The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry
The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry

Author: Yosef Kaplan

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-05-08

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 9004343164

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In The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry an international group of scholars examines aspects of religious belief and practice of pre-emancipation Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Amsterdam, Curaçao and Surinam, ceremonial dimensions, artistic representations of religious life, and religious life after the Shoa. The origins of Dutch Jewry trace back to diverse locations and ancestries: Marranos from Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi refugees from Germany, Poland and Lithuania. In the new setting and with the passing of time and developments in Dutch society at large, the religious life of Dutch Jews took on new forms. Dutch Jewish society was thus a microcosm of essential changes in Jewish history.

Exile in Amsterdam
Exile in Amsterdam

Author: Marc Saperstein

Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press

Published: 2005-12-31

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 0878201254

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Exile in Amsterdam is based on a rich, extensive, and previously untapped source for one of the most important and fascinating Jewish communities in early modern Europe: the sermons of Saul Levi Morteira (ca. 1596-1660). Morteira, the leading rabbi of Amsterdam and a master of Jewish homiletical art, was known to have published only one book of fifty sermons in 1645, until a collection of 550 manuscript sermons in his own handwriting turned up in the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. After years of painstaking study from microfilms and three trips to Budapest to consult the actual manuscripts, Marc Saperstein has written the first comprehensive analysis of the historical significance of these texts, some of which were heard by the young Spinoza. Saperstein reviews the broad outlines of Morteira's biography, his treatment by scholars, and his image in literary works. He then reconstructs the process by which the preacher produced and delivered his sermons. Morteira's sermons also provide a trove of information about individuals and institutions in Morteira's Amsterdam, enabling Saperstein to analyze the shortcomings of behavior and the lapses in faith criticized by the preacher. The sermons also presented an ongoing program of adult education that transmitted the Jewish tradition on a high yet accessible level to a congregation of new Jews-immigrants who had lived as Christians in Portugal and were now assuming a Jewish identity with minimal prior knowledge. Here Saperstein focuses on themes Morteira considered crucial: memories of the historical past, confrontations with Christianity, ideas of exile and messianic redemption, and attitudes toward the New Christians who remained in Portugal. These historical reflections on Amsterdam's community of new Jews are illustrated by eight of Morteira's sermons, which Saperstein presents in English and with full annotation for the first time. Exile in Amsterdam offers those interested in European Jewish history and homiletics access to primary source documents and the scholarship of one of the premier historians of Jewish preaching.

Jerusalem on the Amstel
Jerusalem on the Amstel

Author: Lipika Pelham

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-04-01

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 1787381846

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Seventeenth-century Amsterdam was a cosmopolitan "carnival of nations:" French Huguenots, North African merchants, Spanish Moriscos--and Iberian New Christians, formerly Jewish families forcibly converted to Catholicism, now fleeing the Inquisition and rediscovering their ancestral faith. This is the extraordinary tale of Amsterdam's prosperous Sephardi community during the Dutch Golden Age. Trading, writing, publishing, staging plays and being painted by Rembrandt, this Nação (Nation) of formerly wandering Jews not only settled but thrived, enjoying high status and unparalleled freedom. At a time when Dutch Catholics were repressed and Jews elsewhere were confined to the ghetto, this community dared to nurture the 'Hope of Israel', sowing the seeds of Zionism. Lipika Pelham charts the captivating history of Amsterdam's Jews, from their integral role in the Dutch economic miracle and the Enlightenment to a somber coda in 1942, when the Nazis herded them into the "Jewish Theater" for deportation to the camps. But this was not the death of the resilient Nação--Pelham also seeks out its descendants in present-day Amsterdam, offering poignant reflection on the meaning of nationhood, the Holocaust and what remains of Jerusalem on the Amstel.

Fables in Jewish Culture
Fables in Jewish Culture

Author: Emile Schrijver

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2023-11-15

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 1501775847

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Fables in Jewish Culture catalogues almost 400 Jewish scrolls and books from the collection of Jon A. Lindseth that contain animal stories with moral connections. Spanning six centuries, the books are in several languages, including Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and Judeo-Persian. They were printed all over the world and include animal stories from the Hebrew Bible and other religious texts as well as translations of secular stories, such as Aesop's fables in Hebrew. The catalogue is divided into four sections—Biblical works, rabbinic works, medieval works, and postmedieval works—and each entry is illustrated with a page or more from the work, a detailed description of the characteristics and publishing history of the work, and description of the fables contained therein, along with a discussion of their literary and/or cultural-historical significance. This volume includes a foreword by Jon A. Lindseth, describing how he assembled this collection of Jewish books containing fables, as well as essays on the role of fables in Jewish culture, their use in Biblical and rabbinical literature, and their appearance in Jewish and Yiddish literature. Fables in Jewish Culture concludes with a bibliography of fables in Jewish literature and multiple indexes that allow readers to locate works by a number of criteria, including fable, author, title (in English, Hebrew, and Latin), and printer. Contributors: Marion Aptroot, David Daube, Simona Gronemann, Jon A. Lindseth, Raphael Loewe, Lies Meiboom, Emile Schrijver, David Stern, Heide Warncke, Irene Zwiep.

Reluctant Cosmopolitans
Reluctant Cosmopolitans

Author: Daniel M. Swetschinski

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2000-06-01

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1909821802

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Winner of the 2000 National Jewish Book Award for Sephardic Studies Focusing on the social dimension of Amsterdam's Portuguese Jewish economic and religious life, Swetschinski paints a lively and unconventional picture of the dynamics of a remarkable Jewish community, the first traditional Jewish society to engage creatively with the non-Jewish, secular world in relative harmony. A broad, authentic, and original vision of the transition from medieval to modern Jewish history.