The Low Countries. Jaargang 6

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The Jews in the Netherlands

The five ages of man, represented in an illustration for a book of rhymes, c.1910. Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam.

When discussing the history of the Jews it always makes sense to pause a moment and consider what, exactly, the term ‘Jew’. implies, and whom, exactly, it denotes. Linguistically, the expressions ‘Jew’, ‘Jewish’. and ‘Jewry’ derive from the ethno-geographical designation Judaea, the name of what was once a Middle Eastern kingdom on the west bank of the River Jordan, of which the capital city was Jerusalem. For centuries the Judaean, or Jewish, nation managed to hold its own as a cultural, religious and political entity, in spite of successive waves of Assyrian and Babylonian military conquest, and occupation by the Greeks and Romans. In 63 ce, however, Judaea was integrated into the Roman Empire. A period of unrest and revolt ensued which, in 70 ce, culminated in the dismantling of the state. The people were banished en masse, Jerusalem sacked, and the Temple - which epitomised the very essence of nationhood - razed and burnt. Judaea, in effect, was obliterated from the map.

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The dispersion which followed was cushioned by the fact that there were established diasporic Judaean communities all over Asia Minor, the Levant, and the Middle East to fall back on. Some had existed since ancient times; others evolved as Judaeans - for the usual economic or political reasons - migrated, or as people relocated from one place to another. These settlements had evolved a distinctive way of Jewish life in which the institutionalisation of synagogues (Greek for house of assembly, or gathering), formalised prayer, and study of the Torah, the Law of Moses as enshrined in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, had become an acceptable form of observance to compensate for lack of access to the Temple and the core religious rituals that were exclusive to its priesthood. In the new, post-70 ce situation, rabbis (religious teachers and interpreters of the Law), who were respected community figures both in and outside Judaea, became the appointed custodians of Jewish identity, with the task of instilling a new sense of direction into Jewish life. For this they were ideally equipped because of their mental agility in the exegesis of the Law, and their expertise in applying this in both religious and everyday social contexts.

In a dispersal which eventually took them to all corners of the globe, the expatriates with no homeland to return to felt themselves to be dispossessed and disenfranchised exiles. Permanently trapped abroad, they existed in a no-man's-land of memories on the one hand, and hope of succour on the other, while drawing morale from the glorious epoch of the mighty kings of Israel and Judaea and the conviction that, one day, a leader of the line of David, the mightiest of the kings, would arise and lead them home again. Meanwhile, in anticipation of that day, the preservation of their faith and customs became the Judaeans' paramount concern.

The disintegration of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity and Islam in the fourth and sixth centuries respectively placed Judaism at the interface of two proselytising world religions. Judaism preserved its integrity by firmly rooting itself in the interpretation of the precepts of the Law as codified in the Babylonian Talmud, the authoritative rabbinical reference work on religious law and custom. To this self-perpetuating discipline of

Parokhet (veil for the Holy Ark) from Middelburg, 1820. Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam.

self-appraisal - always in reference to the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts - can be attributed Jewry's infinite capacity for regeneration and reaffirmation, as well as an inherent respect for intellectual creativity. But this did not lead to an isolationist world view, as non-Jews often think; where this may have seemed the case, it was the result of being denied access to the surrounding culture. In the Islamic world, at any rate, cross-fertilisation between Judaic thought, Islamic philosophy, and the Arabic sciences was so developed that one may legitimately speak of symbiosis. Out of this emerged scholars such as Maimonides in the twelfth century, whose synthesis of traditional Jewish and Graeco-Arabic concepts is part of world intellectual history.

In the Christian world, particularly in Western Christendom, Jewry found a far less hospitable environment, the more so from the Crusades onwards. Wherever the Church of Rome reigned supreme, Jews were marginalised by law, often subjected to brutality and plain violence. Invariably, they were at risk of sudden banishment for reasons beyond their control: a ruler's whim, maybe, or some change in the local or international political scenario.

