Sephardim and Ashkenazim: Jewish-Jewish Encounters in History and Literature 9783110695410, 9783110695304, 9783110695526, 2020939840

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Sephardim and Ashkenazim

Europäisch-jüdische Studien Beiträge European-Jewish Studies Contributions Edited by the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam Editorial Manager: Werner Treß

Volume 18

Sephardim and Ashkenazim Jewish-Jewish Encounters in History and Literature Edited by Sina Rauschenbach

ISBN 978-3-11-069530-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-069541-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-069552-6 ISSN 2192-9602 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020939840 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Design Jan Blatt (Berlin); Engraving: ̓t Gesigt van de Portugeese en Hoogduytse Jodenkerken tot Amsterdam, circa 1752, Van der Laan en P. van Gunst. © By courtesy of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Sina Rauschenbach 1 Sephardim and Ashkenazim A Research Survey and a Research Agenda

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Jonathan Ray 2 Ashkenazim and Sephardim before (and after) the Modern Age History, Historiography, and the Meaning of Jewish Communal 23 Categories Katrin Kogman-Appel 3 Creating a Visual Repertoire for the Late Medieval Haggadah

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Moti Benmelech 4 Early Modern Messianism between Ashkenazim and Sephardim 73 Tirza Kelman 5 “All of the Differing Opinions of the Poskim, No One Fails to Appear” 89 The Use of Ashkenazic Works in R. Joseph Karo’s Beit Yosef Rafael D. Arnold 6 Confluent and Conflictual Traditions in the Lagoon Ashkenazic and Sephardic Tombstones in Venice from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century 103 Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld 7 Joining the Fight for Freedom Redemption of Captives and the Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam 125 Jonathan Schorsch 8 Kabbalah and Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Amsterdam The Sephardic and Ashkenazic Producers of Sefer Raziel ha-Malakh 155 (1701)

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Martin Stechauner 9 Vienna A Cultural Contact Zone between Sephardim and Ashkenazim Carsten Schapkow 10 Max Nordau’s View on Sephardic Judaism and the Emergence of Political Zionism 209 Selected Bibliography Research Literature About the Authors Index of Names

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1 Sephardim and Ashkenazim A Research Survey and a Research Agenda Some fifty years ago, in The Earth is the Lord’s, Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote one of the most beautiful and provocative descriptions of what he called “the Sephardic way” and “the Ashkenazic way.”¹ According to Heschel, Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions were marked by profound and essential differences. Those differences concerned, among other issues, the relationship of the groups to their respective surroundings, their inner hierarchies, their scholarly and intellectual preferences, and their general approaches toward life and religion. Heschel concluded that “a difference of form rather than a divergence of content”² distinguished Sephardic from Ashkenazic culture. This difference, he wrote: [M]ight be more accurately expressed as a distinction between a static form, in which the spontaneous is subjected to strictness and abstract order, and a dynamic form, which does not compel the content to conform to what is already established. The dynamic form is attained by subtler and more direct means. Room is left for the outburst, for the surprise, for the instantaneous.³

Since the publication of The Earth is the Lord’s, scholars have both agreed with or contradicted Heschel,⁴ but few have offered new comparisons between Sephardic and Ashkenazic cultures.⁵ What might be interpreted as a fear of essentializing group identities is also a relict of two worlds that have often been separated. Differences between “the Sephardic way” and “the Ashkenazic way” (in the words of Heschel) seemed to impact on scholarship and research agendas. Note: Parts of this introduction are based on my essay “Sephardim und Aschkenasim,” in Handbuch Jüdische Studien, ed. Christina von Braun and Micha Brumlik (Cologne: Böhlau 2017), 111 – 24. Susanne Härtel and Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld have read the final draft and contributed illuminating insights. I am grateful for their collaboration and help.  Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s & The Sabbath (New York: Harper Row, 1966 [1950]), 23 – 28.  Ibid., 34– 35.  Ibid., 35.  For an early reply, see Daniel Elazar, The Other Jews: The Sephardim Today (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 30 – 40.  For one of the few early exceptions, see H. J. Zimmels, Ashkenazim and Sephardim: Their Relations, Differences and Problems as Reflected in the Rabbinical Responsa (London: Oxford University Press, 1958). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-001

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For a long time, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Judaism have been studied separately. Scholars have devoted their works either to the histories and cultures of Iberian Jews or to those of their French, German, and Eastern European counterparts. The language barriers that separated Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews also separated the respected researchers who had to deal with the sources. Scholars who have approached the subject as a unity have only found a few followers, and their studies have remained as outstanding as they are rare.⁶ It is only in recent times that more scholars have begun to bridge the Sephardic-Ashkenazic divide and address questions of Sephardic-Ashkenazic relationships, perceptions, and influences. Since the beginning of the millennium, a number of new studies have approached the subject from different perspectives. The following survey does not encompass all the contributions that have been made to the field. Rather, it is meant to indicate developments and foci that have attracted the attention of researchers and provide suggestions for further studies.

A Research Survey Scholars concerned with Jewish history and thought have long insisted on the fundamentally different experience of medieval Jews on the Iberian Peninsula and their coreligionists north of the Pyrenees. Notwithstanding the fact that medieval encounters between the two groups were limited and generally restricted to individuals moving from one context to the other, the absoluteness of the earlier distinction has recently been challenged. Among the most important studies are those by David Nirenberg and Jonathan Elukin. Whereas the former describes Iberian convivencia as “a constructive relationship between conflict and coexistence,”⁷ the latter questions the Iberian singularity of convivencia and draws our

 For a similar observation, see Sarah Abrevaya Stein, who writes: “In particular, studies rarely cross sub-ethnic boundaries considered internal to Jewish culture: the boundary, for example, that divides the Ashkenazim … from the Sephardim …, and these from other Jewish sub-groups.” Eadem, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), 3. Stein is one of the few scholars who bridge the divide between Ladino and Yiddish Studies. For a research survey with a strong focus on the question of language, see Rafael D. Arnold, “Forschungsüberblick über die Sefardischen Studien im deutschsprachigen Raum,” in Galut Sepharad in Aschkenas: Sepharden im deutschsprachigen Kulturraum (= PaRDeS 19: 17– 159), ed. Amor Ayala, Rebekka Denz, Dorothea M. Salzer, and Stephanie von Schmädel (Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2013), 89 – 112, here 17– 33.  David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998 [1996]), 9.

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attention to similar conditions of “living together, living apart” in medieval Ashkenaz.⁸ Nirenberg also suggests that researchers look beyond the natural frontiers of the Pyrenees and emphasizes the similarity of experiences of the Jews of the northern Iberian Peninsula and the Jews of Provence.⁹ Scholars have also questioned the decisive impact of the respective Muslim and/or Christian contexts on tradition and cultural change in medieval Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities. One famous example relates to the distinction between Sephardic polygamy and Ashkenazic monogamy after the publication of R. Gershom Meor ha-Golah’s famous decision from around 1000. Whereas some scholars emphasized the adaptation of Jewish migrants from Sephardic and Ashkenazic background to the respective Muslim or Christian contexts of their destinations,¹⁰ others used the example of the Iberian frontier zone to argue that Iberian Jews did not necessarily change their polygamous practices when their communities transitioned from Muslim to Christian rule.¹¹ Finally, scholars now reject the suitability of common notions of group identities and the general use of the term “Sephardic” for Iberian Jews in pre-expulsion contexts and times. Important contributions have been penned by Jonathan Ray, who questions the existence of one transregional Sephardic identity prior to 1492 and makes a case for the gradual emergence of a Sephardic Diaspora afterward.¹² Ray’s approach to (the) Sephardic Diaspora/s has been influenced by his-

 Jonathan Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).  Nirenberg, Communities of Violence. For the importance of the Jews of Provence as mediators between the Iberian Jewish worlds in the south and Ashkenazic worlds in the north, see Avraham Grossman, “Relations between Spanish and Ashkenazic Jewry in the Middle Ages,” in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardic Legacy, ed. Haim Beinart (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), vol. 1, 220 – 39; and idem, “Bein Sefarad, le-Tzarfat,” in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday [Hebrew], ed. Aaron Mirsky, Avraham Grossman, and Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1988), 75 – 101.  For an important study with further details, see Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004 [2001]), esp. 70 – 90.  Yom Tov Assis, “The Ordinance of Rabbenu Gershom and Polygamous Marriages in Spain” [Hebrew], Zion 46 (1981): 251– 77. Assis contended that some prominent figures in Iberian Jewish history continued to be polygamous even though their Christian surroundings generally insisted on the validity and significance of monogamous marriages.  Jonathan Ray, “New Approaches to the Jewish Diaspora: The Sephardim as a Sub-Ethnic Group,” Jewish Social Studies, n. s. 15, no. 1 (2008): 10 – 31. For a similar approach, see David A. Wacks, Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature: Jewish Cultural Production before and after 1492 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015). Aviva Ben-Ur goes even further and con-

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torians who study Ashkenazic identity constructions in the context of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and new approaches to nineteenth-century nationalisms.¹³ Especially noteworthy is the work of Joseph Davis, who proposes three different models of Ashkenazic identity building in the late sixteenth century based on geography, ethnicity, or individual choice.¹⁴ He posits the notion of “individual choice” in reference to the respective synagogues where Jews chose to pray or the halakhic codex they decided to follow. Considering halakhah, he elaborates on the “Ashkenization” of Joseph Karo’s Shulhan Arukh in sixteenthcentury Cracow by Moshe Isserles. As we know from studies by Israel Ta-Shema, Karo’s Beit Yosef and Shulhan Arukh were deeply influenced by Karo’s preference for Sephardic decisors, even though he himself continuously reiterated his wish to create a halakhic compendium beyond Jewish-Jewish differences and divides.¹⁵ A detailed historical-critical study of Isserles’s changes and their interpretation in light of Sephardic-Ashkenazic differences is still a desideratum, but the importance of the issue has long been recognized and has encouraged scholars to study Karo’s and Isserles’s predecessors with a similar approach. Of special significance are recent contributions regarding the works of Asher ben Yehiel and Yaakov ben Asher, who used their personal migration and intercultural experiences to bridge halakhic differences and propose steps toward a unified halakhah for Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Castile. Interestingly, however, doubt has recently been cast on the extent of Asher ben Yehiel’s success in promoting Ashkenazic learning in Sepharad. Scholars have argued that his attempts failed and that his son, Yaakov ben Asher, took this failure into account when he returned to a rather “Sephardical-

siders the existence of a coherent Sephardic group to be an invention of nineteenth-century scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums. See her “Atlantic Jewish History: A Conceptual Reorientation,” in Constellations of Atlantic Jewish History, 1550 – 1890: The Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica; A Companion Volume to an Exhibition Held in the Goldstein Family Gallery of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, ed. Arthur Kiron (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 25 – 46, here 35.  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006 [1983]). Also important for Jonathan Ray’s study is Rogers Brubaker, “Ethnicity without Groups,” European Journal of Sociology 43, no. 2 (2002): 163 – 89.  Joseph Davis, “The Reception of the Shulhan ‘Arukh and the Formation of Ashkenazic Jewish Identity,” AJS Review 26, no. 2 (2002): 251– 76.  Israel Ta-Shema, “Rabbi Joseph Caro and his Beit Yosef: Between Spain and Germany,” in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, ed. Haim Beinart, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), 192– 206. Tirza Kelman continues the discussion of this subject in her contribution to this volume.

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ly” oriented compromise between the two cultures, which was primordial for the later success of his Turim. ¹⁶ Beyond the corpus of halakhic codices, exegetical, mystical, and polemical works representing different cultures of knowledge and thought ended up traveling between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic worlds and mingling with each other.¹⁷ With the early modern revolution of print and new possibilities for mobility and migration, texts and ideas circulated to a hitherto unknown degree and continued to figure as markers of difference and connectedness.¹⁸ Conscious of the tension between these two options but in opposition to classical studies highlighting Sephardic-Ashkenazic dichotomies in view of the Iberian Jewish traumas of 1492– 1498, historians have recently tended to deconstruct binaries and focus on the possibilities of parallels and entanglements associated with early modern Sephardic and Ashkenazic experiences. As early as 1994, Mordechai Breuer has drawn our attention to mutual influences and parallel developments regarding the study of religion and philosophy, the organization of communities, and processes of social and economic stratification.¹⁹ Recently, Martin Jacobs and Carsten Wilke, among others, have contested Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s claim for a unique and decisively Sephardic tradition of early modern Jewish historiography.²⁰ Others devoted studies to relativizing Gerson D. Cohen’s

 Judah Galinsky, “Ashkenazim in Sefarad: The Rosh and the Tur on the Codification of Jewish Law,” Jewish Law Annual 16 (2006): 3 – 23. See also Israel Ta-Shema, “Rabenu Asher u-veno R. Yaakov baal ha-Turim: Bein Ashkenaz li-Sefarad,” Peamim 46 – 47 (1991): 75 – 91.  On exegesis, see Eric Lawee, “From Sepharad to Ashkenaz: A Case Study in the Rashi Supercommentary Tradition,” AJS Review 30, no. 2 (2006): 393 – 425. On polemics, see Daniel L. Lasker, “Jewish Philosophical Polemics in Ashkenaz,” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews, ed. Ora Limor and Guy Stroumsa (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 195 – 213. On hasidut, see Israel Ta-Shema, “Hasidut Ashkenaz bi-Sefarad: Rabbi Yonah Gerondi, ha-ish u-foalo,” in Galut ahar Golah, ed. Aaron Mirsky, Avraham Grossman, and Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1988), 165 – 94.  David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), esp. 99 – 102.  Mordechai Breuer, “Hashpaah sefaradit be-Ashkenaz be-sof yemei ha-beinayim u-ve-reshit ha-et ha-hadashah,” Peamim 57 (1994): 17– 28.  Martin Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte in jüdischen Chroniken: Hebräische Historiographie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); Carsten L. Wilke, “Sephardi and Ashkenazi Conceptions of World History: From Gedaliah ibn Yahya to David Gans,” Judaica Bohemiae 51, no. 1 (2016): 111– 26, here 121. For an earlier reply to Yerushalmi, see Robert Bonfil, “How Golden was the Age of the Renaissance in Jewish Historiography?,” in Essays in Jewish Historiography: In Memoriam Arnaldo Dante Momigliano, 1908 – 1987, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert (Middletown: Wesleyan University, 1988), 78 – 102. For the original argument, see Yosef Hayim Yer-

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classical distinction between Sephardic and Ashkenazic messianism and eschatology.²¹ Again others questioned Cohen’s analysis of kiddush ha-Shem and a supposedly Sephardic tendency toward conversion vis-à-vis an Ashkenazic tendency toward martyrdom.²² These and similar studies all contribute to complicating Sephardic-Ashkenazic dichotomies and help to refine the relevant methodology from comparative approaches toward the study of entanglements. New approaches to cultures of reading and translation and their respective applications in the field of Jewish Studies have also contributed to our understanding of early modern Jewish historiography.²³ Yet, we are also aware that the exchange of texts and ideas was often easier than the actual encounters. Our knowledge regarding Sephardic settlements in early modern Central and Eastern Europe is still limited.²⁴ However, Sepharushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).  Elisheva Carlebach, Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism in Ashkenaz and Sepharad; Third Annual Lecture of the Victor J. Selmanovich Chair of Jewish History (New York: Touro College Graduate School of Jewish Studies, 1998); and David Berger, Cultures in Collision and Conversation: Essays in the Intellectual History of the Jews (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011), 289 – 311. See also Moti Benmelech’s contribution to this volume. For the original argument, see Gerson D. Cohen, “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim,” in Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, ed. Marc Saperstein (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 202– 33.  See, e. g., Abraham Gross, “On the Ashkenazi Syndrome of Martyrdom in Portugal in 1497” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 64 (1994): 83 – 114; Ram Ben-Shalom, “Kidush ha-Shem and Jewish Martyrdom in Aragon and Castile in 1391: Between Spain and Ashkenaz” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 70 (2001): 227– 82; and Abraham Gross, “Conversions and Martyrdom in Spain in 1391: A Reassessment of Ram BenShalom” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 71 (2002): 269 – 78. For the question of martyrdom in the Sephardic Diaspora, see Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), 1– 22, esp. 4– 9.  For the adoption/translation of Sephardic knowledge in/into Ashkenazic worlds, see Shlomo Berger, “Ashkenazim Read Sephardim in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam,” Studia Rosenthaliana 35, no. 2 (2001): 253 – 65; Michael Stanislawski, “The Yiddish ‘Shevet Yehudah’: A Study in the ‘Ashkenization’ of a Spanish-Jewish Classic,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1998), 134– 49. For the opposing perspective, see Richard Ayoun, “Les courants de communication des Sépharades avec les Achkénazes,” in Le monde sépharade, ed. Shmuel Trigano, vol. 2 (Paris: Seuil, 2006), 653 – 69. For more examples, see the contributions in Amor Ayala, Rebekka Denz, Dorothea M. Salzer, and Stephanie von Schmädel, eds., Galut Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Sepharden im deutschsprachigen Kulturraum (= PaRDeS 19: 17– 159) (Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2013).  For a recent survey, see Ayoun, “Les courants de communication des Sépharades avec les Achkénazes,” 658 – 62. See also Jacob Elbaum, “The Influence of Spanish-Jewish Culture on the Jews of Ashkenaz and Poland in the Fifteenth-Seventeenth Centuries,” in Binah 3 (1994):

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dic-Ashkenazic relations in the centers of the Western Sephardic Diaspora proved to be difficult and distanced. As we know from the pioneering works by Yosef Kaplan, this was especially true in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, where Sephardim gradually distinguished themselves and their community from Ashkenazic migrants as soon as the latter grew in numbers and importance.²⁵ Sephardic dominance and strategies of exclusion were also apparent in other centers of the so-called Western Sephardic Diaspora. In Hamburg, Sephardic community leaders not only insisted on their right to control their Ashkenazic coreligionists economically and religiously,²⁶ but they also negotiated their 1649 privilege to remain and openly practice their religion to the detriment of the Ashkenazim living in the city.²⁷ In late seventeenth-century London, Sephardim excluded Ashkenazic newcomers from of their community, their synagogue, and their cemetery.²⁸ In 1722 Bordeaux, Sephardic privilege included settlement restrictions

179 – 97; and idem, “Ikvot sifrut megorshei Sefarad bi-ytzirat yehudei Polin ba-meah ha-16,” Peamim 80 (1999): 33 – 44. For earlier studies, see Janina Morgensztern, “Notes on the Sephardim in Zamość, 1588 – 1650” [Polish], Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 38 (1961): 62– 82; and Jacob Shatzky, “Sefardim in Zamoshch” [Yiddish], Yivo Bleter 35 (1951): 93 – 120.  Yosef Kaplan, “The Portuguese Community in 17th-Century Amsterdam and the Ashkenazi World,” in Dutch Jewish History, ed. Jozeph Michman, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry, 1984– 1993), 23 – 45; idem, “Amsterdam and Ashkenazic Migration in the Seventeenth Century,” Studia Rosenthaliana 23 (1989): 22– 44.  Hiltrud Wallenborn, “Portugiesische Nation und hochdeutsche Juden: Die Hamburger sephardische Gemeinde und die Ansiedlung von aschkenasischen Juden im Hamburger Raum,” Menora 8 (1997): 121– 49. Felix Sprang does not really discuss the topic of Sephardic-Ashkenazic relations even though the title of his essay suggests something similar. See his “‘I Was Told They Were All lewes’ – Mentalities and Realities of Segregation: Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews in Early Modern Hamburg and Altona,” in Frühneuzeitliche Ghettos in Europa im Vergleich, ed. Fritz Backhaus, Gisela Engel, Gundula Grebner, and Robert Liberles (Berlin: Trafo, 2012), 399 – 416.  Hiltrud Wallenborn, Bekehrungseifer, Judenangst und Handelsinteresse: Amsterdam, Hamburg und London als Ziele sefardischer Migration im 17. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003), 293. See also Jutta Braden, Hamburger Judenpolitik im Zeitalter lutherischer Orthodoxie (1590 – 1710) (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2001), 224– 25.  David Katz, The Jews in the History of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 [1994]), 180 – 83. See also Todd M. Endelman, “Benjamin Disraeli and the Myth of Sephardi Superiority,” Jewish History 10, no. 2 (1996): 21– 35. For the continuation of Sephardic exclusiveness vis-à-vis Ashkenazim to Sephardic exclusiveness vis-à-vis North African Jews settling in London after the 1770s, see Daniel Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 55 – 76. For a critical discussion of Schroeter, see Aviva BenUr, “The Absorption of Outsiders: Gibraltarian and North Africans in London’s Portuguese Jewish Community,” in From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardic Orbit from Medieval to Modern Times; Essays in Honor of Jane S. Gerber, ed. Federica Francesconi, Stanley Mirvis, and Brian M. Smollett (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 255 – 78.

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against Avignonese, Italian, and Ashkenazic merchants from other parts of France.²⁹ In eighteenth-century Livorno, Sephardic elites again and again invested time and energy in a fight against the loss of their religious and political power within the community. Given that Livorno’s Jewish population was not divided into different synagogues (as was the case in Venice),³⁰ Sephardic fears of loss increased with demographic changes and a growing diversity within the Livornese community. In the nineteenth century, the struggles of community leaders against the growing influence of “Italian Jews” (with the term “Italian Jews” being used by Livorno Sephardim to designate all Jews not of Iberian descent) went so far as to plead for a partial return to their earlier autonomy. Their request, which implied a withdrawal from the French model of emancipation introduced in Tuscany after Napoleon’s victory in 1801, was granted by Ferdinand III Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1814.³¹ Livornese Jews were finally emancipated in 1860.³² Generally, Iberian Jews in the Western Sephardic Diaspora justified their claims to superiority by tracing their roots back to the royal house of David and their supposedly noble origins.³³ Notwithstanding the differences, Sephardic

 Zosa Szajkowski, “Relations among Sephardim, Ashkenazim and Avignonese Jews,” Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science 10 (1955): 165 – 96, here 175. Later, Szajkowski mentions similar restrictions against “foreign” (and now Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Italian) Jews in the case of Avignonese community rules (177).  Surprisingly, we lack a larger study on Sephardic-Ashkenazic relations in the Serenissima. For particular aspects, see Rafael D. Arnold, “Postumer Kulturkontakt: Aschkenasische und sephardische Sepulkraltraditionen auf dem Jüdischen Friedhof in Venedig,” in Ashkenazim and Sephardim: A European Perspective, ed. Andrzej Kątny, Izabela Olszewska, and Aleksandra Twardowska (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 73 – 94. See also Rafael D. Arnold’s and Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld’s chapters in this volume.  Jean-Pierre Filippini, “Il Granduca e la Nazione ebrea di Livorno nel Settecento, tra la prepotenza degli ‘spagnoli,’ e le pretese degli ‘italiani,’” Nuovi Studi Livornesi 9 (2001): 37– 51, esp. 37 (for the use of the term “Italian Jews” in early modern Sephardic Livorno). For a survey of the power relations in the Livornese community, see also idem, “Da ‘Nazione ebrea’ a ‘Comunità israelitica’: La Comunità ebraica di Livorno tra Cinquecento e Novecento,’” Nuovi Studi Livornesi 1 (1993): 11– 23. In view of Sephardic dominance, Renzo Toaff calls the whole Jewish community of Livorno “Sephardic.” See his “Livorno, comunità sefardita,” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 3rd series 38, no. 7– 8 (1972): 203 – 209, as well as idem, La nazione ebrea a Livorno e a Pisa (1591 – 1700) (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1990), 416.  Francesca Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 246.  Yosef Kaplan, “The Self-Definition of the Sephardi Jews of Western Europe and their Relation to the Alien and the Stranger,” in idem, An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 51– 77. For the French case, see Szajkowski, “Relations among Sephardim, Ashkenazim and Avignonese Jews,” 173. For a nineteenth-century Ashkenaz-

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Jews continued to support Ashkenazic Jews and help them in times of distress and persecution.³⁴ Not least to protect themselves against anti-Jewish prejudice, wealthy Sephardim were often worried about the behavior and outward appearances of their Ashkenazic coreligionists. Unfortunately, we lack studies analyzing Ashkenazic reactions to Sephardic attitudes of superiority and paternalism on a broader scale. But we are aware of cases where early modern Ashkenazim either ridiculed Iberian arrogance or censured Sephardim for their close relationships with non-Jews and their “loose interpretation” of Jewish life.³⁵ Images from outside the Jewish communities contributed toward complicating the picture. In the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western Sephardic Diaspora, the Sephardic self-perception was reflected in a particular view of Sephardim by their Christian neighbors. Christian Hebraists interested in Jewish literature and thought preferred Sephardic Jews as their partners in dialogue and in the exchange of ideas.³⁶ Christian painters chose Sephardic models in order to show the Jews’ integration into Christian societies.³⁷ Further, countries such as France decided to emancipate their Sephardic subjects separately and more quickly than their Ashkenazic counterparts. Not surprisingly, Sephardic authors helped sustain this variant perception by emphasizing Sephardic virtues and contrasting “Sephardic civilization” with “Ashkenazic backwardness.” One famous example is Isaac de Pinto, who responded to Voltaire’s anti-Jewish polem-

ic satire mocking Sephardic nobility and “purity,” see Israel Zangwill, The King of Schnorrers (New York: MacMillan, 1909 [1893]), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38413/38413-h/38413-h. htm. Sephardic obsession with genealogy has usually been explained by Sephardic internalization of Iberian Christian values and traditions. For a recent study and rather different re-evaluation of “Sephardic aristocracy,” see Jane Gerber, “Pride and Pedigree: The Development of the Myth of Sephardic Aristocratic Lineage,” in Reappraisals and New Studies of Modern Jewish Experience: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Seltzer, ed. Brian M. Smollett and Christian Wiese (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 85 – 103.  For the case of Amsterdam, see Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012). See also Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld’s chapter in this volume.  Zimmels, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, 276 – 79.  Alison Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson, eds., Hebraica veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). For the example of Menasseh ben Israel and his Christian interlocutors, see Sina Rauschenbach, Judaism for Christians: Menasseh ben Israel (1604 – 1657), trans. Corey Twitchell (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019 [2012]).  Samantha Baskind, “Distinguishing the Distinction: Picturing Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam,” The Journal for the Study of Sephardic & Mizrahi Jewry (2007): 1– 13.

