid-sixteenth century, the Sephardic diaspora began to change shape dramatically, as the steady stream of refugees from the Peninsula was largely diverted from its earlier Mediterranean destinations. This shift was primarily a response to economic and political developments in northern Europe. By this time, the ports of the Atlantic coast had begun their dizzying rise to commercial prominence. The importance of stimulating economic growth in the increasingly competitive political atmosphere of the early modern Atlantic states led to a gradual shift in attitudes to Jewish settlement among rulers and bureaucrats. Conversos escaping the Peninsula began to settle in the guise of practicing Catholics in Antwerp, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Rouen, Nantes and London. Since their mercantile skills were recognized, rulers were largely (though not invariably) willing to ignore the considerable evidence that these “New Christians” were secretly practicing Judaism. Even in Antwerp, which was under Spanish rule, there was a certain flexibility; although the New Christian merchants there were technically subject to the Inquisition, some measures were taken to guarantee their protection as early as 1526. There was a similar development in France, where settlement by Jews had long been prohibited. In 1550, Henri II issued lettres patentes offering favorable terms of settlement to New Christians from the Peninsula; despite occasional threats and molestations, New Christians steadily continued to settle in southwest France from this time onward. Unlike the exiles and conversos who settled in the Mediterranean region, who upon arrival became part of an established Jewish world, the crypto-Jews who settled in northern Europe took up residence in areas with no Jewish population at all. These immigrants were pioneers in the re-establishment of Jewish life in areas of Europe where Jewish settlement had been forbidden since the medieval expulsions.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, as the revolt of the Dutch against their Spanish masters became recognized as an irreversible transformation, converso merchants began to turn their eyes to the rapidly developing commercial centers of the Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam. From about 1595, converso families began settling in Amsterdam, initially as practicing Christians. They soon discovered they were able to live as professing Jews, and were perhaps more welcome as such in the Calvinist-dominated Netherlands than as Iberian Catholics. The rapid growth of the community in Amsterdam was encouraged by the exceptionally tolerant attitude of the authorities and the local populace. During the Twelve Years Truce with Spain (1609-1621), as many as fifty “Portuguese” families a year made their way to Amsterdam. Leaders of the new community invited rabbis from Mediterranean Sephardic communities to aid in the process of the “re-judaization” of their ex-converso members. From the start, however, the community was dominated by its wealthy merchants, usually active in Atlantic trade. It was not, however, a community of wealthy merchants alone; it absorbed large numbers of poor ex-converso refugees from Spain and Portugal, who were supported by an elaborate welfare system. By the mid-seventeenth century, Amsterdam’s Jewish printing presses were among the most active in Europe, supplying not only traditional Hebrew texts, but also manuals of Jewish practice for neophytes, literary works in Spanish and Portuguese, and original apologetic texts. By the second half of the seventeenth century, Amsterdam had become an enormously important Sephardic center, perhaps rivaling Venice; it had a population of about 2,500.

The new northern Sephardic diaspora steadily consolidated and continued to expand. In the early seventeenth century, a stream of Jews flowed from Amsterdam to Hamburg, partly to evade restrictions in commercial traffic with Spain due to hostilities between Spain and the Netherlands; and the Hamburg community took permanent root. Even in Poland there was a Sephardic presence in the seventeenth century, with a small colony of ex-converso merchants living in the town of Zamosc. This did not, however, become a permanent outpost. Many Sephardic Jews were also active as merchants in the port city of Gdansk (Danzig).

In 1655, the well-known Amsterdam rabbi Menasseh ben Israel traveled to England in an effort to gain the right of Jewish settlement in England. (Up to this point, New Christians who had settled in London did not practice Judaism openly). Although the Whitehall Conference convened by Oliver Cromwell in December of that year produced no results, the crypto-Jews of London felt confident enough to begin organizing a community. A year later, a house was rented and adapted for use as a synagogue. Shortly thereafter, land was bought to establish a cemetery. During the Restoration, the community was granted de facto recognition, and it began to absorb a stream of new members from the Netherlands, France, and the Iberian Peninsula. As in Amsterdam, the London Jews invited rabbinic authorities from elsewhere in the Sephardic diaspora to supervise the community’s religious life. But in London, too, it was the wealthy brokers, importers, and wholesale merchants who dominated the community.

