Brill s Series in Jewish Studies

Transcription

1 Brill s Series in Jewish Studies General Editor David S. Katz (Tel Aviv) Advisory Editors Stuart Cohen (Bar-Ilan) Anthony T. Grafton (Princeton) Yosef Kaplan ( Jerusalem) Fergus Millar (Oxford) VOLUME 38

2 The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History Edited by Yosef Kaplan LEIDEN BOSTON 2008

3 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Dutch intersection: the Jews and the Netherlands in modern history / edited by Yosef Kaplan. p. cm. (Brill s series in Jewish studies ; v. 38) ISBN (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Jews Netherlands History Congresses. 2. Judaism Netherlands History Congresses. 3. Netherlands Ethnic relations Congresses. I. Kaplan, Yosef. DS135.N4D dc ISSN ISBN Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

4 In Memoriam Henriëtte Boas ( )

5 CONTENTS Preface... xi List of Abbreviations... xvii Bernard D. Cooperman Amsterdam from an International Perspective: Tolerance and Kehillah in the Portuguese Diaspora... 1 Adam Sutcliffe The Boundaries of Community: Urban Space and Intercultural Interaction in Early Modern, Sephardi Amsterdam, and London Yosef Kaplan Amsterdam, the Forbidden Lands, and the Dynamics of the Sephardi Diaspora Jonathan Schorsch Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva: An Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Merchant Abroad in the Seventeenth Century Harm den Boer Amsterdam as Locus of Iberian Printing in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Gary Schwartz The Temple Mount in the Lowlands Michael Studemund-Halévy The Persistence of Images: Reproductive Success in the History of Sephardi Sepulchral Art Evelyne Oliel-Grausz Patrocinio and Authority: Assessing the Metropolitan Role of the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam in the Eighteenth Century

6 viii contents Jonathan Israel Philosophy, Deism, and the Early Jewish Enlightenment ( ) Shlomo Berger Yiddish Book Production in Amsterdam between : Local and International Aspects Hilde Pach In Hamburg a High German Jew Was Murdered : The Representation of Foreign Jews in the Dinstagishe un Fraytagishe Kuranten (Amsterdam, ) Avriel Bar-Levav Amsterdam and the Inception of the Jewish Republic of Letters Stefan Litt Ashkenazi-Dutch Pinkassim as Sources for Studying European-Jewish Migration: The Cases of Middelburg and The Hague in the Eighteenth Century Gérard Nahon The Hague, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Jerusalem: David de Pinto and the Jesiba Magen David, Shalom Sabar From Amsterdam to Bombay, Baghdad, and Casablanca: The Infl uence of the Amsterdam Haggadah on Haggadah Illustration among the Jews in India and the Lands of Islam Irene E. Zwiep A Maskil Reads Zunz: Samuel Mulder and the Earliest Dutch Reception of the Wissenschaft des Judentums Bart Wallet Dutch National Identity and Jewish International Solidarity: An Impossible Combination? Dutch Jewry and the Signifi cance of the Damascus Affair (1840)

7 contents ix Rivka Weiss-Blok Jewish Artists Facing Holland Benjamin Ravid Alfred Klee and Hans Goslar: From Amsterdam to Westerbork to Bergen Belsen Evelien Gans Next Year in Paramaribo: Galut and Diaspora as Scene-changes in the Jewish Life of Jakob Meijer Elrud Ibsch Writing against Silence. Jewish Writers of the Generation-After in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and France: A Comparison David Weinberg Patrons or Partners? Relations between the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Dutch Jewish Community in the Immediate Postwar Period Manfred Gerstenfeld International Aspects of the Restitution Process in the Netherlands at the End of the Twentieth Century List of Contributors Index Plates

8 PREFACE This volume contains almost all the papers presented at the Tenth International Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands, organized by the Center for Research on Dutch Jewry and held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 21 to 24 November More than eighty years ago, the historian and bibliographer Sigmund Seeligman, in his well known article, Die Juden in Holland, eine Charakteristik, coined the term species hollandia Judaica, which was accepted by quite a few of those who dealt and deal with the history of the Jews of Holland as an apt epithet for the uniqueness of Dutch Jewry, treating it as a distinct and special instance in the history of modern Jewry. Seeligman sought to point out the differences between the Jews of Holland and those of other countries and emphasized the adaptation of the Dutch Jews to the Dutch national character in the wake of the process of emancipation. By contrast, Dr. Joseph Michman, the founder of the Center for Research on Dutch Jewry in Jerusalem and one of the main architects of the first international symposia on the history of the Jews of Holland, in the lecture he delivered at the fourth symposium in 1986, which explicitly took issue with Seeligman s approach, sought rather to bring out the Jewish essence of the Jew as a Dutchman, or, in other words, how Dutch Jews differed from their Gentile compatriots. While Seeligman s view expressed a horizontal approach, which mainly brought out the particular Dutch context of the history of the Jews of Holland, Michman s attitude always emphasized the vertical dimension, that is to say, the connections of Dutch Jewish life with Jewish history and culture over the generations. The articles in this volume are linked in a certain sense to Michman s approach. Most of them deal with the connections between the history and culture of the Jews of Holland from the beginning of the seventeenth century until the period after the Holocaust, and with phenomena and processes that distinguish all of Jewish history in the modern period. However, the common denominator of all the articles in this collection is very far from an essentialist conception of Jewish history. Moreover, they are distinguished not only by the examination of the influence of general Jewish history on that of the Jews of Holland