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ics by claiming that Voltaire’s accusations were addressed to Ashkenazim, but not to Sephardic Jews.³⁸ The example of the French emancipation is particularly helpful in understanding how Sephardic-Ashkenazic differences continued into modern historiography and influenced scholars to adopt either the position of their Ashkenazic protagonists or of their Sephardic counterparts. Since the nineteenth century, researchers have been quick to denounce Sephardic tendencies to act as a separate group and to fail in a larger context of Jewish solidarity vis-à-vis Christian hostility and anti-Judaism. Historians such as Gérard Nahon complained about this kind of “hostile historiography” (historiographie hostile) and rejected the accusations of their opponents.³⁹ They have drawn our attention to the joint efforts of Sephardim and Ashkenazim prior to 1790 and the importance of the Sephardic emancipation in that year as a model for the Ashkenazic emancipation in 1791.⁴⁰ Ronald Schechter opts for a more balanced perspective and stresses the similarity of doubts among both Sephardim and Ashkenazim concerning French approaches to emancipation and equality.⁴¹ Jay R. Berkovitz adds to the picture by questioning the myth of “Sephardic modernity” and emphasizing the importance of reforms in Ashkenazic communities in Alsace and Lorraine even before 1789, at a time when French Sephardim continued to adhere to their old elites and patterns of community and administration.⁴² In the case of Livorno and the power struggles within the Jewish community, scholars have increasingly insisted that factors other than Sephardic-Ashkenazic

 For an English translation, see Isaac de Pinto, “Critical Reflections on the First Chapter of the Seventh Volume of M. Voltaire’s Works,” in Letters of Certain Jews to Monsieur Voltaire, Containing an Apology for their own People and for the Old Testament, trans. Philip Lefanu (Philadelphia: Herman Hooker, 1848), 33 – 53. For recent studies on de Pinto, see José Luís Cardoso and António de Vasconcelos Nogueira, “Isaac de Pinto (1717– 1787) and the Jewish Problems: Apologetic Letters to Voltaire and Diderot,” History of European Ideas 33, no. 4 (2007): 476 – 87; and Adam Sutcliffe, “Can a Jew Be a Philosophe? Isaac de Pinto, Voltaire, and Jewish Participation in the European Enlightenment,” Jewish Social Studies n. s. 6, no. 3 (2000): 31– 51.  Gérard Nahon, “Sépharades et Achkénazes en France: La conquête de l’émancipation,” in Les Juifs dans l’histoire de France: Premier colloque international de Haifa, ed. Myriam Yardeni (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 121– 45, here 132. Earlier in his essay, Nahon literally speaks of a “Portuguese question” (question portuguese) (122) in Jewish historiography about the emancipation. Apart from its apologetic purpose, Nahon’s essay offers an important survey of research until 1980 regarding Sephardic-Ashkenazic relations in pre- and post-revolutionary France.  Ibid., 138 – 40.  Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715 – 1815 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003).  Jay R. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650 – 1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

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differences have to be taken into account. Francesca Trivellato argues that more than ethnicity, social questions and class were the decisive factors for the tension and hostility between different groups in the eighteenth-century.⁴³ In a similar way, Francesca Bregoli offers the example of Tuscany to argue that privilege has not always been a catalyst but, rather, has sometimes even been an obstacle to emancipation. Here, the question is more about Port Jews than about Sephardim, even though the two groups overlapped to a significant degree.⁴⁴ However difficult a similar analysis of Jewish reservations toward emancipation might be, the question helps to reorient our understanding of the cultural boundedness of markers of distinction and contributes to ongoing discussions about changing hierarchies among religion, ethnicity, class, gender, and race in the construction of solidarities and distinctions across different contexts and times.⁴⁵ The so-called Eastern Sephardic Diaspora has been much less researched than its Western counterpart, but observations about interethnic encounters and Sephardic superiority and exclusiveness have also been made with regard to the Ottoman Empire and its successor states.⁴⁶ Again, recent studies on Otto-

 Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 93. In her book, Trivellato also offers a brief survey on Sephardic-Ashkenazic relations. See ibid., 92– 97.  Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment, esp. 208 – 38. For Port Jews in an Ashkenazic setting, see Lois Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).  For the question of religion and ethnicity, see recent research on the Sephardic Diaspora, e. g., David L. Graizbord, “Religion and Ethnicity among ‘Men of the Nation’: Toward a Realistic Interpretation,” Jewish Social Studies n. s. 15, no. 1 (2008): 32– 65; idem, “Between Ethnicity, Commerce, Religion, and Race: The Elusive Definition of an Early Modern Jewish Atlantic,” in Theorising the Ibero-American Atlantic, ed. Harald E. Braun and Lisa Vollendorf (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 117– 40. For the question of race and gender, see Laura A. Leibman and Sam May, “Making Jews: Race, Gender and Identity in Barbados in the Age of Emancipation,” American Jewish History 99, no. 1 (2015): 1– 26. Even though Leibman and May’s study is not about Europe nor about Sephardim and Ashkenazim but about gender, race, and class in nineteenth-century Barbados, their claim is relevant beyond their actual object of their research.  For an important example, see Mordecai Kosover, “Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Palestine: A Study in Intercommunal Relations,” in Homenaje a Millás-Vallicrosa, ed. Roberto Almagià, vol. 1 (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1954), 753 – 84. For a classical study of the Ottoman sections of later Yugoslavia, see Harriet Pass Freidenreich’s introductory chapter to her The Jews of Yugoslavia: A Quest for Community (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979). Freidenreich, too, confirms Sephardic superiority and leadership in the Balkans until the massive influx of Ashkenazic immigrants from Habsburg territories in the nineteenth century (6). Afterward, according to Freidenreich, “[T]he line of demarcation [between Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities, S. R.] continued to follow the old border be-

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man Jews relativize classical dichotomies and differentiate discourses of distinction from a daily praxis of interaction. Minna Rozen, in her important work on Jews in sixteenth-century Istanbul, not only refers to Sephardic fights over “Sephardization” against the struggles of Romaniot Jews to maintain their particular identities, but she also emphasizes continuous movements and interactions on the part of communities and community members on the Bosporus.⁴⁷ Based on letters from the Cairo Geniza, Abraham David reveals unknown family and financial networks between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in sixteenth-century Egypt and Eretz Israel.⁴⁸ Yaron Ben-Naeh goes so far as to emphasize the absence of an ethnic consciousness in sixteenth-century Ottoman Jerusalem and notes that interethnic divides were, in fact, a product of seventeenth-century European-Jewish regimes of distinction that were only gradually transported into the East.⁴⁹ Ben-Naeh’s observations correspond to Matthias Lehmann’s findings concerning the ambivalent concurrence between global Jewish solidarity and ethnic preference in the history of the distribution of Western funding among Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire and its successor states.⁵⁰ In connection with the Balkans, research on Jewish-Jewish encounters has been limited and often restricted to the nineteenth- and early twentieth century. However, scholars who have touched upon the topic have emphasized the importance of such cities as Belgrade and Sarajevo as contact zones and centers of growing

tween Habsburgs and Ottomans” (7), and only the 1930s, just before the Shoa, saw the communities grow together and overcome their differences (38).  Minna Rozen, A History of the Jewish Community in Istanbul: The Formative Years (1453 – 1566) (Leiden: Brill 2010 [2002]), 87– 98. Rozen distinguishes the situation on the Bosporus from that in Salonika, where each language group had its own congregation and there was less mobility.  Abraham David, “Bein Ashkenaz la-mizrah ba-meah ha-shesh esreh: Yehudei Ashkenaz beEretz Yisrael u-ve-Mitzraim le-orah shel ha-genizah ha-Kehirit,” in From Sages to Savants: Studies Presented to Avraham Grossman [Hebrew], ed. Joseph R. Hacker, Yosef Kaplan, and Benjamin Z. Kedar (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2010), 309 – 28.  Yaron Ben-Naeh, “‘Are We Not Brothers?’ Relations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Late 17th Century Jerusalem” [Hebrew], Katedra 103 (2002): 33 – 52, esp. 51– 52. See also Yaron Ben-Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans: Ottoman Jewish Society in the Seventeenth Century (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), esp. 371– 83. In his earlier study of Sephardic-Ashkenazic relations in Ottoman Palestine, Mordecai Kosover focuses on both interethnic fights over the distribution of European charity and the payment of Ottoman taxes.  Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). On charity and interethnic relations, see also Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld’s chapter in this volume.

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convergence between the (mostly Sephardic) Jews from the Ottoman Empire and the (mostly Ashkenazic) Jews from the Habsburg Empire.⁵¹ Recent rapprochements between Jewish Studies and Postcolonial Studies, albeit still limited,⁵² have not only contributed to our understanding of the implementation of European dynamics of power into non-European cultures and contexts, but they have also opened our eyes to Orientalism within both the Sephardic and the Ashkenazic Diasporas.⁵³ After the eighteenth century, differences were expressed in terms of East and West, “Occident” and “Orient.”⁵⁴ Western Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazic) continued to claim their superiority and “nobleness” as opposed to the “baseness” and “lack of civilization” of their Eastern coreligionists (both Sephardic and Ashkenazic). Eastern Jews accused their Western pairs of religious hypocrisy and assimilation. In the case of German Jews, new constructions of “the West” not only contributed to the blur of (Western‐)Sephardic and (Western‐)Ashkenazic differences, but also to the rise of a new collective memory that created a direct link between the German present and the Iberian past. John Efron, Carsten Schapkow, and Jonathan Skolnik, among others, have recently elaborated on what Ismar Schorsch first

 Krinka Vidaković-Petrov, “The Ashkenazi-Sephardi Dialogue in Yugoslavia, 1918 – 1941,” in Ashkenazim and Sephardim: A European Perspective, ed. Andrzej Kątny, Izabela Olszewska, and Aleksandra Twardowska (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 19 – 39, 22. The main part of Vidaković-Petrov’s essay (as most of the essays of the volume) is dedicated to modern developments and encounters. On Sarajevo, see Ivana Vučina Simović, “The Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Sarajevo: From Social, Cultural and Linguistic Divergence to Convergence,” transversal 13 (2012): 41– 64. As for the western Balkans, a EAJS-conference was convened by Krinka Vidaković-Petrov (Belgrade) and Katja Šmid (Jerusalem) in Belgrade in 2016 but the proceedings have not yet been published. See https://www.eurojewishstudies.org/cgp/conference-grant-pro gramme-reports/the-western-balkan-encounter-of-sepharad-and-ashkenaz-between-traditionand-change/.  For a recent discussion of the use of Postcolonial Studies in the field of Jewish Studies, see Sina Rauschenbach and Jonathan Schorsch, eds., The Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Perspectives (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).  Ivan Davidson Kalmár and Derek Penslar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005). The volume is also helpful for an understanding of the importance of Orientalism in the history of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. For an illuminating insight into Orientalism in the Sephardic Diaspora, see Daniel Schroeter, “From Sephardi to Oriental: The ‘Decline’ Theory of Jewish Civilization in the Middle East and North Africa,” in The Jewish Contribution to Civilization: Reassessing an Idea, ed. Jeremy Cohen and Richard I. Cohen (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012 [2008]), 125 – 48.  Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew. For the Ashkenazic world, see Steven Aschheim’s classical study Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800 – 1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982).

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called “the myth of Sephardic supremacy”:⁵⁵ the importance of the Sephardic model for German Jewish education, philosophy, literature, and visual and acoustic aesthetics from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth.⁵⁶ One of the reasons for German Jewish praise of “the Sephardim” was their wish to distance themselves from Eastern European Jews.⁵⁷ As a consequence, German Jews from the Haskalah to the Wissenschaft des Judentums developed a deep interest in Sephardic philosophy and poetry of the Middle Ages.⁵⁸ They preferred the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew,⁵⁹ laid the foundation for a new genre of Sephardic historical fiction, and consented to the construction of Ashkenazic synagogues in a neo-Sephardic-Moorish style that was meant to be reminiscent of the medieval convivencia and glory on the Iberian Peninsula.⁶⁰ However, German Jewish Sephardism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was oriented toward a Sephardic world that was long gone.⁶¹ It was medieval Sephardic history that interested German Jews, not the modern Sephardic reality.⁶² Ottoman

 Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 34 (1989): 47– 66.  John M. Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Carsten Schapkow, Role Model and Countermodel: The Golden Age of Iberian Jewry and German Jewish Culture during the Era of Emancipation, trans. Corey Twitchell (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016 [2011]); and Jonathan Skolnik, Jewish Pasts, German Fictions: History, Memory, and Minority Culture in Germany 1824 – 1955 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). For England, see Endelman, “Benjamin Disraeli and the Myth of Sephardi Superiority.”  Efron, German Jewry.  Schapkow, Role Model and Countermodel. For selected contributions, see Ross Brann and Adam Sutcliffe, eds., Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From al-Andalus to the Haskalah (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz, and Irene Zwiep, eds., Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007).  Ibid.  Efron, German Jewry, 112– 60. For Efron, the aforementioned synagogues were not only a product of the nineteenth-century Ashkenazic “allure of Sepharad,” but also an expression of anti-Jewish Orientalism on the part of their Christian architects.  For “Sephardism” and its different manifestations in a global setting, see Yael Halevi-Wise, ed., Sephardism: Jewish-Spanish History in the Modern Literary Imagination (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). For “Sephardism” in the twentieth-century Caribbean and for further studies, see Sarah Phillips Casteel, Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).  David Ruderman contradicts the notion that medieval Sephardic philosophers had a real impact on eighteenth-century Ashkenazic thinkers and speaks of them as being only “cultural icons.” See David Ruderman, “The Impact of Early Modern Jewish Thought on the Eighteenth Century: A Challenge to the Notion of the Sephardi Mystique,” in Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medi-

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Sephardim moving west to centers of the Ashkenazic Diaspora were not linked with the ideals of “Sephardism,” but were often excluded and “orientalized.”⁶³ Those who remained in successor states of the Ottoman Empire and encountered Ashkenazic migrants moving in were sometimes full of an “allure of the Ashkenazic” that was similar to the aforementioned “allure of the Sephardic” in the Western Ashkenazic world.⁶⁴ Last but not least, West-East divides also seemed to cross the oceans and arrive in North America, Africa, and other centers of modern Jewish migration, where communities of “Western Jews” (be they Ashkenazim or Sephardim) evidenced a paternalism and exclusivism whenever they encountered Jewish immigrants from “the East.”⁶⁵

eval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Discourse, ed. Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz, and Irene Zwiep (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007), 11– 22, esp. 21.  Corry Guttstadt, “Sepharden auf Wanderschaft: Vom Bosporus an die Spree, Elbe und Isar,” in Galut Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Sepharden im deutschsprachigen Kulturraum (= PaRDeS 19: 17– 159), ed. Amor Ayala, Rebekka Denz, Dorothea M. Salzer, and Stephanie von Schmädel (Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2013), 89 – 112, here 102– 106. It is important to note that, according to Guttstadt, Turkish Jews also “orientalized” themselves for marketing reasons. For a recent volume devoted to the literary production of Ottoman Sephardim in nineteenth and twentieth-century Vienna, see Michael Studemund-Halévy, Christian Liebl, and Ivana Vučina Simović, eds., Sefarad an der Donau: Lengua y Literatura de los sefardíes en tierras de los Habsburgos (Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2013).  For the case of Sarajevo, see M. Jakóbiec-Semkowowa, “Sarajevo’s Sephardim and Ashkenazim in a Literary Mirror of Their Own and Foreign Authors,” in Ashkenazim and Sephardim: A European Perspective, ed. Andrzej Kątny, Izabela Olszewska, and Aleksandra Twardowska (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 41– 56, here 43. For the example of Vienna, see Martin Stechauner’s chapter in this volume.  For the United States, see Aviva Ben-Ur, Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History (New York: New York University Press, 2009). For the French imperial context, this paternalism has been emphasized with regard to education programs such as the ones of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. More recently, scholars such as Richard I. Cohen and Ethan Katz, among others, calling for an imperial turn in Jewish Studies, stress how Jews in France identified with and contributed to colonial power, whereas their “oriental” brethren in the respective colonies were conceded the doubtful honor of mediators between their European colonizers and the colonized population to which they themselves belonged. For the example of colonial Morocco, see Ethan B. Katz, The Burdens of Brotherhood. Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2015). For the example of colonial Algeria, see Richard I. Cohen, “Der Kampf der Kulturen: Europäische und orientalische Juden in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart,” ed. Lehrstuhl für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur an der LMU München (= Münchner Beiträge zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur 2) (Munich: Lehrstuhl für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur, 2008), 31– 53. For the “imperial turn,” see Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, introduction to Colonialism and the Jews, ed. Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2017), 1– 25, here 4– 10.

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A Research Agenda Our survey, even though anything but complete, shows that the study of JewishJewish encounters has advanced remarkably over the last years, but, still, there is much to be done. On the level of research, conferences and conference volumes dedicated to the subject often continue to follow earlier patterns of juxtaposing contributions on Sephardic with Ashkenazic history and thought. On an institutional level, Jewish Studies departments are primarily concerned with Ashkenazic Studies, whereas Sephardic Studies (if they exist at all) are separate entities, merging with the growing field of Mizrahi Studies. The present volume offers new perspectives and bridges some of the aforementioned gaps. Our authors discuss different contexts and constellations of Sephardic-Ashkenazic encounters from the sixteenth to the long nineteenth century. They compare the two groups with regard to specific questions, look for entanglements in specific contexts, and reconsider “classical” narratives such as the ones about Sephardic and Ashkenazic activism and quietism, Marranism and martyrdom, rationality and mysticism,⁶⁶ biblical and Talmudic scholarship, elite and popular culture, power and powerlessness, and “classicism” and “romanticism,” to return once more to Heschel and Elazar’s reply.⁶⁷ All of our authors were encouraged to think not in terms of Ashkenazic and Sephardic Studies but to relate to research “beyond the East-West divide.”⁶⁸ In other words, our volume includes not only both Sephardic and Ashkenazic perspectives but every chapter is designed to reveal different aspects of encounters – comparisons, conflicts, and/or collaborations. In the second chapter, Jonathan Ray raises fundamental questions regarding the categories of “Sephardim” and “Ashkenazim,” their construction in early modern Europe and – closely connected – the fallacy of automatically assuming that what we know about early modern times was also true of the Middle Ages. To make his point, Ray emphasizes the fluidity of the relationships between geography and community and community and culture in medieval times, and then turns to the impact of geography, material culture, political structures, conversion, and language on the development of early modern Sephardic and Ashkenazic identities. On a broader level, Ray’s essay offers illuminating reflections on modern historiography and the pitfalls of dubious attributions that still shape

 Cohen, “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim.”  Elazar, The Other Jews, 30 – 40. Elazar’s chapter is a response to Abraham Joshua Heschel.  David Sorkin, “Beyond the East-West Divide: Rethinking the Narrative of the Jews’ Political Status in Europe, 1600 – 1700,” Jewish History 24, no. 3 – 4 (2010): 247– 56.

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debates on Sephardic-Ashkenazic encounters. In the context of our volume, it reminds us once again of the challenges that we encounter and have to take into account. The third chapter is dedicated to the history of Jewish art in medieval Italian lands. It has commonly been assumed that Sephardic-Ashkenazic collaborations only began with the waves of Iberian-Jewish migration between 1492 and 1498, and earlier studies contended that there were essential differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazic imaginaries in the Middle Ages. Contrary to this assumption, Katrin Kogman-Appel analyzes early Italian haggadot to make a case for fourteenth- and fifteenth-century encounters between Ashkenazic and Sephardic manuscript cultures. Her examples are taken from the œuvre of Joel ben Simeon, who adopted both Ashkenazic and Sephardic motifs for his illustrations before his imaginaries spread north of the Alps and had an important impact on the Ashkenazic iconographic repertoire. Although Italian indigenous scripts almost disappeared, Italy became an important point of Sephardic-Ashkenazic cross-cultural encounters and evidences proof regarding the connectedness of ideas and models beyond the Sephardic-Ashkenazic divide well before the sixteenth century. Following developments after the expulsions of 1492– 1498, Moti Benmelech contributes new insights into the discussion about Ashkenazic quietism vs. Sephardic messianism. As against Scholem’s famous statement that messianism was a manifestation of escapism during times of crisis and distress, Benmelech presents the case of Asher Lemlein, whose messianism was prominent in Ashkenazic society, to emphasize the notion that after 1492 Sephardim were rather anti-messianic. Even though Sephardic scholars composed messianic treatises, they actually rejected messianic movements. According to Benmelech, their lack of messianic enthusiasm can be explained as a Sephardic reaction to the trauma of the 1492 expulsion. Further reasons for Sephardic and Ashkenazic attitudes toward messianism could be differences in political and religious administration in sixteenth-century Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities, as well as different cultures of memory, which might also explain why Sephardim did not respond to the claims of Lemlein, who actually rejected a plethora of concepts that were important to Sephardic culture. Turning from messianism to halakhah, Tirza Kelman presents a case study of references to Sephardic and Ashkenazic sources in Joseph Karo’s Beit Yosef, proving that Karo’s use of Sephardic sources was even more prevalent than has been suggested. To make her point, Kelman uses Karo’s discussion of niddah, and, more precisely, the waiting period before the counting of the seven “clean days” before a Jewish woman can ritually immerse herself. According to Kelman, there were only few exceptions to Karo’s preference for Sephardic sources, one of

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them being R. Isserlein, whose judgments Karo quoted more than once even though he did not always agree with them. Karo’s disagreements with R. Isserlein are also telling in the sense that Karo explained them by referring to regional halakhic differences and conceded that there were exceptions to his interest in presenting a unified halakhah for all Jews. In the sixth chapter, Raphael D. Arnold draws our attention to SephardicAshkenazic relations in early modern Venice, a subject that has been surprisingly neglected in recent approaches to Jewish-Jewish encounters. Arnold’s sources are Sephardic wills in seventeenth-century Venice testifying to the interest of their authors in constructing a distinct Sephardic identity that was embedded in a global Sephardic network. Being a minority in the Serenissima, Sephardic Jews insisted that their gravestones not be erected upright but be laid in the Sephardic tradition, whereas Ashkenazic Jews did not have to express their preferences because their tradition corresponded to the norm. Moreover, names of the deceased on Sephardic tombstones were often repeated in Latin characters so that family members who could not read Hebrew were able to find the tombs. Connecting early modern Venice with Livorno, Amsterdam, and the Levant, Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld relies on new archival sources to analyze the question of Sephardic-Ashkenazic cooperation and/or competition in the seventeenth-century Amsterdam Cativos Organization Pidyon Shevuyim. Dedicated to the redemption of Jews who had fallen captive to non-Jews, but also of Conversos who wanted to leave the Iberian Peninsula and had been taken prisoner by the Inquisition, the organization’s activity was part of a general struggle to confirm the status of the Amsterdam community in the international networks of the Sephardic and the larger Jewish Diaspora. At the same time, Levie Bernfeld’s study offers illuminating insights into the earlier philanthropic collaboration of sixteenth-century Venetian Levantine, Ponentine, and Ashkenazic communities and contributes significantly to recent research on Jewish solidarity and interethnic networks before the advent of Zionism. Jonathan Schorsch’s contribution, even though devoted to a different place and a later century, brings us back to the important subject of Ashkenazic-Sephardic cross-cultural encounters in manuscript and book production. Presses and bookshops have always been important venues of encounters and entanglements.⁶⁹ In the case of Amsterdam, collaborations are especially telling given that they transcended the well-known social and communal borders and offer new insights into “a multicultural intra-Jewish urban scene”⁷⁰ and a “polyglot Jewish

 Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry, esp. 99 – 100.  See ch. 8, 160 in this volume.

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republic of letters”⁷¹ that have not yet been fully explored. Schorsch’s conclusions are based on a case study of the 1701 edition of Sefer Raziel and Zohar Hadash by Mosseh Mendes Coutinho and Yitzhak b. Avraham of Neustadt, a Sephardic and an Ashkenazic printer, respectively, who were connected through their families. The two were partners in a scientific effort to spread kabbalistic thought among Jewish lay readers and to counter distortions of Jewish texts in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Christian Hebraism. The final two chapters are dedicated to case studies concerned with Ashkenazim relying on Sephardim and (much less studied) Sephardim relying on Ashkenazim as their models and inspirations. In the ninth chapter, Martin Stechauner analyzes nineteenth-century Vienna as a contact zone between Turkish Sephardim and Ashkenazim, where processes of transculturation resulted in the rise of a particular metropolitan Viennese Sephardic culture. Contrary to the “myth of Sephardic superiority,” Turkish Sephardim in Vienna started to take their Ashkenazic counterparts as models and partners. They employed Ashkenazic rabbis and cantors, who introduced Viennese aesthetics and tunes into the traditional Sephardic service and followed Ashkenazic models of nineteenth-century “Sephardism,” building their 1887 “Turkish Temple” in the Moorish style of the Viennese Leopoldstädter Tempel. Further, they went along with the city’s Ashkenazim and adapted to the cultural imperative of Viennese high society wherever they could. Ultimately, Sephardic and Ashkenazic cultures mingled into one Viennese hybrid until the Israelitengesetz of 1890 again alienated the two communities, which then dissolved the relationships that had developed between them. In the tenth chapter, Carsten Schapkow turns to the journalist and public intellectual Max Nordau, who, unlike the founders of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, used his travels to Spain to emphasize the vain efforts of Iberian Jews to integrate into their countries and become accepted by the Christian majority cultures that surrounded them. Interestingly, Nordau even made his case beyond the scope of Jewish history, relying on the fate of a Morisco beggar, who told him about the expulsion of his family between 1609 and 1614. For Nordau, the experience of the expulsion, not the ever praised convivencia, turned into the key lieu de memoire in Jewish history. Iberian Jews were not admired but rather censured for giving up their solidarity in exchange for an expectation that could not be realized. It was only Nordau’s second trip to Spain, when he arrived there as a refugee during World War I and established strong relationships with Ángel Pulido and Abraham Shalom Yahuda, that made him decide to take account of the importance of the pre-expulsion history of Iberian Jews.

 Ibid.

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The subject of Zionism⁷² and the claim for an all-embracing Jewish solidarity in a world of increasing anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence ends our travel through six-hundred years of Sephardic-Ashkenazic encounters. Coherency mandated that our contributions focus on the geographical landscape of Europe and the chronological limits of late medieval and early modern times. Even though comparative remarks concerning later developments and non-European contexts are included, exploring them was not and could not be our authors’ primary interests. What might be considered a missing link has its scientific explanation. In terms of geography, we are still confronted with an enormous lack of information regarding Jewish-Jewish encounters beyond European contexts, especially when it comes to early modern colonial empires.⁷³ In terms of chronology, the use of the term “Sephardim” underwent significant changes in the twentieth century and now covers the whole range of meanings from “Jews with Iberian ancestry” to “non-European Jews” to “non-Ashkenazic Jews,” depending on the position, the context, and the political agenda of the respective speaker. Since the emergence of the term “Mizrahim,” discussions about “Sephardim” are torn between efforts to emphasize their European origins and others to stress their rootedness in and compatibility with Arabic cultures and traditions.⁷⁴ As a consequence, scholars engaging in Sephardic Studies have either been accused of neglecting the histories and cultures of non-European Jews⁷⁵ or have been criticized for ac-

 Interestingly, even Zionism, which was meant to bridge Jewish-Jewish divides, was often conceived in different Sephardic and Ashkenazic modes. See Vidaković-Petrov, “The Ashkenazi-Sephardi Dialogue in Yugoslavia, 1918 – 1941,” 30 – 38. For earlier studies, see Freidenreich, The Jews of Yugoslavia, 30 – 34, and eadem, “Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Inter-War Yugoslavia: Attitudes toward Jewish Nationalism,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 44 (1977): 53 – 80. To my knowledge, there has yet to be a detailed comparative study in Sephardic and Ashkenazic Zionism.  For a few exceptions concerning the English and Dutch Americas and Caribbean, see, e. g., Stanley Mirvis, “Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Colonial Jamaica (1692– 1786),” in A Sephardic Pepper-Pot in the Caribbean, ed. Michael Studemund-Halévy (Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2016), 109 – 23; Mark I. Greenberg, “A ‘Haven of Benignity’: Conflict and Cooperation between Eighteenth-Century Savannah Jews,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2002): 544– 68; and Wieke Vink, Creole Jews: Negotiating Community in Colonial Suriname (Leiden: Brill, 2010), esp. 187– 219.  Elazar, The Other Jews. See also Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), 82 (on Spanish Sephardim resenting the blurring of distinctions between themselves and Mizrahim) and 83 (on Ashkenazic recognition that extends only to the Jews of Iberia).  Kaye/Kantrowitz, The Colors of Jews, 93 – 98. Kaye/Kantrowitz notes: “It needs to be said: Sephardi experience from Spain or Portugal does not cover the field nor does ‘Sephardic’ necessa-

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tually offering Mizrahi Studies without respecting Iberian Jewish tendencies to take their distance and distinguish themselves both from Ashkenazim and other Jews in and outside of Europe.⁷⁶ Thus, a volume on modern and contemporary Sephardic-Ashkenazic relations would have to stretch beyond Europe and include research on Mizrahi-Ashkenazic relations in the Middle East and Israel in both colonial and postcolonial times. Alternatively, contributors would need to disregard the claims of Jews whose ancestors had in fact been part of the larger Iberian Sephardic Diaspora before their past was cut off from European contexts for political reasons and decisions.⁷⁷ In both cases, a different range of studies would be needed, and these would also have to include a critical reflection on the historical use of concepts such as “Sephardic” and “Mizrahi” in different research areas and contexts. In accord with our geographical and chronological limitations, in this volume, “Sephardim” is used in the narrow sense of “Iberian Jews” and their early modern descendants. We do not pretend to address all geographical areas and all relevant historical moments. More than presenting a complete panorama of early modern Sephardic-Ashkenazic relations, our authors probe case studies in comparative/ entangled histories that we consider useful for developing fresh perspectives on old discussions and/or strengthening a field that has long been neglected. Yet, it should be emphasized that our focus on Iberian Jewish History is part of a pragmatic choice and not a political decision. Instead of presenting final conclusions, we aim at opening new discussions, and it is to be hoped that our contributions to Sephardic-Ashkenazic encounters in early modern Europe can also contribute to new approaches in the field of Sephardic-Mizrahi-Ashkenazic entanglements beyond the European context and the nineteenth century.

rily mean ‘European’; Spanish and Arab culture are deeply entangled.” Ibid., 95. The kinds of studies that Kaye/Kantrowitz objects to are represented by Véronique Poirier, Ashkénazes et Séfarades: Une étude comparée de leurs relations en France et en Israël (années 1950 – 1990) (Paris: Cerf, 1998), where Sephardic Jews are generally characterized as the non-European others, suffering from cultural backwardness and in need of Ashkenazic help and support.  Yaron Tsur, “Ha-historiografiah ha-yisraelit ve-ha-beayah ha-edatit,” Peamim 94– 95 (2003): 7– 56. I am grateful to Dikla Katz for turning my attention to this essay.  See, e. g., Schroeter, who notes at the end of The Sultan’s Jew: “… by the 1830s, the Sephardi Diaspora that had formerly bridged both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic had lost much of its meaning. The perception of a sharp division between the Muslim world and Europe, between East and West, now profoundly affected the Jewish world. The Sephardi origins of Jews of North Africa and the Middle East were no longer of great relevance to European Jews, who now viewed their coreligionists in Muslim countries as ‘Oriental’ Jews, belonging to a decayed civilization that awaited emancipation.” Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew, 158.

