Portuguese Synagogue Research Articles

The Jewish religious heritage continuum: Jewish religious communities’ interactions with synagogues and ceremonial objects in Amsterdam

ABSTRACT This article explores how rabbis, directors and members of Amsterdam’s Jewish religious communities view the heritagisation of Jewish religious life by analysing how they interact with Amsterdam’s main synagogues and their collections of ceremonial objects. It focuses on the synagogues of the Jewish Cultural Quarter – the Portuguese Synagogue with its accompanying Sephardi community, and the former Ashkenazi synagogue complex, now the Jewish Museum. From a dynamic heritage perspective, this heterogeneous constellation raises questions about how and why heritage making occurs here. Following a Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology, concurrent data collection and analysis let emerge interrelated conceptual categories that explain how communities interact with these functioning and musealised synagogues and objects: Embodying the transmission of tradition; Instrumentalising the heritage of Jewish religious life; Transforming the beauty of holiness; and Assembling in heritagised synagogues. These categories intersect in the core category of the Jewish religious heritage continuum, which this article presents as a dynamic embodiment of remembering, reconnection, and revival of Jewish tradition. For the interviewees, these performances, and the deployment of functioning and musealised synagogues and collections, form a cultural apparatus that marks their present, diverse and living material culture and grafts a Jewish future onto a Jewish past.

Constructing Memory Through Communal Praying: How the Orders of Service of Special Occasions Contribute to the Functioning of Amsterdam's Esnoga as a Site of Memory

This article discusses the function of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue (Esnoga) as a site of memory for the Sephardic community. Besides providing a historiography of this community in Amsterdam and discussing the postwar development of the memory of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, concepts from memory studies and a framework for psalm analysis are employed to analyze the communal praying in three of the Esnoga’s Orders of Service of special occasions from the period 1961 (the Eichmann trial) until 1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall). This analysis illustrates how the Esnoga is a space in which the Sephardic community can performatively engage with their collective shared knowledge of the past: the mythic past as well as the recent past of the Holocaust. In this way, memories are constructed and expressed which constitute the group’s sense of unity and identity. The memorialization of the past and visions for the future are reconstructed in the Orders of Service in four ways: the psalms and prayers transmit memories over generations; the act of communal praying continually invests the psalms and prayers with new meanings; they provide a distinct, Godly view of reality; and they structure a feeling of communality across time and space. The communal praying in the Orders thus illustrates how the Esnoga allows for the transmission of memories through external symbols by acting as a site of memory in which the identity of the Sephardic community is expressed, transmitted, and affirmed.

Home beyond Borders and the Sound of Al-Andalus. Jewishness in Arabic; the Odyssey of Samy Elmaghribi

In their conversation about music, Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim discuss a process of seeking home in music and literature. For Moroccan-Jewish superstar Samy Elmaghribi (Solomon Amzallag), who migrated to France and Israel and then settled for most of his life in Montreal, Canada, the reference to Al-Andalus through the sound of the nouba became his home. Beginning his career in his native country of Morocco as a singer and composer of modern Moroccan music, in Montreal, Samy Elmaghribi became the cantor in the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, the oldest Jewish congregation in Canada. Based on ethnographic research and investigation within the archives of the artist, the authors suggest that Samy Elmaghribi created a sense of home in music, a homeness, one that transcends our present understanding of Arabness and Jewishness, religiosity and secularism, tradition and creativity. Focus on Samy Elmaghribi, an artistic persona emblematic of his generation, demonstrates how the contemporary reassessment of renowned Jewish artists’ North African heritage is often misread in light of the political present. This example encourages us to rethink the musical legacy to which these North African Jews contributed beyond what is labelled Judeo-Arabic, traditional, religious, or secular.