9 xii preface but also by focusing on events and processes in modern Jewish history that show the significant influence of the history of the Jews of Holland. Most of the articles here share the emphasis placed on the intersection: that is to say, they view the Jews of Holland not as a separate phenomenon in Jewish history but as a Jewish collective whose identity and creativity were formed, throughout its history, in close connection with the Jewish people in the present and past. At the same time, the Jews of Holland were not only influenced by the great Jewish centers and nourished by the culture that the Jewish immigrants brought with them to Holland from their countries of origin, but at various stages they also became harbingers of processes and tendencies in modern Jewish history, and their activity and creativity often served as a source of inspiration for Jews elsewhere in the Diaspora. The economic activity of the Portuguese Jewish merchants and entrepreneurs in Amsterdam during the seventeenth century embraced the entire world, and their integration in international trade and in the colonial projects of the great maritime powers of Europe also attracted the cooperation of Jews in other countries and influenced the economy of the Jews elsewhere. The printing houses of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam became the main suppliers of Jewish books, both rabbinical and other, not only for the Sephardi Jewish Diaspora. They also provided religious books for the well-established Ashkenazi communities in Central and Eastern Europe. Amsterdam became the center of production for wide-ranging Jewish literature in Spanish and Portuguese, both religious and secular, which was intended for the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Nation in the West and East. Similarly, in the printing houses of Ashkenazi Jews were printed, in addition to traditional rabbinical literature, also works in Yiddish that were intended for the entire Ashkenazi world, and we find that between 1650 and 1750 Amsterdam became a central focus not only for the distribution of the Yiddish book but also of literary creation in Yiddish. Toward the mid-seventeenth century, Jewish printing in Amsterdam assumed the status that Hebrew printing in Venice had hitherto held, and the editions of Hebrew books from Amsterdam became famous throughout the Diaspora and served as a model for imitation. Similarly, both Portuguese and Ashkenazi Jews were among the first to create a Jewish library awareness, which preceded that created by the Jewish Maskilim in the Age of Enlightenment by several generations. Also the first Jewish newspapers, in Spanish and Yiddish, were

10 preface xiii printed in Amsterdam in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, with the intention of providing information to a readership beyond the borders of Holland. The institutions established by the Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam, the patterns of organization that they formed, and the ordinances that they composed, became models for imitation in the entire Western Sephardi Diaspora, including the centers of Jewish settlement on the American continent. Throughout most of the early modern period, the Sephardi community of Amsterdam was the leader of the Western Sephardi Diaspora, and people turned to it with requests not only for material assistance but also for advice and council, and it produced most of the rabbis, cantors, and teachers for the Sephardi communities in Western Europe and the New World, who were trained in its schools and academies. The unique tolerance enjoyed by the Jews of Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, though it was less principled and comprehensive than is commonly thought, was far greater than that known by the Jews in any other part of the Diaspora, and it gave the Jews of Holland, especially the Portuguese elite within it, a particular symbolic status in the consciousness of the Jews in the pre-emancipation period. However, changes in the world economy and in the status of Holland in trans-atlantic trade weakened the economic position of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam and led to deep impoverishment of the Sephardi community of the city, and toward the mid-eighteenth century it lost its former leading and influential status. Moreover, due to the social and cultural consequences of emancipation and assimilation, the cohesion that had characterized Jewish life in Holland was severely weakened. Nevertheless, during the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, until its destruction in the Holocaust, Dutch Jewry retained its creative vitality. From the social, political, and cultural point of view, it never lost contact with the Jewish centers of the world, both old and new, and some of the articles in this volume express this, as well. In their own way, the Jews of Holland took part in the processes of modernization and secularization of the Jewish Diaspora and participated intensely in international Jewish political and philanthropic activity. The confrontation with the problems of modern Jewish identity found fascinating expression in Holland, in cultural productivity, literature, and art. The articles in this book touch upon a variety of subjects, sometimes broad, sometimes specific, from the perspective of the wider Jewish

11 xiv preface context, a context that is sometimes organizational and institutional, sometimes religious, sometimes political, cultural, or artistic, and sometimes a matter of consciousness. The articles that deal with the Holocaust and the developments characteristic of Dutch Jewry in its wake also relate to broader contexts of Jewish history. This volume is dedicated to the unforgettable Henriëtte Boas, who was a sensitive witness to much of the history of the Jews of Holland during most of the twentieth century. She was a teacher of classical literature with a deeply rooted Jewish education and broad cultural horizons, an intellectual who was involved in many controversies that stirred the Jews of her homeland, a journalist with indefatigable curiosity, and a sharp-eyed historian who knew the history and culture of the Jews of Holland intimately and deeply a brave and feisty woman. At all the symposia on the history of the Jews of Holland that took place both in Israel and in Holland, her special, active, and eccentric presence was prominent. There was hardly any lecture to which she did not respond with questions and objections, with characteristic fervor and emotional engagement, with intellectual interest, but mainly with a keen existential identification with the Jewish world from which she stemmed. The tenth conference was held in Jerusalem in November 2004, three years after her death, and it was hard not to feel her absence. We mourn our loss. * * * I would like to thank all the institutions and individuals that provided essential support for the organization of the Tenth International Conference on Dutch Jewry and the publication of this book: The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Israel and especially Mr. Bob Hiensch, the Dutch Ambassador to Israel, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Foundation for Collective Maror Funds in Israel, the Frankenhuis Foundation, the Levi Lassen Foundation, and the Maatschappij tot Nut der Israëliten in Nederland. In addition, I would like to express heartfelt gratitude to the Foundation for Research on Dutch Jewry in Jerusalem and to its former chairman, Avraham Roet, its former secretary, Professor Alfred Drukker, and Ya acov Yannay, former member of its Board of Directors. I also extend thanks to the present chairperson, Dr. Joel Fishman, and the director general, Mr. Chaim den Heijer, without whose devoted assistance it would not have been possible to hold the conference and publish this volume. I also wish to thank the Friends of the Center for Research on