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Trade, commerce, and toleration

Jews first appear in the Low Countries in the thirteenth century, initially in the southern provinces and then, over the next century, in the north. In Guelre, for instance, where the dukes and barons were chronically short of funds for their incessant internecine warfare, Jews were for a while actively welcomed because of the useful financial services they could provide: interest-based money-lending, which the Church proscribed as usury; though they were debarred from virtually every other occupation. In the fifteenth century the Jewish presence in the Netherlands declined again, remaining very sparse until the end of the sixteenth century. Until then, Jewish immigration had by and large been from Germany and beyond. By contrast, the sixteenth century stream was composed of refugees from states where the Inquisition was being enforced with increasing rigour. Particularly relevant to Dutch Jewish history are the expulsions - including conversos, Christianised Jews who had abjured under duress - from Spain following its final reconquest in 1492, and Portugal in 1497, which generated the first colony of Sephardic Jewish merchants in Antwerp by as early as 1511.^1. However, life for this and smaller communities elsewhere in the (then Spanish-ruled) Netherlands continued to be uncertain. The situation changed in 1579 when the northern territories, in the context of the Dutch Revolt, which was in part launched on the back of the Reformation, declared de facto independence from Spain by the Union of Utrecht. This laid the foundations of a state which allowed the Iberian Jews and conversos - collectively known in the vernacular as ‘Portuguese Jews’ - to settle freely and permanently in Amsterdam, where their economic contribution was an important factor in the city's rapid commercial blossoming. As their economic input grew, so did the city administration's toleration of their way of life, creating a climate in which conversos could revert to their Jewish faith. By the early seventeenth century the community had grown so numerous that it split into two administrative units, which together acquired a Jewish burial-ground and undertook joint responsibility for education and poor-relief.

Rembrandt, Menasseh ben Israel. 1636. Etching, 14.9 × 10.3 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

The Sephardic Jews based in the United Provinces were outstandingly successful in carving out a unique position in world trade, finance and shipping. Soon Ashkenazi Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe were also attracted by the limitless potential of the country's meteoric maritime, commercial and industrial growth, especially in the years just before and during the Spanish-Dutch truce of 1609-1621 which, among other benefits, saw a resumption of the lucrative Iberian trade and the foundation of the West India Company. So valuable were the Jews and their trans-continental network of family business contacts to the expanding Dutch mercantile empire that, in 1657, the States-General went out of its way to recognise the resident community as Dutch nationals, although in practice this implied little more than a guaranteed right of abode. The Amsterdam Sephardic Jewish community achieved its peak of wealth, prestige and cultural sophistication roughly between 1648 and 1672. Its intellectual cream included scholars such as Isaac Aboab de Fonseca and Jacob Sasportas, who brought the Amsterdam Sephardic rabbinate into great esteem internationally. Even more famous was Menasseh ben Israel, whose affability and scholarship brought him great respect in Christian circles. He succeeded in gaining the

1. See The Low Countries 1995-96: pp. 21-26

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support of Oliver Cromwell for legal readmission of Jews to England in 1656. In literature, Daniel Levi de Barrios and Joseph Penso de la Vega ranked among the foremost contemporary writers and poets. The leading Jewish moral philosopher of the day was Isaac Orobio de Castro. His main concern was to stamp out syncretic leanings in ex-converso circles, in the context of which Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza^2. and Juan de Prado were expelled from the community. Foremost among the great Amsterdam Sephardic financial dynasties were the De Pintos and the Pereiras, who dominated the capital market, while Jacob Delmonte topped the league in the import of Spanish wool, and was a principal shareholder in the West India Company. Outstripping even the latter in wealth were Antonio Lopes Suasso and his son Francisco, chief financial agents to the Spanish crown on the Amsterdam money market. Their fortune was chiefly invested in the Dutch East Indies Company, the Dutch Republic's flagship enterprise which for over a century was the world's largest mercantile organisation. Another member of the community, the magnate-diplomat Jeronimo Nunes da Costa, acted for the Portuguese crown. Nunes specialised in the diamond trade, but retained a wide-ranging portfolio of interests which included the import of figs from the Algarve and sugar and tobacco from Brazil. He was also among the main benefactors of Amsterdam's New Portuguese Synagogue, a gem of Classicist architecture built between 1671 and 1675, which truly bespeaks the grandeur and status of Golden Age Sephardic Jewry. The precious palisander wood for the masterly and still perfectly preserved heykhal, or Ark, was another of Nunes' gifts.

