Poverty and Welfare Among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam

National Jewish Book Awards Winnerof the Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy for Sephardic Culture, 2012. Early modernAmsterdam was a prosperous city renowned for its relative tolerance, and manypeople hoping for a better future, away from persecution, wars, and economicmalaise, chose to make a new life there.

Conversos and Jews from many countrieswere among them, attracted by the reputed wealth and benevolence of thePortuguese Jews who had settled there.

Behind the facadeof prosperity, however, poverty was a serious problem.

It preoccupied theleadership of the Portuguese Jewish community and influenced its policy onadmitting newcomers: the struggle to keep poverty under control and ensure thatfinances were available for welfare was paramount. TirtsahLevie Bernfeld looks at poverty and welfare from the perspective of bothbenefactors and recipients.

She analyses benefactors’ motives for philanthropyand charts its dimensions; she also examines the decision-making processes ofcommunal bodies and private philanthropists, identifying the culturalinfluences that shaped their commitment to welfare.

At the same time herdetailed study succeeds in bringing the poor to life: she examines what broughtthem to Amsterdam, aspects of their daily life in the petitions they sent tothe different welfare institutions, and the survival strategies offered bywork, education, and charity.

She also considers the related questions ofsocial mobility and the motivation of the poor for joining the AmsterdamPortuguese community.

Her research takes her, finally, beyond the margins ofthe established community to the small but active groups of Sephardi banditswho formed their own clandestine networks.

Special attention is also paid to poorwomen, whether arriving alone or left behind and sometimes heading small familyunits, who were often singled out for relief.

In this way the book makes amuch-needed contribution to the study of gender, in Jewish society and moregenerally. Thisground-breaking, multi-faceted study of the dynamics of the relationshipbetween the rich and the poor adds a nuanced new dimension to our understandingof Jewish life in the early modern period.