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Acknowledgments Most of the chapters in this volume are based on lectures delivered at the Fourth Annual Conference of the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg (ZJS), organized by Kerstin Schoor and myself, in November 2016. I am grateful for the moral and administrative support that I received from the ZJS from the first idea of programming a conference on Sephardic-Ashkenazic relations to the final organization. Special thanks go to my colleagues of the Board of Directors, Christina von Braun, Anne Brenker, Liliana Ruth Feierstein, Rainer Kampling, Kerstin Schoor, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, and Werner Treß, to our senior professors Micha Brumlik, Irmela von der Lühe, and Helmut Peitsch, to Simone Damis, Nadja Fiensch, and Monika Schärtl, as well as to the researchers, student assistants, and guests who contributed to the straightforward procedure, the scientific outcome, and the warm atmosphere of the conference. Especially enriching was the collaboration with Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, who was one of our research fellows during the academic winter term of 2015 – 2016 and was fortunately able to come back to Berlin for the conference. After the conference, Monika Schärtl has been supportive in clarifying questions and paving the way for turning the conference papers into a volume. Wenke Papenhagen has been helpful in organizing payments and other things that had to be done in Potsdam. Since 2018, Evelyn Grossberg has been in charge of the language and copy editing, and it has been a pleasure to work with her. The final editing was mine, as was the decision to interfere only partly with our authors choices regarding the transliteration of Hebrew names, titles, and words. As far as possible, the footnotes and bibliographies have been presented in consistent formats. Julia Pohlmann helped with the first version of the index and the combined bibliography. Robert Messer contributed to earlier drafts of individual bibliographies. The cover illustration was designed by Jan Blatt. The rights for the original engraving were provided by the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam and Rachel Boertjens, who has been extremely generous and supportive. My final thanks go to the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and the University of Potsdam, both of which generously funded the conference and the editing of the volume. Further funding was provided by the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für Europäisch-Jüdische Studien (MMZ). Werner Treß, Julia Brauch, Katrin Hofmann, and Antonia Mittelbach have smoothly guided the book through the different phases of its publication.

Jonathan Ray

2 Ashkenazim and Sephardim before (and after) the Modern Age History, Historiography, and the Meaning of Jewish Communal Categories The central questions of this volume – encounters between Ashkenazim and Sephardim and the ways in which they came to shape each community – touch upon both history and historiography. That is, a deeper appreciation of Jewish-Jewish interaction requires an awareness of how medieval and early modern Ashkenazim and Sephardim understood these labels, as well as how later scholars have employed them. Toward this end, we have to recognize the influential legacy of modern Jewish Studies scholarship and its role in forming our conception of an Ashkenazic-Sephardic divide. It is not that the terms “Ashkenazim” and “Sephardim” were not operative in the pre-modern world; indeed, they were. However, we have become so conditioned to look for them to the exclusion of other categories of identity that they are often all that we see. Therefore, it is worth reconsidering the popular narrative that assumes both the permanence and the primacy of these terms in Jewish history. In the present chapter, I offer some observations regarding encounters between Ashkenazim and Sephardim during the medieval and early modern periods, as well as some comments on the limits and potential utility of these communal categories. As a point of departure, I highlight three key ways in which the historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has shaped the current discourse on the nature of Ashkenazic and Sephardic identity. One approach favored by scholars of the modern era was to juxtapose Sephardic cosmopolitanism and Ashkenazic piety and insularity. This trend often contrasted a Sephardic tendency to accept outside influences from the surrounding culture with Ashkenazic rejection of the same. A second and somewhat related presentation of the Sephardic-Ashkenazic dichotomy followed a wider academic discourse on racial and ethnic identities that promoted an essential division between European and “Oriental” cultures.¹ Here, scholarship generally associated the Sephardim with Muslim or “Eastern” civilization, in both positive and negative ways. A  John M. Efron, “Orientalism and the Jewish Historical Gaze,” in Orientalism and the Jews, ed. Ivan Kalmar and Derek Penslar (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 80 – 93. On Ashkenazic insularity, see Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (New York: Behrman House, 1961). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-002

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third way in which this binary developed within Jewish Studies is perhaps the most tendentious: the issue of conversion. Here, the characterization of medieval Sephardim as more accepting of apostasy owing to their lack of religious devotion was set against a medieval Ashkenazic society that was often characterized as having chosen death over conversion and was thus heralded for its martyrs.² In each of these historiographic paradigms, the two communities were imagined as being mutually constitutive – each the counterpoint of the other. Today, many of the theories that undergird these assumptions have or are being revised or rejected. Yet, the dualistic and contrasting nature of Jewish society that they helped to create in the minds of generations of scholars remains a force to be reckoned with. It is therefore worthwhile to revisit the subject of Ashkenazic and Sephardic societies during what might be called their formative period, roughly from the ninth to the sixteenth century. For a better understanding of the notion of Jewish subcultures and the ways in which these subsets of Jews interacted with one another in this early period, it is perhaps helpful to reconsider the prevailing assumption that Ashkenazim and Sephardim represented the primary cultural divisions of the Jewish world. This stance ignores the fact that throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish society embraced many regional or “sub-ethnic” groups, including Romaniotes, Sicilians, Yemenites, Tunisians, and Persians, just to name a few. Furthermore, it is often difficult to speak about any of these regional cultures with any great precision. Not all Jews who lived in the Iberian and Germanic lands of the Middle Ages can be considered Sephardim or Ashkenazim. These regions were loosely defined by shifting borders, and the Jewish cultures with which they became associated were similarly amorphous. This was true in the Middle Ages, and all the more so in the early modern period as the medieval Ashkenazim and Sephardim expanded into large and often peripatetic Diasporas. The lack of a neat division of medieval Jewry into Ashkenazim and Sephardim also means that the members of these two subcultures did not tend to define themselves in opposition to one another, nor were they inherently suspicious or antagonistic toward each other. Ethnically speaking, medieval Jewry was quite pluralistic; the competition for cultural dominance within the Jewish world simply had not developed to the point that it would in later periods. To be sure, from the seventeenth century on, tensions increased significantly as self-identified  As David Malkiel has argued, “One may still maintain that intimacy breeds apostasy, but this premise can no longer be restricted to Spain, any more than Ashkenaz provides a model of unremitting hostility on the one hand, and Jewish introversion and hostility on the other.” David Malkiel, “Jews and Apostates in Medieval Europe: Boundaries Real and Imagined,” Past and Present 194 (2007): 33.

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Ashkenazim and Sephardim routinely viewed and discussed each other with great wariness and, at times, open hostility.³ But this mutual enmity should not be projected back on the Middle Ages. During that earlier period, internal Jewish animosity was more clearly illustrated by negative comments on the part of intellectual factions (i. e., among groups of Jewish philosophers, poets, Talmudists, etc.) and between groups such as Karaites and Rabbanites, than between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, per se.⁴ Each regional Jewish subculture might have favored its own customs and showed pride in its heritage, but such attitudes rarely produced the sort of rancor that existed between competing intellectual circles. Apart from being anachronistic, the notion of an Ashkenazic-Sephardic divide during the medieval period is also somewhat skewed toward certain internal, Jewish criteria. In many ways, our map of the medieval Jewish world is generally one drawn from rabbinic conceptual categories. Important as these categories may be, they often map awkwardly and incompletely onto the Jewish communities of a given geographic area. This is the case with the SephardicIberian or Ashkenazic-Franco-German societies of the Middle Ages. One of the principal ways in which Jewish historiography has delineated these two communities is with regard to their approach to religious law (halakhah). Privileging halakhah is, perhaps, understandable. For many Jewish Studies’ scholars, rabbinic texts and their interpretation represent the defining factor of Jewish culture, and thus any of its subcultures.⁵ Indeed, early modern rabbis, whose writings exerted a considerable influence over modern readings of Jewish history, tended to measure differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in terms of halakhic cultures. The division of Jewish society into two broad cultural

 Felix Sprang, “‘I Was Told They Were All Iewes’ – Mentalities and Realities of Segregation: Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews in Early Modern Hamburg and Altona,” in Frühneuzeitliche Ghettos in Europa im Vergleich, ed. Fritz Backhaus, Gisela Engel, Gundula Grebner, and Robert Liberles (Berlin: Trafo, 2012), 399 – 416; Benjamin Ravid, “‘How Profitable the Nation of the Jews Are’: The ‘Humble Addresses’ of Menasseh ben Israel and the ‘Discorso’ of Simone Luzzatto,” in Mystics, Philosophers and Politicians: Essays in Jewish Intellectual History in Honor of Alexander Altmann, ed. Jehuda Reinharz, Daniel S. Swetschinski, and Kalman P. Bland (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1982), 159 – 80; and Yosef Kaplan, “The Self-Definition of Sephardic Jews of Western Europe and Their Relation to the Alien and the Stranger,” in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391 – 1648, ed. Benjamin Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 121– 45.  Although the long-standing feuds collectively referred to as the “Maimonidean Controversies” are, at times, taken to be evidence of a Sephardic-Ashkenazic divide, these debates were more indicative of medieval intellectual factionalism than broad cultural tensions.  Daniel Elazar, “Sephardim and Ashkenazim: The Classic and Romantic Traditions in Jewish Civilization,” Judaism 33 (1984): 146 – 59.

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spheres was, in many ways, reinforced by rabbinic scholars who defined these spheres in terms of accepted legal traditions. For instance, one of the leading Polish rabbis of the sixteenth century, Solomon Luria, credited the medieval Catalan rabbi Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides) with bringing Tosafistic learning to Spain and creating a bridge between what Luria understood to be the distinct societies of medieval Ashkenaz and Sepharad.⁶ Such statements obscure the fact that the relationship between geography and cultural community was in flux throughout the Middle Ages. It was not always clear, even to medieval Jews, exactly which regions on the Iberian Peninsula or in northern and central Europe belonged to “Sepharad” and “Ashkenaz,” respectively.⁷ In the Middle Ages, the term Ashkenaz was generally understood throughout the Jewish world to refer to Germany. But even this early geographical definition of the term carries with it a fair bit of imprecision, since even “Germany” was hardly a clear and static geographic category. The ambiguity was amplified in the later Middle Ages, as most of the Jews living in the land of Ashkenaz, that is, the benei Ashkenaz, or Ashkenazim, relocated to Poland, Lithuania, and other points east, and in so doing established new centers of Ashkenazic life. However, some Jews continued to live in the older German lands, and both they and their territory continued to be designated as Ashkenazim/Ashkenaz. Thus, by the sixteenth century, there were “Ashkenazim” living in Ashkenaz proper, as well as in Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Moravia, and other lands that were acknowledged as lying beyond Ashkenaz itself. Similar to the relationship between geography and community, the one between community and culture also remained quite fluid for pre-modern Jews. Whereas it is possible to determine some salient features of Ashkenazic and Sephardic culture, we must nonetheless recognize that these characteristics took centuries to develop, becoming much more fully articulated in the early modern period as these communities transitioned out of their ancestral homelands to new areas of settlement. Thus, when thinking about the valence of these ethno-cultural identities for medieval Jews, we should bear in mind that they had not yet attained the force or resonance that they would in the modern

 Joseph M. Davis, “The Reception of the ‘Shulhan ‘Arukh’ and the Formation of Ashkenazic Jewish Identity,” AJS Review 26 (2002): 262. Here, legal traditions included halakhah but also liturgy and custom, as can be seen in a famous statement by Isaac Luria that, “it is proper for each person to hold fast to the order of the prayers according to the customs of his forefathers.” Cited in Davis, “Reception of the ‘Shulhan ‘Arukh,’” 256.  Eduard Feliu, “Cataluña no era Sefarad: Precisiones Metodológicas,” in La Cataluña judía, ed. Mariona Companys (Barcelona: Museu d’Historia de Catalunya, 2002), 25 – 35.

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world.⁸ Although medieval Jews did possess notions of larger cultural communities – that is, Sephardic or Ashkenazic – such identities coexisted with categories of belonging that were much narrower in scope. Indeed, throughout the medieval world, Jews tended to think of religious customs as being defined by local practices based on cities or small regions (i. e., Austria and the Rhineland), rather than of Ashkenaz or Sepharad as a whole.⁹ The notion of local cultural customs persisted throughout the early modern period, but in the late sixteenth century there arose a new sense of a broader Ashkenazic community based on a combination of geography and an associated halakhic authority. A similar transition took place with regard to Sephardic Jews. Sepharad originally seems to have referred to Muslim-dominated al-Andalus, but over the centuries the designation expanded and contracted in the minds of various Jewish authors. As Jews moved from Muslim to Christian Iberia over the course of the Middle Ages, the term retained its meaning as a general cultural designation, particularly among intellectuals, but that was complicated by the prevalence of more limited identities based on the customs of individual kingdoms or cities.¹⁰ In view of the limits of Sephardic and Ashkenazic identities during the Middle Ages, it is possible to address the question of how these two groups engaged with and related to one another. In the Middle Ages the encounter between Ashkenazic and Sephardic intellectual culture generally took place in a range of contact zones that were generally peripheral to the Rhine Valley and al-Andalus. These included the rabbinic centers of northern France, which hosted scholars who had been steeped in the traditions of the Andalusi rabbis, such as Nahmanides and Jonah of Gerona. Another important area of encounter was the Castilian city of Toledo, where the Ashkenazic rabbis Asher ben Yehiel and his sons settled after fleeing the German lands in the early fourteenth century.¹¹

 The same of course can be said for ethno-national identities of the medieval world in general. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983); Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay, eds., Manufacturing Middle Ages: Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013).  Davis, “Reception of the ‘Shulhan ‘Arukh,’” 266 – 67.  Jonathan Ray, “Images of the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 1 (2009): 195 – 211.  On Jonah Gerondi in Evreux, see Ephraim Kanarfogel, Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 59 – 81, and Israel Ta-Shema, “Hasidut Ashkenaz bi-Sefarad: Rabbi Yonah Gerondi, haish u-fo’alo,” in Galut ahar golah, ed. Aaron Mirsky, Avraham Grossman, and Yosef Kaplan (Jer-

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Medieval Catalonia, although often taken by modern scholars to be part of Sepharad, was actually another such contact zone as were the southern French regions of Provence and Languedoc. In these areas, the rabbinic cultures that had developed in the Rhine Valley, northern France, and Muslim al-Andalus overlapped and blended together over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Perhaps the most influential Jewish scholar of that region, Nahmanides, is best known for creating an intellectual and religious synthesis between Ashkenazic and Sephardic attitudes with regard to philosophy, mysticism, and the interpretation of sacred texts. That this process of amalgamation was emblematic of Catalan, and not Sephardic society, highlights the distinct regional character of these contact zones.¹² In discussing Nahmanides’s treatment of Andalusi religious traditions, Bernard Septimus emphasizes that the great sage, influential as he was in his day, represented a fairly localized trend in medieval Jewish thought that should not be extrapolated to include all Sephardim. He clarifies that, “Nahmanides and his circle represent a distinctive Catalan strain within thirteenth-century Hispano-Jewish culture.”¹³ Thus, although Nahmanides’s role in the successful incorporation of Ashkenazic learning is justly acclaimed, it should not be considered transformative for all of medieval Sephardic Jewry. To be sure, the degree to which this synthesis shaped Jewish culture in the associated kingdoms of Aragon or Valencia is not at all clear. As noted above, a similar process to the one fomented by Nahmanides in thirteenth-century Catalonia took place in neighboring Castile during the following century. Here, the primary avenue for the integration of Ashkenazic halakhic usalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1988), 165 – 73, 181– 88. For Toledo, see Israel Ta-Shema, “Between East and West: Rabbi Asher b. Yehi’el and His Son Rabbi Ya’akov,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, vol. 3, ed. Jay M. Harris (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 179 – 96; and Judah Galinsky, “Ashkenazim in Sefarad: The Rosh and the Tur on the Codification of Jewish Law,” Jewish Law Annual 16 (2006): 3 – 23.  Avraham Grossman, “Relations between Spanish and Ashkenazi Jewry in the Middle Ages,” in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, 2 vols., ed. Haim Beinart (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), vol. 1, 220 – 39; and Pinchas Roth “Regional Boundaries and Medieval Halakhah: Rabbinic Responses from Catalonia to Southern France in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Jewish Quarterly Review 105 (2015): 72– 98.  Bernard Septimus,”‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’: Nahmanides and the Andalusian Tradition,” in Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 12. The combination of Andalusian and Franco-German Jewish traditions produced what Septimus calls a “creative tension in Nahmanides’ thought.” Septimus, “‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love,’” 13. On Catalonia as part of Sepharad, see Ezra Shevet, “The Status of Custom in the Writings of Ramban and His Catalonian School” [Hebrew], Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-’Ivri 18 – 19 (1992– 1994): 439 – 53; and Feliu, “Cataluña no era Sefarad.”

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traditions and religious customs was via the arrival of Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel. The rabbinic dynasty he established transformed traditional rabbinic culture in Toledo, then the largest and most intellectually influential Jewish center in Castile. However, it is not clear if the Ashkenazic traditions they imported also shaped rabbinic culture in the neighboring districts of Galicia, Extremadura, and southern Castile (Andalusia). This regionalism raises questions as to the extent of these cross-cultural Jewish encounters. For instance, the fourteenth-century legal code of Jacob ben Asher, Arba’ah Turim (or Tur), is often cited as a prime example of Ashkenazic-Sephardic interaction, representing an amplification of Sephardic legal traditions to include those of Ashkenazic sages. Yet as popular as this code was in pre-expulsion Castile, it is not clear that it was equally well known throughout Iberia. Its widespread circulation was greatly expanded during the sixteenth century. Indeed, it was the combined influence of the expulsion of 1492, the advent of Jewish printing, and Joseph Karo’s use of the Tur as a foundational text for the creation of his expanded code, the Beit Yosef, that the fusion of these disparate medieval traditions was more fully established. This distillation and dissemination of medieval Sephardic legal thinking during the sixteenth century also led to a second major period of religious and cultural confluence of Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions. During this latter process, it was the Sephardim who came to exert a transformative influence on Ashkenazic thought and practice, reversing the trend of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.¹⁴ Moreover, just as there were areas in which the encounters between Ashkenazim and Sephardim were particularly frequent, there were also regions in which these designations played little or no role in the construction of Jewish identities. As noted above, there appear to have been whole regions of medieval Iberia where the local Jewish communities were not considered to be part of Sepharad, including the northern districts of Galicia, Leon, and Navarre, as well as the Kingdom of Portugal. The last only became associated with the Sephardim following the arrival of Castilian Jews in 1492, the subsequent blending of these refugees with the indigenous Portuguese communities, and the eventual exodus of the combined Hispano-Portuguese “nation” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Similarly, in some medieval centuries (and with regard to certain historical questions), the Jews of Catalonia and Provence can be counted as  Jacob Elbaum, “The Influence of Spanish-Jewish Culture on the Jews of Ashkenaz and Poland in the Fifteenth-Seventeenth Centuries,” Binah 3 (1994): 180 – 81. On the popularity of the Tur in the fifteenth century, see Judah Galinsky, “On the Circulation of the Turim in Spain in the Generation before the Expulsion, and its Unknown Abridgement of Tur, Hoshen Mishpat” [Hebrew], Yeshurun 12 (2003): 84– 102.

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Sephardim, whereas in other periods they operated as distinct regional Jewries. The same can be said for the Jews who inhabited the medieval Franco-German lands broadly referred to as Ashkenaz. Although Jacob ben Asher often distinguished between the customs of his family’s ancestral home in Ashkenaz (Cologne) and his adopted home in Sepharad (Toledo), he also used the terms Ashkenaz and Tzarfat somewhat interchangeably.¹⁵ To be sure, some modern scholars have noted these distinctions among the various subregions of the medieval Jewish world. In his landmark study on this subject, H. J. Zimmels identified Sepharad in the later Middle Ages as being limited to Castilian Jewry.¹⁶ Yet even this narrower scope does not fully capture the nuanced sense that these terms had during the Middle Ages. It is not at all evident that Jews in all the Castilian territories considered themselves heirs to the Andalusi designation of Sepharad/Sephardim. Indeed, it is possible that during the later Middle Ages, such terms were limited to the intellectual elite of Toledan Jewry and those that accepted their religious authority. Material culture provides another illustration of how medieval Jewish societies were often characterized by local variants. The artistic and architectural legacy of medieval Iberia, for instance, suggests significant differences between the Jewish centers of Castile and the Crown of Aragon. It has been observed that the Jews in Christian Iberia continued their use of Islamic architectural and literary motifs. Yet, the Jewish adherence to older Andalusi forms of artistic expression was much more pronounced in Castile than in regions such as Catalonia, where Jewish patrons were quick to embrace the new Gothic cultural idioms of northern Europe. Whereas there may be various reasons for this distinction, it cannot be ignored that Jewish stylistic tendencies closely followed those of the local Christian milieu rather than a broad Sephardic tradition. In other words, when Jews living in Christian Spain built their synagogues in the Mudejar style or embraced figural illustrations in their illuminated manuscripts, they were in fact echoing Christian trends particular to their local region. Indeed, Jewish material culture in Christian Iberia seems to suggest that the Sephardim were less concerned with maintaining a clearly distinct Sephardic cultural heritage than in joining in the process of cultural appropriation and adaption that characterized so much of Hispano-Christian society.¹⁷

 Davis, “Reception of the ‘Shulhan ‘Arukh,’” 263.  H. J. Zimmels, Ashkenazim and Sephardim: Their Relations, Differences and Problems as Reflected in the Responsa (London: Marla Publications, 1976), 47.  On Jewish Mudejarism, see Jerrilynn D. Dodds, “Mudejar Tradition and the Synagogues of Medieval Spain: Cultural Identity and Cultural Hegemony,” in Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. Vivian Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds (New

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These examples of Jewish adaptation of local cultural tendencies also remind us that throughout the Middle Ages, the contours of Jewish society were shaped as much by external dynamics as by internal religious and legal traditions. Scholars have often measured this external influence by the relative openness of different Jewish societies toward the adoption and adaptation of key elements in their surrounding culture.¹⁸ Yet, there were other factors that determined the character and course of Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities beyond the oft-noted cultural distinctions between their Christian and Muslim settings. When comparing medieval Ashkenazic and Sephardic societies, it is important to note that the general demographic and historical context for Jewish communal growth in each region was fundamentally different. In medieval Iberia, there were pre-existing Jewish communities throughout al-Andalus before most of the region was brought under Christian rule during the high Middle Ages. By contrast, Franco-German Jewry during this same period was in a much earlier stage of development. Although there are whole swaths of time for which we do not have ample documentation, it appears that full, organized, and autonomous Jewish communities existed throughout Iberia from Roman times through the Visigothic period of the early Middle Ages, and then under Muslim rule from the eighth to the fifteenth century. It was in the tenth to twelfth centuries that Jewish intellectuals began to regularly refer to the society they had built in al-Andalus as “Sepharad” and to promote the notion of a distinct Sephardic intellectual culture.

York: George Braziller, 1992), 112– 31; and Jerrilynn D. Dodds, María Rosa Menocal, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, eds., The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). For Jewish material culture in the medieval Crown of Aragon, see Vivian Mann, “The Unknown Jewish Artists of Medieval Iberia,” in The Jew in Medieval Iberia, 1100 – 1500, ed. Jonathan Ray (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 138 – 79; and Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Hebrew Manuscript Painting in Late Medieval Spain: Signs of a Culture in Transition,” Art Bulletin 84 (2002): 246 – 73.  Classic formulations of this argument include Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, trans. Louis Schoffman, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961), vol. 1, 1– 38; Gerson D. Cohen, Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim (Prior to Shabbetai Zevi) (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1967); and Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Recent revisions of this thesis, particularly with regard to medieval Ashkenazic society, include Ivan Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultures of the Jews, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 449 – 516; Jonathan Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Joseph Shatzmiller, Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Marketplace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); and Paola Tartakoff, “Testing Boundaries: Jewish Conversion and Cultural Fluidity in Medieval Europe,” Speculum 90 (2015): 730 – 31.

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In northern Europe, the situation was somewhat different. The incremental evolution of Jewish communities throughout much of medieval France and Germany is reflected in the royal and seigneurial charters issued first to small groups of Jews who came to the region seasonally in order to trade. These early writs were essentially forms of safe conduct, but the itinerant Jewish merchants who carried them and the small settlements that they established eventually gave way to larger, independent Jewish communities that shaped medieval Ashkenaz.¹⁹ These settlement charters played a key role in delimiting Jewish polities throughout medieval Europe. The ongoing relationship of the Jews to Christian lords came to define their status in each region and was a formative element in the development of their culture and identity. In both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic cultural spheres, we see a clearly articulated claim on the part of Christian kings to natural sovereignty over all the Jews in their realms from about the twelfth century onward.²⁰ However, the nature of the challenges to those royal claims from other Christian lords also helps distinguish the Ashkenazic and Sephardic contexts. In Iberia, ecclesiastical assertion to jurisdiction over the Jews was never as strong or as successful in challenging royal sovereignty as it was in France, England, or the Holy Roman Empire. Conversely, claims of sovereignty by the Iberian nobility and, increasingly over the course of the later Middle Ages, municipal councils, appear to have been greater than they were in northern Europe.²¹ Another example of external influence on the course of Jewish communal development, and a key difference between medieval Ashkenazic and Sephardic societies, can be seen in the figure of the Jewish courtier. In the Christian kingdoms of late medieval Iberia, there developed a position of rab mayor or rab

 Jonathan Ray “The Jew in the Text: What Christian Charters Tell Us about Medieval Jewish Society,” Medieval Encounters 16 (2010): 243 – 67. By the twelfth century, “Ashkenaz” effectively extended from northern France to Romania. See Michael Toch, “Jewish Migration to, within and from Medieval Germany,” in Le Migrazioni in Europa secc. XIII – XVIII, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1994), 639 – 52.  For the notion of Jews as “serfs of the royal chamber” in Christian Iberia, see El Fuero de Teruel, ed. Max Gorosch (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1950), title 568; and Norman Roth, “The Civic Status of the Jew in Medieval Spain,” in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, ed. Paul E Chevedden, Donald J. Kagay, and Paul G. Padilla (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 139 – 61. For northern Europe, see Gavin I. Langmuir, “‘Tamquam Servi’: The Change in Jewish Status in French Law about 1200,” in Toward a Definition of Anitsemitism, ed. Gavin I. Langmuir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 167– 94.  Salo W. Baron, “‘Plenitude of Apostolic Powers’ and Medieval ‘Jewish Serfdom,’” in Ancient and Medieval Jewish History, ed. Leon Feldman (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 284– 307.