12 preface xv Dutch Jewry in Holland for their cooperation and generous assistance. Professor Dan Michman helped greatly with his advice in planning the program of the conference. Professor Galit Hazan-Rokem, former head of the Institute for Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University, always responded enthusiastically to our requests. Throughout all the stages of organizing the conference and preparing this volume, Lea Menashe and Eva Ben David, the two devoted secretaries of the Center, spared no effort to make sure that everything was done professionally, always managing to inspire all the participants and everyone involved in the project with good spirits. Ms. María Mercedes Tuya, from the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, prepared the index with great care. Last but far from least, deep gratitude is due to Valerie Carr Zakovitch for her careful copyediting, which assured consistency in spelling and style throughout the volume. Yosef Kaplan

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14 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AJS Review BAA BT CAHJP CJO CZA EAJS GAA GAA PA 334 HUCA ICA JJS MGWJ NA NIG NIOD NIW NZB REJ SPPNN StRos TJHSE WJC American Jewish Studies Review Bulletin des Archives d Anvers Babylonian Talmud Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem Centraal Joods Overleg (Central Jewish Umbrella Organization) Central Zionist Archives European Association for Jewish Studies Gemeentelijke Archiefdienst Amsterdam Archieven der Portugees-Israëlietische Gemeente te Amsterdam Hebrew Union College Annual Jewish Colonization Association Journal of Jewish Studies Monatschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums National Archive, The Hague Nederlands Israëlitische Gemeente Nederlands Institutuut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad Nederlandse Zionistenbond Revue des études juives H. den Boer, Spanish and Portuguese Printing in the Northern Netherlands , CD-ROM (Leiden 2003) Studia Rosenthaliana Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England World Jewish Congress

15 AMSTERDAM AS LOCUS OF IBERIAN PRINTING IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES Harm den Boer Introduction The Netherlands, and particularly Amsterdam, was rightly reputed as the center of Jewish book printing almost from the moment Menasseh ben Israel started his press in In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic had developed a flourishing printing industry with a vast international reach. The Sephardi Jews who settled in Amsterdam at the beginning of the century found there the opportunity to have their prayer books and other works printed without major obstacles. They quickly established their own presses, which enabled them, and later also their Ashkenazi brethren, to obtain a dominant position in the Hebrew printing and book trade all over Europe. The Sephardim who, as former New Christians, or conversos, had started printing in Spanish and Portuguese to overcome their lack of knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish tradition, continued to publish in their native languages throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The publication of Meyer Kayserling s Biblioteca española-portuguezajudaica 1 revealed the wealth of Jewish learning available in vernacular language among the Western Sephardim, and established the reputation of Amsterdam as a New Jerusalem, where a cultural and literary brilliance unparalleled in the Jewish world existed. In this article I will discuss the results of my recently published bibliography of Spanish and Portuguese editions printed in the Northern Netherlands from Rather than comment on the details of the particular editions listed, the long sought after copies finally traced, or the new findings, I wish to elaborate on the overall relevance of * See illustrations on pp M. Kayserling, Biblioteca española-portugueza-judaica (Strasbourg 1890). 2 H. den Boer, Spanish and Portuguese Printing in the Northern Netherlands , CD-ROM (Leiden 2003) (hereafter cited as SPPNN ).

16 88 harm den boer Iberian printing in the Netherlands, more specifically, on the relation between Jewish and non-jewish editions. My reflections on the Netherlands as locus of Iberian printing will, I hope, also provide the reasons for the chronological, geographical, and linguistic criteria that have been followed in the present bibliography. Notwithstanding the heterogeneity of the works comprised in Spanish and Portuguese Printing, I argue that these reflect a meaningful cultural reality, and not merely an arbitrarily or positivistically gathered set of titles. This reality has made itself evident during the course of the project, the history of which I would briefly like to comment upon. In 1981, the eminent bibliographer José Simón Díaz 3 encouraged me, the Dutch student in his course on bibliografía española, to look for the Spanish editions printed in the Netherlands that were extant at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. This exercise could be a starting point for a bibliographical research project that would complete the work undertaken by Jean Peeters Fontainas. The latter s Bibliographie des impressions espagnoles des Pays Bas (1933) represented a fi rst census of Spanish editions printed in both the Southern and Northern Netherlands roughly corresponding to contemporary Belgium and The Netherlands with a total of 1,484 entries. 4 Peeters-Fontainas afterwards published a more complete and descriptive bibliography, which dealt exclusively with the works printed in the Southern Netherlands. 5 The 1,413 works 6 brought together by the great bibliophile in this second volume had a huge impact in the Hispanic world; now it was possible to see how much Spain s Golden Age was indebted to the printing houses of the Southern Netherlands, where many of the classics of Spanish literature were produced in splendid editions, among them Lazarillo de Tormes, the works of Jorge Montemayor, Miguel de Cervantes, Baltasar Gracián, Francisco de Quevedo, and Santa Teresa de Jesús. Peeters-Fontainas did not continue his bibliographical enterprise with a volume dedicated to the Spanish works printed in the Northern 3 José Simón Díaz is the author of Bibliografía de la literatura hispánica, 15 vols. (Madrid ) and the still very useful Manual de bibliografía española (Madrid 1980). 4 J. Peeters-Fontainas, Bibliographie des impressions espagnoles des Pays Bas (Leuven 1933). 5 Idem, Bibliographie des impressions espagnoles des Pays Bas Meridionaux (Nieuwkoop 1965). 6 Plus a few addenda; a supplement was printed, with the collaboration of A.-M. Frédéric, Supplement a la Bibliographie des impressions des Pays Bas Meridionaux (Antwerp 1977).

