2 - Refuge and Opportunity: The Geography of a Jewish Migration

Summary

Te Deum laudamos Sancto, Sancto, Sancto,

Adonai, Sabaoth, Omnipotent.

Let my soul chant forthright

The heavenly and never-ending hymn of praise:

For without delay and terror,

Shipwreck, storm or other misfortune,

My eyes now gaze on Amsterdam before me,

And I am free of the Pit and of so many enemies.

A worthy and divine analogy,

My spirit recognizes the evidence

That he who puts his faith in you finds you:

In your infinite and holy Providence

Protection sought is found,

If sought with just and proper reverence.

DAVID JESURUN, the ‘CHILD POET’

THE overwhelming majority of the immigrant settlers of seventeenth-century Amsterdam's Portuguese Jewish community were born in Portugal, Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, or France. Most, if not all, of the immigrants from Spain, Antwerp, and France were themselves the sons and daughters or grand children of Portuguese parents and grandparents. On the one hand, then, almost all Portuguese Jewish settlers in Amsterdam were Portuguese natives, at varying removes. On the other hand, not all Portuguese expatriates, nor even all New Christian émigrés, settled in Amsterdam or even in a Jewish community. Some remained in Christian countries where Judaism was proscribed; others settled in other Jewish communities; and still others stayed in Amsterdam for only a short time, before settling in Jewish or Christian communities elsewhere. Before, during, and after the establishment of the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam, there existed a larger Portuguese New Christian and Jewish diaspora spreading across geographical and religious boundaries in ever-changing configurations.

The Genesis Of A Diaspora

The origins of this Portuguese diaspora go back to events in Spain in 1492. In that year the remaining Jews of Spain who had hitherto contrived to evade or resist the forces, pressures, or temptations of a century of conversions were expelled from the lands of the Catholic monarchs Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. An uncertain percentage converted at the last moment in order to gain permission to remain in Spain. A great many, probably the majority, decided to leave and sought refuge in North Africa, in Italy, in Ottoman Greece and Turkey, and, especially, in Portugal. Thus came into being the first Iberian Jewish or Sephardi diaspora.