A Communal Tree of Life: Western Sephardic Jewry and the Library of the Ets Haim Yesiba in Early Modern Amsterdam

A Communal Tree of LifeWestern Sephardic Jewry and the Library of the Ets Haim Yesiba in Early Modern Amsterdam David Sclar (bio) Mass production of books in the early modern period broadened the quest for learning, promoted the invention of new educational tools, and generated wider social networks. As wealthy individuals assembled vast collections of texts, and institutions formed new spaces as centers of specialized scholarship, an increasingly large and diversified readership gained access to, utilized, and shaped knowledge on a grand scale. Semipublic libraries developed into cultural hubs, at once enabling and driving intellectual, social, and religious developments in Europe. In the first decades of the seventeenth century, a book collection belonging to the Ets Haim Yesiba (Tree of Life Seminary), the scholastic arm of Western Sephardic Jewry in Amsterdam, emerged as the period's first Jewish institutional library.1 It grew in size and importance as thousands of Conversos emigrated to the Dutch Republic in search of religious tolerance and financial opportunity. As a whole, these newly professing Jews, whose ancestors had been forcibly baptized in Spain and Portugal, took advantage of their new surroundings. They amassed immense wealth through mercantilism, formed new communities in western Europe and across the Atlantic, and built strong communal institutions, including a host of charities, the Talmud Torah educational system (under which formed the Ets Haim Yesiba),2 and the monumental Esnoga synagogue.3 They forged an identity as a Naçao (Nation) and frequently referred to themselves as "Portuguese" Jews, indicative of a deeply intertwined Jewish and Iberian heritage.4 As carriers of new knowledge, books—specifically, traditional texts in Hebrew, and Bibles, liturgies, and legal works in vernacular languages—supported the population's Judaization, particularly within the walls of the Ets Haim (Figure 1). [End Page 43] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Adolf van der Laan, 't Gesigt van de Portugeese en Hoogduy[t]se Jodenkerken tot Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Pieter van Gunst, ca. 1710). Image provided by the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary (PNT A41.1.21.1). The imposing Portuguese synagogue (Esnoga) appears on the left, with the Ets Haim Yesiba and its library located in the smaller building in front of it. The Great Synagogue of the Ashkenazic community is situated across the canal on the right. The library of the Ets Haim Yesiba stands as a unique development in the history of premodern Jewry, and possibly of religious and communal institutions in early modern Europe in general. It did not belong to any single person, grew under the decentralized and ever-changing leadership of elected officials (parnasim), and served the broad religious and moral concerns of the Portuguese Jewish community. Unlike contemporary patrician and university libraries, formed by or for and according to the whims of intellectual and socioeconomic elites, the Yesiba's collection was a formal repository of texts funded by patrons and community coffers in the service of an expansive educational program. The Livraria, as it became known, originated as a sort of purchasing department responsible for providing students with textual and ritual supplies in support of their primary instruction. As the community grew, however, so did the school and its library. Through decades of Converso immigration, crises posed by nonbelievers and religious enthusiasts,5 and the expansion of the Western Sephardic diaspora, religious and lay leadership formed a rabbinic library of record consisting of hundreds and eventually thousands of volumes. Throughout its history, [End Page 44] its user base included pupils enrolled in yeshiva, elder students in the community seeking greater textual fluency, and scholars in the Medras Grande (the highest class of the Yesiba) pursuing advanced studies and working on their own publications. The Library's maturity reflected broad European developments in authorship, publishing, and reading, as book collections began to fill rooms rather than mere shelves. Collecting still required literacy, money, supplies, and texts from which to copy, but printing with movable type, particularly in cultural and economic centers like Amsterdam, revolutionized the availability of materials and the capacity to publish. Greater access to texts and increased literary awareness contributed to intellectual and social development. In the case of Portuguese Jewry, the Ets Haim's growing...