The close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth saw a large influx of Ashkenazi Jews settle not only in Amsterdam but throughout the country. But as these newcomers arrived just when the Republic's hegemonic grip on the world market was entering on an irreversible relative decline, the majority remained as poor as when they came, scratching a living as best they could from small trade and street vending, still virtually the only options open to Jews. Even among the Sephardim, the recession eventually left more than half their number utterly pauperised. In effect, by the end of the century, the bulk of the Jewish population was entirely dependent on poor-relief dispensed by the parnassim, the governing body of the community, which was all-powerful among the Sephardim and Ashkenazim alike.

Sephardic tallith corner, Amsterdam, 1924. Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam.

At the same time, a wind of social and political change was rising which would completely transform the situation of Netherlands Jewry before the eighteenth century was out. From the 1720s the rationalist philosophies of the German and French Enlightenments became current among Dutch intellectuals. Articulate writers and commentators began to plead the case for a more civilised approach towards the Jews, and a reappraisal of the socio-religious prejudice and politico-economic constraints to which they were still subject. Dutch Jewish intellectuals arrived at similar conclusions, in part through Moses Mendelssohn's influential school of German Jewish rationalist philosophy.

As events in France rolled on towards the age of liberty, equality and fraternity, a mood of insecurity overtook the Dutch Republic, which could not hope to remain unaffected by revolutionary political developments so close at hand. Among Dutch Jewry, confusion about the rightful place and identity

2. See The Low Countries 1994-95: pp. 43-51

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Martin Monnickendam, Interior of the Great Synagogue. 1935. Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam.

of Jews in a non-Jewish society grew apace. On the one hand, they were seen and treated as aliens; a despised people, differentiated and set apart by an ethnic identity defined in terms of religious and cultural norms and values. On the other, they were established nationals in a country where, in contrast to many other states, they had always fared tolerably well. Change was an unknown quantity, and could only be viewed with trepidation.

Emancipation

Change, when it came, came from outside with Napoleon's invasion of the United Republic in 1795: a new state, the Batavian Republic, was proclaimed and a new constitution, enshrining the ideals of the French Revolution, introduced. Thus, on 2 September 1796, Jews became full and equal citizens by a National Assembly declaration stating that ‘no Jew shall be alienated from the enjoyment of any right or benefit accruing to Batavian citizenship’.

De jure emancipation plunged the traditional notion of Jewishness into disarray. Stripping away the rationale for Jewry's self-perception as a nation exposed every facet of custom, tradition and religion to scrutiny, redefinition, and realignment. Citizenship had brought duties and obligations as well as rights. In particular, it had brought the Jewish religion into the pub-

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lic domain, as a consequence of which it became the state's business to bring Judaism into line with the Christian congregations. Thus central guidelines dealing with all aspects of internal organisation, worship and religious instruction were drawn up and implemented. Reform was expedited by the fact that the Emperor's younger brother, King Louis Napoleon of Holland (1806-1810), took a highly personal interest in the assimilation of his Jewish subjects. His reign saw the creation of an Upper Consistory with supreme authority over all the Jewish denominations, while all kinds of existing regional and local structures and affiliations were dissolved and replaced by standardised, elected governing bodies. The government also appointed commissions to lay the groundwork for modernising the Jewish educational system, and for synchronising synagogue worship with what was deemed a proper order of religious conduct and decorum for established Judaism. In education, among other measures, Yiddish was to be scrapped from the syllabus to ensure that Jew and non-Jew had an equal education. Reform was not affected by the fall of the Napoleonic regime, but continued according to schedule after the Orange restoration and the accession of Willem i (1813-1840).

Jewry's integration into Dutch life and culture was by no means smooth: between equality before the law and true one-nation brotherhood lay many rivers to cross. For Jews the process created anguish and divisiveness, while the surrounding Gentile society rarely extended a fraternal hand. Division was at its most obvious in the greater readiness of the economically and socially successful top layer of the community to sacrifice some of the traditional Jewish values for the sake of integration. Indeed, there was a demonstrable correlation between upward social mobility and a progressive estrangement from Judaism. (Here it should be noted that unlike their German contemporaries, who were experiencing similar developments, Dutch Jews were not inclined to turn to conversion as a shortcut to full assimilation.) Disunity was also reinforced because the religious leadership was not disposed to make concessions. The net result of all this was the creation of an increasingly unbridgeable cultural and religious divide between the poorer, traditionalist Orthodox majority and the steadily growing, economically viable, secularised upper stratum.

