Early modern Amsterdam was a prosperous city renowned for its relative tolerance, and many people hoping for a better future, away from persecution, wars, and economic malaise, chose to make a new life there. Conversos and Jews from many countries were among them, attracted by the reputed wealth and benevolence of the Portuguese Jews who had settled there. Behind the facade of prosperity, however, poverty was a serious problem. It preoccupied the leadership of the Portuguese Jewish community and influenced its policy on admitting newcomers: the struggle to keep poverty under control and ensure that finances were available for welfare was paramount.
Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld looks at poverty and welfare from the perspective of both benefactors and recipients. She analyses benefactors' motives for philanthropy and charts its dimensions; she also examines the decision-making processes of communal bodies and private philanthropists, identifying the cultural influences that shaped their commitment to welfare. At the same time her detailed study succeeds in bringing the poor to life: she examines what brought them to Amsterdam, aspects of their daily life in the petitions they sent to the different welfare institutions, and the survival strategies offered by work, education, and charity. She also considers the related questions of social mobility and the motivation of the poor for joining the Amsterdam Portuguese community. Her research takes her, finally, beyond the margins of the established community to the small but active groups of Sephardi bandits who formed their own clandestine networks. Special attention is also paid to poor women, whether arriving alone or left behind and sometimes heading small family units, who were often singled out for relief. In this way the book makes a much-needed contribution to the study of gender, in Jewish society and more generally.
This ground-breaking, multi-faceted study of the dynamics of the relationship between the rich and the poor adds a nuanced new dimension to our understanding of Jewish life in the early modern period.
National Jewish book awards winner
'I consider this to be one of the best and most important theses I have had the privilege of examining in my career and one of fundamental importance not just for early modern Dutch Jewish history but for all early modern Jewish history. I have no doubt at all that her book, which is well written and clearly set out, will be a landmark in Jewish historiography, an outstanding work of research which will at the same time be very widely referred to by Jewish historians of many different kinds. The book is also impressively erudite, showing a good working knowledge of virtually the entire primary and secondary published literature pertaining to the Portuguese Jewish community of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Amsterdam, whether in English, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, or Hebrew. No one has systematically researched the problem, dimensions, and history of poor relief in the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam before, and Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld has carried out this task carefully, thoroughly, and convincingly. She has skillfully utilized the data she has extracted from the community records and other archival materials to expand and (in a number of cases) importantly correct our knowledge of the general demographic, organizational and financial history of the congregation. Since a majority of those in receipt of poor relief in the Amsterdam Sephardi community were female, the thesis also makes a relevant and notable contribution to the history of gender, and of the family, within a Jewish context.'
Jonathan Israel
'The first systematic study of the poor and poor relief in Sephardic Amsterdam . . . a pioneering work . . . based on a thorough grasp of all the archival and historical sources . . . convincingly shows that the poor made up an increasingly greater percentage of the population than previously thought . . . this major study of Dutch Jewry is highly recommended.'
Harvey Sukenic, Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews
‘Explores and maps new territory in such an astonishingly thorough manner . . . a splendid example of prodigious research producing a result that illuminates an important aspect of a great Jewish community.’
Marc Saperstein, European Judaism