Amsterdam—Benveniste Talmud: Preparatory Phase

chapter 1 Amsterdam—Benveniste Talmud: Preparatory Phase The voice of rejoicing and salvation known as remonstrants. The latter group, which favored Psalms 118:15 the power of the state over that of the Church, provided the Jews as an example in support of their appeal for tol- Amsterdam (Almsterdam) is one of the great cities in eration in a request to the magistracy of Amsterdam in Jewish history. It was a home and refuge to generations 1617. The appeal included “even to the Jews” who deny the of persecuted Jews, a citadel of tolerance in an intolerant founder of Christianity, “whom the petitioners regard as world. Amsterdam, the Dutch Jerusalem, became one of their only savior.”3 the leading cities of Western Jewry. Continuous Jewish The states of Holland appointed a commission— settlement, from successive waves of refugees seeking a based on prior resolutions (dated March 4th and 17th of haven from oppression, resulted in a multi-cultured, intel- 1615)—to address the question of whether Jews should lectually rich community. be allowed to settle in the states of Holland and, if so, The first Jews (conversos) to come to the Netherlands under what conditions. Among the members of the com- originally settled in Emden.1 Wishing to return to Juda- mission was the famed jurist Hugo Grotius, the author of ism, R. Moses Uri Levi advised them to go to Amsterdam De jure belli ac pacis (Concerning the Law of War and where they would be less conspicuous. He suggested that Peace), remembered as the “father of international law.” they rent a house in the Jonker Straat locality and that Grotius dealt with the question of Jewish settlement in a they “bind a scarlet thread” to their house as the spies sent document entitled Remonstrantie nopende de orders, die by Joshua advised Rahab to do (Joshua 2:17). Sometime in de landen van Holland en West Friesland dienen gesteld afterward, on Yom Kippur, the police burst in, terrifying op de Joden. the Portuguese returnees, and demanded that they pres- Grotius—it appears that his opinion was not unanimous ent their Catholic images. “The parnas, Jacob Tirado, among the members of the commission—responded in explained in fluent Latin that they had come two thou- favor of permitting Jewish settlement and permitting the sand miles in order not to be Catholics; and permission exercise of the Jewish religion. Grotius wrote a separate was given to them to build a synagogue. In a short while Joden Reglement, consisting of forty-nine articles, con- the original ten families grew to four hundred.”2 cerning the conditions under which Jews might practice Jews from Central Europe also sought refuge in their religion. Although this document contained restric- Amsterdam from the havoc of the Thirty Years’ War. Pol- tions that would be considered onerous today, it was an ish Jewish refugees from the Chmielnicki massacres enlightened appeal for tolerance in its time.4 followed in 1648–49; and then Lithuanian Jews—refugees Once established in Amsterdam, the Sephardim from the Swedish invasion of that country in 1655— became successful and wealthy merchants. The 200- followed. By 1674 the Jewish population of Amsterdam was penny tax assessment of 1631 included Bento Oserio at approximately seventy-five hundred, of whom twenty-five fl. 50,000 and Christoffel Mendes at fl. 40,000, both of hundred were Sephardim. Marrano families. Although the freedom, wealth, and In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the states accomplishments of the Amsterdam Jewish communi- of Holland began to address the question of how to deal ties are justifiably lauded, Jews experienced numerous with the growing Jewish presence. The Dutch response was restrictions. The Jews, who represented only 1.5 percent of prompted not only by the growing number of Spanish and Amsterdam’s population, were not the wealthiest compo- Portuguese Jewish refugees, but also by a religious dispute nent. Their participation in the city’s guilds was initially between the strict Calvinists and the party of Arminius, restricted to the booksellers’ guild. Allowing Jewish participation in the booksellers’ guild can be attributed to the 1 Conversos (Marranos) are Jews who were forced upon threat of death to convert to Christianity in Spain and Portugal in the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries or their descendants, many of whom 3 Quoted in Arthur K. Kuhn, “Hugo Grotius and the Emancipation of practiced Judaism secretly until they could practice it openly again. the Jews in Holland,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical 2 Martin Lowenthal, A World Passed By: Great Cities in Jewish Diaspora Society 31 (1928): 175. History (New York, 1933; reprint, 1961), 189–90. 4 Kuhn, “Hugo Grotius and the Emancipation,” 173–77. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004376731_003 28 chapter 1 fact that Jews would not be competitors, but would print century, Amsterdam had become a European printing books in Hebrew, and even if in the vernacular, for their center.8 A sense of the scale of the book business can fellow Jews.5 Nevertheless, this was an important guild, be realized from the fact that “[n]early fifteen hundred given Amsterdam’s position in the book trade. seventeenth-century Dutch book-auction catalogues are The Low Countries played a prominent role in the his- known to survive.”9 The number of book printers subse- tory of printing. In Holland, a thriving mercantile nation quently declined, however, so that by the period from 1725 boasting one of Europe’s foremost printing industries, to 1749 there were only 191 book printers in the city. the first printed book dates to 1473 (Utrecht) and the first Given the Jewish settlement, the freer atmosphere, and Amsterdam imprint to 1506. Amsterdam’s Hebrew presses the existence of a flourishing printing industry in Amster- would become the leading Hebrew presses of Europe, dam, it is not surprising that it became a Hebrew printing providing not only Western but also Eastern Europe center. Indeed, the Hebrew printing-houses of Amster- with a steady supply of Hebrew books for centuries. dam dominated the Hebrew printing industry in the same A prominent, early sixteenth-century press in Antwerp manner as their non-Jewish counterparts dominated the that printed Hebrew titles belonged to Christopher Plan- printing industry in Europe. From the era of Menasseh tin, described as the most important sixteenth-century ben Israel to 1732 (slightly more than a century), there were printer of Hebrew books after Bomberg. 318 printers of Hebrew books in Amsterdam.10 The Hebrew It is estimated that the output of the Dutch presses in presses published as many as 1,449 titles in the century the seventeenth century exceeded the combined produc- from 1640 to 1739, with as many as 246 works appearing tion of the presses of all the other European countries. in the decade 1710–19, in contrast to the four decades from Within Amsterdam the number of book printers rose from 1600 to 1639, when seven, four, ten, and twenty-six titles two from 1440 to 1449 to thirty-eight in the time period of were published, respectively.11 1550 to 1599, ninety-six from 1600 to 1624, 154 in the 1625– The first printed book with Hebrew letters in the Neth- 49 period; 190 from 1650 to 1674, and peaking to 273 from erlands was the Epistola apologetica magistri Pauli de 1675 to 1699, and then declining afterward. In Amsterdam Middelburgo ad doctores Lovanienses (Louvain, undated at its height, in excess of 30,000 people supported them- but attributed to 1488), although that work was preceded selves through a facet of the book trade. Amsterdam’s by Johannes Cellarius’s Opuscula quattor, which showed printing industry was enhanced by its position as a center the Hebrew alphabet in woodcut letters.12 The first of Protestant propaganda.6 Hebrew work printed in Amsterdam was not printed for The Jewish community, too, was actively engaged in Jews. The Familie David by the Protestant theologian Hugh printing. The issue of Jewish printing had been dealt with by Grotius in article XVI of his Joden Reglement. Grotius 8 Much of this introductory material appears in my Printing the wrote that Jews “may have, utilize and cause to be printed Talmud: A History of the Individual Treatises Printed from 1700 to in this country any book, with the exception of those 1750 (Leiden: Brill, 1999). I repeat it here because it is pertinent which contain words of blasphemy or contempt.” Bloom to the chapters that follow. writes that Jews did not require permission from the city 9 Giles Mandelbrote, “A New Edition of the Distribution of Books by Catalogue: Problems and Prospects,” The Papers of the Biblio- to publish what they thought or believed. Furthermore, graphical Society of America 89 (1995): 407. the city’s non-Jewish authorities did not in any way hin- 10 Bloom, Economic Activities, 59. der Jews from printing and circulating the products of 11 Yeshayahu Vinograd, Thesaurus of the Hebrew Book: Listing of the Jewish presses. He concludes that “The Church Coun- Books Printed in Hebrew Letters since the Beginning of Printing circa 1469 through 1863, vol. 1 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1993–95), cil of Amsterdam supported by such men as Voetius and xxiv–xxv. For one aspect of the book trade in Amsterdam, see Maresius tried to censor books printed by Jews, but the Marvin J. Heller, “The Hebrew Book Trade as Reflected in Book government would not hear of it.”7 Catalogues,” Quaerendo 26 (1996): 245–57. That the issue of Hebrew printing was raised 12 L. Fuks and R. G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography in the in Amsterdam is to be expected.

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