By and large, education was the state's main vehicle for implementing a rigorously enforced programme of Jewish acculturation into mainstream society. From 1820 Jewish schoolchildren learnt Dutch as their native language, and Dutch history and culture as their official past. Hebrew and Jewish tradition continued to be taught, but they were taught in Dutch with the aid of translated texts. In 1857, following the introduction of sweeping educational legislation, Jewish charitable schools were closed and the children shifted into the (free) state sector. This too helped to accelerate the erosion of a specifically Jewish orientation to life. Yet, throughout, certain basic elements remained intact. The main Jewish festivals continued to be universally observed, while the time-honoured rites of circumcision, marriage, and death were respected as of old.

Meanwhile, slowly but surely, the Jewish community was making its way into the political decision-making process and in 1848 Jews were admitted to parliament. All the same, it was at municipal level - starting with Amsterdam - that Jews first became a real force in politics. In The Hague,

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Jewish cemetery, c.1958 (Photo by Lies Wiegman).

where Jews would have a strong impact on the political stage in the long run, the first generation of Jewish politicians found themselves dogged by resentment, social discrimination and straightforward obstructiveness. The one circumstance not to their disadvantage was that within the corridors of power there existed an intensity of antipathy between Protestant and Catholic (the latter of whom had been emancipated at the same time as the Jews) that far outweighed their common loathing of the Jews. In Amsterdam, however, Jews were soon rising to positions of sufficient political influence and social prestige to help alleviate the lamentable conditions in which many very poor Jews, and non-Jews, too, were living. Dr Samuel Sarphati stands out in this respect. The scion of a wealthy family, he graduated in medicine from Leiden University and began practising in Amsterdam, where he was appalled by the poverty, deprivation, and poor housing and living conditions he saw around him. A man of singular energy and personal charisma, Sarphati succeeded in pushing through a comprehensive, low-cost housing programme, and was besides instrumental in the creation of a handsome middle-class neighbourhood which today still bears his name. Another contemporary figure who promoted philanthropic causes was the banker Abraham Carel Wertheim, who organised the capitalisation of the Dutch railways, and became the first Jew to sit on the board of the Nederlandse Bank, the central bank. Although these were by no means isolated cases, on balance the handful of Jews preeminent in public life at any one time were never enough to make any great difference to the Jewish community.

The briefest of glances at the situation in the beginning and at the end of the nineteenth century reveals the extent to which a previously change-resistant Dutch Jewish society had changed. Most significantly, leaving aside the formal establishments of an official Portuguese-Israelite Church (sic) Community (Sephardic) and a Netherlands-Israelite Church (sic) Community (Ashkenazi), any meaningful distinction between Sephardim and Ashkenazim had all but disappeared. The effects of assimilation and adaptation were evident in every facet of religious, social and private life. Still, for most Jews, the Jewish identity and Jewish background remained a giv-

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en. So it is not entirely surprising that only a very few ever renounced Judaism definitively, crossing over into general society via marriage or conversion.

Between 1869 and 1940 the Jewish population more than doubled from 68,000 at the beginning of the period, to 115,000 in 1920, and 140,000 in 1940. The last figure does not take into account the thousands of German Jews who moved to the Netherlands in the 1930s. Insofar as a community spirit prevailed, this revolved around going to synagogue, being involved in charitable good causes, and following the independent Jewish press. The latter reached a very high percentage of the Jewish population and, even now, practically every Jewish household gets the Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad (New Israelite Weekly), which first came out in 1865, delivered on the doormat. In relation to other established religious communities, however, Judaism could scarcely count as cohesive. As a result of this, Jewish interests never coalesced into one of the institutionalised (denominational and political) pillars on which the Dutch power structure rested from the beginning of the present century until the sixties. The seeds of this anomaly originate with the founding fathers of Jewish emancipation, who were in no doubt that Jewish integration was best served by confining Judaism and

The fence around the Jewish district in Amsterdam, 1941 (Photo Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam).