Religious Humanism and Interfaith Cooperation: A Tale of Two Congregations

Religious Humanism and Interfaith Cooperation:A Tale of Two Congregations Rabbi Jeff Berger Sabato Morais, Mikveh Israel, Mother Bethel, Islamophobia, Portuguese and Spanish Jewish congregations Introduction In August, 2018, Boris Johnson, the former Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom (a potential candidate for Prime Minister) wrote an article in the Telegraph1 that on the surface seemed to express tolerance toward Muslim women who choose to wear a niqab or burka but was perceived by many in the Muslim community as Islamophobic. Citing the Danish law that prohibited such clothing, he caricatured those who wore them but suggested that the U.K. was more accepting. That week at Friday prayers in a North London mosque, the imam spoke out, vigorously and angrily, criticizing the former Foreign Secretary and accusing the Tory Party of Islamophobia. It appeared to me while listening to the imam that we each have a subjective view about what offends our specific culture or religion and that it is essential to acknowledge when others perceive that something is offensive. However, there was vociferous debate in the media by those defending free speech. I could not help wondering whether Jewish people would be offended if a similar statement had been made about the extreme religious dress in the Hassidic communities. I think Jews have over time decided to take ourselves less seriously when making insensitive jokes about our own sub-sects, but we still bristle when unsolicited comments come from outsiders. This raised an important question. When should we take a stand in support of those of another faith who feel attacked or offended? After rereading the Telegraph article, I submitted an online essay offering a more balanced view, calling on the Jewish community to stand up for Muslims when they are targeted by hate speech.2 Not surprisingly, this drew some unpleasant criticism from within my own community. [End Page 572] All of this weighed on my mind when reading an article about Sabato Morais, a rabbi who served the Philadelphia Spanish and Portuguese community from 1851 to 1898. Born in Livorgno, Italy, in 1823, Morais worked in London for five years, from age twenty-two, as the director of the Orphan's School at the London Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, until making his way to Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel community. He was known to be an outspoken supporter of religious humanism and minority rights, as well as a strong critic of slavery during the American Civil War.3 Mikveh Israel, the synagogue that employed Morais, was established in 1740. Founded by Spanish and Portuguese Jews whose antecedents were expelled during the Spanish Inquisition, the community played an important role during the 1776 American War of Independence. Interestingly, it has also had an ecumenical relationship with Christ Church (Episcopal) in Philadelphia, dating to the late 1700's.4 This essay looks at some activities in Morais's life and seeks to draw lessons relevant for today's ecumenical faith leaders in standing up and speaking out for social justice. Motivation for This Exploration In early December, 2017, a group of American and European faith leaders, sponsored by KAICIID, the Vienna-based intergovernmental organization that promotes interreligious dialogue to prevent and resolve conflict, met with the leadership of the Dialogue Institute at Temple University to explore the theme "Addressing Urban Issues—Hate Crime, Antisemitism, and Islamophobia in the U.K. and the U.S.A." During the three-day KAICIID Fellows Trans-Atlantic Conference, we visited a number of houses of worship, including Mother Bethel, the oldest church property in the United States owned by African Americans. The property was acquired [End Page 573] in 1794 and was replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841 before the present building was erected in 1890. Upon entering, I was struck profoundly by the similarity between the main lobby and grand staircase of that building and a building with which I was quite familiar, Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of New York City. Shearith Israel is a historic community that first began in 1654 in what was called New Amsterdam. Over the centuries, as populations grew and new residential areas were opened, the community occupied in succession...

Sephardic sacred space in colonial America

The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest extant synagogue building in the United States, has provoked a certain amount of controversy regarding its origins: while the architect is known, scholars have disputed whether the essential attributes of the structure should be traced to eighteenth-century English pattern books, descriptions of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam provided to architect Peter Harrison by congregants, or the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. The origins of the structure are important, as most of the Portuguese synagogues in colonial American and the Caribbean bear the same basic and unusual design features as the Touro structure. This essay argues that the resolution to this controversy lies in the structural ideal behind both the pattern books and the synagogues in Amsterdam and London: the Biblical Tabernacle and Temple as described by Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon de Templo in his messianic study, the Retrato del Templo de Selomo (1642). Early modern synagogue architects mimicked both the proportions prescribed by Leon de Templo and key symbolic design features of the Temple. By echoing the divinely-inspired structures, eighteenth-century Sephardic Jews in colonial America hoped to draw their worship closer to God and to help bring about the messianic era.

‘The voice of the minister heard in words of exhortation and instruction’: Abraham de Sola and the Jewish sermon in Victorian Montreal, and beyond