17 amsterdam as locus of iberian printing 89 Netherlands. He realized, soon enough, that the books published in the rebellious Dutch Republic were of an entirely different nature than those issued in the Spanish Netherlands. The Belgian bibliographer felt that he was too unfamiliar with the many Jewish works printed in Amsterdam, works in which were interspersed Hebrew words and religious references, and also frequently fashioning an exotic Spanish (the Ladino deriving from the Ferrara translations); all these elements, he realized, required very specific preparation. In Spain s Golden Age, authors such as Quevedo had identified the Northern Provinces with heretics and Jews and deeply mistrusted whatever was published there. 7 For the Iberian world, the address of Amsterdam alone was sufficient to mark a publication as a challenge to state or religion hardly surprising given the role of the Dutch presses in the anti-spanish propaganda known as the Black Legend. Although the Iberian perception of printing in the Dutch Republic did not entirely correspond with the reality, and in fact some Catholic works were printed in Amsterdam, 8 it cannot be denied that Spanish printing in the Northern Netherlands was largely an affair of the Sephardi Jews and (some) Protestants living there. When I started my research at the Biblioteca Nacional, and came across one of the major collections of Dutch Hispanica in the world, I gradually became acquainted (and soon fascinated) with the culture of the Dutch Sephardim. Given the Portuguese identity of these Dutch Jews, reflected in their written and printed culture, I realized that the initial project of a bibliography including only Spanish editions was no longer an option. Kayserling s bibliography presented an approach to Iberian printing from the Jewish perspective. His Biblioteca española-portugueza-judaica was, in this sense, more meaningful than the national-linguistic approach, as it really reflected a cultural identity. However, Kayserling s impressive compilation had evident limitations, too. Realized as a pioneering exploration, using the bibliographic standards of his time, its descriptions were far from exact, as Kayserling did not have the opportunity 7 M. Herrero García, Ideas de los españoles (Madrid 1928). Quevedo is most explicit in his La hora de todos y fortuna con seso, written around I refer to the works of Saavedra Fajardo ( Janssonius 1658, 1664) and Gracián (Blaeu 1659; Le Grand 1665), Den Boer, SPPNN, nn. 736, 739, , and 396, respectively. Of course, these works were popular among both Catholic and Protestant readers. Significantly, Carlos Bundeto s Espejo de la muerte, printed by the Amsterdam printer Jorgio Gallet, was issued with the false location of Antwerp (SPPNN, n. 273).

18 90 harm den boer to personally examine many of the works that he listed. Moreover, the term Judaica, by its very nature an unsatisfying concept, reveals itself highly problematic for dealing with the authors covered in the Biblioteca. One could justify the inclusion of non-jewish works written or printed by Jews, but how to deal with all those Spanish or Portuguese conversos who were still living as Christians, or could not make up their minds? Kayserling apparently followed in the footsteps of Daniel Levi de Barrios s flattering Relación de los escritores de la nación judaica amstelodama [c.1682], which mentioned many writers who had never belonged to the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam, nor could be considered, really, as Jewish. 9 On the other hand, Kayserling s notion of Judaica, however lacking in precision, proved to be valuable as well. By mentioning, for instance, an edition by the Portuguese physician Francisco da Fonseca Henriques that was printed by Miguel (Moses) Díaz in Amsterdam (1731), 10 he hinted at the work of Sephardi printers that was addressed to a non-jewish readership. In 1972, Alfonso Cassuto explicitly called attention to the commercial branch of Sephardi printing, mentioning works written by Portuguese Old Christians, such as Summa politica by the Portuguese Sebastião César de Meneses, 11 and António do Couto Castelo Branco s Memórias militares (1710). 12 Kayserling had also incorporated the works of the Protestants Miguel de Monserrate Montañés and Fernando Tejeda, 13 assuming they were Jewish, and although this proved to be wrong, there is still justification for relating their publications to the Sephardi Jews living in Holland, as we shall see. In the course of my project I have realized that many of the editions covered in Spanish and Portuguese Printing in the Northern Netherlands 9 Among them Miguel de Silvera and Antonio Enríquez Gómez, conversos who never formally reverted to Judaism and who had never been at Amsterdam, and Manuel Thomas, the Catholic brother of Jonah Abravanel; Barrios, Relación (SPPNN, n. 189). 10 Medicina lusitana (Amsterdam 1710), with a second, enlarged edition in Kayserling mentioned the work in his supplement published in REJ 22 (1891), p SPPNN, nn. 405, Sebasteão César de Meneses, Summa política (Amsterdam: Simão Dias Soeiro, 1650), printed by Menasseh s son, Samuel ben Israel Soeiro (SPPNN, n. 588). 12 António do Couto Castelo Branco, Memórias militares (Amsterdam: Miguel [= Moses] Dias, 1710) (SPPNN, n. 320). 13 Referring to Monserrate, Kayserling, Biblioteca, p. 73, expresses his doubts, but mentions Johan Christian Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea, 4 vols. (Hamburg ), vol. 3, n. 1403; on Carrascón, see Kayserling, Biblioteca, p. 35.