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de la corte, which effectively translated as “crown rabbi,” who was a royal functionary that, among other things, often acted as a sort of minister for Jewish affairs.²² Whereas prominent Jews came to serve both Christian and Muslim lords throughout the Middle Ages, the establishment of the specific post of crown rabbi was unique to Christian Iberia. Here, we see the establishment of a new figure in Jewish society that combined the positions of royal officials, such as the tax farmer, which was often occupied by Jews, with that of a Jewish communal leader (rabbi). The authority of the crown rabbi was established by the crown but recognized, if often grudgingly, by Jews within his jurisdiction. It was, perhaps, this reluctance to accept the authority of the crown rabbi that led the authors of medieval halakhic literature to avoid distinguishing this new office from that of royal treasurer or bailiff (often rendered as gizbar ha-melekh) or the more general role of intercessor (shtadlan). Even those modern historians who supplemented their reading of medieval rabbinic sources with royal archival documents continued this medieval tendency to represent Jewish courtiers as an undifferentiated group. Most notably, Yitzhak Baer saw Sephardic courtiers from the ninth to the fifteenth century as a single archetype, rather than as an evolving set of representatives with varying degrees of jurisdiction, authority, and cultural impact. In his notorious condemnation of Jewish courtiers in medieval Spain, Baer represented all courtiers as a single social group or class within Sephardic society, characterized by philosophical and moral relativism that contributed to their society’s decline.²³ It is only when we are able to step back from this influential portrait of the Sephardic courtier as a cultural archetype and recognize the differences between Jews who served the crown generally and those who held specific posts as crown rabbis (rab mayor) that we are able to offer a more accurate comparison between

 Jonathan Ray, “Royal Authority and the Jewish Community: The Crown Rabbi in Medieval Spain and Portugal,” in Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2004), 307– 31; Eleazar Gutwirth, “Abraham Seneor: Social Tensions and the Court Jew,” Michael 11 (1989): 169 – 229; and Macarena Crespo Álvarez, “El cargo de Rab Mayor de la corte durante el reinado de Juan II: El camino hacia la centralización,” El Olivo 61, no. 2 (2005): 51– 64.  The central thesis of Yizhak Baer’s foundational A History of the Jews in Christian Spain is that the ultimate decline and dissolution of Hispano-Jewish society was due to the Averroist worldview of its elite. See also the echoes of Baer’s conceptualization of Jewish courtiers in Bezalel Safran, “Bahya Ibn Paquda’s Attitude toward the Courtier Class,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, vol. 1, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 154– 96.

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medieval Sephardic and Ashkenazic societies.²⁴ For instance, whereas prominent Ashkenazic Jews did serve Christian lords, and in that capacity acted as intercessors on behalf of their communities, there was no official post of minister for Jewish affairs in the lands north of the Pyrenees. Moreover, the figure of the crown rabbi in medieval Spain and the re-emergence of similar posts such as that of the kahya in the Ottoman Empire or the Hofjuden in eighteenth-century Europe remind us that the external factors that continued to shape the regional character and general trajectories of Jewish communal histories were often political, and not cultural.²⁵ Of all the ways in which Jewish-Christian relations helped determine the nature and distinct trajectories of medieval Ashkenazic and Sephardic societies, none has received more attention from modern scholars than the problem of conversion. To be sure, attitudes toward conversion represent an important factor that distinguishes the pre-modern Ashkenazim and Sephardim, although not in the ways we have come to expect. Modern Jewish historiography has often juxtaposed the two communities with regard to conversion as a means of arguing that the Ashkenazic community was essentially more insular and less influenced by its surrounding non-Jewish society than were their Sephardic brethren. The latter is often seen to have accepted conversion more readily – either during the riots of 1391 or in the decades thereafter – because their high level of integration into non-Jewish society had eroded their dedication to Judaism.²⁶ Although these long-standing theories have now been largely rejected, the impact of conversion, if not its underlying motivations, can still provide an important lens through which we can compare the trajectories of these two societies. We might begin by reflecting upon more mundane social-historical factors, rather than spiritual ones. Although we do have evidence of Jewish individuals and groups converting to Christianity in medieval France, Germany, and Eng-

 Here my reference to “Sepharad” is to Christian Iberia, including Portugal, where the post of crown rabbi (arrabi mor) appears to have played a significant, and quite new role in the governance of Jewish communities in the later Middle Ages. See Ray, “Royal Authority and the Jewish Community,” 322– 30.  On the position of the kahya in the Ottoman Empire, see Yaron Ben-Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans: Ottoman Jewish Society in the Seventeenth Century (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 203 – 205. For Hofjuden, see Selma Stern, The Court Jew (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1950), and the studies listed in Norman Stillman, “The Emergence, Development and Historical Continuity of the Sephardi Courtier Class,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma 6 (1993): 17– 18n1.  For a rejection of this theory, see David Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000 – 1250 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), ch. 8; Ram BenShalom, “Jewish Martyrdom and Conversion in Sepharad and Ashkenaz in the Middle Ages: An Assessment of the Reassessment” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 71 (2001): 279 – 300.

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land, the size and scope of these conversions never approximated those that gave rise to Converso society in Spain and Portugal during the later Middle Ages.²⁷ The scale, not the impetus, of Hispano-Jewish conversion is what most set it apart from other medieval Jewish societies. Likewise, the bifurcated nature of Sephardic society after 1391 – that it comprised both professing Christians and Jews – was more determinative of the distinct nature of Sephardic society than any other single category, be it law, philosophical worldview, or religious rite (nusah). Such a dual religious culture never fully developed among medieval Ashkenazim. The issue of conversion also informs another point of comparison between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, namely the expulsion of Jews from each region at the close of the Middle Ages. Although a theologically, socially, and economically driven animus pervaded Christian thinking about Jews throughout medieval Europe, both the decisions to expel the Jews of each region and the enduring results of those expulsions turned on very different issues. The presence of a large and unassimilable Converso population in Spain determined the fate of Spanish Jews and the complex social and religious character of the early Sephardic Diaspora (as well as the persistence of anti-Judaism in Spain long after 1492). By contrast, the expulsion of Ashkenazic communities was motivated by forces other than the problem of assimilating converted Jews. The expulsions and migrations of the Sephardim and Ashkenazim at the end of the Middle Ages mark a shift toward a new era in their cultural development and interaction with one another. In the early modern period, both communities underwent important changes in internal composition and self-perception in their new areas of settlement. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Sephardic and Ashkenazic identities during this period, and one that has been somewhat undervalued as a lens through which we can view the instantiation of Jewish subcultures, is language. The Yiddish language, in both its oral and written forms, was a powerful cultural force within Ashkenazic society, functioning as an emblem of identity for Ashkenazim and as a cultural bridge between the medieval and early modern periods.²⁸ With the rise of printing in the early

 Tartakoff, “Testing Boundaries.”  Marion Aptroot, “Writing ‘Jewish’ not ‘German’: Functional Writing Styles and the Symbolic Function of Yiddish in Early Modern Ashkenaz,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 55 (2010): 128; and Shlomo Berger, “Functioning within a Diasporic Third Space: The Age of Early Modern Yiddish,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 15 (2008): 68. Folklore is another category worthy of greater attention when it comes to defining Jewish subcultures. As Eli Yassif has noted, analysis of Jewish folklore has the ability to get at “feelings and opinions shared by a broad segment of society.” Eli Yassif, “Local Identity: Spatial Consciousness and Social Tension in Hebrew Legends from Me-

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modern period, Yiddish books became a vehicle for the establishment of Ashkenazic culture, helping to deepen the cultural bonds among Yiddish speakers by creating a Yiddish readership that drew upon shared stories and information. Naturally, Judeo-German culture played out differently in the Germanic lands than it did in lands such as Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, where the dominant local culture was not Germanic. In the early modern period, the Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe continued to rely on Yiddish as their primary vernacular language for centuries after their expulsion from central Europe. An analogous situation existed among the Sephardim of the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and the Netherlands with regard to their continued use of Judeo-Spanish and Portuguese. Yet whereas both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Diasporas continued to speak versions of their medieval vernaculars, the cultural impact of this practice differed in each society. In the case of the Sephardim, Spanish and Portuguese were generally well known in many of their new lands of settlement, especially in the great mercantile ports of the early modern world. The involvement of Spanish and Portuguese Christians in trade, ecclesiastical life, war, and diplomacy throughout the early modern period meant that Jewish use of these vernaculars often lent them a cosmopolitan air that muted their identities as Jews. In PolandLithuania, however, Ashkenazic adherence to Yiddish served to distance the Jews who spoke it from most of their Christian neighbors, few of whom knew the language. But for the Ashkenazim who remained in Germanic lands, Yiddish did not alienate them from their neighbors in the same way as it did in Eastern Europe. Thus, the use of the same vernacular language (Yiddish) constructed the boundaries of early modern Ashkenazic culture in significantly different ways depending on the region in which the Ashkenazim lived.²⁹ Eventually, the kind of linguistic estrangement experienced by the Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe also took hold throughout the Eastern Sephardic Diaspora. By the nineteenth century, the so-called Western Sephardim in London and the Netherlands had generally abandoned Iberian vernaculars for English and Dutch, while those in Ottoman lands continued to speak Judeo-Spanish. As the use of Spanish and Portuguese waned throughout the Mediterranean, Sephardic preservation of older forms of these languages served to identify Sephardim as a distinct group. Thus, their use of Spanish in the sixteenth-century Med-

dieval Ashkenaz,” in Jüdische Kultur in den SchUM Städten: Literatur – Musik – Theater, ed. Karl E. Grözinger (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), 39.  Moshe Rosman notes: “with no real common language, it would seem that Jews and Christians [in Poland] were operating in separate cultural universes.” Moshe Rosman, “Innovative Tradition: Jewish Culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 524.

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iterranean region could have associated the Sephardim with a non-Jewish culture, but their continued use of it in the nineteenth century underscored their Jewishness. As historian David Biale has noted, the “intense linguistic acculturation in the early and high Middle Ages” that allowed both Ashkenazim and Sephardim to adopt the vernacular of the surrounding Christian societies in which they lived later gave way to “a kind of linguistic conservatism” in which the preservation of those medieval languages served to mark them as distinct in their new areas of settlement.³⁰ Having discussed the impact of geography, material culture, political structures, conversion, and language on the development of Sephardic and Ashkenazic identities, I now turn to another key aspect of modern historiography that continues to shape the debate on this topic: the notion of distinct Sephardic and Ashkenazic worldviews and self-perceptions. As I have already noted with regard to attitudes toward conversion, modern scholarship has often referenced the underlying mentalité, or psychological aspects, of Ashkenazic and Sephardic selfidentity as key cultural markers of each group. Today, however, careful scrutiny of these mentalités casts doubt on their existence, or at the very least on their role in the formation of distinct communal characteristics. Was there really a sense of cultural superiority among the early modern Sephardim vis-à-vis other Jews? Or was their general willingness to assert their association with fellow Sephardim the result of social, political, and economic factors in their new areas of settlement that allowed them to see themselves as valuable members of relatively cosmopolitan societies? Similar questions must be asked of early modern Ashkenazim, whose sense of cultural alienation was potentially the product of both internal and external factors. If we suspect that the self-perception of each group is something more than the reflection of collective cultural traits formed in the medieval period and maintained throughout the following centuries, we have to pay closer attention to the ways in which external factors created a changing sense of self in different regions within both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic worlds.³¹ The association of Sephardim with wealth, cosmopolitanism, and a general haughtiness that these qualities produced was once enthusiastically endorsed by Sephardim and non-Sephardim alike. Today, scholars are more aware of the ways in which this image of the Sephardim distorts the reality of Jewish poverty that  David Biale, “Preface: Toward a Cultural History of the Jews,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), xxi.  For the juxtaposition of Jewish status in late medieval Poland and the Holy Roman Empire, see Adam Teller, “Telling the Difference: Comparative Perspectives on the Jews’ Legal Status in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire,” Polin 22 (2010): 118.

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was endemic in nearly all Jewish communities until quite recently.³² Similarly, we would do well to bear in mind that the sources out of which historians have created our current narratives of the Jewish past are themselves biased with regard to the Jewish other. Writing on Jewish self-perception of the early modern period, Matthias Lehmann notes that this was a world that Jews “imagined as unified yet experienced as fragmented.”³³ That disconnect between expectation and experience often manifested itself in the borders of communal cultures, with many Jews perceiving homogeneity among other Jewish societies, but recognizing fragmentation in their own communities. Thus, just as Christians and Muslims generally looked at the various ethnic, linguistic, and halakhic communities of Jews and saw only Jews, so too did Ashkenazim and Sephardim view each other as a single undifferentiated group. Yet, within their own societies, medieval and early modern Jews were well aware of ethnic and cultural distinctions. Members of the early Sephardic Diaspora, for instance, were indeed cognizant of the distinctions between Portuguese and Spanish, Levantine and Ponentine, and Maghrebi and Ottoman Jews. The same is true of the Ashkenazim, with regard to divisions, for example, between Polish and German Jews.³⁴ Thus, even as cultural division of the Jewish world between “Ashkenazim” and “Sephardim” took hold in the sixteenth century, both communities continued to preserve an awareness of distinct internal subcultures. We must also recognize that Jewish constructions of the self and of the Jewish other generally transcended the legal and liturgical matters that were of interest to the scholarly elite. In the minds of most Jews, ethnic and cultural identities were often based on crude stereotypes rather than on legal or philosophical tendencies. For those Jews who sought to disparage their coreligionists of different ethnic backgrounds, the most salient distinguishing characteristics were often tied to popular cultural traditions. Eliyahu Bashyatsi (or Bashiazi), a fifteenth-century Karaite scholar living in the Ottoman Empire, thought of the Ash-

 Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989): 47– 66. On the question of poverty and social stratification in the Sephardic Diaspora see Yaron Ben-Naeh, “Poverty, Paupers and Poor Relief in Ottoman Jewish Society,” Revue des Études Juives 163 (2004): 151– 92; Miriam Bodian “The ‘Portuguese’ Dowry Societies in Venice and Amsterdam,” Italia 6 (1987): 30 – 61; Kaplan, “Self-Definition of Sephardic Jews;” and Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews of Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012).  Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 3.  Jonathan Ray, After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 79.

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kenazim as those who ate garlic and wore distinctive long garments with large hoods that gave them an intimidating air.³⁵ As the Ashkenazic-Sephardic binary became more prevalent, Jews from outside these groups sought affiliation with their communities and appropriation of their cultural profiles. During the early modern period, a common phenomenon in Sephardic and Ashkenazic societies was the willingness and even enthusiasm of Jews on the margins of each cultural community to associate themselves with the Ashkenazim or Sephardim and to lay claim to what they imagined to be a glorious communal past. In the case of the Sephardim, this medieval past was often defined by the towering intellectual achievements of its great rabbis.³⁶ In the case of the Ashkenazim, it was likely to be associated with a deep sense of religious piety. In particular, the legacy of the Hasidei Ashkenaz movement of the thirteenth century appears to have exerted a strong influence on late medieval and early modern Polish Jewry, which embraced it as a general cultural trait, rather than as a sectarian anomaly.³⁷ In some of the legends about their own origins, Polish Jews explained that their communities were founded by Jews expelled from Spain, thus grafting their history onto that of the Sephardim, rather than the medieval Ashkenazim.³⁸ As is well known, a similar appropriation of Sephardic identity took place in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany among the maskilim and their successors within the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. The maskilim considered the Sephardic emphasis on the systematic study of the Hebrew Bible and its grammatical underpinning to be an admirable alternative to the system of Tal Mordecai Kosover, “Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Palestine: A Study in Intercommunal Relations,” in Homenaje a Millás-Vallicrosa, 3 vols., ed. Roberto Almagià (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1954– 56), vol. 1, 754– 55.  This association of medieval Sepharad with great intellectual accomplishments was promoted within the Sephardic Diaspora from its inception and was adopted by early German maskilim: Joseph Hacker, “On the Intellectual Character and Self-Perception of Spanish Jewry in the Late Fifteenth Century” [Hebrew], Sefunot n. s. 2 (1983): 47– 59; Joseph Hacker, “The Intellectual Activity of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 95 – 135; and Andrea Schatz, “Returning to Sepharad: Maskilic Reflections on Hebrew in the Diaspora,” in Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse, ed. Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz, and Irene Zwiep (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007), 263 – 77.  Edward Fram, “Piety, Pietism and German Pietism: ‘Sefer Hasidim I’ and the Influence of ‘Hasidei Ashkenaz’,” Jewish Quarterly Review 92 (2002): 455 – 93.  Haya Bar-Itzhak, Jewish Poland – Legends of Origin: Ethnopoetics and Legendary Chronicles (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 29 – 32, and 39.

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mudic analysis, or pilpul, that prevailed in most Ashkenazic religious circles of their day. They revered the linguists and poets of medieval Sepharad, seeing them as responsible for the revival of Hebrew as a living language and a vehicle for artistic and religious expression. Similarly, historians such as Isaak Markus Jost and Heinrich Graetz saw themselves as heirs to the intellectual spirit of medieval Sepharad.³⁹ Here, the supposed psychological character of medieval Sephardim and Ashkenazim had less to do with their actual worldview than with that of later generations who reimagined Ashkenazic and Sephardic identities as they re-created their own lineages. Moreover, whereas modern Ashkenazic historians were the more influential in establishing a strong cultural dichotomy between these two communities, they were not alone in this respect. At the turn of the last century, Ottoman Jewish intellectuals developed their own historiography with regard to Jewish, and in particular Sephardic, history. They presented the Sephardic Diaspora as part of a seamless narrative that linked the Sephardim and their many achievements to a supportive Ottoman state in a symbiotic history that ran from 1492 up to their own day.⁴⁰ The notion of Ottoman-Jewish cooperation contrasted sharply with the generally negative portrait of the Jewish experience in Christian Europe. This historiographic trend echoed the Wissenschaft distinctions between a rejected and backward Ashkenazic society and its more successful Sephardic counterpart. Modern Sephardic historians took this construct a step further by conflating Sephardic history with that of all Ottoman Jews, a move that simultaneously delegitimized the history or non-Sephardic Jews in the Empire and marginalized that of the Sephardim in other lands.⁴¹

 For the rereading of Sephardic culture by Jewish scholars during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Carsten Schapkow, Role Model and Countermodel: The Golden Age of Iberian Jewry and German Jewish Culture during the Age of Emancipation (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016); Irene E. Zwiep, “From ‘Dialektik’ to Comparative Literature: Steinschneider’s ‘Orientalism,’” in Studies on Steinschneider, ed. Reimund Leicht and Gad Freudenthal (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 137– 50; Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy;” and Schatz, “Returning to Sepharad.”  Julia Phillips Cohen, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3; and Devin E. Naar, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 224– 26. In the case of Salonican historians, the glory of Ottoman-Jewish relations was often narrowed to the representative example of their own city, which they termed the “Jerusalem of the Balkans.”  Cohen, Becoming Ottomans, 2. Similarly, Ashkenazic authors and folklorists of the period promoted an idealized and nostalgic characterization of Ashkenazic shtetl society as synonymous with authentic “Jewish” society. See Itzig Nakhmen Gottesman, Defining the Yiddish Nation: The Jewish Folklorists of Poland (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003).

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Looking past these idealized projections of modern scholarship, we can posit that it is the transition from the later Middle Ages to the early modern period and from the medieval centers of Ashkenaz and Sepharad to those of Eastern Europe and the wider Mediterranean world that greatly multiplied the frequency and intensity of the encounters between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews. Yet even here, we should not imagine the neatly binary world promoted by much modern scholarship. Indeed, in early modern Muslim lands, encounters between Ashkenazim and Sephardim were generally overshadowed by those between Sephardim and a variety of other Jewish groups: Romaniote, Maghrebi, and others. One might even consider encounters and subsequent rivalries between former Conversos who had joined the Sephardic Diaspora after reconverting to Judaism and those Sephardim who had never converted out (often styled as “Ponentines” and “Levantines,” respectively) as being more noteworthy than between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. A similar situation existed in early modern Italian cities such as Rome, Venice, and Ferrara.⁴² Differing attitudes toward Conversos and former Conversos were also important factors in shaping the divergent trajectories of the Eastern and Western branches of the Sephardic Diaspora. In the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, descendants of the Conversos were generally subsumed into the greater Sephardic society by the seventeenth century, and the impact of their Christian cultural heritage ceased to be a distinguishing element of their identity. By contrast, the vast majority of the Sephardim in northern Europe and the Americas shared a Converso background, and their distinction as “men of the Portuguese nation” continued to be a defining characteristic of their cultural identity well into the modern period.⁴³ This was particularly true in the United States, where, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ashkenazic historians and Reform rabbis enthusiastically advertised the Converso heritage of the country’s founding Jewish communities. American Jewish historiography situated Marranism and the Sephardic flight from religious oppression to the free profession of Judaism within the country’s general narra-

 Benjamin Arbel, “Jews in International Trade: The Emergence of the Levantines and Ponentines,” in The Jews of Early Modern Venice, ed. Robert C. Davis and Benjamin Ravid (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 73 – 96. On Ferrara, see Laura Graziani Secchieri, “Ebrei Italiani, Askenaziti e Sefarditi a Ferrara: Un’analisi topografica dell’insidiamento e delle sue trasformazioni (secoli XIII – XVI),” in Gli Ebrei nello Stato della Chiesa, ed. Marina Caffiero and Anna Esposito (Padova: Esedra, 2012), 163 – 90.  Miriam Bodian, “Amsterdam, Venice and the Marrano Diaspora in the Seventeenth Century,” in Dutch Jewish History, ed. Jozeph Michman, vol. 2 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1989), 47– 65; and Miriam Bodian, “‘Men of the Nation’: The Shaping of ‘Converso’ Identity in Early Modern Europe,” Past and Present 143 (1994): 48 – 76.

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tive of freedom from persecution. At the center of this historiographic trend was the claim that Christopher Columbus, then lionized and embraced as America’s founding father, was himself of Converso stock.⁴⁴ For those Jews from central and Eastern Europe who migrated to Mediterranean lands during the later Middle Ages, their identity as Ashkenazim appears to have been somewhat broader than that of their Sephardic counterparts. They did not tend to create distinct synagogue communities (kehalim) based on geographical and ethnic identities (‘edot), as did Jews of Iberian and Italian origin, but generally joined together as undifferentiated communities of Ashkenazim.⁴⁵ Exactly why this should have been true is still not completely clear. More localized, sub-ethnic identities such as Catalan or Portuguese remained viable categories for Sephardic Jews as they relocated to various parts of the Mediterranean over the course of the sixteenth century. The same was the case for some groups of Italian Jews who retained their identities as Sicilians, Apulians, etc., as they resettled beyond their traditional regions.⁴⁶ Eventually, a similar process of communal consolidation took place throughout much of the Jewish world. As early as the sixteenth century, many communities in the Ottoman Empire sought to prohibit the establishment of multiple and competing communities in a single locale, whereas others addressed the problem of cities where there were several distinct ethnic communities by redefining each community as “a city unto itself.”⁴⁷ Rather than see these legal positions as expressions of inherent unity or disunity among Jews or of the strength or weakness of certain ethnic identities within the Jewish world, we should understand them as Jewish responses to factors beyond their control. That is, the impetus for Jews to retain or discard certain categories of communal identity had less to do with what was inherently important to them than when and where it was possible to achieve these aims. Jewish leaders in smaller communities who could force new Jewish settlers in their town to join the existing community rather than creating new and competing communities generally did so. In cities with larger Jewish populations, such as Rome and Istanbul, it was not easy (nor per-

 Beth S. Wenger, History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 47– 49, 60 – 63. Today, such claims are generally rejected by most scholars of the period.  Davis, “Reception of the Shulhan ‘Arukh,’” 254.  Nadia Zeldes, “Sefardi and Sicilian Exiles: Settlement, Community Formation and Crisis,” Hispania Judaica 6 (2008): 247; Benjamin Arbel, “Jews in Cyprus: New Evidence from the Venetian Period,” Jewish Social Studies 4 (1979): 23 – 40.  Davis, “Reception of the ‘Shulhan ‘Arukh,’” 255. For the Talmudic notion that Jews of a single town represent a single community/polity, see BT Yebamot 13b – 14a.

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haps advantageous) for the native community to subsume and control all newcomers. As a result, Jewish leaders, including legal theorists such as Joseph Karo, were forced to accept this situation as a fait accompli. ⁴⁸ Slowly, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the multiplicity of older communal divisions in the Jewish world gave way to a broader perceived dichotomy between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.⁴⁹ As Jews migrated en masse from the relatively narrow geographical confines of their medieval homes (e. g., the Rhine Valley, Castile, or the Crown of Aragon) to the wider world of the early modern diasporic communities (Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean lands, and beyond), the practices they brought with them came to mark these Diasporas as distinct cultural communities within the larger Jewish world.⁵⁰ The perceptions of others also played a role in this process. As the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Diasporas spread far and wide, their cultural consolidation was fueled by external recognition of the groups’ shared ethnic and religious characters as well as by internal self-perception. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, expulsion, migration, and the expansion of Jewish trade networks created new contact zones for Jews of varying ethnic backgrounds in which they came to define themselves through their engagement with one another. Among the most significant areas of encounter were the burgeoning commercial centers of the Netherlands, the Italian peninsula (particularly Rome and Venice), and the Ottoman Empire.⁵¹ In these cities, the process of

 Both Joseph Karo and Samuel de Medina distinguished between immigrants who settled in a new community as individuals or families and those who came as whole communities. The former were allowed – perhaps expected – to conform to the laws and customs of their new community, whereas the latter could stick to their own. Again, this seems to be less of an establishment of legal norms than a legal justification of the social reality. See Davis, “Reception of the ‘Shulhan ‘Arukh,’” 255n21– 22.  Matthias B. Lehmann, “Rabbinic Emissaries from Palestine and the Making of a Modern Jewish Diaspora,” in Envisioning Judaism, ed. Ra’anan S. Boustan and Alex Ramos (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1238.  Benjamin Arbel, “Mediterranean Jewish Diasporas and the Bill of Exchange,” in Union in Separation: Diasporic Groups and Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean (1100 – 1800), ed. Georg Christ (Rome: Viella, 2015), 527– 42.  Moshe Idel, “Encounters Between Italian and Spanish Kabbalists in the Generation After the Expulsion,” in Crisis and Creativity, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 189 – 222; Graziani Secchieri, “Ebrei Italiani, Askenaziti e Sefarditi a Ferrara,” 163 – 90; Howard Adelman, “Custom, Law, and Gender: Levirate Union among Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Italy after the Expulsion from Spain,” in The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After, ed. Raymond B. Waddington and Arthur H. Williamson (New York: Garland, 1994), 107– 25; Kaplan, “The Self-Definition of the Sephardic Jews;” and Adam Ferziger, “Between ‘Ashkenazi’ and Sepharad: An Early Modern German Rabbinic Response to Religious Pluralism in

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resettlement and encounter with other Jews eventually led to the integration of smaller groups (Catalan, Castilian) into the larger categories of Sephardim and Ashkenazim. Thus, it was only over the course of the early modern period that Jews who had formerly held their own, distinct ethnic character were increasingly seen as being associated with either the Sephardic or Ashkenazic Diasporas. In the sixteenth century, Jews of Hungarian origin living in the Ottoman Empire maintained communities distinct from those of self-styled Ashkenazim. By the late seventeenth century, however, we have evidence that Hungarian Jews had begun to be recognized, broadly, as Ashkenazim.⁵² An important part of this amalgamation of smaller Jewish ethnicities into these larger categories was the need for networks of support across large distances and the simultaneous reluctance of many Jews to be drawn into too many such networks. The Diasporas of Catalan or Polish Jews were not large enough to maintain adequate systems of mutual aid, and the notion of helping all Jews everywhere proved too daunting for most. The emergence of Sephardic and Ashkenazic designations, broadly construed, was in part a result of this dilemma. In Amsterdam, for instance, shared cultural traits as well as a shared experience of migration linked Polish and German Jews in the minds of the already-established Sephardic community. Whatever differences these various branches of the Ashkenazic world might have had with one another, they were overcome in part by common need, but more particularly by a common rejection at the hands of the city’s Sephardim.⁵³ Indeed, the unwillingness of the Sephardic nação to differentiate among different groups of Ashkenazim eventually overcame the efforts of Amsterdam’s Lithuanian, Polish, and German Jews to maintain separate communities.⁵⁴ A similar process took place in the Levant, where the Ashkenazim who had settled in Jerusalem expected support from their Ashkenazic brothers in Poland and Metz, rather than from local Sephardic communities.⁵⁵

the Spanish-Portuguese Community,” Studia Rosenthaliana 35 (2001): 7– 22. For Jerusalem and Safed, see Abraham David, To Come to the Land: Immigration and Settlement in 16th-Century Eretz-Israel (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999), 62– 72; 100 – 17.  Davis, “Reception of the ‘Shulhan ‘Arukh,’” 274.  Yosef Kaplan, “Amsterdam and Ashkenazic Migration in the Seventeenth Century,” Studia Rosenthaliana 23 (1989): 22– 44; and Kaplan, “Self-Definition of Sephardic Jews.” A similar phenomenon had taken place in North Africa during the sixteenth century, as Catalan, Castilian and Portuguese Jews were all seen as “Sephardim” by the Arabized Jews among whom they came to settle. See Ray, After Expulsion, ch. 4.  Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 130.  Lehmann, “Rabbinic Emissaries from Palestine,” 1240.