On April 26, 1846 the members of the Board of Shearith Israel, Portuguese Congregation of Montreal, approved the recommendation of their hiring committee to engage Abraham de Sola, from London, as their minister. But there were conditions. First, the Trustees wanted to be sure that enough money could be raised actually to pay the minister. They also wanted reassurance that the twenty-one year old had "the requisite qualifications to give English discourses in addition to the other duties required of him."1 On this, there was a meeting of minds between the Trustees and the candidate: Abraham de Sola had already informed the Congregation that he was eager to deliver sermons to his new community.2 Preaching in English was not a new phenomenon in the Sephardic community, but neither was it commonplace.3 In the early nineteenth century, the ordinances of the Sephardic community of London called only for the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, or Haham, to deliver sermons in Spanish twice a year. After Abraham's father, David Aaron de Sola delivered his first English sermon in 1831, the Elders of the Congregation resolved in the words of David Aaron that "in future, Sermons in the English language should be frequently delivered at the synagogue, in order to afford the congregation religious instruction in the only way it could prove useful."4 These sermons became a regular feature two years later when David Aaron was commissioned to deliver a talk on one Sabbath each month.5 In Montreal, the Trustees of Shearith Israel had stipulated in on March 13, 1844, that de Sola's predecessor, David Piza, be required "to deliver two sermons in the English language appropriate to the approaching festival of Passover."6 But the phenomenon of the hazan, or minister, who could address, instruct, and/or rebuke his congregation was still noteworthy. London's Jewish Chronicle reported with favour in late 1846 on the modern qualifications of A.P. Mendes, who was off to serve as minister in Kingston, Jamaica, and Abraham de Sola. The paper especially commended Mendes for the "agreeable effect produced upon his auditors in the few discourses we had the pleasure of hearing in the Portuguese Synagogue [that] left no doubt in their mind

From the "Jerusalem of the Balkans" to the Goldene Medina : Jewish Immigration from Salonika to the United States

From the "Jerusalem of the Balkans" to the Goldene Medina:Jewish Immigration from Salonika to the United States* Devin E. Naar (bio) Who are these strangers who can be seen in the ghetto of the East Side, sitting outside of coffee-houses smoking strange-looking waterpipes, sipping a dark liquid from tiny cups and playing a game of checkers and dice, a game that we are not familiar with? See the signs on these institutions. They read: "Café Constantinople," "Café Oriental," Café Smyrna," and there are other signs in Hebrew characters that you perhaps cannot read. Are they Jews? No it cannot be; they do not look like Jews; they do not speak Yiddish. Listen; what is that strange tongue they are using? It sounds like Spanish or Mexican. Are they Spaniards or Mexicans? If so, where did they get the coffee-houses, an importation from Greece and Turkey? -Samuel M. Auerbach, "The Levantine Jew" (1916)1 Writing in The Immigrants in America Review, Auerbach offered an image of "Levantine Jews" as "strangers" within the context of a predominantly Yiddish-speaking, eastern European Jewish culture on the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the first decades of the twentieth century. Auerbach, like his contemporaries writing in English or Yiddish, provided a perspective that he felt would resonate with his readership.2 Subsequent accounts of American Jewry have echoed descriptions [End Page 435] such as Auerbach's insofar as they have treated Jews from the eastern Mediterranean-described alternatively as "Levantine," "Oriental" or "Sephardi"-as marginal figures in their narratives. Others have omitted completely from their accounts the experiences of these Jews, who stray far from the mold of "normative" American Jewry. In addition to differences in language, culture, geographic origin, and religious traditions (minhagim), the relatively small demographic weight of Jews from the eastern Mediterranean also has contributed to their marginalization in American Jewish historiography. Perhaps as many as sixty thousand Jews from the eastern Mediterranean arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1924, whereas over two million largely Yiddish-speaking Jews from eastern Europe arrived during the same period.3 As a result, Jews from eastern Europe often have stood symbolically for American Jewry of the early twentieth century.4 Recent works, such as those issued in conjunction with the 350th anniversary of Jews in America, pay scant attention to Jews from the eastern Mediterranean. They do begin their narratives of American Jewish history with the tale of the twenty-three refugees who fled from the Inquisition in Recife, Brazil, and settled in New Amsterdam in 1654.5 These "Old Sephardim," however, constituted a group distinct from those Jews who arrived from the eastern Mediterranean during the early twentieth century, and whom scholars have labeled the "New Sephardim." Some members of Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue of the "Old Sephardim" in New York, initially argued in the 1910s that [End Page 436] the newcomers should not be categorized as "Sephardim" at all. Rather, they advocated labels such as "Levantine" or "Oriental," both terms with derogatory connotations, so as not to muddy their own reputation as the "noble," well-established "Sephardim," the true heirs to the legacy of the Spanish golden age.6 Contributors to the Ladino and Anglo-Jewish press in America debated and polemicized over the terms "Levantine," "Oriental," and "Sephardi," some distinguishing among the Jews from the eastern Mediterranean according to linguistic community-Ladino, Greek, and Arabic-and viewing only Ladino-speakers, the perceived descendants of medieval Iberian Jewry, as "Sephardim" in a strict sense.7 The only terms of identification not contested during the early twentieth century were those based on city or town of origin that the newcomers gave themselves and utilized internally. A few scholars have succeeded in giving voice to the Jews from the eastern Mediterranean who lived in early twentieth-century America. They have filled important lacunae by focusing on the efforts of these [End Page 437] immigrants at communal organization, their interactions with the "Old Sephardim" and "Ashkenazim," and their creation of a Ladino press in New York.8 Such scholars point out city-based identity but often represent it as a source of conflict and an obstacle...

