The Correspondence of theMahamad of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries1 By R. D. Barnett, M.A., Litt.D., F.B.A., F.S.A. IHE extent to which the Mahamad2 (Wardens) of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of London have made public their records shows a remarkable spirit of liberality and enterprise which might well serve as an encouragement and example to others. Already in the last century James Picciotto3 was granted access to their records, and for the Bicentenary of Bevis Marks Synagogue in 1902, the late Dr. Gaster, a former occupant of my present presidential office, and Haham of the was to use congregation, the first their records to make a general survey, theHistory of theAncient Synagogue of Bevis Marks (1901), which?whatever its defects?was no less remarkable for being the first of its kind than for being written in the incredibly short space of six months. It may be also noted that, as has recently come to light, a Dr. Gaster prepared number of detailed appendices for a second volume which, though they got as far as proof, were never published. Since then, we have had my father's translation of the firstMinute Book,4 his history of the Congregation,5 and theAbstracts ofKetuhoth orMarriage Contracts from 1687 to 1837;6 Treasures of a London Temple1 (a description of the silver and other ritual appurtenances) and finally the lateMr. Hyamson's admirable history, The Sephardim of England, published in 1951 for the 250th anniversary of the opening of the Synagogue. After these distinguished pre? decessors ofmine have skimmed off the cream of Anglo-Sephardi history (and I have made no mention of the labours of Lucien Wolf, and of others, in fields outside the Synagogue's own records), itmay well seem that there is little left for us to garner. And now it is probably true that little but subsidiary work (though there could be plenty to of it) remains be done in the archives of the Synagogue?with the possible exception of the one field upon which I have chosen here to speak. Yet even here what I have to say is largelymarginal comments to the great works ofmy predecessors. The correspondence of theMahamad has been little read and less studied. It is particularly useful in throwing additional light on well-known domestic matters, but most of all because it reflects the whole pattern and picture of the foreign relations of the London Synagogue. This is a subject which has hitherto not been particularly 1 Presidential address delivered before the Jewish Historical Society of England on 4th November, 1958. 2 In this article, the traditional spellings used by the Spanish and Portuguese Jews for certain are of more titles used, instead philologically accurate transliterations, e.g. Haham (for Hahham) Mahamad Saliah &c. 3 (forMa'amad) (forShaliahh) Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History, London, 1875. Second edition: Edited with notes by Israel Finestein: 1956 * (Soncino Press). El Libro de Los Acuerdos, O.U.P., 1931. 5 Bevis Marks Records, Part I, O.U.P., 1940. e Bevis Marks Records, Part II, O.U.P., 1945. 7 By A. G. Grimwade and others, ed. R. D. Barnett, London, 1951. 1 Jewish Historical Society of England is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England ® www.jstor.org 2 THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE MAHAMAD studied,1 obviously because it could be said that domestic affairshave deserved priority. I shall hope in this paper to repair this omission of the past, treating firstof some internal matters, then of British matters overseas, then those of Europe and theHoly Land. The correspondence in question, with a few exceptions, consists of outgoing letters, in the form of several hundreds of copies, which from the year 5451 (1691) were written in at the end of theMinute Books of theMahamad, a custom continued until the end of the eighteenth century.2 Occasionally copies of letters inward are found incor? porated into the text of theMinutes of a meeting of Elders orMahamad, but these are usually about purely domestic matters such as legacies, divorces, marriages. The languages employed in the correspondence are various, ranging over the following in order of frequency: Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French and Hebrew, of the last there being but one example. But fortunately it does not seem to have been necessary for the then Secretary of the Synagogue (or Chancellor as he was chiefly and rather grandly called) to be a master of all these tongues, as very often the copies of the letters at least at first appear to be in different hands. The commonest was, of course, Portuguese, the recognized vernacular of the Congregation for the firsthundred years of its existence, afterwhich English gradually took over. In 1803 Jacob Mocatta pointed out that Portuguese was unfamiliar to most members of the Congregation, but English was not established as the official language until 1819. Spanish was used for writing letters to certain Sephardic communities