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I have attempted to assert that pre-modern Ashkenazim and Sephardim can be useful models for understanding and comparing Jewish societies, as long as we remain mindful of certain important caveats. Assessing Jewish culture through moments of encounter between Ashkenazim and Sephardim presupposes the conscious acceptance of these terms as markers of self-identity. Yet, prior to the sixteenth century, and in many cases long afterward, such self-conscious use of these terms was limited and sporadic. Thus, when evaluating how Jews from different regions and subcultures interacted, we have to look more closely at the contingencies of each situation before employing communal labels that may in fact be anachronistic. I have argued that in order to be cognizant of the ways in which modern scholarly aspirations have shaped the current discourse on Ashkenazim and Sephardim, we have to remain aware of several factors: First, that the predominance of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities within the Jewish world really dates from the early modern period. Second, that even then, other Jewish subcultures remained important and came to shape the regional character of the Sephardim and Ashkenazim. Third, that there are a number of ways to develop a useful definition of Jewish subcultures that transcend the usual reliance on halakhic attitudes or presumed mentalités. Rather than assume, or even pursue, exact definitions of Ashkenazim and Sephardim, we might consider what is gained and lost by the implementation of such terms and thus demonstrate a clearer awareness of their utility. By first recognizing how these two groups were constituted, and thus how and where the terms Ashkenazim and Sephardim were, and were not, viable, we will be better prepared to understand moments of encounter between them.

Katrin Kogman-Appel

3 Creating a Visual Repertoire for the Late Medieval Haggadah Introduction Ashkenazic haggadah imagery was a relatively rare phenomenon prior to the mid-fifteenth century, but interesting developments can be observed from the 1450s on. On the one hand, numerous stimuli engendered an enrichment of the imagery and broadened the scope of the iconographic themes. On the other, some elements of this imagery became conventionalized and customized, generating a sophisticated visual language that later also impacted printed haggadot. A rich, multifunctional repertoire of pictorial themes designed to accompany one of the most meaningful and central Jewish rituals emerged. These images functioned both as aids for commemoration and as visual guidelines for conducting the ceremonies, and some of the included images evoked hopes of future redemption. A scribe and illuminator from the Rhineland and one of the few professionals of the Jewish book trade from this period that we know by name, Joel ben Simeon, was a key figure in this chapter of Jewish book history. Born around 1420, he was active as a young scribe in the Rhineland, but moved south some time before 1450. After having received some artistic training in northern Italy, he continued to develop a career in the book trade that would last for almost four decades. Joel never settled in any particular place and returned at least twice to the German lands to work on manuscript projects there. More than twenty extant manuscripts were either signed by or can be attributed to him on stylistic grounds (Figs. 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, and 11).¹ Elsewhere I have pointed out Joel’s role in turning the haggadah into a popular book for relatively broad circles of the Jewish population, and not necessarily one only for upper-class courtiers and people of similar social profile. Several visual elements that he developed

 Literature on Joel ben Simeon is abundant and cannot be fully cited here; see especially the bibliography in Katrin Kogman-Appel and David Stern, The Washington Haggadah: A FifteenthCentury Manuscript from the Library of Congress (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 115 – 21, which also includes a list of manuscripts attributed to him; for some more recent insights, see Franziska Amirov, Jüdisch-christliche Buchmalerei im Spätmittelalter: Aschkenasische Haggadah-Handschriften aus Süddeutschland und Norditalien (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 2018), 164– 20. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-003

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made his imagery particularly suitable for wider audiences. He was a keen observer of the social ambience in his environment and thus found interesting ways to address a socially mixed clientele by means of his visual language.² In this essay I address another observation that can be made when we look more closely at the fifteenth-century developments in haggadah imagery. In some of Joel’s images as well as in those of other, anonymous, professionals we find iconographic motifs and themes that were developed in Iberia as early as in the fourteenth century. These imageries might have been imported in some way or another to Italy, where there must have been an interesting cultural encounter. We know of many such encounters during the post-expulsion period. However, the point I would like to make here is that in terms of imagery it can be shown that as early as during the fifteenth century people such as Joel ben Simeon had opportunities to familiarize themselves with Sephardic book culture. In the following I take a closer look at the development of the early Ashkenazic illustrated haggadah – as it appeared around 1300 – into a much enriched genre in the fifteenth century. Some of the differences between the early and the later manuscripts are considered in the light of a potential input of Sephardic imagery. First, however, by way of introduction I start with a few words about Sephardic culture in Italy.

Sephardim in Italy Much is known about Sephardic immigrants to Italy during the period after the expulsions from Iberia in 1492 and 1496, but to some extent there were migrations as early as during the years following the persecutions and forced baptisms in 1391, and even earlier in the fourteenth century. We know very little about these movements, but the histories of certain books offer some clues. Sephardic cultural influence was felt in Italy during that entire period, and Robert Bonfil

 Katrin Kogman-Appel, “The Illustrations of the Washington Haggadah,” in Washington Haggadah, 87– 106; Katrin Kogman-Appel, “The Audiences of the Late Medieval Haggadah,” in Patronage, Production, and Transmission of Texts in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Cultures, ed. Jonathan Decter and Esperanza Alfonso (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 99 – 143; and Katrin KogmanAppel, “Joel ben Simeon Looking at the Margins of Society,” in Intricate Interfaith Networks in the Middle Ages: Quotidian Jewish-Christian Contacts, ed. Ephraim Shoham-Steiner (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 287– 314.

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points out that by the late Middle Ages literary forms and genres employed by Italian Jews followed upon genres common in Iberia.³ Several observations point to the import of Sephardic manuscripts to Italy. As Mauro Perani recently noted, the sheer number of Sephardic codices in Italian libraries is striking. More recently scholars, including Perani, have unearthed numerous fragments of Sephardic manuscripts that were reused in book bindings.⁴ Moreover, and more importantly in our context here, we know mostly from owner signatures and censors’ records that almost all of the surviving illuminated Sephardic haggadot made it to Italy at some point,⁵ even though we have no records as to exactly when they were moved. A haggadah from southern France, perhaps from Languedoc, from the 1340s bears a sales record from 1459 in Bologna (BL Add. 14761).⁶ The so-called Wolf Haggadah documents an encounter between Sephardic and Italian book culture prior to 1500 even more firmly.⁷ Written in southern French Sephardic square script, the book was the property of

 Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 153– 54.  Mauro Perani, “Manuscripts Brought to Italy by the Jews Exiled in 1492: The Evidence of the ‘Italian Genizah,’” in Between Edom and Kedar: Studies in Memory of Yom Tov Assis (= Hispania Judaica Bulletin 10), ed. Aldina Quintana, Raquel Ibáñez-Sperber, and Ram Ben-Shalom (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Zvi Institute, 2014), 287– 310.  Examples are Sarajevo, National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, fol. 104v with a censor’s signature; on background about censure in Italy and its impact on Jewish book culture, see Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the Editor and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the 16th Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); for a facsimile edition of the Sarajevo Haggadah, see Eugen Werber, The Sarajevo Haggadah (Belgrade: Svjetlost, 1988); the Golden Haggadah in London, British Museum, Add. MS 27210, fol. 101v with an owner’s signature from 1599, and several later ones from the seventeenth century, accessed June 20, 2017, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_ 27210_f001r; for a facsimile edition, see Bezalel Narkiss, The Golden Haggadah: A FourteenthCentury Illuminated Hebrew Manuscript in the British Museum (London: Eugrammia Press, 1970); Bezalel Narkiss, Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, and Anat Tcherikover, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Isles, vol. 1, Spanish and Portuguese Manuscripts (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 58 – 67.  London, British Library, MS Add. 14761, fol. 161v, accessed June 20, 2017, http://www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_14761_fs001r; for a facsimile edition, see Jeremy Schonfield, ed., The Barcelona Haggadah: An Illuminated Passover Compendium from Fourteenth-Century Catalonia in Facsimile (MS British Library Add. 14761) (London: Facsimile Ed., 1992); Narkiss et al., British Isles, 78 – 84.  Jerusalem, National Library of Israel, cod. 807246, accessed June 20, 2017, http://dlib.nli.org.il/ view/action/nmets.do?DOCCHOICE=931780.xml&dvs=1497971167671~162&locale=en_US& search_terms=&adjacency=&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/nmets.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID= 5&divType=.

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Jacob ben Solomon Tzarfati (the “French”), a scholar and a physician, who is known to have lived in Avignon during the second half of the fourteenth century, but at that time the book was not illustrated. It was then brought to Italy. Some marginal inscriptions are indicative of Italian writing, and the book was adorned with marginal drawings in a typical late-fourteenth-century Italian style.⁸ Another book that traveled from Iberia to Italy prior to the expulsion was a copy of Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, now in Jerusalem.⁹ Also written in Sephardic square script, it, too, when it was brought to Italy, was embellished with illuminations in Perugia by a Christian painter, Matteo di Ser Cambio, around 1400.¹⁰ Even though they do not tell us anything about the reception of Sephardic imagery in Italy, the Wolf Haggadah and the Jerusalem Mishneh Torah are informative regarding the Sephardic-Italian exchange in book culture, the transfer of books, and the migration of people. Malachi Beit-Arié and Edna Engel have contributed some paleographic observations to this period in Jewish book history. Whereas in the earlier Middle Ages a distinct Italian script can be discerned and defined, Beit-Arié observes that the situation changed during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Italy became a destination for immigrants from both the north, Ashkenaz, and the west, Iberia. Consequently, indigenous Italian Hebrew script almost entirely disappeared from the peninsula giving away to either Ashkenazic or Sephardic script. Immigrant scribes were using their own styles, which they had brought with them to Italy. The most outstanding relevant case is that of Abraham Farissol, a scribe and scholar of southern French origin, whose scribal practices were very influential in Italy. Born in 1451, he moved to Italy at an early age, prior to the expulsions.¹¹ In fact, Engel devoted an entire paper to the changes in scri-

 Michel Garel, “The Rediscovery of the Wolf Haggadah,” Journal of Jewish Art 2 (1975): 22– 27; for earlier discussions of the Wolf Haggadah, see David Kaufmann, “Une Haggadah de la France Septentrionale,” Revue des Études Juives 25 (1892): 65 – 77; Bruno Italiener, Die Darmstädter Pessach-Haggada: Codex orientalis 8 der Landesbibliothek zu Darmstadt aus dem vierzehnten Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Karl W. Hirsemann, 1927), 86 – 145.  National Library of Israel, 401193, accessed December 7, 2017, http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLIS/ en/ManuScript/Pages/Item.aspx?ItemID=PNX_MANUSCRIPTS000042460.  Bezalel Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts, expanded Hebrew version of the earlier English edition Jerusalem, 1969 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1984), 285 – 300; see also Rafael Weiser, ed., Books from Sefarad [Hebrew], exhibition catalogue (Jerusalem: The Jewish National and University Library and the Israel Museum, 1992), 101– 105.  Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology: A Typology of the Production of Hebrew Books and Their Design in the Middle Ages; Historical and Comparative Aspects Analyzed in a Quantitative Approach to Dated Manuscripts [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: National Library of Israel, continuously

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bal practices in Italy owing to the influx of Sephardic and Ashkenazic practices during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.¹²

Joel ben Simeon Encounters Sephardic Books It is likely that it was in this cultural ambience that Joel ben Simeon encountered some elements of a Sephardic tradition of manuscript illumination when he arrived in Italy. In this he may not have been alone, and the same might have been true of other lesser known individuals who shared a similar professional and cultural profile. However, Joel was the most dominant and most prolific member of his profession, and as of today is the most well-known of the fifteenth-century Jewish book makers of his time. Over the years, he developed an innovative iconographic repertoire, and Sephardic visual culture seems to have played an interesting role in his efforts. Alternatively, as we shall see, we cannot entirely exclude the possibility that such exchanges also occurred to the north of the Alps, but these are much more difficult to pinpoint. Haggadah illumination in Ashkenaz and northern France prior to Joel ben Simeon developed at a slow pace. A haggadah with a few illustrations has survived within a northern French Miscellany from c. 1280, which is now in London.¹³ About 20 years later we find the Birds’ Head Haggadah from the Rhineland with a much richer imagery.¹⁴ From c. 1430 there is another Miscellany with a haggadah, probably from Mainz, now in Hamburg.¹⁵ From Bohemia the updated), ch. 11, accessed July 27, 2017, http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/Hebrew/collections/ manuscripts/hebrewcodicology/Pages/default2.aspx.  Edna Engel, “Immigrant Scribes’ Handwriting in Northern Italy from the Late-Thirteenth to the Mid-Sixteenth Century: Sephardi and Ashkenazi Attitudes toward the Italian Script,” in The Late Medieval Hebrew Book in the Western Mediterranean: Hebrew Manuscripts and Incunabula in Context, ed. Javier del Barco (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 28 – 45.  British Library, Add. MS 11639; accessed July 20, 2017, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Full Display.aspx?ref=Add_MS_11639&index=21; for a facsimile edition, see Jeremy Schonfield, ed., The North French Hebrew Miscellany (British Library Add. Ms. 11639) (London: Facsimile Ed., 2003).  Jerusalem, Israel Museum, MS 180/57; for a facsimile edition, see Moshe Spitzer, ed., The Birds’ Head Haggadah of the Bezalel National Art Museum in Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1965); for the most recent attempt to explain the phenomenon of birds’ heads, see Marc M. Epstein, The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), ch. 1.  Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, cod. heb. 37, accessed August 1, 2018, http://web.nli.org. il/sites/NLI/English/digitallibrary/pages/viewer.aspx?&presentorid=MANUSCRIPTS&docid= PNX_MANUSCRIPTS000167431– 1#|FL51028660.

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so-called Erna Michael Haggadah, executed some time prior to 1450, has come down to us, but it is difficult to determine an exact date.¹⁶ There are also several other manuscripts with very few illustrations.¹⁷ In the following I consider this small corpus of books as a pool of early Ashkenazic haggadah illustration¹⁸ and compare it to the much richer repertoire found in the books attributed to Joel ben Simeon. As we shall see, there was a great deal of change and enrichment. Some of the roots of these developments are to be sought in the Sephardic repertoire, and it is these elements that are the subject of the present essay. An early harbinger of this cultural encounter between Ashkenazic and Italian Jews and their coreligionists from Iberia can be observed as early as at the end of the fourteenth century in Lombardy. Here the so-called Schocken Haggadah¹⁹ was written and illuminated, and some of its illustrations show some striking similarities to Sephardic parallels.²⁰ Thus, even back then Italian Jewish book makers and owners were not only aware of Sephardic book culture, but a certain process of reception had begun. Back to Joel ben Simeon: there is one piece of evidence that is difficult to approach. Before Joel moved to Italy he produced three manuscripts for Ashkenazic clients somewhere in the south of what is today Germany: the so-called

 Jerusalem, Israel Museum, MS 181/18; for its attribution to Bohemia, see Tal Goitein, “The Erna Michael Haggadah: An Ashkenazi Manuscript in the Israel Museum” (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2010).  Examples are a French siddur from 1306, Parma, Biblioteca palatina, MS Parm 3518, accessed July 20, 2017, http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/digitallibrary/pages/viewer.aspx? &presentorid=MANUSCRIPTS&docid=PNX_MANUSCRIPTS000081062-1; Benjamin Richler and Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma (Jerusalem: Jewish National and University Library, 2001); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. hébr. 644, accessed July 20, 2017, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10542192z.r=644?rk=42918;4; both can perhaps be dated to the fourteenth century; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, cod. hébr. 642, accessed July 20, 2017, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10539275z.r=640? rk=107296;4.  Earlier literature on haggadah imagery includes Joseph Gutmann, “The Illuminated Medieval Passover Haggadah: Investigations and Research Problems,” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 7 (1965): 3 – 25; Mendel Metzger, La Haggada enluminée: Étude iconographique et stylistique des manuscrits enluminés et decorés de la Haggada du XIIIe au XVIe siècle (Leiden: Brill, 1973); Narkiss, introduction to Manuscripts.  Unknown private collection, formerly Jerusalem, Schocken Institute, MS 24085; for descriptions and scans from earlier photographs, see http://cja.huji.ac.il/browser.php?mode=set&id= 23782, accessed August 24, 2017; Milvia Bollati, Flora Cassen, and Marc M. Epstein, The Lombard Haggadah (New York: Les Enluminures, 2019).  Yael Zirlin, “The Schocken Italian Haggadah of c. 1400 and its Origins,” Jewish Art 12– 13 (1987): 55 – 72.

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First Nuremberg Haggadah, now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem,²¹ another haggadah now in the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (JTS 4481),²² and a siddur now in Parma.²³ Unfortunately, the margins of these manuscripts were badly trimmed. In JTS 4481 the images were in fact almost systematically cut out. In a 1995 dissertation, Yael Zirlin attempted to reconstruct both image cycles. This task is easier for the First Nuremberg Haggadah, where more fragments of illustrations survived.²⁴ These losses of Joel’s work before his move to Italy make it difficult to pinpoint specific developments in his repertoire after his relocation and under the influence of what he encountered in Italy. I thus take Zirlin’s careful reconstruction into account, albeit with great caution; evidence from Joel’s early Italian haggadot is more conclusive. Several of Joel’s haggadot depict the final search for crumbs of leaven after the thorough cleaning of the house (Fig. 1). At some point during the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century it became common for Ashkenazic haggadot to include an instructive section prior to the haggadah text with guidelines for the disposal of leaven (“On the Evening of the Fourteenth [of Nisan]”) and other preparations.²⁵ These textual additions became common in almost all Ashkenazic haggadot, but they are extremely rare in Sephardic manuscripts.²⁶ Depictions of the cleaning can, nevertheless, first be observed in Sephardic illuminated haggadot, which often contain elaborate biblical image cycles.²⁷ The Golden Haggadah from c. 1320, produced either in Barcelona or in Lleida, is the

 MS 181/60, formerly Jerusalem, Schocken Library, MS 24086; for a description and scans from earlier photographs, see http://cja.huji.ac.il/browser.php?mode=set&id=23789, accessed August 24, 2017.  MS 4481, for a description and scans from earlier photographs, see http://cja.huji.ac.il/ browser.php?mode=set&id=27, accessed August 24, 2017. The Jewish Theological Seminary also holds one of Joel’s early Italian haggadot from 1454, MS 8279.  Biblioteca palatina in Parma, MS Parm 3144, accessed August 1, 2018, http://web.nli.org.il/ sites/nlis/en/manuscript/pages/results.aspx#query=lsr01,contains,all&query=any, contains,parma%203144.  Yael Zirlin, “The Early Works of Joel ben Simeon, a Jewish Scribe and Artist in the 15th Century” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995), 119 – 73.  The guidelines are based on Mishna Pesahim 1:1; for further halakhic background, see Shmuel and Ze’ev Safrai, Haggadah of the Sages: The Passover Haggadah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carta, 1998), 89 – 92.  Katrin Kogman-Appel, Illuminated Haggadot from Medieval Spain: Biblical Imagery and the Passover Holiday (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2006), 36 – 37.  For a detailed study of these cycles contextualizing them in a broader framework of Sephardic culture and its interaction with the Christian environment, see Kogman-Appel, Illuminated Haggadot.

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most outstanding among these manuscripts.²⁸ At the end of the biblical cycle there are further scenes that portray preparations for the holiday and, in some sense, lead from the historical perspective to the ambience in the home of the haggadah’s patron.²⁹ Among these, the cleaning of the house and the final search for leaven are also illustrated. In the Golden Haggadah a small panel shows the interior setting of a house, where two women are busy cleaning the ceiling and the floor, while an elderly man, assisted by a young boy with a bowl in his hand, is searching the holes and cracks in the wall with a candle (Fig. 2).³⁰ Judging from the textual evidence of many of his manuscripts, Joel ben Simeon, who seems to have worked primarily for an Ashkenazic clientele, was the first to introduce a similar imagery after he arrived in Italy. None of the earlier Ashkenazic manuscripts, Joel’s two early fragments included, shows such a scene. His later images, however, usually include a piece of furniture and a man busying himself with a candle, a bowl, and a feather to search for the remaining leaven (Fig. 1). Most likely the man is meant to represent the patron of the manuscript, who was in charge of the halakhic observance within the household. An early example from Joel’s Italian period is a haggadah now in Cologny-Genève (Fig. 3).³¹ Its initial pages include extremely detailed instructions for the preparations for the holiday, among them the cleaning of the house. These in fact go much beyond the usual very brief paragraph of instructions and offer a detailed discussion more in line with the halakhic compendia commonly used by scholars, a fact that perhaps points to the scholarly profile of the owner of the haggadah. In the margins near the instructions for cleaning, we find an image of a man searching for leaven. Joel did not copy a Sephardic model. His ideas for designing an illuminated haggadah were utterly different from those of his Sephardic predecessors. He did not display a full interior setting and illustrated only one man instead of the en-

 See above note 5; for the suggestion that the Golden Haggadah might have originated in Lleida, see Isabel Escandell i Proust, “La Hagadà d’Or, revisada: Aproximació al seu context historicoartístic i noves propostes,” Lambard 23 (2011– 2012): 103 – 30.  As elaborated elsewhere; see Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Another Look at the Illustrated Sephardic Haggadot: Communal and Social Aspects of the Passover Holiday,” in Temps i espais de la Girona Jueva, ed. Silvia Planas i Marcé (Gerona: Patronat Call de Girona, 2011), 81– 102.  As instructed in halakhic texts, see, e. g., BT Pesahim 8a; for an English version, see Isidore Epstein, ed., The Babylonian Talmud (London: Soncino Press, 1952).  Fondation Martin Bodmer, MS 81, accessed August 1, 2017, http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/ thumbs/fmb/cb-0081; for a facsimile edition, see Maurice-Ruben Hayoun, ed., Haggadah de Pessah: La Pâque juive (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2011), who observes that this haggadah combines the Italian and Ashkenazic rites.

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Fig. 1: Washington, DC, Collection of the Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress, MS heb. 1 (“Washington Haggadah”), fol. 1r, German Lands, 1478, Cleaning the house of leaven (used with permission)

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Fig. 2: London, British Library, Add. MS 27210 (“Golden Haggadah”), fol. 15r, Barcelona or Lleida, c. 1310, Cleaning the house of leaven (© The British Library Board)

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Fig. 3: Cologny-Genève, Fondation Martin Bodmer, MS 81, fol. 1r, Italy, c. 1450, Cleaning the house of leaven (image in the public domain)

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tire family. Whereas the Sephardic image elaborates on the ambience of the household, Joel’s focus was on the halakhic implications of the cleaning ritual. Further, the function of these images seems to have been quite different. The Sephardic cycles, owned by courtier scholars who probably kept these books as status symbols, were statements of how Sephardic erudites approached biblical history. One aspect of their attitude to biblical chronology was the idea that the past, the present, and the messianic future flow seamlessly from one into another within the framework of six millennia echoing as it were the six days of Creation.³² Joel was perhaps aware of this approach to history, which was introduced by the Sephardic exegete Moses ben Nahman (d. 1270) of Gerona.³³ However, nothing in his visual language indicates that he was in any way interested in visualizing this view. Rather he perceived haggadah illustration as a means to deliver instructive elements that concerned the performance of the different rituals.³⁴ The cleaning of the house and the search for leaven were considered rituals in their own right. A theme that had become particularly popular in fourteenth-century Sephardic haggadot shows portrayals of the Rabbis mentioned in the haggadah. One example among many others is a series of images in a Catalan haggadah now in the John Rylands University Library in Manchester (Fig. 4).³⁵ These portrayals were not incorporated in the initial miniature cycles but appeared in the margins of the text. The illuminator of the Schocken Haggadah adopted this imagery around 1400 for a portrayal of R. Eleazar ben Azaria (fol. 6v). Joel ben Simeon evidenced an interest in this iconography as early as in JTS 4481, where we also encounter an image of R. Eleazar ben Azaria, apparently overlooked by the person who cut off the marginal images (fol. 2v). In Joel’s later haggadot, however, those produced after his arrival in Italy, we find many more such portraits of all the Rabbis. Examples are the Rothschild Haggadah in the National

 Kogman-Appel, Illuminated Haggadot, ch. 7.  Nina Caputo, “‘In the Beginning …: Typology, History, and the Unfolding Meaning of Creation in Nahmanides’ Exegesis,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 1 (1999): 54– 82.  Katrin Kogman-Appel, “‘And You Shall Tell Your Son on this Day’: The Didactic Elements of Medieval Haggadah Illustration,” in Prodesse et delectare: Case Studies on Didactic Literature in the European Middle Ages/Fallstudien zur didaktischen Literatur des europäischen Mittelalters, ed. Norbert Kössinger and Claudia Wittig (= Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung; Beihefte) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 138 – 73.  Manchester, John Rylands University Library, MS heb. 6; for a facsimile edition, see Raphael Loewe, ed., The Rylands Haggadah (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988).

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Library of Israel³⁶ and a prayer book Joel produced in 1469 for an Italian young woman,³⁷ where we encounter not only R. Eleazar ben Azaria, but also R. Eliezer, R. Yose the Galilean, and R. Akiva (Figs. 5 and 6).³⁸ The evidence is not clear-cut. That the iconography of the Rabbis appears first in Sepharad is evident, but how it reached Joel ben Simeon is less clear. Did he have a chance to encounter a Sephardic haggadah while still in the Rhineland? Or did he create Rabbi Eleazar’s portrait independently owing to some other source of inspiration? Had he access to the Schocken Haggadah? Another theme that evolved into standardized imagery was the portrayal of the four sons, which may have followed a similar path. The text presents the sons’ questions and the father’s reply in a way that sketches them as four representatives of humankind, four different types of men: wise, wicked, simple, but cooperative and eager to absorb some knowledge, and dumb and uninterested. Elsewhere I have argued that it was Joel ben Simeon who standardized these figures as he visualized them, picking certain social types he would have encountered in his environment and turning them into these images.³⁹ Here I deal with the possible impact of Sephardic imagery on Joel’s development and the later conventions that grew out of them. In early Ashkenazic haggadot the four sons are pictured only rarely. In the London Miscellany there is just one figure representing the act of posing questions. In the Birds’ Head Haggadah they are not shown at all. They appear in the Hamburg Miscellany, from around 1430, but in a distinct and unique iconography, being shown as pairs of men in dialogue (Fig. 7).⁴⁰ The wicked son is usually the one rendered in the most clear-cut visual language, imaged as an unwanted individual or a hostile non-Jew. In the Hamburg Miscellany it is vulgar behavior that underscores the wickedness. However, this iconography did not appear in later manuscripts and was never conventionalized. In the Schocken

 Jerusalem, National Library of Israel, cod. 406130; accessed August 1, 2017, http://web.nli.org. il/sites/NLI/Hebrew/digitallibrary/pages/viewer.aspx?presentorid=MANUSCRIPTS&docid=PNX_ MANUSCRIPTS000041667-2.  London, British Library, Add MS 26957, accessed August 1, 2017, http://www.bl.uk/manu scripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_26957_fs001r.  A portrait of R. Yose the Galilean accompanies the section about the plagues in the Hamburg Miscellany, fol. 29r.  Kogman-Appel, Washington Haggadah, 87– 106; later these types would turn into representatives of the four ages of man; see Mira Friedmann, “The Four Sons of the Haggadah and the Ages of Man,” Journal of Jewish Art 11 (1985): 16 – 40.  In the Erna Michael Haggadah, fol. 14r, there is a depiction of the wise son, but it seems to be from a later hand; see Goitein, “Erna Michael Haggadah,” 138.