19 amsterdam as locus of iberian printing 91 reflect an interesting cultural context, not only one where Jewish and non-jewish authors and publishers came together, but also one with a particular resonance in the Iberian world. The International Role of Dutch Printing The Netherlands, and especially Amsterdam, were of course not a particular locus for the Iberian world alone, and in order to assess the importance of Iberian printing there, a brief comment on the international role of the Dutch printing industry needs to be made. During the seventeenth century and a good part of the eighteenth century, the Republic enjoyed the reputation of being Europe s publishing house. Thanks to material factors, such as its excellent commercial and communications network, the quality of printing and paper, and, above all, its climate of tolerance, many books were printed in the Netherlands that could not have been published abroad, including potentially controversial works on religion, philosophy, and science. From a quantitative perspective, the volume of Spanish and Portuguese titles does not measure up to the production in other languages such as French, German, or English. French was by far the dominant language, a position to which the presence of many French exiles living in the Dutch Republic contributed significantly. A personality like Pierre Bayle represents better than anyone else what exploits were possible in a tolerant climate, with his foundation of Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (1684), the most influential literary and philosophical review of that time, and his equally reputed Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697). 14 The presently available data from the Short Title Catalogue of the Netherlands numbers almost ten thousand titles in French printed between 1550 and 1800, representing approximately eighty-five percent of the total production in foreign modern languages. The same catalogue lists only one hundred and seventy-eight titles in Spanish and forty-seven in Portuguese, and although these numbers (a scant two percent) are not a true representation of the approximately eight hundred titles contained 14 P. Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, 2 vols. (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1697). See H. Bots (ed.), Critique, savoir et érudition à la veille des Lumières: Le Dictionaire historique et critique de Pierre Bayle ( ) (Amsterdam 1998).

20 92 harm den boer in our Spanish and Portuguese Printing, it remains a fact that the Iberian part of foreign printing was, numerically, of minor importance. 15 It would seem that the relatively small number of Spanish editions as compared to those in other languages renders little justice to the international position of the Spanish culture during the same period, at least during the larger part of the seventeenth century. Evidently, this fact is explained by the conflict between the Iberian world and the Low Countries during much of the seventeenth century, with repercussions that would reach beyond the peace treaties with both Spain (1648) and Portugal (1661). 16 The Spanish market continued to be served best in the Southern Netherlands, where printing was also affordable and of an excellent quality. Furthermore, works printed in the still Spanish provinces would have the benefit of the necessary official approbations by the representatives of the Crown and the Church. Iberian Jewish Printing By far, most Spanish and Portuguese editions from the Netherlands were printed by or on behalf of the Sephardi Jews of Amsterdam. These editions addressed, in the first place, an internal need, by providing former conversos, or New Christians, with necessary knowledge in order 15 Upon consulting the online Short Title Catalogue of the Netherlands project (www. pica.org), a database with continuous updates thanks to ongoing research, I found (in 2002) the following numbers of works printed within the present-day boundaries of the Netherlands, in the principal foreign languages: French 9,931 85% English 698 6% German 684 6% Italian % Spanish % Portuguese %. The percentages are relative, the languages total put at 100%. The relatively small number of Spanish and Portuguese titles, as compared to SPPNN, is a matter of bibliographical definition (in general, I have included many minor titles, as the so-called Opuscula by Barrios, as separate entries) but can also be explained by the fact that I have researched many collections outside of the Netherlands, which hitherto were not incorporated in the project. 16 Mention should be made, however, of the Dutch interest in Spanish literature, even in times of war; see the informative bibliography by J. Lechner, Repertorio de obras de autores españoles en bibliotecas holandesas hasta comienzos del siglo XVIII (t Gooi-Houten 2001).

21 amsterdam as locus of iberian printing 93 to reconnect with Judaism. At the same time, they reflect the cultural effervescence of Iberian Jewish community life. The editions printed by or on behalf of the Sephardi Jews of the Netherlands constitute a good eighty percent of the total production of Spanish and Portuguese language books that were printed in the Northern Netherlands. From the eight hundred and sixteen bibliographical entries included in Spanish and Portuguese Printing in the Northern Netherlands, five hundred and thirty-four titles (representing sixty-five percent) can be defined as Jewish, 17 whereas from the remaining non Jewish part, comprising two hundred and eighty-two titles (representing thirty-five percent), more than half were either composed, collected, financed, or printed by Dutch Sephardim. 18 The significant number of bibliographic, historiographic, and cultural studies dedicated to the Sephardi Jews of the Netherlands and other parts of the converso, or Western Sephardi, diaspora have provided extensive information on the importance and function of the Spanish and Portuguese culture of the Portuguese Nation. 19 The Sephardim s printed works arose out of the need to provide former conversos with prayer books and Bibles, and, generally, with the major works of Judaism with which they had lost true contact while living in Iberia. As new immigrants continued to join the Sephardi communities well into the eighteenth century, a great many of these works were printed, particularly in Amsterdam. In our bibliography, no less than one hundred and ten editions of Jewish liturgy can be counted, six editions of the complete ( Jewish) Bible, nine editions of chumashim with haftarot, four editions of Psalms, seven editions of targums, and Pirke Avot. 20 The biblical and liturgical literature was complemented by instructions or commentaries on Jewish Law, which provided insight in the practical aspects of Judaism. Furthermore, a whole library of Jewish thought was made available, whether they were translated (including 17 By Jewish is meant: dealing with Jewish religion or Jewish communal life. 18 To give but some examples: Confusión de las confusiones by Joseph Penso de la Vega (1688; SPPNN, n. 636) cannot be called a Jewish work, but its author was a Sephardi Jew; Romances varios (1688; SPPNN, n. 686), a collection of poetry published in the same year, is non-jewish in content, but its publisher, the bookseller Isaac Cohen Faro, was also a Sephardi Jew. 19 There are too many studies to mention separately. I refer to such leading authors as M. Bodian, J. I. Israel, Y. Kaplan, R. H. Popkin, C. Roth, H. P. Salomon, D. M. Swetschinski, or Y. H. Yerushalmi, among many others. 20 SPPNN permits easy insight into the data.