abroad, among whom it was more current than Portuguese. It may be asked why, if the Congregation was founded in 1656, there should be no copies of letters earlier than 1691. There were certainly foreign relations before that date, and it is certain that lettersmust have been exchanged. The paucity of records in fact from the seventeenth century in general is peculiar. In his introduction to the Libro de los Acuerdos, in effect the Synagogue's firstMinute Book which begins in 1663, my father suggested that it had a predecessor, now lost. So, too, with marriage records of theKahal, none of which survive before 1687. The absence of a marriage register prior to 1687 is explained by the assumption that it was retained by Haham Jacob Abendana who died in 1686, since itwas originally the practice that they were written by theHaham himself and that they should be under theHaham's charge; and we know the present series of Registers was begun with a set of threeRegisters presented or rather, returned, to theKahal in 1744 by Haham Isaac Nieto, which he had either written himself or received from his father,Haham David Nieto.3 It is similarly then possible that copies of synagogal correspondence earlier than 1691 were kept by an individual and lost; but it is also most probable that theywere destroyed, as part of a general policy which seems to have been decided on at an early date, to draw a veil over the awkward truth that the origins of the Synagogue lay under the Commonwealth (whose official acts the Stuart Government at the Restoration declared null and void 1 Mention, however, might be made of a pamphlet of 20 pages by the late Paul Goodman entitled Bevis Marks in History, a Survey of the External Influences of the Congregation Sahar Asamaim, Bevis Marks, London. (1934) This brochure, however, is an essay in publicity, rather than a contribution to historical studies. See also A. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England (London 1951) ch. ix. 2 The volumes which I have used in the preparation of this paper are MSS. 103 (5438-5484), 104 105 106 and 107 (5484-5511),3 (5511-5536), (5537-5548) (5548-5554). They must have been those of Hahamim Ailyon, David and Isaac Nieto. An inventory of books and papers recorded under the Minutes of the Mahamad for 7th Iyar, 5523 (1763), showed that a fourth book ofMarriage Registers had then been received through Is. Lumbrozo de Mattos. This must have been that of Haham Gomes de Mesquita. THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE MAHAMAD 3 and overturned) and to suggest instead that the Synagogue was founded in the days of the Merry Monarch,1 a belief only finally and completely dispelled by the work of Lucien Wolf and Wilfred Samuel.2 Of this policy of mystification we have clear evidence in a letter addressed to Ishac Abraham Cohen de Lara of Amsterdam, written on 20th Tisry, 5466 (1705). This gentleman, a bookseller and publisher,3 had written on 29th September to theMahamad, stating that he proposed to republish some works of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel concerning the resettlement of the Jews in England, and, as such a publication would be of advantage to the Synagogue, he wished to dedicate it to the gentlemen of theMahamad. The Mahamad replied that, as "absent matters are very differentfrom those which one sees before one's eyes, they are positive that itwould be more damaging than beneficial, and therefore beg him to refrain from his intentions of publishing thiswork until circumstances improve." It is quite clear from this letter that they felt that the less said about their connection with the still hated Common? wealth, the better. Internal Affairs We turn first to the internal affairs touched on in the correspondence. Here the recurrent theme, rather surprisingly, is that of poverty. By this is meant not that of theKahal as a whole but of its less fortunate members, who have to be supported. This appears repeatedly as grounds for refusing appeals for help from congregations abroad, but it seems at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth to be substantiated.4 In 1689 the Government ofWilliam III found it necessary in its struggle against the Stuart cause to impose a system of passes at the English ports on all foreigners coming into the country. A list of Jews among them compiled from the state records covering the years 1689 to 1696 was published by Israel Abrahams.5 From 1692 numerous persons entering are marked in the lists as "poor Jews"; others not so marked may have been; almost all are Sephardim, and in a letter addressed to Senor Joseph de la Penha,6 apparently in Holland, 1692, theMahamad warn him to discontinue forwarding poor people to London as "His Majesty's Council have just passed a new Order forbidding entry at the ports without a passport which costs 1 The facts are admitted grudgingly by the authors of the Petition of 1689 "The Case of the Jews Stated" (Henriques, "Proposals for Special Taxation of the Jews after the Revolution," Trans.