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Fig. 4: Manchester, John Rylands University Library, MS heb. 6 (“Rylands Haggadah”), fol. 22v, Catalonia, c. 1330, Rabbi Eliezer (image in the public domain)

Haggadah the wicked son is rendered as a mundanely dressed man wearing a sword, and his outfit marks him as a non-Jew (fol. 8r). In several Sephardic haggadot, the four sons, or some of them, were visualized as early as in the fourteenth century. Here the wicked son is shown as

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Fig. 5: Jerusalem, National Library of Israel, cod. 6130 = 34 (“Rothschild Haggadah,” Joel ben Simeon), fol. 15r, German Lands, early 1450s, Rabbi Yose the Galilean (reproduced with permission)

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Fig. 6: London, British Library, Add. MS 26957 (“Maraviglia Prayer Book,” Joel ben Simeon), fol. 43v, Italy, 1469, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Akiva (© The British Library Board)

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an armed man wearing a helmet. Examples are the images in the mentioned Sephardic haggadah in the John Rylands University Library in Manchester (Fig. 8), and a closely related manuscript in the British Library.⁴¹ Another haggadah now in London portrays a similar iconography.⁴² In these images the wicked son appears as a Muslim soldier, linked, as Julie Harris suggests, to anti-Muslim polemics in some Iberian Jewish circles. Against such a background the image of the Muslim fighter grew into a negative non-Jewish stereotype.⁴³ In the mentioned Sephardic haggadah from southern France (BL Add. MS 14761), the wicked son is dressed similarly (even though lacking the visibly strong link to Muslim warfare) and is shown as he grabs an elderly man by his beard threatening him with a lance (Fig. 9). We recall that this manuscript was found in Bologna as early as in the 1450s. Joel ben Simeon turned the imagery of the armed aggressor into that of a knight and many of his haggadot show the wicked son in full armor (Fig. 10). In the London Haggadah, however, produced while Joel visited Ulm in Swabia during the 1450s, he also added a victim (Fig. 11),⁴⁴ echoing the imagery of the southern French haggadah. Jews did not involve themselves in knighthood. In some medieval contexts, especially during the later Middle Ages, they were not allowed to carry weapons. Ivan Marcus discusses documentary evidence regarding Jews representing themselves as knights.⁴⁵ Following up on this textual

 MS Oriental 1404, accessed August 15, 2017, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref= or_1404_fs001r; Narkiss et al., British Isles, 93 – 101.  MS Oriental 2884, accessed August 15, 2017, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref= or_2884_fs001r; Narkiss et al., British Isles, 67– 78.  Julie A. Harris, “Good Jews, Bad Jews, and No Jews at All: Ritual Imagery and Social Standards in the Catalan Haggadot,” in Church, State Vellum, and Stone: Essays on Medieval Spain in Honor of John Williams, ed. Therese Martin and Julie A. Harris (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 275 – 96; Jane Barlow, “The Muslim Warrior at the Seder Meal: Dynamics between Minorities in the Rylands Haggadah,” in Postcolonising the Medieval Image, ed. Eva Frojmovic and Catherine E. Karkov (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 218 – 41.  London, British Library, Add. MS 14762, accessed August 15, 2017, http://www.bl.uk/manu scripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_14762_fs001r; for a facsimile edition, see David Goldstein, ed., The Ashkenazi Haggadah: A Hebrew Manuscript of the Mid-15th Century from the Collections of the British Library (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997); the date of the London Haggadah is uncertain; Yael Zirlin, “Joel Meets Johannes: A Fifteenth-Century Jewish Christian Collaboration in Manuscript Illumination,” Viator 26 (1995): 265 – 82, suggested that it may have been produced in 1460, but the possibility of an earlier date cannot be excluded; see Katrin Kogman-Appel, “The London Haggadah Revisited” (forthcoming in a Festschrift).  Ivan G. Marcus, “Why Is this Knight Different? A Jewish Self-Representation in Medieval Europe,” in Tov Elem: Memory, Community and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Soci-

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motif, Sara Offenberg discusses instances in which Jewish patrons and artists adopted knightly iconography to represent an inverted reality of eschatological victory and redemption. Knighthood occasionally also functioned metaphorically as a representation of social virtues.⁴⁶ However, when Joel chose the portrayal of the knight to visualize the wicked son of the haggadah, the image acquired negative connotations and turned into a representative of the non-Jewish persecutor. The addition of a victim, apparently a Sephardic motif, added to these negative connotations. The wise son is shown in Sephardic haggadot as a scholar with a book (often open) as an attribute of wisdom.⁴⁷ Joel adopted the motif of the scholar in almost all of his haggadot (Fig. 10), but we also find it earlier in the Schocken Haggadah. Interestingly enough, there are some Sephardic haggadot that image only the first two sons and leave the references to the other two without accompanying illustrations. Although the imageries of the simple son and the one who does not know to ask in Joel’s manuscripts are innovative, taken from real-life situations in Joel’s environment, and the portrayals are part of his unique haggadah repertoire, those of the wise and the wicked son rely on an earlier tradition. It thus makes sense to assume that Joel had seen a Sephardic haggadah with a wise scholar and an armed villain attacking a victim but no images of the third and fourth sons. He adopted the Sephardic imagery of the wise and the wicked, but given the absence of images of the other two, designed his own versions. The evidence of the First Nuremberg Haggadah and the siddur in Parma shows how Joel might have dealt with these figures in his early days. The former has some traces of a drawing showing an armored man. However, in this manuscript there is evidence of some additions by a later hand, and the image of the wicked son is among them. It appears that the armor was apparently added and altered an existing image of which nothing can now be discerned. There are no traces of illustrations in JTS 4481. The only evidence of an early stage of this iconography comes from Joel’s siddur in Parma, where we find traces of trimmed figures for all four sons. The wicked son is shown as a knight in full armor, but without a victim (fol. 58r). It is thus likely that he first conceived of the imagery of

eties; Essays in Honor of Robert Bonfil, ed. Elisheva Baumgarten, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, and Roni Weinstein (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2011), 139 – 52.  Sara Offenberg, “A Jewish Knight in Shining Armour: Messianic Narrative and Imagination in Ashkenazic Illuminated Manuscripts,” University of Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought 4 (2014): 1– 14; see also Sarit Shalev-Eyni, Jewish among Christians: Hebrew Book Illumination from Lake Constance (Turnhout and London: Brepols, 2010), 85 – 92.  See, e. g., London, British Library, Add. MS 14761, fol. 34r.

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Fig. 7: Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 37 (“Hamburg Miscellany”), fol. 25r, Mainz, 1435, the wicked son (reproduced with permission)

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Fig. 8: Manchester, John Rylands University Library, MS heb. 6 (“Rylands Haggadah”), fol. 23r, Catalonia, c. 1330, the wicked son (image in the public domain)

the knight while still in the Rhineland and enriched his iconography after having encountered a Sephardic haggadah. The imageries I have discussed thus far later spread to the north of the Alps. In two fifteenth-century haggadot from Franconia, we find elaborate visualiza-

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Fig. 9: London, British Library, Add. MS 14761, fol. 34v, Catalonia, c. 1330, the wicked son (© The British Library Board)

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Fig. 10: Washington, DC, Collection of the Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress, MS Heb. 1 (“Washington Haggadah,” Joel ben Simeon), Germany, 1478, fol. 5v, the wise and the wicked son (used with permission)

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Fig. 11: London, British Library, Add. MS 14762 (“London Haggadah”), fol. 9r, Ulm, 1460 (?), the wicked son (© The British Library Board)

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tions of the entire household cleaning every corner of leaven in a three-story building.⁴⁸ There we also find similar renderings of the four sons and many Rabbis. Joel visited the German lands at least twice after having moved to Italy: at some time during the 1450s, when he was involved in the production of what is known as the London Haggadah in Ulm;⁴⁹ and again in 1478, when he wrote and illustrated the Washington Haggadah.⁵⁰ The latter was executed on parchment made somewhere in the German lands, so it has been suggested that the book originated there.⁵¹ It is through these journeys and perhaps other such projects that Joel apparently transmitted these imageries to the north.

Conclusions The few examples addressed in this essay demonstrate that the Ashkenazic iconographic repertoire prior to 1400 differed in many ways from what we find later on. It is only around the middle of the fifteenth century and beyond that a rich imagery developed there. Elements of that imagery became conventionalized and standardized and would later even have an impact on printed haggadot. Part of this imagery made its way from Sepharad into Italy, where it was adopted around 1400 by the illuminator of the Schocken Haggadah and by Joel ben Simeon and perhaps also by other, unknown, miniaturists. There is also some evidence that elements of Sephardic imagery may have been known in the Rhineland during the first half of the fifteenth century. Joel used these motifs to build a rich repertoire that would remain influential for several decades. One feature, however, is striking: among the outstanding characteristics of illuminated Sephardic haggadot is the inclusion of a full-fledged biblical picture cycle at either the beginning or the end of the book. I have shown elsewhere

 The Second Nuremberg Haggadah, now in the private collection of David Sofer in London, formerly Jerusalem, Schocken Library, MS 24087, accessed August 15, 2017; viewable only at the National Library of Israel, http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLIS/en/ManuScript/Pages/Item.aspx? ItemID=PNX_MANUSCRIPTS002534788; the Yahuda Haggadah is in Jerusalem, Israel Museum, MS 180/50; see Katrin Kogman-Appel, Die Zweite Nürnberger und die Jehuda Haggada: Jüdische Künstler zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999), 102– 107.  See above, note 45.  Washington, Library of Congress, MS heb. 1; for a facsimile version see Kogman-Appel and Stern, Washington Haggadah.  Malachi Beit-Arié, “Joel ben Simeon’s Manuscripts: A Codicologer’s View,” Journal of Jewish Art 3 – 4 (1977): 25 – 39, repr. in Malachi Beit-Arié, ed., The Making of the Medieval Hebrew Book: Studies in Palaeography and Codicology (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993), 93 – 108; the same applies to the Rothschild Haggadah of unknown date; see Zirlin, “Joel Meets Johannes,” 281n29.

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that these cycles are a manifestation of a particularly Sephardic approach to history,⁵² but whereas Joel might well have encountered a copy with such a biblical picture cycle, he did not adopt it. Being apparently unfamiliar with the Sephardic approach to history, he might have considered it unsuitable for a haggadah. Nevertheless, the openness and the flexibility with which professionals in the book trade such as Joel ben Simeon approached Sephardic book culture are striking, and it would be interesting to assess this cultural encounter within the framework of other cultural genres. Such boundaries were perhaps crossed more easily within the framework of visual arts than in other fields. By the same token the degree of flexibility in borrowing motifs and adapting them to different cultural circumstances may have been higher in visual culture than in any other field. These observations pose more general questions about the role visual languages played in shaping and defining cultural identities. Past scholarship, such as the studies by Mendel Metzger, for example, focused on the differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazic imagery and saw them as convenient markers toward determining different provenances. My observations here blur these boundaries between Sephardic and Ashkenazic cultural bedrocks at least for this early phase of their encounter. They are also indicative of a process that appears to be different from the one described by Beit-Arié for scripts, which I mentioned earlier. It appears that visual languages functioned differently than scribal cultures, even when the same individuals were involved in both professions. During the decades that followed upon Joel’s work, and in particular after the expulsions from Iberia, Italian Jewry would change with regard to demographics, as much as Ottoman and Middle Eastern Jewries would change. What I have attempted to describe here is what might have happened during an early phase prior to the establishment of a Sephardic culture in Italy as a “sub-ethnic identity,” as Jonathan Ray sketched it.⁵³ Once the Sephardic community in Italy grew, the reception of Sephardic culture among the Ashkenazic communities and the patterns of its appropriation might have changed. Both the Sephardic migrants who conveyed their book art to Italy and the Ashkenazic migrants who moved from north of the Alps into the thriving Italian cities functioned as agents of cultural import. Both, in fact, lived in situations of a double Diaspora having only recently left their “original” diasporic homes. Having ended up in Italy, they arrived at a cultural ambience that furthered acculturation. What I have described

 Kogman-Appel, Illuminated Haggadot, ch. 7.  Jonathan Ray, “Approaches to the Jewish Diaspora: The Sephardim as a Sub-Ethnic Group,” Jewish Social Studies 15, no. 1 (2008): 10 – 31.

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here is but a minor aspect that should be considered within a broader framework that examines both the creation of Sephardic and Ashkenazic identities and their entanglement in early modern Italy.

Moti Benmelech

4 Early Modern Messianism between Ashkenazim and Sephardim Introduction

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, two communities of Jewish immigrants and exiles settled in Italy: Ashkenazim fleeing or expelled from the German lands and northern France in the decades following the Black Death and Sephardim departing the Iberian Peninsula after the massacres of 1391 and over the following century until the final expulsion in 1492.¹ Throughout these encounters both communities shaped their own identities as Ashkenazim and Sephardim based, to a great extent, on their mutual images and the differences between them. A discussion of the relationship between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in the early modern period is still a desideratum; however, reviewing how each group approached one specific phenomenon can clarify some of the differences and the similarities between them. In this chapter, I consider one limited aspect of these relationships and examine the attitudes of Ashkenazim and Sephardim in early modern Italy and the Ottoman Empire to messianism, messianic calculations, and expectations and the roles they played in the formation of messianic movements.

Note: I would like to express my gratitude to the Herzog College Research Authority for its generous support of this research.  On the Ashkenazic presence in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Moses Shulvass, “Ashkenazic Jewry in Italy,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 7 (1952): 110 – 31; more recently, Robert Bonfil, “Ashkenazim in Italy,” in Yiddish in Italia, ed. Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm (Milan: Associazione Italiana Amici dell’Università di Gerusalemme, 2003), 219 – 23; and Alessandra Veronese, “Migrazioni e presenza di ebrei ‘tedeschi’ in Italia settentrionale nel tardo Medioevo (con particolare riferimento ai casi di Trieste e Treviso),” in Ebrei nella Terraferma veneta del Quattrocento, ed. Gian Maria Varanini and Reinhold Christopher Mueller (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2005), 59 – 69. On Sephardic exiles in Italy, see Robert Bonfil, “Italy: The Bridge between West and East and between East and West,” in The Sephardic Jewish Diaspora after the Expulsion from Spain [Hebrew], ed. Robert Bonfil et al. (Jerusalem: Shazar, 1993), 73 – 93. On the impact of the Black Death on European Jews, see Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), esp. 108 – 37. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-004

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Medieval Messianism between Ashkenaz and Sepharad Gerson Cohen, in his now classic “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim,” discussed the different approaches of Ashkenazim and Sephardim to messianism, highlighting that throughout the Middle Ages Sephardim were involved in messianic movements, in calculations of the end, and in messianism in general to a much greater degree than Ashkenazim. Cohen contended that this disparity articulated essential differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim owing to their diverse cultural ancestries, similarly to other differences between them: for example, Ashkenazic erudition vs. Sephardic rationality, Ashkenazic martyrdom vs. Sephardic conversion, and so forth. Cohen’s thesis was undermined by Elisheva Carlebach, who noted that some of the early medieval messianic movements he discussed were largely marginal and lacked any organizational or martial dimensions. She likewise claims that messianism was no less a part of the Ashkenazic collective identity than of the Sephardic one. David Berger recently re-examined both Cohen’s thesis and Carlebach’s criticism, suggesting a modified understanding of the varying approaches of Ashkenazim and Sephardim to messianism. Although Berger agrees that in the Middle Ages and early modern period messianic protagonists appeared in Spain and the East but not in Ashkenaz and that Sephardim were engaged in writing about messianism and calculating the end, he suggests that these differences were the result of variances in social structure and local influences rather than essential disparities between the two groups.² However, all three scholars dealt only briefly with actual messianic arousals or movements (which did or did not occur), but rather focused on either references to messianism in various books and letters or on the (very limited) impact of these elements on Jewish historiography and other external sources. In the pages

 Gerson D. Cohen, “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim,” Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture 9 (1967), repr. in idem, Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Culture (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 115 – 56; Marc Saperstein, ed., Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 202– 33; Elisheva Carlebach, Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism in Ashkenaz and Sepharad; Third Annual Lecture of the Victor J. Selmanovich Chair of Jewish History (New York: Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro College, 1998); David Berger, “Sephardic and Ashkenazic Messianism in the Middle Ages: An Examination of the Historiographical Controversy,” in idem, Cultures in Collision and Conversation: Essays on the Intellectual History of the Jews (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011), 289 – 311.

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that follow, I offer a fresh perspective, examining the actual role played by Ashkenazim and Sephardim in early-sixteenth-century messianic thought and movements through first-hand sources. I believe that the results of this examination will shed light on the self-consciousness of both Ashkenazim and Sephardim in one of their defining moments. The period between the late fifteenth century and the 1530s was a time of considerable religious unrest and messianic arousal throughout Europe.³ Jewish society was not spared this messianic thrill, and during the first third of the sixteenth century calculations of the end, messianic propaganda, books, and correspondence concerning messianism flourished in an unprecedented way, including even the appearance of prophets and messianic harbingers. Thus, this period can well serve as a case study for the different attitudes of Sephardim and Ashkenazim toward messianism.

Ashkenazim and Messianism The most prominent messianic awakening among Jews during this period, and the only one that turned into an actual social movement, centered around

 The most prominent examples of this awakening are: Savonarola’s attempt to establish a theocratic republic in Florence in the second half of the 1490s (the effects of this episode were still evident in northern Italy throughout the sixteenth century, well after Savonarola’s execution in 1498); the appearance of El Encubierto, the hidden king, whose arrival would mark a new messianic age in Valencia in the 1520s; the German Peasants’ War of 1524– 1525 led by Thomas Müntzer, a priest and a messianic preacher from Mühlhausen, endowing this social-economic uprising with a religious messianic significance; and the radical Anabaptists’ attempt to establish the New Jerusalem in Münster after the prophets Jan Mattys and Jan Bockelson von Leyden (who later declared himself the King Messiah) carried out extensive social and religious reforms. On these awakenings and movements, see Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. and expanded ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); Sara Nalle, “The Millennial Moment: Revolution and Radical Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schäfer and Mark Cohen (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 151– 71; Eric W. Gritsch, Thomas Müntzer: A Tragedy of Errors (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989); Abraham Friesen, Thomas Muentzer, a Destroyer of the Godless: The Making of a Sixteenth-Century Religious Revolutionary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd rev. ed. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1992).

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Asher Lemlein, an Ashkenazic kabbalist born around 1440,⁴ Lemlein’s family emigrated from Reutlingen in Swabia in the southwest German lands to northern Italy at an unknown date.⁵ Lemlein himself lived in Isola d’Istria in the Venetian Terraferma, an area that was home to many Ashkenazic Jews in the first third of the sixteenth century.⁶ He was a well-known and respected scholar and kabbalist; even his most bitter opponent, Rabbi Joseph ibn Shraga, referred to him as “our great teacher Rabbi Asher Lemlein.”⁷ Lemlein’s reputation as a kabbalist and magician attracted many followers, Jewish and Christian; he was later forced to hide in an inner room to avoid the masses of both Jewish and Gentile visitors and followers seeking his advice.⁸ Lemlein was the only messianic harbinger in this period to generate a movement, a group of people devoted to his messianic promises and ready to invest both socially and also to become actively involved in promoting that belief. The movement spread far beyond the borders of the Terraferma and the Apennine Peninsula to the German lands and Bohemia; Lemlein’s followers were to be found from Prague to Frankfurt. David Gans, the famous Jewish intellectual and erudite from Prague, related that in 1500 his grandfather smashed the special oven that the family used to bake matzos for Passover because he believed that in the following year he would be baking the matzos in Jerusalem. Gans also mentioned Lemlein’s followers in Frankfurt, including the rabbi of the community, Eliezer Treves.⁹ Lemlein predicted that the Messiah would reveal himself between 1501 and 1503, presenting himself as either a prophet or, as some of the sources claim, as the Messiah himself. Lemlein’s sermons evoked a movement of repentance: “People proclaimed a fast, donned sackcloth, and turned every man from his

 In a letter dating from 1500 he described himself as “old and ancestor;” see Ephraim Kupfer, “The Visions of Rabbi Asher ben Meir Lemlein Roitlingen” [Hebrew], Kobez al-Yad n. s. 8 (1975): 387– 423.  The research concerning Lemlein is still very limited. See Kupfer, “The Visions;” Moti Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho: The Life and Death of Messiah Ben Joseph [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2016), 58 – 69; Rebekka Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser: Politik, Ideologie und jüdisch-christlicher Messianismus in Deutschland, 1500 – 1600 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 52– 87; Saverio Campanini, “A Neglected Source Concerning Asher Lemlein and Parida da Ceresara: Agostino Giustiniani,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 2 (2008): 89 – 110.  Kupfer, “The Visions,” 407n1.  Alexander Marx, “Le faux Messie Ascher Laemmlein,” Revue des Études Juives 61 (1911): 137, 138.  Kupfer, “The Visions,” 423; Samuel Löwinger, “Recherches sur l’œuvre apologétique d’Abraham Farissol,” Revue des Études Juives 105 (1940): 35.  David Gans, Tzemaḥ David, ed. Mordechai Breuer (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983), 137.

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evil path.”¹⁰ Abraham Farissol even mentioned flogging as a means of repentance employed by Lemlein’s followers, echoing the fourteenth-century Flagellantes prominent in Germany and the Netherlands.¹¹ Lemlein’s movement of repentance similarly thrilled members of Christian society; one Christian source refers to 1501 as “the year of repentance.” This repentance, and especially the fact that the Messiah did not appear in its wake, was particularly emphasized by Christian writers, notably Johannes Pfefferkorn,¹² Paulus Fagius,¹³ Sebastian Münster,¹⁴ and Johannes Isaac Levita,¹⁵ who accentuated the messianic aspect of Lemlein’s activities and highlighted his failure as evidence that the real Messiah had already come. Indeed, Lemlein’s prophecies failed and his messianic promises proved false,¹⁶ generating a serious crisis and leading some of his followers to convert to Christianity.¹⁷ It is possible that Pfefferkorn’s conversion to Christianity in 1504 was a consequence of Lemlein’s messianic failure and that he himself had actually been one of Lemlein’s followers.¹⁸ Despite its broad scope, information about Lemlein’s messianic movement is very limited: few sources concerning it, especially Jewish ones, have reached us, but this lack of sources is very common in cases of failed messianic movements. Indeed, as Yonina Talmon demonstrated in discussing the sociology of messian-

 Joseph ha-Kohen, Divrei ha-Yamim le-Malkhei Tzarfat u-le-Malkhei Beit Ottoman ha-Togar (Amsterdam: Shlomo Props, 1733), 53v. See also the descriptions by Abraham Farissol in Löwinger, “Recherches,” 35; and Gedaliah ibn Yaḥya, Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Ha-Dorot haRishonim ve-Korotam, 1962), 103.  Löwinger, “Recherches,” 35.  Johannes Pfefferkorn, Der Juden Spiegel (Nuremberg, 1507).  Paulus Fagius, Liber Fidei seu Veritatis (Isny, 1542), 99. On this book, see Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century Christian Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1983), 249 – 50; Stephen G. Burnett, “A Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy and Anti-Jewish Polemic in Sebastian Münster’s Messiah of the Christians and the Jews (1529/39),” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 91 (2000): 172– 73.  Sebastian Münster, Messias Christianorum et Iudaeorum Hebraice et Latine (Basel, 1539). On this composition, see Burnett, “A Dialogue.”  Quoted by Marx, “Le faux Messie,” 135– 38.  Paulus Fagius, Liber Fidei, 99.  It is not clear how many of Lemlein’s followers converted; Christian sources indicate much higher numbers than Jewish ones. However, Jewish sources also explicitly mention the conversion of some of his followers.  Campanini, “A Neglected Source,” 95. Hava Frankel-Goldschmidt, “On the Periphery of Jewish Society: Jewish Converts to Christianity in Germany during the Reformation” [Hebrew], in Culture and Society in Medieval Jewry, ed. Menahem Ben-Sasson, Robert Bonfil, and Joseph R. Hacker (Jerusalem: Shazar, 1989), 648.

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ic movements,¹⁹ it results from their subversive nature and the established leadership’s attempts to eradicate any remaining remnants of the movement. Furthermore, the failure of a messianic movement often led to its members and followers obliterating any reference to a prior connection with it. I therefore suggest that in this case the “silence of sources” may express the wide scope of the movement and the significant influence it wielded.

Sephardim and Messianism Whereas members of the Italian rabbinical elite criticized Lemlein and the Sephardic Jewish chronographer Gedaliah ibn Yaḥya²⁰ called Lemlein’s followers fools, in Ashkenazic Prague and Frankfurt he was very much appreciated, even after the failure of his messianic predictions. As Rabbi Eliezer Treves of Frankfurt explained: “It was not a vain thing, and he gave a sign or a wonder and said that probably our sins caused and postponed it [the redemption].”²¹ We can thus clearly characterize this messianic arousal and movement as an Ashkenazic phenomenon. The fact of Lemlein’s Ashkenazic messianic movement undermines the accepted assumption, first expressed by Gershom Scholem and his school, that connects messianic activity in the generations following the expulsion from Spain with Sephardim. I would argue that in the decades following the expulsion, Sephardic society had very little interest, if any at all, in messianism; we can even describe Sephardic attitudes as anti-messianic. This is surprising not only owing to the central role that Sephardim later played in messianic movements (especially the Sabbatian movement), but also due to a result of the prominence of Sephardic scholars and kabbalists in calculating the end and composing messianic writings and propaganda during the early sixteenth century. Isaac Abravanel, the most prominent Sephardic leader and scholar at the turn of the sixteenth century, predicted that the Messiah would arrive between 1503 and 1531. Another Sephardic scholar, Rabbi Joseph ibn Shraga, who settled in Argenta, near Ferrara, following the expulsion, calculated that the end would come in the year 1512. Avraham Halevi, a Sephardic kabbalist, who, after suffering many calamities, settled in Jerusalem around the year 1514, circulated extensive messianic propaganda and authored numer Yonina Talmon, “Pursuit of the Millennium: The Relation between Religious and Social Change,” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 3 (1962): 124– 48.  Ibn Yaḥya, Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah, 103.  Gans, Tzemaḥ David, 137.

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ous messianic treatises and pamphlets anticipating the revelation of the Messiah in 1530. The most prominent and best-known messianic protagonist of the period, Shlomo Molcho, was a Portuguese new-Christian who returned to Judaism and settled in Italy. All of these figures highlight the prominent Sephardic involvement in messianic activity during the early sixteenth century. However, these examples are misleading; we have to distinguish between messianic rhetoric on the one hand – writing and speaking about messianism and messianic calculations – and on the other the formation of a mass movement committed to fostering the messianic process or preparing for life in the messianic era (such as the actions of David Gans’s grandfather in destroying the matzos oven). Abravanel’s writings constitute the most explicit expression of this gap between messianic rhetoric and action. Born into one of the most acclaimed Sephardic aristocratic families, Abravanel was among the most prominent leaders of Sephardic Jewry in the years preceding the expulsion.²² After leaving Spain in 1492, he settled in Naples and, following the French invasion in 1494, moved first to Sicily and then to Monopoli (on the Adriatic shore). He eventually settled in Venice in 1502. While in Monopoli, Abravanel completed his commentary on the Former Prophets that he had begun writing in Spain and in February 1496 concluded his commentary on Deuteronomy. In the following months, he composed a commentary on the Passover haggadah, which he finished just before the holiday, and that was followed by a commentary on Tractate Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), which is read weekly between Passover and Shavuot. In the summer of 1496, having finished these two short projects, Abravanel did not return, as might have been expected, to his biblical interpretive enterprise but penned the work Migdol Yeshu’ot (The Tower of Salvation), which comprises three books: Ma’ayanei ha-Yeshu’a (The Wells of Salvation), the central volume of the trilogy, is an endeavor to calculate the end based on the obscure dates and numbers that appear in the Book of Daniel; Yeshu’ot Meshiḥo (Salvation of His Anointed), which is an anti-Christian commentary on the messianic aggadot and midrashim; and Mashmi’a Yeshu’a (The Announcer of the Salvation), which provides a commentary on all the biblical messianic prophecies. The trilogy was completed in February 1498, at which stage Abravanel returned to his work on the Later Prophets: Isaiah and the Twelve Minor Prophets. Thus, Abravanel took a year and a half  There exists a wide variety of literature concerning Isaac Abravanel and his family. The classic biography remains Benzion Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher, 3rd rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972). For a more recent and updated biography, see Cedric Cohen-Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Shazar, 2017).