22 94 harm den boer the works of Maimonides, Bahya ibn Paquda, Judah Halevi, and many other classics ), or written by Amsterdam Sephardi authors, such as Menasseh ben Israel, Isaac Aboab, or Judah León Templo. Printed sermons (sixty-six separate editions have been found so far), public discourses on important events, and the rules of the many religious and charitable institutions (forty-three separate publications) reflect the Jewish life that developed in the Amsterdam Sephardi community. Although few of these printed works provide us with actual insight into the personal lives or the internal history of the community, some titles reflect the sometimes-painful religious trajectories of former conversos. Uriel da Costa s banned Exame das tradições fariseas (1624) challenged rabbinic Judaism; Abraham Pereyra s Certeza del camino (1666) and Espejo de la vanidad del mundo (1671), two pious moral treatises full of references and quotations from Iberian Catholic authors, represent the itinerary of a rich merchant who had lived in Madrid and, as a Jew in Amsterdam, repented over his Christian past. The books by Pereira coincide with the tremendous excitement in the Sephardi community of Amsterdam caused by the false messiah Shabbetai Zevi and the deep disenchantment felt afterwards. A whole range of prayer books and pious works published in Spanish around 1666 reflect the impact of the Sabbatian movement in Amsterdam. Iberian literature also occupied a prominent place in Sephardi cultural life. Writers such as Daniel Levi (Miguel) de Barrios, Jacob (Manuel) de Pina, or Joseph Penso de la Vega, together with a whole range of minor poets, wrote Jewish religious literature in their native tongues and celebrated community life with poetry, prose, and even drama. Two conversos who were burnt alive by the Inquisition in Spain in 1655 and 1656 were commemorated by their Jewish relatives in Amsterdam, through a printed collection of poems with contributions by twenty authors. 21 Funerals and weddings of prominent Sephardim would also be accompanied by literary celebrations, much in Golden Age Iberian fashion. It would be a misconception, though, to think of Iberian Jewish printing only in terms of an internal need. Firstly, Amsterdam being the center of the Western Sephardi diaspora, many Spanish and Portuguese editions were exported to Sephardi communities abroad. 21 Elogios que zelosos dedicaron a la felice memoria de Abraham Núñez Bernal... (Amsterdam: [Menasseh ben Israel?], 1656) (SPPNN, n. 363).

23 amsterdam as locus of iberian printing 95 Frequently, Sephardi authors living elsewhere would have their works printed in Amsterdam because of its relative freedom and its printing infrastructure. This is particularly true for Jews living in Hamburg, where, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was no comparable printing industry and freedom was far more restricted due to the strong position of the Lutheran church. 22 Secondly, even the Jewish literature produced by the Amsterdam Sephardim occasionally had a non-jewish reader in mind, as well. Menasseh ben Israel, Judah León Templo, and Jacob Abendana had extensive contacts outside the Jewish community and repeatedly addressed themselves to a Christian audience. Finally, it would be a misconception to think of Iberian Jewish printing only in terms of Jewish or religious works. The culture of the former conversos had an important secular dimension, which reflected the mundane interests of an Iberian merchant community. Prominent writers such as Barrios or Penso de la Vega celebrated contemporary social and political events in a subtle display of the loyalty and aristocratic lifestyle of Sephardi Court Jews; in these works no mention was made of their Jewish religion. As mentioned before, Sephardi printers also published Spanish and Portuguese works for commercial reasons only. This was the case with Summa política by Sebastião César de Meneses, published at the printing house of Menasseh ben Israel in 1650; and with the works printed by Moses Díaz using his Christian name, Miguel. The Gazeta de Amsterdam, printed by David de Castro Tartas between 1662 and 1701, is another example of a publication not meant for a Jewish market alone. The contents of this early newspaper were very much the same as those published in other languages, such as Italian and French, in Amsterdam. Tartas merely profited from the privileged position of Amsterdam as a center for newsgathering, and would count on a readership interested in keeping up-to-date with current events, whether they were Jewish, New Christian merchants, or even interested, Old Christian Iberians. The role of Sephardi printers and authors in works intended for the Iberian market is not always easy to trace, as they were very 22 I have demonstrated that the work by the (probably) Hamburg Sephardi Jew Isaac de Castro, Sobre o principio e restauração do mundo (without printer, 1612) was in fact printed by Albert Boumeester in Amsterdam, as was Samuel da Silva s translation of Maimonides, Libro de la tesuba, in 1613; see H. den Boer, Bibliography and History. Two Rare Works Printed by Isaac de Castro Printed at Hamburg or Amsterdam, in Aus den Quellen. Beiträge zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte. Festschrift für Ina Lorenz zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. A. Brämer et al. (Hamburg 2005), pp