‘The voice of the minister heard in words of exhortation and instruction’: Abraham de Sola and the Jewish sermon in Victorian Montreal, and beyond

On April 26, 1846 members of Board of Shearith Israel, Portuguese Congregation of Montreal, approved recommendation of their hiring committee engage Abraham de Sola, from London, as their minister. But there were conditions. First, Trustees wanted be sure that enough money could be raised actually pay minister. They also wanted reassurance that twenty-one year old had the requisite qualifications give English discourses addition other duties required of him.1 On this, there was a meeting of minds between Trustees and candidate: Abraham de Sola had already informed Congregation that he was eager deliver sermons his new community.2 Preaching English was not a new phenomenon Sephardic community, but neither was it commonplace.3 In early nineteenth century, ordinances of Sephardic community of London called only for Sephardic Chief Rabbi, or Haham, deliver sermons Spanish twice a year. After Abraham's father, David Aaron de Sola delivered his first English sermon 1831, Elders of Congregation resolved words of David Aaron that in future, Sermons English language should be frequently delivered at synagogue, order afford congregation religious instruction only way it could prove useful.4 These sermons became a regular feature two years later when David Aaron was commissioned deliver a talk on one Sabbath each month.5 In Montreal, Trustees of Shearith Israel had stipulated on March 13, 1844, that de Sola's predecessor, David Piza, be required to deliver two sermons English language appropriate approaching festival of Passover.6 But phenomenon of hazan, or minister, who could address, instruct, and/or rebuke his congregation was still noteworthy. London's Jewish Chronicle reported with favour late 1846 on modern qualifications of A.P. Mendes, who was off serve as minister Kingston, Jamaica, and Abraham de Sola. The paper especially commended Mendes for agreeable effect produced upon his auditors few discourses we had pleasure of hearing Portuguese Synagogue [that] left no doubt their mind

My Student Years at Leo Baeck College

I entered the Leo Baeck College in October 1959 and completed my studies there in June 1965. In those days the college had few students and was initially housed in the old council room of the West London Synagogue atop the main entrance in Upper Berkeley Street. In 1963 the building on the corner of Upper Berkeley Street and Seymour Place was demolished and in its place was erected a new building for the Leo Baeck College which also doubled as a venue for the West London Synagogue Religion School. In the late 50s the faculty was almost entirely made up of refugees from Nazism, many of them graduates of the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums , the great Berlin seminary founded in 1 872 by Abraham Geiger and closed in 1942 by the Nazis. An exception was Rabbi Dr Alan Miller, a young and dynamic British born graduate of Jews College and Oxford University, who taught history and Modern Hebrew literature. In 1961 two other British born scholars joined the faculty, Raphael Loewe, who also taught at University College and David Patterson, Cowley lecturer in post-Biblical Hebrew at Oxford. By this time Alan Miller had left for New York to take up the prestigious post of Rabbi at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. David Patterson took over the teaching of Modern Hebrew literature and Raphael Loewe taught us Midrash. Raphael Loewe, though an Ashkenazi, was Parnas Presidente of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Maida Vale. He was later appointed Professor of Hebrew Studies at University College. David Patterson was to later found the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. An expert on Avraham Mapu (the first Hebrew novelist) Patterson also taught us the poetry of Bialik and the prose of Agnon. He was probably the most self-effacing of our teachers. Rabbi Dr Israel Otto Lehman, former curator of Hebrew documents at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, taught us liturgy and Mediaeval Jewish philosophy. He also offered to teach Arabic but was persuaded by the college authorities not to do so. (Arabic had been a part of the Hochschule curriculum.) Dr Lehman

Rembrandt's Jews (review)

