Sephardi Jewish converts in Early Modern Amsterdam: The Quest for Zion In The Dutch Republic

Jerusalem on the Amstel: The Quest for Zion in the Dutch Republic tells the story of the Iberian New Christians or conversos – Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism – who arrived in Amsterdam in the early 1600s. In post-Reformation Netherlands, they encountered something new, Freedom of Conscience, a fundamental tenet inscribed in law by the new Dutch Republic’s Treaty of Utrecht (1579). This freedom enabled the Iberian community to rediscover its ancestral faith, granted the title of ‘The Portuguese Nation of the Hebrews’, a contractual status that guaranteed them legal autonomy.

The first part of my book explores the choices and dilemmas faced in the formation of this new Jewish community in Amsterdam. I demonstrate the extent to which the conversos drew on the memory of Judaism of their ancestors to invent this new identity. In Amsterdam the new Jews nurtured the ‘Hope of Israel’, a Messianic chain of desire to return to Zion, while creating in Amsterdam their Dutch Jerusalem, a proto-Zionist enclave. The second part of my book turns to today’s Dutch Portuguese Jews and traces the echoes of this once prosperous past on the current declining, dwindling community. Through interviews and research in Amsterdam, including with Holocaust survivors, it addresses the theme of memory creation and its relevance in the formation of community. By weaving past and present histories, the two distinct parts of the book make clear the importance of generational memory in the invention of identity and how it resonates in our time. The doctoral commentary gives the book its academic framework, showing clearly the contributions it makes to existing literature and outlining the methods and approaches I used in my research.