24 96 harm den boer aware of Amsterdam s reputation among the Spanish and Portuguese and occasionally published with a false address. Francisco (Joseph) de Cáceres, Miguel (Daniel Levi) de Barrios, Joseph (Penso) de la Vega, Duarte (Moses) Lopes Rosa, and Manuel de León (Leão) had works printed with such addresses as Frankfurt, Brussels, or Antwerp. David de Castro Tartas was behind the publication of a famous story about the Pirates of the Caribbean, which I will comment on because it gives such insight into the contacts between the Jewish and non-jewish Iberian world that developed in Amsterdam. Physicians, Poets, and Pirates In 1678, a French ship surgeon by the name of Alexander Exquemelin published an amazing story about his adventures among the buccaneers of the Caribbean. Exquemelin was a French surgeon who could not exercise his profession in his home country because of his Protestant religious confession. He had decided to seek his luck in the French colonies in the West Indies, where he could work, but after some hardships he ended up as a surgeon to the buccaneers roaming the Caribbean Sea. When in Jamaica he could no longer continue his practice, because envious colleagues denounced his lack of a diploma, he went to the Netherlands to obtain his professional degree. This he did, but during his stay in Holland he wrote about his adventurous experiences among the pirates, producing a story that was printed in Dutch in 1678 by Ten Hoorn. One of the first translations of the book was into Spanish, published in Cologne by a certain Lorenzo Struickman, in 1681 (fig. 1). 23 Upon closer scrutiny of this edition it becomes immediately clear, however, that the work was not published in the Catholic city of Cologne, but rather, in Amsterdam. It had been translated by a certain Alonso de Bonne-Maison or Buena-Maison, a Spanish physician from Aragon who had studied medicine in Leiden. The late bibliographer Herman de la Fontaine Verwey supposed this Bonne-Maison to be a marrano 23 Piratas de la América y luz a la defensa de las costas de Indias Occidentales (Colonia Agrippina: Lorenzo Struickman, 1681), really printed at Amsterdam by David de Castro Tartas (SPPNN, n. 368).

25 amsterdam as locus of iberian printing 97 belonging to the Sephardi community of Amsterdam; 24 although this is one of De la Fontaine s rare mistakes, he was not far from the truth, because there was important Sephardi involvement in the publication of this book. To start with, the book contained a large poem about the Caribbean islands and some minor poems written by the poet laureate of the Portuguese Jewish congregation of Amsterdam, Daniel Levi de Barrios. Here, Barrios carefully avoided allusions to his religious faith, calling himself Capitan Don Miguel de Barrios, as he always did whenever addressing himself to an Iberian Catholic audience. The book also contains poems by Duarte Lopes Rosa, known in the Sephardi congregation as Moses Rosa. Together with Barrios, Rosa was involved in the cultural and literary life of the Sephardi high society. Rosa was also a physician. I think we can reconstruct how the Spanish translation came into being. Exquemelin, Bonne Maison, and Rosa must have become acquainted as fellows of the medical profession in Amsterdam; they were, so to say, bound to meet as colleagues, foreigners, and as Latinos. Rosa would have introduced these persons to his Sephardi environment; in the first place, to his fellow writer Miguel de Barrios. There is evidence that Bonne-Maison and Barrios were acquainted in a work the latter wrote to celebrate the wedding of a Dutch couple. As this poem was the only work that Barrios wrote for a Dutch personality, I assume it was the Spanish, Christian Bonne-Maison who introduced the Jewish Barrios into Dutch bourgeois society. Conversely, the Sephardi friends of Exquemelin and Bonne-Maison helped to publish the Spanish pirate story in the printing house of David de Castro Tartas, whom I have identified as the real printer behind the invented Lorenzo de Struickman from Cologne. Not only the typographical evidence, but also the engraving used in Barrios s Luna opulenta (published by Tartas just a year before Piratas de la América) points in that direction (fig. 2). As De la Fontaine Verwey has already observed, it is remarkable that Exquemelin s pirate story, which was attractive to a Dutch, German, or English reader, would have been addressed to the Spanish reader at all. Exquemelin not only narrated the deeds and cruelties of the buccaneers, he also exposed the vulnerability of the Spanish colonies in 24 H. de la Fontaine Verwey, The Ship s Surgeon Exquemelin and His Book on the Bucaneers, in Quaerendo 4 (1974), pp

26 98 harm den boer America. Although the translation tried to portray itself as a warning to better defend the Spanish properties, the pride of Spanish readers could easily have been hurt in the process. The ambiguity of the Dutch environment for Iberian printing was, as late as the seventeenth century, still evident. In 1681, the mentioned doctor Alonso de Bonne-Maison appears yet again as translator of a work, this time of the monumental story about the Dutch Revolt by the Jesuit Famiano Strada. Although the content of this work is of undisputed reputation among Spanish Catholic readers, it was again published under the fictive address of Cologne, although it was really printed in Amsterdam (fig. 3). I surmise that another Sephardi printing house, that of Joseph Athias, was involved in the splendid typography of the edition. There existed still another Spanish publication by Bonne-Maison of an entirely different nature, a work of which no copy presently survives. A Spanish adventurer by the name of Don Gabriel Fernández de Villalobos, Marqués de Varinas, discovered upon his stay in Amsterdam that Bonne-Maison had published in 1681 a work under the title Bárbaras tiranías cometidas por los españoles en Indias. Villalobos was so offended by this work s contents that he had the whole stock confiscated at the publisher s house, at his own expense! The Spanish gentleman complained to Amsterdam s municipal authorities about De Bonne-Maison and Exquemelin, who, it turns out, shared a house in Amsterdam. Apparently Villalobos s efforts met with success, because both men left Amsterdam in 1681 and sailed to Jamaica. Sephardi Involvement in the Atlas Mayor The most monumental work among Iberian publications in the Netherlands also includes Sephardi involvement, a fact to which surprisingly little attention has been dedicated. I refer to the Atlas Mayor by Joan Blaeu, published in ten volumes between 1659 and Besides the Spanish edition, Blaeu s opus magnum was issued in Latin, French, Dutch, and German editions. The Spanish edition was, however, the first to be published, and perhaps the most ambitious (fig. 4). In his catalogue of 25 Joan Blaeu, Atlas Mayor o Geografía Blauiana [also called Nuevo Atlas] (Amsterdam, [and beyond]).