Reviewed by: Rembrandt's Jews Kalman P. Bland Rembrandt's Jews, by Steven Nadler. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 250 pp. $25.00. Readers of this exemplary book are in for a series of pleasant surprises. They start at the very beginning, with the book's title. Despite the grandeur suggested by its two terms, the title is restrictive and modest. In choosing it, Steven Nadler, an intellectual historian and celebrated biographer of Spinoza, seems to have been guided by the ancient rabbinic principle of ethically parsimonious speech: emor me'at ve-'aseh harbeh. The book accomplishes far more than its title promises. The book indeed probes deeply into all aspects of Rembrandt's personal, financial, and artistic relationships with Amsterdam's Jews. The book also probes to equal depth and with equally impressive sophistication many other aspects of the seventeenth-century intersection between Dutch Jewry and Dutch culture. Borrowing a term from Salo Baron's monumental social and religious history of the Jews, the book might fairly and more prosaically have been called "The Multiple Visual Dimensions of Dutch Jerusalem." Consider the List of Illustrations. Of the twenty-five handsomely reproduced black and white figures, seven originate with Rembrandt; of the eighteen even more splendidly reproduced color plates, again only seven originate with Rembrandt. Among the black and white figures are five drawings and etchings produced by Romeyn de Hooghe, including Circumcision in an Amsterdam Sephardic Family, View of the Portuguese Synagogue with Bridge, and The Jews' Cemetery. Among the color plates are two paintings by Emanuel De Witte (Interior of a Church and Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam) and four paintings by Jacob van Ruisdael (Wheatfields, Landscape with Blasted Tree by a Cottage, and two renditions of The Jewish Cemetery). Admirably avoiding [End Page 131] the common pitfall of using illustrations merely to adorn or accompany the text, Nadler subjects all of the figures and plates to well-informed critical scrutiny. He consistently offers persuasive and insightful accounts of their formal traits and iconographic significance. With Ruisdael's paintings of The Jewish Cemetery and its potentially messianic implications firmly fixedin our mind's eye, Nadler cautiously rejects the messianic implications. He summarizes his general conclusions with these words: "Perhaps. Or maybe Jacob van Ruisdael, that most recognizable of Dutch painters, an artist who saw the sublimity in the flat, low-lying land in which he lived, was, once again, simply exploring the dramatic possibilities of a landscape. If so, he unwittingly contributed—like de Witte with his Synagogue, de Hooghe with his prints of Amsterdam's Jews at services, and Rembrandt with his paintings and etchings of his [Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish] neighbors—yet another Dutch icon to the history of Jewish art" (p. 221). Nadler conscientiously specifies what he considers to be the salient characteristics of these Dutch icons. On the one hand, they profoundly differ from the medieval stereotypes and traditional portrayals of the despised Jew: "And then we come to seventeenth-century Dutch art, where we find . . . nothing. Utter plainness. There is a uniformity in the depiction of all walks of life. Ugliness and deformity are there, but they represent the common sins and foibles of all mankind. . . .There is no special iconography reserved for the Jews. The depictions of Jews and their activities are generically no different from those of wealthy regents, middle-class merchants, and indigent laborers. The naturalistic renderings, the settings of everyday life, and the easy integration in their dress, architecture, and habits into Dutch culture make the Jews in the art of Holland's golden age perfectly ordinary" (p. 221). Similar conclusions are reached regarding the stark contrast between Albrecht Altdorfer's sixteenth-century negative depiction of the synagogue in Regensburg and "de Witte's respectful portrayals of the Jewish congregation and the architectural achievement of which it was so proud" (p. 180). On the other hand, Dutch images of the "ordinary" Jews, according to Nadler, are also characterized by profound Dutch affinities—ethnic, political, cultural, and religious—with the Jewish nation. Readers will delight in Nadler's discussion of the many reasons for and multi-faceted expressions of these Dutch affinities, perhaps never as intensely and...

