Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of “New Jews” (review)

Abstract

Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira's Sermons to a Congregation of New Jews, by Marc Saperstein. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2005. 585 pp. $49.95. Exile in Amsterdam is a study of Jewish preaching in early modern period that tells story of one prominent rabbi, Saul Levi Morteira, and his unique Portuguese community of Amsterdam in first half of seventeenth century. Marc Saperstein is also author of Jewish Preaching 1200-1800, a book that aimed at presenting a more general view of sermonizing within Jewish community throughout Middle Ages and early modern period. Saul Levi Morteira was chief rabbi of community of ex-Marranos, or New-Christians, whose members returned openly to Judaism when immigrating to Amsterdam from beginning of seventeenth century on. Being an originally Ashkenazi Jew, Morteira arrived in Amsterdam in 1616 and remained in city until his death in 1659. As a spiritual leader of community, he employed sermon as a principal vehicle guiding his flock back into fold of rabbinic Judaism. This was a powerful and necessary device. Indeed, members of community openly chose to be Jews and embrace Jewish traditions, but they were ignorant of rabbinic literature and traditions, did not master Hebrew, and were still influenced by Christian doctrines on Jews and Judaism, which they learned and absorbed in their previous Christian life. Thus, during first formative decades of community's existence, sermon had to play an important role in transforming people's way of life and constructing a new Jewish consciousness and identity. This story is here told in four parts. The first part deals with book's protagonist. Saperstein, who discovered 550 hitherto unknown sermons of Morteira in rabbinic seminary in Budapest, attempts to decode Morteira's doings as gleaned from sermons. Discussing value of manuscripts, analyzing ways Morteira composed sermons and correctly adding a useful discussion on sermon as an oral performance, Saperstein is able to show how a rabbi writes a sermon and how he is acting as a preacher; how he is working with Bible, rabbinic literature, and traditional ideas, but also how he is aware of circumstances within which he is operating. The second part of book deals with the listeners, Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community. Here Saperstein locates individual sermon within its historical context, and whole corpus of these 550 sermons as a historical source for study of community's religious preoccupations. …