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long break from writing his monumental biblical commentary, devoting himself to intensive messianic works, which are notably different than his otherwise analytical-philosophical literary enterprises.²³ In his introduction to Yeshu’ot Meshiḥo (The Salvation of His Anointed), Abravanel revealed some of his motivations in choosing to write about messianism:²⁴ House of Israel, elders and juveniles, who are bleeding [from wounds] stabbed by the swords of wandering, the arrows of exile and the anxiety of their expulsion from the land of their captives that overtook them between the straits. For this their heart is faint and in their bitter spirit they wept a most bitter lamentation. They set their mouth against the heavens, against God and His Messiah: why did the son of Jesse not come? Why did he not come to reign out of prison? Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why do the wheels of his chariots tarry? … It is an old leprosy, they say, our bones are dried, and our hope is lost … the Messiah died or broke down or was captured. His sun, the sun of righteousness with healing in its wings, will not shine.

It appears that Abravanel’s transition from writing rational biblical commentaries to messianic preaching and calculations of the end did not occur in a vacuum. Furthermore, there is no hint therein at a messianic arousal or any concrete messianic expectations; on the contrary, his messianic writings constitute an attempt to confront the despair and loss of messianic faith and hope that he identified among his fellow Sephardic exiles by instilling messianic belief and optimism in their hearts and raising their spirits. Abravanel’s Migdol Yeshu’ot was an attempt to strengthen the exiles’ spirits and their religious consciousness by putting the messianic topic on their agenda.²⁵

 For a (partial) list of Abravanel’s writings, see Netanyahu, Abravanel, 327. Cohen-Skalli has suggested that Ma’ayanei ha-Yeshu’a accords with Abravanel’s interpretive enterprise based on his two previous works – the commentaries on the Passover haggadah and Tractate Avot – because the Book of Daniel was learned on Tishah be-Av (the 9th of Av), the next religious occasion following Shavuot. See Cedric Cohen-Skalli, “Authorship in the Age of Early Jewish Print: Isaac Abravanel’s Ma’ayanei ha-Yeshu’a and the First Printed Edition in Ferrara 1551,” in Tradition, Heterodoxy and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period, ed. Chanita Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2006), 189. Yet Abravanel devoted a year and a half to writing the Messianic Trilogy, much more than the few months during which he composed the commentaries on the haggadah and Avot.  Isaac Abravanel, Yeshu’ot Meshiḥo [Hebrew] (Bene Berak: Machon Meorei Sepharad, 1993), 1– 2. See also idem, Ma’ayanei ha-Yeshu’a [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Abravanel, 1960), 275.  Abravanel’s harsh words about the exiles’ attitude toward messianic faith do not only reflect the atmosphere in his close surroundings. His encounter with the large community of expellees in Corfu shocked him. He described the people that he met there as “broken pots of clay,” lacking any “spirit of God,” interested only in materialistic values and detached from any kind of

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The changes in the date that Abravanel calculated for the redemption may reveal his purpose in composing this Messianic Trilogy. Throughout the first eleven chapters of Ma’ayanei ha-Yeshu’a he unambiguously calculated that the various obscure numbers and dates in the Book of Daniel all point to 1503 as the year of the redemption. However, in the final chapter of the book he recalculated all the numbers and dates to point to a new date: the year 1531. Thus, he concluded that the process of the redemption would begin in 1503 and end in 1531. The reasons for this shift and recalculation are unclear, especially in light of his intellectual and creative efforts to manipulate the numbers and dates, which all pointed to 1503. I suggest that in February 1498, when he finished writing his Messianic Trilogy, Abravanel understood that his messianic deadline was too close; if the Messiah did not arrive within the following five years, by 1503, the results would be disastrous. Abravanel’s main goal was to strengthen messianic faith and thus, fearing that he would accomplish the complete opposite, he had no choice but to postpone the deadline. Whatever the reason, the ambience of despair and loss of messianic faith that he described affirm the disparity between the Ashkenazic interest and involvement in messianism and the feelings of indifference and disbelief toward it among Sephardim. The three other prominent messianic advocates mentioned above – Joseph ibn Shraga, Avraham Halevi, and Shlomo Molcho – although of Iberian ancestry, appear to have influenced mainly Ashkenazic society. Joseph ibn Shraga settled in Argenta, close to Ferrara, an area with a considerable Ashkenazic population, and we know only of his Ashkenazic students (Moses Basola, Elia Ḥalfan, and Avraham Kanito Tzarfati). Likewise, Avraham Halevi’s correspondents were Ashkenazim (Rabbi Yisrael Ashkenazi, Rabbi Avraham of Perugia members of the Meshulam family), as were all of Shlomo Molcho’s known followers. Indeed, Yaakov Mantino, Molcho’s nemesis, was Sephardic. ²⁶ It thus appears that interest in messianism and active involvement in messianic activity in the early sixteenth century were Ashkenazic practices. By contrast, Sephardic scholars were engaged in messianic calculations and writing about messianism but were not generating messianic movements or raising interest among their Sephardic associates. However, a thorough review of the very limited information available concerning Lemlein reveals familiar attributes

spirituality. It seems, therefore, that Abravanel was referring to the state of mind of the entire community of exiles, not only those in Naples. See Netanyahu, Abravanel, 72.  Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 164.

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and the influence of Sephardic sources dating from the second half of the fifteenth century, some 30 years prior to Lemlein’s activities. Lemlein claimed that one of the features of the messianic age would be the restoration of prophetic revelation and that in the future prophets would reveal hidden secrets; indeed, some Hebrew sources refer to him as the prophesier. Likewise, as Saverio Campanini noted recently, magical practices and magic in general constituted an essential part of Lemlein’s activity. Agostino Giustiniani, the Italian humanist and Hebraist, wrote that Lemlein used holy names and boasted about his ability to perform marvelous acts and enter an ecstatic state at any given time. In a response to claims by his opponents, a letter from a member of Lemlein’s closest circle refers to accusations that Lemlein used holy names in a forbidden manner.²⁷ The letter writer did not deny Lemlein’s use of holy names, but contended that he did so in a permissible way. In addition, Lemlein’s library included many books concerning magic, for example Sefer Raziel (The Book of Raziel [the Angel]), a practical Kabbalah grimoire; Ḥayyei ha-Olam haBa (Life of the World to Come) by the famous thirteenth-century Sephardic kabbalist and magician Avraham Abulafia; and the Clavicula Salomonis, a pseudoepigraphical grimoire attributed to King Solomon, a typical example of Renaissance magic.²⁸ Paride da Ceresara from Mantua, whom Giustiniani described as one of Lemlein’s Christian adherents, was fascinated, as was Giustiniani himself, with the letters of the secret names of God and the power of the Hebrew letters – about which Lemlein wrote an entire treatise.²⁹ Giustiniani was interested in Kabbalah and it appears that he was attracted to Lemlein because of the latter’s engagement with magic.³⁰ Lemlein was also familiar with astral magic and talismans,³¹ and apparently with the hermetic texts,³² as well as being a critic of philosophy and philosophical studies in general. ³³ These characteristics – prophecy and prophetic visions, magic, use of the sacred names of God, objection to philosophy and messianism – also appeared within a kabbalistic circle active in Spain during the 1470s, which was named  Campanini, “A Neglected Source,” 102.  Mss. Escorial, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial G-III-11, 133v–135r.  Mss. Budapest-Kaufman 179, 141– 47.  Campanini, “A Neglected Source,” 106. For a bibliography concerning Paride da Ceresara, see ibid., 106n50.  Mss. Budapest-Kaufman 179, 132– 35; 141– 47.  As noted above, Lemlein quoted from Sefer Raziel and Clavicula Salomonis. On Lemlein’s attitude regarding these books, see Moshe Idel, “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 186 – 242.  Kupfer, “The Visions,” 406.

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after its principal work – Sefer ha-Meshiv (The Book of the Answering Angel). A member of that kabbalistic circle, Rabbi Joseph della Reina, employed such magical-kabbalistic methods in an attempt to bring about the coming of the Messiah, which ended in a resounding failure, with disastrous results. Both Lemlein and Della Reina used holy names engraved in gold for magical messianic purposes: Della Reina wore a gold ring with holy names inscribed on it, and Lemlein used a golden plaque. Halevi and Molcho were both, directly or indirectly, associated with this magical-kabbalistic Sephardic circle. There was a similar legacy of using magic for messianic purposes, be it to obtain information about the time of the Messiah’s expected arrival or to reinforce messianic developments in Spain in the 1470s and in early sixteenth-century Ashkenazic northern Italy. However, this legacy developed in different and even contradictory directions among Ashkenazim and Sephardim: whereas the Ashkenazic interest in messianism turned into a social movement, only a few individual Sephardim were engaged in the practice of messianic calculations. As both Ashkenazim and Sephardim shared the same intellectual and magical-kabbalistic background for messianic calculations and activity, it appears that the disparity between the two groups was the outcome of circumstantial factors. As I noted above, Della Reina, the Sephardic kabbalist and one of the prominent members of the magical-kabbalistic circle of Sefer ha-Meshiv, tried in 1470 to force the Messiah to reveal himself. It is possible that his failure chilled Sephardic messianic enthusiasm, and that might have been one of the reasons for the “messianic gap” between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. However, the first reference to Della Reina’s endeavor dates from the 1520s, and it is also difficult to believe that the act of a single member of an esoteric circle would have had such an impact on Sephardic society. An alternative reason for the lack of Sephardic messianic enthusiasm may have been the expulsion from Spain in 1492, which generated acute feelings of crisis and failure, as described in Abravanel’s introduction to Yeshu’ot Meshiḥo, cited above. This explanation calls for a re-examination of the relationship between messianic expectations and social unrest, especially the notion that messianism is a manifestation of escapism during times of crisis and distress, a sort of “the opium of the people,” to quote Karl Marx.³⁴ A methodological discussion of the agents of messianic movements is beyond the scope of this chapter, yet, interestingly, the most significant Jewish messianic occurrence in mod-

 Cohen also recognized this and toward the end of his article he listed a series of anti-Jewish persecutions from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, noting that none of them actually caused a messianic arousal.

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ern times – among the Chabad-Lubavich Ḥasidim in the early 1990s – certainly did not come about from a catastrophe or a crisis. On the contrary, it took place during a period of historic change, ostensibly for the better: the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe, which Chabad viewed as its archenemies and enemies of Judaism in general. A third factor might have been the social and structural differences between the communal orders of the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities in Italy and the Ottoman Empire. A fundamental characteristic of fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Ashkenazic communities in northern Italy was their small, familial nature: members of the community usually settled around a banker who received special permission (condotta) to open a bank or another business in a certain location. The Ashkenazic community thus lacked any officially organized institutions, a structure that persisted even as the community grew beyond the original banker and his entourage. Communities of this kind were fruitful grounds for messianic harbingers, whose activities were, naturally, subversive and anti-establishment (indeed, both Lemlein and Molcho turned against the local Jewish authorities in their writings);³⁵ in the absence of political and religious administration the messianic precursor could preach and spread messianic hype without restraint. Sephardic communities in the Ottoman Empire and in northern Italy, where they appeared from the 1530s onward, were characterized by an organized structure and the existence of communal institutions. Indeed, from the 1530s, the private condotta was replaced by a communal one and the position of the community rabbi was established, reinforcing the community’s capacity to punish intractable members. This kind of atmosphere made it harder for messianic harbingers to spread their propaganda because only the community rabbi was eligible to preach in public and the communal leadership could preclude the presence of unwanted individuals within the community. Indeed, when Molcho published his messianic sermons in Salonica in 1529, the work met with serious opposition from the town’s religious leaders, who joined together and succeeded in blocking distribution of the book.³⁶ In contrast, shortly after his return to Italy, Molcho became a popular preacher and appeared before audiences of enthusiastic listeners – Jews and Gentiles alike – in Rome, Mantua, Ancona, and Bologna, as well as in other places. He was also engaged in negotiations regarding  For Lemlein’s critique of the Jewish leadership, see Mss. Escorial, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial G-III-11, 132r. For Molcho’s critique, see Shlomo Molcho, Sefer ha-Mefo’ar (Salonica: Yossef Ceed and Elia Ricco, 1529), 19v – 20r. For a discussion of these attitudes, see Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 63 – 64, 236 – 37.  Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 179 – 80.

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the publication of a second book. Interestingly, messianic movements (such as Sabbatianism) did spread among Sephardim some 150 years after the expulsion, just as Lemlein’s Ashkenazic messianic movement became active more than 150 years after the departure from Ashkenaz, which took place in the second half of the fourteenth century. The differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim regarding messianism are also apparent in their postmortem appreciation of Lemlein’s movement. Whereas the Ashkenazic scholar David Gans portrayed his grandfather’s devotion to Lemlein and quoted Rabbi Eliezer Treves of Frankfurt, who blamed “our sins” and not Lemlein for the failure of the latter’s messianic pursuits and the loss of a messianic opportunity, Sephardic scholars such as Joseph ha-Kohen and Gedaliah ibn Yaḥya, as well as the Provencal Abraham Farissol, depicted Lemlein as a liar, calling him a fool and insane. They referred to him as “the champion” (ish ha-benayim) using the biblical title given to Goliath, accusing him of causing a wave of conversions, and explicitly noting that he was Ashkenazic. These differences, however, reflect not only the different attitudes of Ashkenazim and Sephardim to messianism, but also to Lemlein’s controversial character. During a dispute that occurred in the early sixteenth century, Sephardic kabbalist (and messianic herald himself) Rabbi Joseph ibn Shraga argued that Lemlein’s concepts of levirate, reincarnation, and resurrection of the dead is a destruction of the whole Torah. In his later writings, which have survived in manuscript form, Lemlein expressed bitter hostility toward the Sephardim. He attacked Sephardic pronunciation and liturgy, calling the Sephardim evil, “those who break through the fence” (poretz gader), crazy, inarticulate, increasing the culture of sin (tarbut anashim ḥatta’im), and so forth. He added that their prayers are not heard because their liturgy is so distorted. Lemlein also assailed Maimonides and members of the Kimhi family, arguing that philosophy led them to follow erroneous paths. He did not spare the Sephardic kabbalists, not even Nahmanides, the renowned thirteenth-century Sephardic scholar and kabbalist, and his students, censuring their “invented” theory of the shmitot. ³⁷ Lemlein systematically attacked all aspects of Sephardic culture – philosophy and law (halakhah), grammar and linguistics, and liturgy and Kabbalah! This was (and remains today) an unprecedented attack, and there is no record

 A kabbalistic cosmogenic and cosmologic theory that describes the world as being created, destroyed and then re-created again in cycles of 7000 years, each of these cycles is connected to one of the sefirot. This theory was especially popular in the circles of Nahmanides and his students throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

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of any other criticism on the same scale.³⁸ Although written in 1509, some six years after his messianic failure and his departure from Italy and after he had settled in the Land of Israel, the consistency of his anti-Sephardic denunciation and his critique of Sephardic rabbis and writers from the time of his messianic activity suggest that his attitude to Sephardic culture and people was unchanged throughout his lifetime. Interestingly, in his writings Lemlein always directed his critique toward Sephardim in the plural, as a distinct group with clear common characteristics and bad habits, rather than individual Sephardim who misinterpreted Jewish law, grammar, Kabbalah, etc. The Sephardic sources, on the other hand, while explicitly noting that he was Ashkenazic, focused their censure on Lemlein himself and did not attack the Ashkenazim as a group; they did not even refer to his followers as Ashkenazim – only to him as such. This may indicate another difference in the collective identities of Ashkenazim and Sephardim in northern Italy. The long-established Ashkenazic presence in this area enabled the emergence of an Ashkenazic collective identity that emphasized Ashkenazic ancestry as its master status. Lemlein’s animosity toward the Sephardim is thus an expression of self-enhancement by way of ingroup favoritism and hostility toward nonmembers. The Sephardic presence in these areas was not as significant or as long-standing and, as Jonathan Ray and others have noted,³⁹ in the early sixteenth century still lacked an established group identity; thus, their master status was a religious one. As this master status was shared with Ashkenazim they did not view the latter as belonging to a rival group, so any criticism was personal and not collective. A similar notion appears in a late-fifteenth-century polemic treatise authored by a Sephardic scholar, entitled ‘Alilot devarim (Evil Libels), which is a severe censure of the Ashkenazic intellectual learning method as well as of Ashkenazic liturgy. However, it does not mention the word Ashkenazim. It seems that

 It seems that this severe criticism had a significant personal background. As I noted above, Lemlein was involved in a dispute with Sephardic kabbalists prior to his messianic activity and was bitterly criticized by Sephardic writers. Lemlein was in no way a representative of the common Ashkenazic attitude toward Sephardic culture or to Sephardim at all. Yet, the practice and position of a “social extremist” within a given society can teach us about the concepts and notions of that society regarding the objects of the criticism.  See, e. g., Jonathan Ray, After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry (New York: New York University Press, 2013); José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “Jews in the Diaspora with ‘Sepharad’ in the Mirror – Ruptures, Relations, and Forms of Identity: A Theme Examined through Three Cases,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 175 – 205; Matthias Lehmann, “Rethinking Sephardi Identity: Jews and Other Jews in Ottoman Palestine,” Jewish Social Studies 15 (2008): 84– 85.

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the Sephardic author of this tract also did not think in ethnic or group terms and criticized the Ashkenazic customs not as Ashkenazic, but as simply wrong.

Conclusion Ashkenazim, but not Sephardim, were interested and involved in messianism and messianic movements in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Contrary to the keen Ashkenazic interest and involvement in messianism, Sephardim were not only indifferent but sometimes even hostile to an Ashkenazic messianic harbinger. I suggest that these opposing attitudes derived from the different formative events that each group experienced and from their different social and communal structures. The bitter and unprecedented hostility toward the Sephardim expressed in the writings of the Ashkenazic messianic harbinger Asher Lemlein, the most prominent messianic leader of the period, can be viewed as an expression of the two groups’ images of one another: whereas Ashkenazim considered Sephardim as a differentiated alien group, Sephardim did not view the Ashkenazim so much as a group, but rather as individuals. However, the similarities between the messianic concept and practices of Lemlein in the first decade of the sixteenth century and those of Sephardic messianic magico-kabbalists from the 1470s are striking. Indeed, some 130 years later this gap disappeared as Sephardim were no less involved than Ashkenazim in the new messianic movement of that generation – Sabbatianism.

Tirza Kelman

5 “All of the Differing Opinions of the Poskim, No One Fails to Appear” The Use of Ashkenazic Works in R. Joseph Karo’s Beit Yosef Therefore I, the humblest of the clan of Joseph, ¹ son of our teacher, Rabbi Ephraim son of our teacher Joseph Karo, may his memory be for life in the world to come, was moved by zeal for the Lord,² and I shook out the bosom of my garment ³ [in preparation] to remove the stones from the road, ⁴ and I agreed to compose a book containing all of the laws that are practiced [today], clarifying their foundations and their origins in the Talmud, with all of the differing opinions of the Poskim [Decisors], no man missing. ⁵ And it arose in my mind that after [I lay out all of] these things I would adjudicate the law and determine which of the opinions is correct, since this is the object, and [in order for us all] to have the same ritual and the same rule. ⁶

In the first edition of Beit Yosef,⁷ R. Joseph Karo (hereafter: RJK) included his preface in each volume of the work, noting that it was an essential key for an understanding of his magnum opus.⁸

 Judges 6:15.  1 Kings 19:10.  Nehemiah 5:13.  Isaiah 62:10.  Isaiah 40:26.  Numbers 15:16. The quotation is from Joseph son of Ephraim Karo, preface of Beit Yosef on Jacob son of Rabbenu Asher, Tur Orah Hayim (Venice: Justinian Press, 1550). The text has not yet been translated systematically, and all of the translations herein were prepared while this paper was being written.  Orah Hayim was first printed in 1550 by Justinian Press in Venice; Yoreh De’ah in 1551 by Bragadin Press in Venice. The Even ha-Ezer volume of Beit Yosef was printed for the first time in 1553 and the Hoshen Mishpat in 1559, both by Foa Press in Sabioneta.  See the opening page of Yoreh De’ah (and similarly in the next two volumes): “The author said, since we have already laid out the reason for the composition of this book, its methods and its rules and laws in our commentary on the Orah Hayim section of Tur, since that composition was more than could be handled, we had to print the commentary on each section separately, and the one who did not see that introduction, or saw it and forgot it, the words of that book will be for him like the words of a sealed book. Therefore, I agreed to have that introduction copied here, and I hereby present it to you.” The introduction to Beit Yosef follows these words; however, despite the above declaration, there are actually differences among the different versions of the introduction. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-005

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The declaration cited above summarizes the goals of his work, which represented a watershed in the history of halakhah – Jewish religious law. In view of the difficulties he identified in the halakhic world of his day and in the existing halakhic literature, he was determined to develop a plan for a new kind of book and devoted the best part of his long preface (approximately 1500 words) to describing its advantages. The preface enumerates three particular goals that he sought to achieve with Beit Yosef. 1. RJK based Beit Yosef on an earlier fourteenth-century important halakhic work entitled Arba’ah Turim or, in short, the Tur, written by R. Jacob, the son of R. Asher son of Yehiel (known by his acronym Rosh). RJK’s first goal was to find and cite the sources from the Babylonian Talmud that were relevant for each law discussed in the Tur. Further on in the preface he noted other objectives in connection with the Tur, such as explaining R. Jacob’s text. 2. To survey all of the opinions and disagreements in connection with each law. He wanted to include all of the post-Talmudic halakhic literature on every relevant subject. 3. To adjudicate the halakhah in each case in light of the material he collected in order to develop uniform, binding halakhic rulings. This chapter addresses some of the questions raised by the second of these issues. The development of a compendium that would include all the opinions of all the poskim to his day was necessarily limited by the range of RJK’s access to and familiarity with other halakhic writings. Thus, the first question is: Who were the poskim included in the phrase “no man missing”? RJK was born in 1488 on the Iberian Peninsula and moved with his family to the Ottoman Empire as part of the emigration of the Jews forced to leave Spain and later Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century. We do not know much about his life, but we do know that he spent some time in Egypt before he started writing Beit Yosef in the Ottoman province of Edirne in 1522. In 1536 he moved to Tzefat, where he completed Beit Yosef and wrote other influential books, including the Shulhan Arukh. This personal history makes RJK a true representative of the Iberian Sephardic tradition, but we also learn from the preface to Beit Yosef that he was familiar with sources from outside his own locale. In the books he listed as those that Beit Yosef would make redundant,⁹ there are about thirty

 The list that is usually quoted is the one printed in the introduction to the first volume, those in the other volumes are somewhat different, but none of them makes any distinction between geographic regions.

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works from different geographical regions, with no distinction among the locales they derived from. This fact emphasizes and strengthens the importance of the questions that touch on the ways in which RJK’s actual library was compiled. As important are questions regarding what Avriel Bar-Levav called “library awareness,” when he explained: I suggest using the phrase “library awareness” … to refer to the consciousness of the essential and practical meaning of libraries, their perception as a whole, and the understanding that an entirety of a book collection is mirrored by an entirety of knowledge, and is even connected to other perceptions of wholeness. This consciousness has links to the actual existence of libraries and collections of books, but is not identical to them; it rather belongs in the sphere of consciousness, whose relationship with reality is complex. The consciousness is not fixed and uniform, and it changes and develops at different times and in different places.¹⁰

The study of the criteria according to which RJK selected the materials he made use of from the large collection of books at his disposal and the ways in which he used each of the works he chose to address is essential to our understanding of his goals in writing Beit Yosef. Added weight is given to questions regarding his use of Ashkenazic – central and Eastern European – traditions. R. Moshe Isserles (Rema) wrote glossa to RJK’s works in the second half of the sixteenth century, emphasizing the differences between those works and the Ashkenazic traditions. The important place Beit Yosef has occupied in the history of halakhah from the day of its publication to the present renders these questions especially significant. Israel Ta-Shema wrote the following regarding the list of books RJK mentioned in the preface:¹¹ Partial as Caro’s list may be, it clearly reflects his extensive use of the Ashkenazic halakhic tradition: In no previous work, Sephardic or Ashkenazic, was so much Ashkenazic material assembled, organized and scrutinized so systematically. Indeed, it is possible that Caro included more Ashkenazic material than Sephardic material (except, of course, for Alfasi and Maimonides).

 Avriel Bar-Levav, “Between Library Awareness and the Jewish Republic of Letters,” in Libraries and Book Collections [Hebrew], ed. Yosef Kaplan and Moshe Sluhovsky (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2006), 201– 24, 201. Bar-Levav later developed and introduced variety into the concept of “library awareness;” my claims about RJK are close to his definition of the “comprehensive library.” See his “The Sacred Space of the Portable Homeland: An Archeology of Unseen Libraries in Jewish Culture from the Medieval Period to the Internet,” in Ut videant et Contingant: Essays on Pilgrimage and Sacred Space in Honor of Ora Limor [Hebrew], ed. Yitzhak Hen and Iris Shagrir (Raanana: Open University Press, 2011), 297– 320, esp. 312– 15.  Israel M. Ta-Shema, “Rabbi Joseph Caro and His Beit Yosef: Between Spain and Germany,” in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, ed. Haim Beinart, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), 192– 206.

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This quote is part of a broader contention posited by Ta-Shema, wherein he noted that RJK’s intention in writing Beit Yosef was for it to be accepted as the authoritative halakhic ruling by the whole of the Jewish Diaspora. Toward this end, he included various sources that were halakhically authoritative in different communities, so that those communities would accept the book as authoritative. Ta-Shema made certain to clarify that he did not believe that RJK’s public aspirations led him to stray from purely halakhic considerations. Rather he saw his determination to be accepted by all the Jewish communities reflected in his use of accepted halakhic literature from different Jewish Diasporas to be a cornerstone of his structural and literary choices in writing Beit Yosef. Ta-Shema’s article is an extremely important one, as it was the first attempt to treat Beit Yosef as a whole and address questions pertaining to the sources RJK made use of in its creation. The principal focus of his article was RJK’s use of the Zohar, which he contended was due to the fact that the Romaniote Jews saw it as an halakhically authoritative text.¹² The first part of the article is devoted to a parallel claim regarding RJK’s use of Ashkenazic material as a means to ensure the acceptance of his halakhic rulings among Ashkenazic Jews. Ta-Shema’s contentions regarding Ashkenazic halakhah expounded in Beit Yosef are posited as an assumption, not as an empirically proven thesis. In the present chapter, I examine the question of RJK’s sources in a more precise fashion, looking at his scope, his method, and his goal in using pre-existing Ashkenazic (German) texts. Owing to the vastness of Beit Yosef in its entirety, I only address a specific case study: the rules of niddah and ritual immersion (tevillah) that appear in the Yoreh De’ah section, from chapter 183 to chapter 200. This literary unit is, on the one hand, well delineated and defined; on the other hand, it is large enough to provide a sufficiently broad sampling of RJK’s working methodology regarding his use of Ashkenazic poskim to be considered indicative of his general approach. As this unit also encompasses subjects where there are well-known differences in halakhic rulings and common practice between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, it offers an added benefit as a case study. Research concerning

 Ibid., 162– 70. Ta-Shema’s central contention regarding the Zohar was disproven by Boaz Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky: Chapters in the Reception History of the Zohar and the Construction of Its Symbolic Value [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute and Bialik Institute, 2008), 168n121. Huss demonstrated that, in contrast to Ta-Shema’s claim, RJK’s intention in referencing the Zohar in the Beit Yosef was to strengthen the Sephardic halakhic practice, in particular against the halakhic rulings of Rosh (R. Asher son of Yehiel) and his son, the author of the Tur, where his halakhic rulings diverged from theirs.