27 amsterdam as locus of iberian printing , Joan Blaeu promised the Spanish Atlas in twelve to thirteen volumes; three more than the aforementioned editions. 26 Eventually, the fire at Blaeu s workshop in 1672 destroyed the material for the volumes covering Asia, Africa, and America, curtailing the project. It is not the fire alone, however, that distinguished the Spanish Atlas Mayor from the editions in the other languages. The Spanish edition is distinctive in that the separate volumes do not share a common title, are not numbered, and the years of publication are widely separated. Some volumes were even printed in more than two editions and, contrary to what is generally assumed, from the text of some extant copies it would seem that the printing of the Spanish Atlas went beyond the fateful year of This, together with the particular interest of its translation, calls for a proper study of the Spanish text, which has still to be made. In itself it is remarkable enough that a printer from the rebellious Netherlands would address this most prestigious of all cartographical projects to Philip IV, the king of Spain (with later volumes dedicated to his successor, Charles II). 27 Perhaps Blaeu s family supposed adherence to Catholicism played a part; more probably, the Spanish edition was part of the vast commercial exploits undertaken by the Dutch printer. Significantly, Blaeu addressed a second dedication to Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzmán, the third count of Peñaranda, who had been the Spanish plenipotentiary during the peace negotiations at Münster. It has come to light that Blaeu had sent five volumes of the Spanish Atlas to Philip IV as a gift through the count of Peñaranda. The Dutch printer no doubt hoped to gain acceptance for his cartographic project among wealthy and high-placed Spanish and Portuguese clients. His strategy seems to have worked, given the quality of the published volumes and the considerable amount of copies extant in Iberian libraries. The Spanish edition of Blaeu s Atlas would not have been possible without the efforts of translators belonging to the Sephardi community of Amsterdam. This was no novelty: already before, Rabbi Menasseh 26 H. de la Fontaine Verwey, De Spaanse uitgave van de Atlas van Blaeu, in Uit de wereld van het boek, vol. 3, In en om de Vergulde Sonnewyser (Amsterdam 1979), pp A. Berkhemer, The Spanish Atlas Mayor by Blaeu: New Data, Caert-Tresoor 16 (1997), pp

28 100 harm den boer ben Israel had translated the Nuevo Atlas, published in 1653 by Blaeu s greatest rival, Johan Janssonius. 28 The Sephardi contribution to Blaeu s Atlas Mayor was already referred to by the poet Daniel Levi de Barrios. On several occasions, Barrios mentions his friend Nicolas de Oliver y Fullana, also known as Daniel Judah, as an illustrious cartographer involved in Blaeu s Atlas; 29 in his account on the Sephardi writers of Amsterdam, Barrios also refers to a certain David Nasi as writer of the first volumes of the Atlas. 30 The Sephardi involvement in Blaeu s Spanish Atlas, to my knowledge, never received any serious attention. 31 The apparent lack of Jewish interest in the atlases could explain the absence of research on the subject. Perhaps the assumption that they are a mere collection of maps has prevented scholars from studying the huge textual component of these publications. The Atlas Mayor was, in fact, an ambitious scholarly project that apart from the impressive cartographical work at its basis contained elaborate descriptions of the history and geography of the regions 28 To my knowledge, Menasseh s work as a translator has not received any academic attention. J. H. Hillesum ( Menasseh ben Israel, Nieuw Nederlands Biografi sch Woordenboek, vol. 10 [1937], pp ) mentions that Menasseh participated in the Spanish translation of Janssonius s Nuevo Atlas; J. Werner ( Universiteitsbibliotheek van Amsterdam ontvangt Spaanse Janssonius, Caert-Thresoor. Tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van de kartografi e in Nederland 4 [1985], pp ) reproduces Menasseh ben Israel s letter to Isaac Vossius (1651), where Menasseh mentions that he has finished the translation of Jan Jans Atlas into Spanish; references are from J. H. Coppenhagen, Manuel Dias Soeiro, , A Bibliography ( Jerusalem 1990), n Barrios, Coro de las musas. (Amsterdam/Brussels 1672), p. 226: Al Sargento Mayor Don Nicolás de Olivier y Fullana, grande Astrólogo y erudito escritor de una parte de la Geografía Blaviana intitulada Atlas del Mundo (SPPNN, nn ); idem, Relación de los poetas y escritores de la nación judaica española amstelodama (1682/1683; p. 189) (SPPNN, n. 52). 30 Barrios, Relación, p. 52: David Nasi escrivió los primeros tomos españoles con grande erudición de la geographia blaeviana, los segundos lineó Daniel Judá, aliás Don Nicolas de Oliver y Fullana, cavallero mallorquin, Sargento Mayor en Cataluña y circuncidado coronel de Infanteria en Holanda contra Francia. 31 There is, however, some interesting information about the involvement of Sephardi merchants in the distribution of the Spanish Atlas. In 1952, Clara Bille revealed that after the fire at Blaeu s printing shop, publishers and book traders still sold parts of the Spanish editions. The brokers Elias de Mattos, Jacob van Aaron Pereira, and Moses van Aron Pereira organized an auction on Thursday, 30 August 1731, where they sold parts of the Spanish Atlas. The buyers were all Portuguese Jews: Salomon van Moses de Franco, David Lobo, Elias de Mattos, Isaac de Prado, and Jacques de Prado. They still traded with the Iberian Peninsula. Through their intermediation, the Spanish copies of the Atlas reached the Iberian clientele; C. Bille, Naschrift De Atlas van Blaeu, Jaarboek Amstelodamum, vol. 4, p. 44.