Mythologizing 1654

T H E JE W I S H Q UA R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Fall 2004) 583–594 N O T E S : ‘‘ T H E A M E R I C A N QU E S T I O N ’’ Mythologizing 1654 ARTHUR KIRON This essay is dedicated to my teacher Arthur Aryeh Goren, who opened my eyes to the politics and public culture of American Jews. WITHOUT MEANING TO sound like the grinch who stole Christmas, I would like to ask why and when the year 1654 became recognized as the founding date of American Jewish history? That this date has been widely accepted by contemporary Jewish and American institutions seems incontrovertible. In preparation for its national celebration in 2004, for example, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, the U.S. Library of Congress, and the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration created an umbrella group and Web site—‘‘Commission for Commemorating 350 years of American Jewish History’’—to honor the occasion.1 These institutions planned a year-long series of national events, including exhibits at some of their home institutions, a traveling exhibit to ‘‘a select number of American communities,’’ as well as ‘‘an internet website,’’ ‘‘a series of public media productions,’’ ‘‘a series of educational initiatives, electronic and in print,’’ and a ‘‘scholars’ conference.’’ The Jewish Women ’s Archive, ‘‘a national, non-profit organization with a mission to uncover , chronicle and transmit the rich legacy of Jewish women and their contributions to our families and communities, to our people and to our world,’’ launched a redesigned Web site as a direct consequence of their ‘‘anticipating increased interest in American Jewish history resulting from the 350th anniversary of Jewish communal life in North America.’’2 ‘‘The Shearith Israel League of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue’’ in New York City, which dates the founding of its congregation to the arrival of Jews to New Amsterdam in 1654, released a three-CD set of its Sephardic liturgical music. For these organizations as well as at Jewish 1. http://www.350th.org 2. http://www.jwa.org/350th The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2004) Copyright 䉷 2004 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. 584 JQR 94:4 (2004) congregations and college campuses across the country, the anniversary constituted a national event. It is clear what we celebrate: the arrival in 1654 of a group of perhaps twenty-three Jews to Dutch New Amsterdam from eastern Brazil, which they had abandoned after the Portuguese Catholic reoccupation of that territory the same year.3 What is not as clear is why this event has come to stand for the origin of American Jewish history. Why this moment and not another? For Congregation Shearith Israel the connection makes sense: 1654 marks the beginning of their congregational history in New York City. By affirming 1654, they lay claim to being the first congregation in American Jewish history and simultaneously direct attention to the Sephardic identity of the first American Jewish pioneers.4 The committee planners, representing the ‘‘national Jewish community ,’’ declare the flight from persecution by the refugees from Brazil as a basic explanation and theme. This notion of America as an asylum for the oppressed (which has its own interesting history)5 is linked by them, in turn, to the ‘‘integral relationship between American freedom and Jewish continuity.’’ The committee moreover aspired to even higher ground: ‘‘the Jewish experience in America—with its commitment to the values of freedom, opportunity, religious liberty, equality and pluralism—is the story of America and American ideals as well.’’6 It is noteworthy that the word ‘‘America’’ was employed by the committee as a convenient synonym for the United States. Not that it is unusual to use the word ‘‘America’’ in this sense. But this usage does have the practical consequence of narrowing the scope of the celebration to the national experience of United States Jewry rather than enlarging it to embrace the multiple Jewish communities located throughout the Western Hemisphere. The Jewish story told about 1654 is identified with the national experience of the...