Primary Sources

  1. Koen, E.M. Notarial Records Pertaining to the Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam up Till 1639.” ##Studia Rosenthaliana 15, no. 2 (1981)- 245-255, seriatum.
  2. Studia Rosenthaliana 10, no. 2 (1976)- 214-231.
  3. Studia Rosenthaliana 12, no. 1 (1978)- 158-179; Studia Rosenthaliana 13, no. 1 (1979)- 101-114.
  4. Studia Rosenthaliana 14, no. 1 (1980)- 72-102.
  5. Studia Rosenthaliana 16, no. 1 (1982)- 61-84.
  6. Studia Rosenthaliana 18, no. 2 (1984)- 159-176.
  7. Studia Rosenthaliana 19, no. 2 (1985)- 174-184.
  8. Studia Rosenthaliana 20, no. 1 (1986)- 109-130.
  9. Studia Rosenthaliana 21, no. 1 (1987)- 105-203.
  10. Studia Rosenthaliana 31, no. 1 (1997)- 139-151.
  11. Salomon, H.P. “The ‘De Pinto’ Manuscript- A Seventeenth-Century Marrano Family History,” Studia Rosenthaliana 9 (1975), 1-62.
  12. Sarraga, Marian. “Early Links between Amsterdam, Hamburg and Italy- Epitaphs from Hamburg’s Old Sephardic Cemetery.” Studia Rosenthaliana 34, no. 1 (2000)- 41-42.
  13. Haag Jewish Community Minute Book, Stefan Litt, University of Duesseldorf, Germany
  14. Brown, Kenneth. “Spanish, Portuguese, and Neo-Latin Poetry Written and/or Published by Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Sephardim from Hamburg and Frankfurt (1).” Sefarad 59, no. 1 (1999)- 3-42. Abstract- Reproduces and evaluates Spanish, Portuguese, and Neo-Latin poetry written by 17th- and 18th-century Hamburg-based Sephardim. Considered in isolation these poems are, at best, circumstantial and of limited creative significance, but when considered as part of a pan-European literary phenomenon they represent an attempt to create a new literary discourse.
  15. Brown, Kenneth, and Reyes Bertolín Cebrián. “Spanish, Portuguese, and Neo-Latin Poetry Written and/or Published by Seventeenth-,Eighteenth-, and Nineteenth-Century Sephardim from Hamburg and Frankfurt (2).” Sefarad 60, no. 2 (2000)- 227-253. Abstract- Preface to the publication of ten Sephardic-authored or attributed poems published in Frankfurt am Main between 1617 and 1785, seven rhymed funerary inscriptions from the BetaHaim Cemetery in Hamburg written between 1622 and 1813, and four personal letters written between 1626 and 1644 (see entry 53-19286). Known authors of these works include doctors Jacob Rosales (1588-1662), Abraham Zacuto (1575-1642), Rodrigo de Castro (David Nehamías; 1546-1627), and Benito de Castro (Baruch Nehamías; 1597-1684).

