Dutch Jewry
In 1997, two years after the publication of the Dutch edition of The History of the Jews in the Netherlands, a conference was held at University College London. There leading experts in the field of Dutch Jewry reassessed and investigated further the issues discussed in that volume, which was received with much acclaim and enthusiasm. This new volume consists of seventeen studies on the history and literary culture of the Jews in the Netherlands and Antwerp, divided into two parts: nine contributions deal with a range of subjects in the early modern era, eight are included under ‘modern Dutch Jewry’. The division itself is arbitrary and serves no clear purpose with regard to the themes of the contributions.
In the first article of Dutch Jewry. Its History and Secular Culture Arend H. Huussen deals with the legal position of the Jews in the Dutch Republic during the period 1590-1796, the year that the old federal Republic of the United Provinces collapsed and was subsequently transformed into a new state in 1813 through the impact of the French Revolution and Napoleon, events which greatly affected the organisation of the Jewish community. Hubert P.H. Nusteling presents some figures on the number and dispersion of Jews living in the Republic, showing that Jews have always preferred to live in the cities and particularly in Amsterdam. Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld has investigated the financing of poor relief in the Spanish-Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yosef Kaplan discusses the moral panic in the eighteenth-century Sephardi community of Amsterdam. Cases of adultery, clandestine marriages, and premarital sexual relations rocked the community leadership, who tried to avert this ‘threat from Eros’ by ordinances and punishments like excommunication, mostly to no avail. Jonathan Israel deals with the question of Spinoza's immersion in philosophy alongside his life within the community and in commerce. Spinoza's expulsion from the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community in 1656 had relatively little to do with the recent changes in his intellectual outlook, a view endorsed by Odette Vlessing's re-evaluation of archive materials. She adduces convincing arguments for the financial and secular reasons that led to Spinoza resigning his community membership, an embarrassment ‘solved’ by a formal excommunication. Alan Cohen grapples with the relationship between Rembrandt and the Jews in his interpretation of various biblical scenes which suggest a Jewish connotation, exemplified in a more detailed manner by the Hebrew script in some of his paintings. Hetty Berg turns
to the eighteenth-century Yiddish theatrical tradition of Amsterdam as a preparation for the leading role Jews were to play in the development of the entertainment industry in the Netherlands. Marion Aptroot discusses the role of Yiddish within the Amsterdam Jewish community in the so-called Diskursn, pamphlets published in 1797 and 1798 shortly after the Dutch Jews were granted emancipation. Very recently these Diskursn have been published in a separate volume.
Part Two opens with J.C.H. Blom's article on Dutch Jewry, which is entirely based on two previous articles on the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands published in The History of the Jews and in European History Quarterly. Selma Leydesdorff reconsiders the integration of Dutch Jews, using much argumentation from her important book We lived with Dignity, The Jewish Proletariat of Amsterdam 1900-1940, published in Detroit in 1994. Piet H. Schrijvers offers a far from complete picture of the life of David Cohen, Professor of Ancient History at Amsterdam University and a notorious president of the Jewish Council in the Netherlands during the Second World War. This article too largely derives from Schrijver's biography of David Cohen, published in Groningen in 2000. Peter Romijn deals with the inability of Dutch society to respond adequately and promtly to the restrictive measures and terror of the Nazi persecutors. He creates a well-balanced picture of this catastrophic period, which led to a large-scale destruction of Jewish life. One great merit of this book is the presentation of the post-war Jewish history of the Netherlands, discussed in a comprehensive and partly updated study by Chaya Brasz. Despite the many problems, external as well as internal, Jewish institutions were re-established in line with pre-war patterns, but by the end of the twentieth century the number of Jews in the organised community must be considerably lower than their total number. Ludo Abicht presents a short survey of historical facts and events concerning the Jews of Antwerp. He concludes that today's community in Antwerp is remarkably varied: it consists of two religious denominations, ranging from Orthodox and Hassidic to elements of Liberal or Reform Judaism, surrounded by a secular fringe. Thus, Antwerp is a fascinating example of a pluralist diaspora community, in which Jews can successfully survive and even thrive in a
multicultural city.
The volume concludes with two literary essays on the diaries of Anne Frank and the novels of Marga Minco. Together with the second publication, the English version of The History of the Jews in the Netherlands, the book adds momentum to the increasingly widespread and intense interest in the history and culture of Dutch Jewry. Like Dutch Jewry, the second book too is a set of varied contributions in a chronology of successive periods involving the collaboration of various leading authorities and showing a consistency of thematic approach. Nowhere do these books aim to
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