The Question of Music in American Judaism: Reflections at 350 Years

Clamorous debates over music have been a feature of American Judaism since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century. Indeed, questions concerning music in the synagogue have stood second only to questions concerning women in the synagogue as prime sources of disputation, dividing synagogues and sometimes even landing up in court. Like women, music is at once alluring and dangerous; it delights the senses but it may also stir up passionate disagreement, undermine the established order, and distract people from the solemnity of worship. In the eyes of synagogue leaders, therefore, both music and women have demanded careful regulation. Ultimately, issues surrounding music, like the better known issues surrounding women, have helped to define what American Judaism is all about. Let us examine several of these issues, and the debates that they generated, debates that, by no coincidence, took place at roughly the same time as synagogues were debating women's issues and related concessions to modernity. The first debate concerned the character of the music. In the Sephardic synagogues of the colonial era (and later, for that matter), music was as tightly regulated as the synagogue ritual. Indeed, the music was inseparable from the ritual. Both were hallowed by tradition, what was called in Hebrew the minhag, the synagogue's ritual or custom as passed down from generation to generation. Shearith Israel, today known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of New York, and all of the other colonial synagogues closely conformed to the traditional minhag as practiced by Portuguese Jews in Europe and the West Indies. Innovations were prohibited; "Our duty," Sephardic Jews in England once explained, is "to imitate our forefathers."1 On a deeper level, Sephardic Jews believed, as did the Catholics among whom they had so long lived, that [End Page 195] ritual could unite those whom life had dispersed. They wanted a member of their Nation, as they called it, to feel at home in any Sephardic synagogue anywhere in the world: the same liturgy, the same customs, and the same music. As late as 1841 , a president (parnas) of Shearith Israel articulated the synagogue's ideology in response to those who sought to change it: "Let any of us, arriving from almost any part of the world, meet," he declared, "we feel ourselves at home, and join in the service of the synagogue, on any day, at any time, even to the different tunes."2 Fortunately for colonial Jews, many local Protestant churches were equally conservative in their musical traditions. "Established texts and known tunes were essential to the worship" of most colonial churches, "while non-verbal utterance, musical improvisation, individual spontaneity, and liturgical flexibility were generally absent."3 The Congregational church in Weston, Massachusetts, in 1724 reflected local custom when it approved a list of fourteen tunes to be used in its worship, and warned the chorister to use no others "unless he has further order from the Church."4 Churches, like their synagogue counterparts, promoted the virtues of tradition, regularity, and order through their choice of what to sing. Just as men, women, children, and slaves all had a fixed and carefully determined place in God's house, so too did sacred music. The late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries witnessed a whole series of innovations in American religious life: the great Protestant awakenings, disestablishment, church-state separation, the rapid growth of new denominations, and the like; and unsurprisingly, these produced changes in music as well. The same revolutionary spirit—the so-called contagion of liberty—that affected so many other aspects of life, also unleashed demands for innovation in liturgy and song; parallel developments, of course, were taking place in Europe. Initially, the synagogue resisted such innovations and attempted to impose discipline. "Every member of this congregation shall, previous to the singing [of] any psalm, or prayer, remain silent until the [Hazzan] shall signify the tone or key, in which the same is to...

Language Usage in Anglo-Sephardi Jewry

Tracing the history of languages used among England's Sephardim, being the first study of its kind, presents a number of challenges. First and foremost, there is a severe lack of linguistic documentation prior to the seventeenth century, as Jewish communities were illegal on English soil between the mass expulsion of 1290 and the readmission under Cromwell in 1656. Although official records of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue do give some indications of language usage between the readmission of Jews to England and the late nineteenth century, actual linguistic monuments are few.

Spinoza on Religious Choice

Here are three sets of circumstances: (i) On 27 July 1656, at the age of 23, Spinoza was thrown out of his religious community–the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam. During the remaining 21 years of his life it would have been easy enough for him to have returned, in practical if not in personal terms, but he chose not to do so. Despite close association with members of various Protestant sects, he chose to live without affiliation to any religious group. At that time, this was rare.

Traditional High Holy Day melodies of the Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam

(1981). Traditional High Holy Day melodies of the Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam. Journal of Musicological Research: Vol. 3, No. 3-4, pp. 223-257.

Selomoh Proops, Corrector or Copyist?

THERE has always been a mystery about why there are two works which are both called the fifth edition of the popular Paraphrasis Caldayca en los Cantares de Selomoh con el Texto Hebrayco y Ladino, traduzida en lengua Espanola, both printed in Amsterdam, one by Ishak de Cordova in 5466 (1706) and the other by Selomoh Proops (spelled Props in this edition) in 5472 (1712). An article in the Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad (No. 41, [10 May 1867], pp. 3-4), signed D. R. M., first mentions this problem. The initials are probably those of David Montezinos (1829-1916) the famous bibliophile who gave his collection of more than twenty thousand volumes of Hebraica, Judaica, and incunabula to the library of the Portuguese synagogue at Amsterdam.' D. R. M. states that the editor of the Proops edition was wise in not acknowledging the earlier edition of Ishak de Cordova as the fifth edition because he believed it to be the fourth. For this reason, Proops, D. R. M. maintains, called his own edition the fifth.2

A Backward Glance at Portuguese and Brazilian Studies in the United States

Portuguese, a relative newcomer to most college and university curricula, may possibly have been taught in the United States as early as the close of the seventeenth century in a school belonging to the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of New York City. It seems likely that the early records kept in Portuguese over several decades were written by those who received their training in the language in New York City. Instruction in Portuguese in college was first offered by a Frenchman, Father Peter Babad of the Society of St. Sulpice. Just when the priest began teaching Portuguese at St. Mary's College in Baltimore, Maryland, is not precisely known, but in 1816 he had a class in it under the auspices of the Department of Classical Languages.