    Secondary Sources

    1. Bodian, Miriam. “Amsterdam, Venice, and the Marrano Diaspora,” in Dutch Jewish History 2, Jerusalem 1989, 47-65.
    2. Bodian, Miriam. “’Men of the Nation’- The Shaping of ‘Converso’ Identity in Early Modern Europe,” Past and Present 143 (1994), 48-76.
    3. Israel, Jonathan. “Lopo Ramirez (David Curiel) and the Attempt to Establish a Sephardi Community in Antwerp in 1653-1654.” Studia Rosenthaliana 28, no. 1 (1994)- 99-119.
    4. Bodian, Miriam. “Spain and the Dutch Sephardim, 1609-1660.” Studia Rosenthaliana 12, no. 1 (1978)- 1-61.
    5. Bodian, Miriam. “An Amsterdam Jewish Merchant of the Golden Age- Jeronimo Nunes Da Costa (1620-1697), Agent of Portugal in the Dutch Republic.” Studia Rosenthaliana 18, no. 1 (1984)- 21-40.
    6. Bodian, Miriam. “The Diplomatic Career of Jeronimo Nunes Da Costa- An Episode in Dutch-Portuguese Relations of the Seventeenth Century.” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 98, no. 2 (1983)- 167-190.
    7. Bodian, Miriam. “The Economic Contribution of Dutch Sephardi Jewry to Holland’s Golden Age, 1595-1713.” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 96, no. 4 (1983)- 505-535. YES
    8. Bodian, Miriam. European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750– Oxford U. Pr., 1985.
    9. Bodian, Miriam.”Manuel Lopez Pereira of Amsterdam, Antwerp and Madrid- Jew, New Christian, and Advisor to the Conde-Duque Olivares.” Studia Rosenthaliana 19, no. 2 (1985)- 109-126.
    10. Bodian, Miriam. “Sephardic Immigration into the Dutch Republic, 1595-1672.” Studia Rosenthaliana 23 (1989).
    11. Bodian, Miriam. “Some Further Data on the Amsterdam Sephardim and Their Trade with Spain During the 1650s.” Studia Rosenthaliana 14, no. 1 (1980)- 7-19.
    12. Bodian, Miriam. “Spanish Wool Exports and the European Economy, 1610-40.” Economic History Review 33, no. 2 (1980)- 193-211.
    13. Kaplan, Yosef. “The Travels of Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam to the ‘Lands of Idolatry’ (1644-1724),” in Y. Kaplan, ed., Jews and Conversos – Studies in Society and the Inquisition, Jerusalem 1985, 197-224.
    14. Katz, David. “English Redemption and the Jewish Readmission in 1656,” Journal of Jewish Studies 34 (1983), 73-91.
    15. Swetschinski, “Kinship and Commerce- The Foundations of Portuguese Jewish Life in Seventeenth-Century Holland,” Studia Rosenthaliana 15 (1981), 58-74.

    Images

    1. Takanot de-Hevrah Kadisha…Ashkenazim be-Amshterdam, Amsterdam- Proops, 1776, BM712.H42 1776, Title page (colored).
    2. Elegy, Isaac Nieto for David Nieto, London, 1728, BM744.3.N5 1728, Title page.
    3. Humble Addresses of Menasseh Ben Israel (London, 1655), DS135.E5 M31 1655, Title page.
    4. Jewish Kalendar, Isaac Abendana, Oxford, 1698, SHF 1297-1, Title page.
    5. Mateh Dan ve-kuzari helek sheni, David Nieto, London, 1714, BM648.N5 1714, Title page.
    6. Mikveh Yisrael, Menasseh ben Israel, Amsterdam, 1650, DS131.M3145 1650, Title page.
    7. Narrative of the late proceeds at White-hall, concerning the Jews…London, 1656, DS135.E5 J47 1656, Page 1.
    8. Parafrasis Comentado Sobre el Pantaeuco, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, Amsterdam, 1681, RB1787-17, Title page.
    9. Piedra Gloriosa, Menasseh ben Israel, Amsterdam, 1655, RB266-8. Insert pages 5, 87, 160, 188, 189.
    10. Proceedings at large in the Arches Court of Canterbury- between Mr. Jacob Mendes Da Costa, and Mrs. Catherine Da Costa Villa Real…relating to a marriage contract… (London,) 1734, KD762.D3 1734, Title page.
    11. Several miscellaneous and weighty cases of conscience learnedly and judiciously resolved… Thomas Barlow, London, 1692, BV4615.B3 1692, Title page.

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