Jewish racial self-awareness to the private sphere. For its part, the Jewish community developed no new internal bonding mechanisms to replace the old ones. As citizens however, though not as Jews per se, Jews were extremely active on many social fronts. Jewish workers, for instance, played a prominent role in pioneering the labour movement. In particular, the powerful, overwhelmingly Jewish, Netherlands Diamond Workers Federation - which was established in 1894 by Henri Polak, who was also in the vanguard of Dutch socialism - was the benchmark of early Dutch trade union organisation. Jews were also strongly represented in the arts and sciences. Jozef Israels, for example, was the outstanding painter of the Hague School. Aletta Jacobs was the first woman to go to university, the first female physician, and a pioneer of women's rights.^3. Nevertheless, in spite of this considerable social and cultural input, anti-Semitism was never far below the surface of mainstream consciousness; stereotypical images of Jews in social and religious contexts featured regularly in the press, on stage, and in vernacular humour. This was certainly a contributory factor in the prompt response to the clarion call of Zionism (1897) for a new, world-wide Jewish nationalism. The Dutch Zionist Federation was duly established in 1899, but thereafter the founding membership was very slow to grow. The movement never really caught on because neither orthodox, patriotic, liberal, nor socialist Jews saw all that much point in it. This too, bears out the extent of fragmentation among Dutch Jewry at the very time when Jews elsewhere were consolidating.

3. See The Low Countries 1997-98: pp. 296-298

Decimation

Nothing was the same after 1933. With Hitler's rise to power, tens of thousands of German Jews needed help and support to obtain entry into the Netherlands. Dutch Jews, torn between compassion and fear lest an influx of refugees should exacerbate existing anti-Jewish feeling, vacillated in re-

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sponding to appeals for solidarity from their beleaguered coracials and coreligionists. With the German invasion of the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, however, the matter was out of their hands. Anti-Semitism, as in the Reich, became official state policy. The abrogation of Jewish civil rights was but the prelude to an orchestrated strategy of segregation, registration, arrest, robbery, deportation and murder. Between the beginning of 1941 and autumn 1943 more than 140,000 Jews were caught up in the Nazi apparatus of whom the majority, some 107,000 souls, were deported from transit camps such as Westerbork and Vught over the period 15 July 1942 to 17 September 1944. Of these only 5,500 were destined to survive the concentration and extermination camps, while just under 16,000 more managed to live through the war by going into hiding or fleeing.^4.

The decimation of Dutch Jewry was all-determinant to the post-war evolution of the Dutch Jewish community. In the years immediately preceding and following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, a further 5,000 Jews left the country to carve out a new existence there. Since then the official community has continued to decline. As against this, a host of more contemporary, less regimented affiliations has sprung up in the form of social and cultural clubs which aim to foster a sense of identity with Judaism. In common with diasporic Jews everywhere, the unifying forces for Dutch Jews today are modern Israel and the events of the Holocaust.

Looking at organised, observant Judaism in the 1990s, the scene is dominated by the Liberal Jewish congregations, with a combined membership of just over 2,500. Traditional, orthodox Judaism has gradually become the preserve of the Lubavitsch rabbinate. One curious phenomenon is the presence of a large group of Israeli immigrants, which currently numbers about 10,000 people. Although many of these have lived in the Netherlands for years and are more or less permanently settled, they for the most part go their own way in complete detachment from their surroundings. More recently, the Jewish population has been augmented by hundreds of Jews from Russia, whose impact has yet to be seen.

All in all, taking into account this still-growing diversity, there is plenty of reason to assert that Jewish life in the Netherlands at this point in time is functioning, and full of variety and interesting possibilities.

wout jac, van bekkum

Translated by Sonja Prescod.

4. See The Low Countries 1994-95: pp. 186-194

Further reading

blom, j.c.h. et al., Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland. Amsterdam, 1995.

brasz, chaya, ‘Continuity and Change in the Post-War Jewish Community in the Netherlands’. In: Proceedings of the Symposium on the Jews of the Low Countries, London 1997 (forthcoming).

kaplan, yozef, ‘The Intellectual Ferment in the Spanish-Portuguese Community of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam’. In: Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy II. Jerusalem, 1992.

michman, jozeph, Dutch Jewry during the Emanicipation Period 1787-1815. Gothic Turrets on a Corinthian Building. Amsterdam, 1995.