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other parts of Beit Yosef shows that this case study actually reflects consistent patterns in RJK’s work with different types of resources. In connection with the opinions noted in this section of Beit Yosef I have related to every instance in which RJK quoted the opinion of a named author. Such a reference might be in the form of a quote or be a presentation of the opinion in RJK’s own words. The length of such citations varies greatly – from opinions that take only a few words to ones that are expressed in long paragraphs and represent a given approach. I counted references to any posek’s opinion as a secondary excerpt in the words of another posek who discussed the former’s approach separately. My analysis reveals that RJK included the words of thirty-one poskim directly.¹³ The following list is divided into groups according to the geographic-halakhic spaces in which they were created. The vast majority of them were already in print by the time this section of Beit Yosef was written, a fact that has great significance for the study of the transmission of knowledge in early modern times.¹⁴ The number that appears in brackets next to each posek is the count of direct references to him in this section of the book. In cases where two numbers appear in the parentheses, the second one represents secondary mentions in the section. When only one number appears, there are no secondary references to the source, only direct citations:¹⁵ ‒ Spain: The Rashba (Shlomo son of Aderet) [276, 28], the Rosh (Asher son of Yehiel)¹⁶ [175, 3], Maimonides [164, 30], the Magid Mishne [93], Rabbenu

 This number does not include R. Aharon of Lunel’s Sefer Orhot Hayim, which appears in the later editions of the Beit Yosef, in Bedek ha-Bayit: RJK’s corrections to his book, which were published by his son at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Though they were later integrated into the additions of Beit Yosef, they were not part of the text in the first edition.  I have written on this topic at length elsewhere. See Tirza Kelman, “‘Written with Iron and Lead Letter in Print’: The Print Revolution and the Creation of the Beit Yosef” [Hebrew], Pe’amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry 148 (2017): 9 – 25.  Thirty-four poskim are mentioned in this section but only in a secondary capacity. Among them there are ten more Ashkenazim.  Rosh was originally Ashkenazic but fled to Spain and became an important authority for Sephardic Jews. At the same time, he was a resource regarding Ashkenazic traditions. Ta-Shema emphasized his role as an Ashkenazic authority while noting his dual Ashkenazic-Sephardic authority, though from Beit Yosef it seems that RJK did not see him as Ashkenazic. More so, it appears that RJK’s use of Rosh’s writings in Beit Yosef is double-sided. On the one hand, he is one of the three “pillars of teaching” that RJK states in his preface that guide his decision-making together with Rambam and Rif. In accordance with this statement, it is not surprising that Rosh’s words appear extensively in Beit Yosef. On the other hand, as Beit Yosef was structured according to Tur and also serves as an exegesis on it, and as the presentation of Rosh’s halakhic stance is one of the main purposes of Tur (see Judah Dov Galinsky, “The Four Turim and the

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Yeruham [82], Ran (Rabbenu Nissim of Gerona) [57, 1], the Ritva (Rabbenu Yom-Tov son of Avraham Asevilli) [5], Rabbenu Yonah [2], and the Zohar [1]. North Africa: Rif (R. Isaac Alfasi) [12, 19], Rabbenu Hananel [4, 25], Rashbatz (R. Simon son of Tzemah Duran) [4, 1], and Rivash (R. Isaac son of Sheshet) [3]. Provence: Ra’avad (R. Avraham son of David) [62, 76],¹⁷ Raza (R. Zrahya Halevi) [4, 13], and Kolbo [2] France: Rashi (R. Shlomo Yitzhaki) [91, 32], Smag (R. Moses of Coucy, known by the name of his book) [57, 6], the Tosaftists [56, 9], Sefer ha-Terumah [29, 13], Smak (R. Isaac of Corbeil) [18], and Rash (R. Shimshon) of Sens [16] Ashkenaz: Mordekhai [55, 2], Hagahot Maimoniyot [54], R. Israel Isserlein [15], Roke’ah [4, 6], Hagahot Asheri [1], Aguda [1]. Italy: Agur [11], Maharik (R. Joseph Colon) [7]¹⁸

Fig. 1: The number of cases in which there is use of opinions of decisors in Beit Yosef, Yoreh De’ah, 183 – 200 (by geographic region)

Halakhic Literature of Fourteenth Century Spain” [PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University, 1999], 67, 70, 195), it is only natural that RJK addressed his opinion on every subject.  This frequency with which the works of Ra’avad are used is not consistent in the whole of Beit Yosef, but a consequence of the importance of his book Be’alei ha-Nefesh, which focused on the laws dealt with in this section of Beit Yosef. Moreover, Raza’s quotations are outstanding and were drawn from the book he wrote in response to Be’alei ha-Nefesh.  It should be noted that this number does not indicate that RJK used seven responsa penned by Maharik, as the source for three of these seven references is the same unit of Maharik’s work and two others derive from another common unit.

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This mapping of RJK’s use of the opinions of earlier scholars in this part of Beit Yosef draws a very different picture than the one Ta-Shema described. There was a significantly greater use made of works by Sephardic poskim than of those authored by poskim from other geographical areas. Rather than only the most important writers that Ta-Shema referred to, it appears that RJK referenced the writings of many authors of Sephardic provenance in a variety of ways. First and foremost, the use of the works of Rashba, whose halakhic literature RJK referred to most often in this section, is strikingly greater than that of any other works.¹⁹ Moreover, the mapping demonstrates that RJK made significant use of quite a few other books deriving from the Sephardic halakhic world as well as those of North African poskim, whose halakhic approach was strongly linked to Sephardic halakhah. The mapping also emphasizes the important place occupied by French authors, a group whose presence in Beit Yosef has not yet garnered academic attention. It appears that RJK himself barely distinguished between the French and the Ashkenazic halakhic writings. In his preface, he highlighted the great literary influence the French Tosaftists’ approach had on later poskim in both France and Ashkenaz. He also noted that not mentioning an opinion that is identical in different writings from this school was not because he did not know that it reappeared, but rather that he saw no value in repeating them if they did not add anything to the earlier opinions. Nevertheless, all the works he listed in the preface as works that might be duplications of one another are extensively quoted in this section of Beit Yosef: the Rosh,²⁰ the Mordekhai, the Smag, the Smak, Sefer Terumah, and the Hagahot Maimoniyot. If we turn to the use he made of Ashkenazic works in Yoreh De’ah, chapters 183 – 200, we see that although not negligible, they are clearly marginal. Against the large-scale, varied material of Sephardic provenance cited in this section, RJK made direct use of only six books of Ashkenazic origin, using Mordekhai and Hagahot Maimoniyot relatively frequently, mentioning them fifty-five and fifty-four  Of the 276 cases on which Rashba’s opinion is quoted directly, thirteen make use of his responsa. The remainder comprises quotes from his two complementary works – the short and the long Torat ha-Bayit. On those matters addressed in the Rashba’s work, including the laws of niddah, the short Torat ha-Bayit serves as one of the central sources for the work of R. Jacob son of Asher, the author of Tur. RJK was in possession of both works, both in manuscript form, and he used each independently, but also compared the texts with each other. In addition to the great wealth of direct citations counted here, Rashba’s opinion is referenced as a secondary citation in other poskim’s words on twenty-eight additional occasions. The significance of Rashba’s influence in Beit Yosef is consistent throughout the work, although especially notable in the parts that deal with subjects that the Rashba wrote about in Torat ha-Bayit.  See note 17 above.

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times, respectively. It should be noted that he had these two books in his possession as part of larger, non-Ashkenazic corpora: Mordekhai was printed together with the Babylonian Talmud and with Rif, and Hagahot Maimoniyot appeared with Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah in its different editions. Hagahot Asheri, mentioned only once in this unit, was printed together with Rosh’s work. Aside from the six Ashkenazic works quoted directly, RJK noted the opinions of only ten additional Ashkenazic poskim, who are cited only as secondary sources. The number of references to the opinions of each of these ten poskim is very limited, and even the opinion of R. Eliezer son of Yoel the Levi (Ra’avya), who is the most frequently cited of the group, appears in only six cases. It should be noted that, unlike Sephardic poskim, whose words are cited as secondary sources in the opinions of Ashkenazic poskim on numerous occasions, the approaches of the Ashkenazic poskim are not presented as part of the halakhic literature of Sephardic or North African geographic areas. The Ashkenazic approaches are only mentioned in works that RJK used directly, which were by authors who were themselves Ashkenazim, as well as in Sefer ha-Agur, which, although Italian in origin, was authored by a rabbi whose genealogical roots were Ashkenazic. We come down to only two independently printed Ashkenazic works that RJK used directly in writing the laws in the chapters this study focuses on: Roke’ah and two books authored by R. Israel Isserlein (Terumat ha-Deshen and Pesakim u-Ketavim), which were printed in one volume. RJK’s use of the Roke’ah in this section of Beit Yosef is fairly symbolic and does not convey R. Eliezer of Worms’s unique ideas; rather he employed them only as a support for the halakhic approaches of others.²¹ Against this background, the use RJK made of R. Isserlein’s books is striking. He referred to each of the fourteen relevant sections in Isserlein’s works.²² The inclusion of such a large portion of the material that ap-

 This fact is not all together true concerning the use that Beit Yosef makes of Roke’ah; a further research project I am working on has shown that there are direct quotes from Roke’ah in the Orah Hayim volume of Beit Yosef, which offer some unique opinions regarding issues to do with prayer, but these few cases do not change the big picture described here.  A reference to responsum 245 can be found in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 196; to responsum 246 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 188 and 190; to responsum 247 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 186; to 248 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 191; to 249 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 190 and 187; to 250 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 184; to 251 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 195; to 253 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 192. Section 47 of Pesakim u-Ketavim is mentioned in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 187, and section 78 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 196. Section 132 is noted in Beit Yosef on Orah Hayim 88. The similarity between responsa 255 and 256 is so significant that R. Yossel Heuschtat, author of the Leket Yosher, felt the need to note explicitly that “He wrote this responsum twice in his book, and he was aware of it and did not erase one of them.” Leket Yosher, part 2, 22. Edward Fram, “Regarding the Order of the Printed Edition of Terumat ha-Deshen” [He-

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pears in the original work is highly unusual in comparison to his use of all the rest of the responsa in this section, which are also quoted less frequently in general. The consistent and intensive use of R. Isserlein’s works is striking throughout Beit Yosef; an in-depth analysis of the way in which they are referenced in this section can serve as a case study for broader future research. RJK’s related to R. Isserlein’s works by paraphrasing his words. This approach contrasts with the way in which he quoted extensively from the works of the leading Sephardic poskim and the way in which he only briefly mentioned the conclusions of others.²³ He dealt with the material in R. Isserlein’s writings using Isserlein’s own words but did not include the more complex parts of the original texts. The scholarly debate is omitted and the reader of Beit Yosef is presented with a summary of the Terumat ha-Deshen’s responsa. Thus, in Yoreh De’ah 195, RJK quoted large parts of Terumat ha-Deshen responsum no. 253, keeping the structure of the original text as well as some of the phrases, but the text is shortened and some of the complex argument is cut out. There are cases in which RJK rendered the text of Terumat ha-Deshen using more complex methods. At times, he split the text and used different parts of the same responsum in different contexts. In other cases, he even used the halakhic assumptions raised in his learned discussion in a particular case in order to rule on a completely different matter.²⁴ Elsewhere, he referred to sources for R. Isserlein’s opinions that the latter did not mention, or noted in an unclear way.²⁵ The depth in which RJK studied R. Isserlein’s writings reflects the respect that he had for Isserlein’s halakhic authority. Additional proof of this notion can be found in the fact that RJK used Isserlein’s words as support for his own hypotheses, citing him as a verifying source.²⁶

brew], Alei Sefer: Studies in Bibliography and in the History of the Printed and the Digital Hebrew Book 20 (1999), 81– 96, esp. 82 and note 2, points to this issue as an explanation for the discrepancy between the JTS manuscript of Terumat ha-Deshen (shelf-mark 1532) and the other manuscripts of this work: the JTS manuscript omitted one of the two repetitions and inserted another responsum in its place in order to bring the number of responsa to 354. Regarding the covert use of these responsa in Beit Yosef on section 197, see Tirza Kelman, “The Use of Ashkenazi Decisors in Beit Yosef, Yoreh De’ah, 183 – 200 as a Case Study” [Hebrew] (MA thesis, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2002), 65 – 69.  For an extensive and detailed description of the ways in which each of the books cited in this section of Beit Yosef was used, see Kelman, “The Use of Ashkenazi Decisors,” 15 – 38.  For example, see the use Beit Yosef makes of responsum 246 of the Terumat ha-Deshen in Yoreh De’ah 190.  Thus, in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 196 and 195.  Thus, in his use of responsum 252 of Terumat ha-Deshen in his commentary on Yoreh De’ah 195, and in his use of unit 78 in Pesakim u-Ketavim in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 196.

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RJK clearly had a judgmental attitude toward several of R. Isserlein’s rulings and serious objections to some of the latter’s approaches, which were expressed in language that clearly and uniquely referenced an Ashkenazic origin. This type of confrontation appears three times in the section under discussion.²⁷ One particular instance features RJK’s definition of R. Isserlein’s ruling as a stringency that is relevant only to Jews of Ashkenazic origin,²⁸ but this occurrence is not marked by a judgmental tone. Rather, it is treated as an observation on the opinion. This attitude is striking in comparison to the way RJK generally dealt with texts from earlier sources. On a first reading his approach to R. Isserlein creates an impression of strong opposition to his halakhic rulings. However, it seems that in these particular, localized confrontations we can actually see evidence of the importance RJK placed on R. Isserlein’s opinion. Those of R. Isserlein’s halakhic positions that he did not refute, he accepted as binding. This is also the conclusion one reaches from a study of the parallel chapters in RJK’s later work, the Shulhan Arukh. ²⁹ Clearly, the severity with which RJK criticized those few rulings can be understood as a reflection of the significance he accorded Isserlein’s halakhic approach. The conversation regarding the waiting period before the counting of the seven “clean days” after a woman’s period is over and before she can ritually immerse herself discussed in Yoreh De’ah 196 is particularly interesting. The significance of this example increases owing to the great weight lent to these paragraphs in the history of halakhah. The divergent rulings of RJK and R. Isserlein led to a wide gap between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazic halakhic approaches regarding the seven “clean days.” Whereas the Sephardic ruling allows women to begin counting their seven “clean days” from the moment intercourse was forbidden, the Ashkenazic mandates a waiting period of five full days. The Ashkenazic ruling not only creates difficulties for couples by extending the period of time during which they are forbidden to each other, but it can lead to further difficulties as well. The distancing of the ritual immersion to a minimum of twelve days on every occasion on which relations are forbidden can increase the likelihood of “halakhic infertility,” a situation in which a woman cannot conceive even though both partners are fertile as intercourse might be forbidden at the time of ovulation, thus causing them to miss the window of fer-

 In Karo’s use of Terumat ha-Deshen 245 in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 195, of responsum 246 in the Terumat ha-Deshen in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 188, and of responsum 250 in the Terumat ha-Deshen in Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 184.  In Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 195, which discusses responsum 251 in Terumat ha-Deshen.  In the places where RJK argues with R. Isserlein and relates to him being Ashkenazic, he did not accept his opinion, but Rema in his glossa (the Mappah) did.

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tility. The Ashkenazic approach has been called “the Terumat ha-Deshen stringency,” an appellation that is in line with the way in which RJK presented R. Isserlein’s words. However, despite the fact that his ruling is stringent compared to the Sephardic ruling, the original purpose of R. Isserlein’s responsum no. 245 in Terumat ha-Deshen was to explain why there was no need to wait seven days before beginning the counting – as was the practice in Austria where he lived – but rather that one can limit the initial period to five days of waiting. Beit Yosef makes no mention of this original intention or of the fact that R. Isserlein was aware of the complexity of his ruling and of its stringency in relation to the initial Talmudic edict. One can see in this process an example of the effectiveness of RJK’s adaptation of R. Isserlein’s words. His conveyance of the latter’s opinion as it is quoted in Beit Yosef was perceived as a direct reflection of Isserlein’s own words, and most of the students of Beit Yosef are content with this presentation and do not revert to the original source. RJK wrote of Isserlein’s ruling: “And all of these things are superfluous stringencies, and they have no base in the Talmud for the ruling, and therefore it is universally accepted in all these areas not to follow that ruling.”³⁰ A study of the ending of R. Isserlein’s discussion of the source, which is not quoted in Beit Yosef, indicates that, unlike the impression left by RJK’s phrasing, Isserlein was fully aware of the fact that this was not a ruling that had its foundation in the Talmud. One who was familiar only with RJK’s work could not guess that the phrase “superfluous stringencies” appeared in the original responsum, Terumat ha-Deshen 245: “And it appears that one should clearly be stringent … since in matters of Torah, one always follows the more stringent opinions, and even more so when we are dealing with matters that carry the death penalty and additional stringencies that the daughters of Israel practice in the laws of menstruation.” The reader who compares these two texts catches a glimpse of an opening behind which a whole world of divergent halakhic approaches appears to be hiding. RJK defined the Ashkenazic approach based on local custom as “superfluous stringencies” and viewed the lack of a Talmudic basis as a reason to treat this ruling as one that should not be followed. In contrast, R. Isserlein viewed the existence of “additional stringencies” as a justification for the observance of halakhic practices that have no Talmudic grounding. The phrasing found in Beit Yosef does not challenge the roots of the worldview held by R. Isserlein, but RJK used the words of the former’s discussion out of context. The above example shows that the method of summarizing and paraphrasing R. Isserlein’s

 In Beit Yosef on Yoreh De’ah 196.

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words might have created a text that is similarly phrased but nevertheless gives the reader a very different feel. RJK referred to R. Isserlein’s Ashkenazic origins only in places in which the two were in dispute and he could not resolve the matter using logic. The decision to solve the conflict between differing halakhic approaches as resulting from the different geographic backgrounds of the poskim – that is, by defining the Ashkenazic halakhah as a local stringency – corresponds well with his preface to Beit Yosef, where he described the circumstances in which a community would be allowed not to follow the unified ruling he expected that his work would achieve: And if [the Jews of] certain lands practiced a prohibition on certain things, even though we determine the halakhah to be different, they should maintain their practice, since they have already taken upon themselves the words of the sage who forbade it, and they may not treat it as something permitted, as we find in [the] chapter “In a place where the practice is.”

In the section of the Babylonian Talmud that includes this quote,³¹ the discussion focuses on the level of commitment to prohibitions that are in practice only in particular places. The conclusion in the Talmud is that there may be a local halakhic imperative to treat these things as forbidden, even though the accepted halakhah in every other locale does not forbid it. The reference to this section in the preface to Beit Yosef served as a limited reservation regarding the grand vision of unified halakhic rulings that RJK presented as the foundation of his work. In cases in which certain Jewish communities had prohibitions that were not accepted in other communities, RJK stipulated that his ruling does not have the power to abolish those prohibitions, even though they have no independent legal standing. It appears that this was the prism through which RJK viewed the halakhic processes of Terumat ha-Deshen that he criticized as unnecessarily stringent. His understanding was that the rulings of poskim were binding without any relation to their geographical origins. This led him to address the geographical differences only in cases where he could not find sources or acceptable arguments to explain R. Isserlein’s more stringent approach. In other instances, RJK accepted R. Isserlein’s rulings. What he did not allow for was the idea that different conclusions might be drawn from different methodological traditions. It is possible that the attempt to explain the double-edged attitude RJK displayed toward R. Isserlein’s works must also take into account the temporal proximity of Isserlein’s lifetime (he died in 1460) and the composition of Beit Yosef, which was published less than a century later. R. Isserlein was a very important  BT Pesahim 50a – 52b.

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and well-regarded posek, whose status and authority were significant not only in the Ashkenazic halakhic world but in other regions as well. At the same time, he was almost a contemporary of RJK, which might account for RJK’s complex approach to R. Isserlein’s works in Beit Yosef. The differences in halakhic culture that were the result of the geographical distance were not part of RJK’s focus as long as he could find other explanations. The geographic explanation only came up in matters on which R. Isserlein’s Ashkenazic approach differed from RJK’s Sephardic one. This factor was in addition to the initial, chronological reason for the complexity with which he treated him: an authority that he felt free to confront explicitly. It is also possible that the scholarly nature of Terumat ha-Deshen, which distinguishes it from most of the other halakhic books that RJK referred to in composing Beit Yosef was the reason for his unusual treatment of the work. R. Isserlein’s special writing style created a text that had different opinions within it, and the author was not in agreement with all of them. By explaining the process of his decision-making, R. Isserlein made it easier to criticize his logic and at the same time became a more significant posek for scholars such as RJK who wanted to learn more about the resources of halakhic decisions in the various Jewish Diasporas. From everything we have seen above, it appears that RJK used the variety of books that he had access to as the foundations for his work, usually minimizing the discrepancies between different geographical areas. He seems to have believed that Jews all over the world formed a united community through shared literature and that their wide dispersal should not affect their halakhic and ideological unity. He had less access to Ashkenazic halakhic works than to Sephardic ones, and he made much more intensive use of the latter. Although he referred to books from different cultures, he did not expect methodological differences, and he used foreign works as if they shared his Sephardic methodology. In Beit Yosef RJK noted discrepancies in halakhah between Sephardic and Ashkenazic practice in specific instances where he could not find any reason for the Ashkenazic deviation from the Talmudic halakhah other than to treat it as a local stringency that did not have to be explained logically. He contended that defined in this way these differences in law are legitimate even if, as he hoped, there was to be a unified system of halakhic ruling. In accordance with this attitude, there was in these anomalous cases room for a ruling that was not consistent throughout the entirety of the Jewish world without the need to acknowledge the existence of alternative and fundamentally different halakhic approaches. To a large extent, the resources that would later be used by Rema to posit an Ashkenazic ruling opposed to that of RJK exist within the text of Beit Yosef itself. The differences in conclusions are in many cases a matter of different traditions regarding the way the resources should be treated, rather than the nature of the relevant resources.

Rafael D. Arnold

6 Confluent and Conflictual Traditions in the Lagoon Ashkenazic and Sephardic Tombstones in Venice from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century

Owing to its geographic location and flourishing trade, Venice became an important harbor city in the Middle Ages. After the Fourth Crusade (1202– 1204), it controlled a large part of the Mediterranean and played a strong political role in the region. It also increased its military power and its trading capacities. Jews are first mentioned in Venice at the end of the eleventh century. Later on, there was a significant influx of Jews from the Levant (eastern Mediterranean) and from Ashkenaz. In the sixteenth century, after the Spanish expulsion, Sephardic Jews migrated to Venice as well. Thus, we find a microcosm of several Jewish subcultures and traditions within the Venetian ghetto. In this chapter, I focus on Jewish last wills from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, that include instructions for the funeral, the burial place, and the design of the tombstone. Thus, this is a microstudy of the identity of these two groups in Venice, as the tombstones are artifacts and manifestations of identity, which is expressed and simultaneously shaped by the choice of a particular design. Generally, it can be said, that the “sites of memory” are not the sites that one remembers, but the places where memory works, “not the tradition itself, but its laboratory.”¹ In the following pages, a reading of individual gravestones shows the Jewish cemetery of Venice as such a site of memory – a place where the still-existing artifacts in combination with the dispositions found in the testaments of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews of that town provide a glimpse into a centuries-old laboratory of memory and identity. Generally, the Jews were not allowed to own houses or land in La Serenissima, so the graveyard near San Niccolò di Lido that came into their possession at the end of the fourteenth century had not only symbolic value but represented an exceptional part of the ghetto. Thus, it is closely related to the history of the Venetian Jews as well as to the history of the ghetto. Furthermore, the grave plates located on the island in the lagoon are of special interest because they are artifacts of distinct Jewish sepulchral traditions. The different

 See Pierra Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), vol. 1, 17– 18. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-006

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types of gravestones helped to shape the identity of the various groups of Jews living in Venice, especially the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim.

Different Sepulchral Traditions Established in 1386, the Jewish cemetery on the Lido of Venice is still in use today. Its area has increased throughout the centuries, even though dramatic vicissitudes² caused partial damage and some destruction: in 1715, part of it was cut off to make room for the construction of a defensive fort; in 1728, a property nearby was added on; then, in the 1920s, another extensive part along the lagoon was cut off for the construction of a street.³ Since its founding, the cemetery has often been rearranged so that many of the tombstones are no longer in their original positions. Moreover, when urgent restoration work was finally being carried out in 1998, restorers uncovered several tombstones and grave plates and took them to the “new cemetery” located a few hundred meters away. Dating from the late sixteenth century on, two distinct sepulchral traditions can be found in the Jewish cemetery on the Lido of Venice. The tombstones (matzevot) of the Ashkenazic Jews were erected on top of the graves in an upright position, whereas Sephardic resting places were usually covered with horizontally lying grave slabs (Fig. 1).⁴ The juxtaposition of these two sepulchral traditions was a consequence of the historical and political situation, which forced Sephardic, Ashkenazic, and Italian Jews to retreat into the Venetian ghetto, founded in 1516.⁵ After their expulsion from Spain and their forced conversion in Portugal  Alfredo Ottolenghi and Riccardo Pacifici, “L’antico cimitero ebraico di S. Niccolò di Lido,” Rivista di Venezia (May 1929): 329 – 38; Riccardo Pacifici, “Le iscrizioni dell’antico cimitero ebraico a Venezia,” Annuario di studi ebraici 1 (1934): 205 – 11; Riccardo Pacifici, Le iscrizioni dell’antico cimitero ebraico a Venezia (Alexandria, Egypt: Tipografia Leon Palombo, 1936); Carla Boccato, “San Niccolò di Lido, oggi e ieri,” Giornale economico di Venezia 1 (1970): 15 – 26; and Aldo Luzzatto, ed., La comunità ebraica di Venezia e il suo antico cimitero, 2 vols. (Milan: Il Polifilo, 2000).  Hannelore Künzl, Jüdische Grabkunst von der Antike bis heute (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), 118.  For the fundamental difference, see Hannelore Künzl, “Grabkunst: Ein Vergleich zwischen den aschkenasischen und sefardischen Grabmälern am Beispiel von Frankfurt, Prag und Ouderkerk,” in Vom Mittelalter in die Neuzeit: Jüdische Städtebilder – Frankfurt, Prag, Amsterdam, ed. Hannelore Künzl and Michael Graetz (Heidelberg: Winter, 1999), 129 – 38.  For the history of the ghetto, see Gaetano Cozzi, ed., Gli Ebrei e Venezia, secoli XIV–XVIII: Atti del convegno internazionale organizzato dall’Istituto di storia della società e dello Stato veneziano della Fondazione Giorgio Cini; Venezia, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, 5 – 10 giugno 1983 (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1987); Rafael Arnold, “Laboratorio culturale: Il Ghetto veneziano e le sue tre Nazioni,” in Venezia, l’altro l’altrove: Aspetti della percezione reciproca, ed. Susanne Winter

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(1492 and 1497/1498), small but substantial groups of Iberian Jews relocated to various Italian cities, where Sephardic culture then began to flourish (e. g., Venice, Ferrara, Pesaro, Rome, and later on Livorno).⁶ Although the different groups of Jews in Venice – the università degli hebrei – faced the same harsh conditions of daily life, they largely retained their specific religious practices and funeral traditions. However, inscriptions on graves were no longer written exclusively in the Hebrew language and alphabet but in the Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian vernaculars, which were interspersed with the Venetian dialect. Furthermore, epigraphs were no longer confined to quotations of biblical or Talmudic literature, but instead began taking on a typically Baroque literary style and themes such as the brevity of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. The abundant ornamental art of that period is characterized by heraldic symbols and even by an increasing depiction of naked putti. In a broader context, we see a growing interest in funeral themes in that period. The structured mourning rituals of the Jews, such as the Shiva with its specific demands on the mourners and their visitors and the reciting of the Kaddish, are well known. However, we have far less knowledge about death and burial ceremonies in earlier times, as these kinds of rituals were only written down and printed in book form since the sixteenth and seventeenth century, first in Italy and then in all the countries where Jews lived. They represent a new genre in Jewish traditional literature and tell us something about the ways in which modernity both threatened and lent new forms of expression to Jewish identity.⁷ Leon Modena (1571– 1648), the Jewish scholar and rabbi, who was a prolific writer, composed (or actually compiled, as he also used earlier sources) a small booklet of eighteen pages⁸ and published it in Venice in 1619. He named it after a quotation from the Bible, Balm for the Soul and Healing for the Bone

(Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2006), 99 – 126; and Donatella Calabi, ed., Venice, the Jews, and Europe (1516 – 2016) (Venice: Marsilion, 2016).  Nello Pavoncello, “Gli ebrei di origine spagnola a Roma,” Studi Romani 28 (1980): 214; Michele Luzzati and Michele Olivari, presentazione to Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Dalla corte al ghetto: la vita, le opere, le peregrinazioni del marrano Cardoso nell’Europa del Seicento (Milan: Garzanti, 1991 [1971]), 8; Laura Minervini, “‘Llevaron de acá nuestra lengua …’: Gli usi linguistici degli ebrei spagnoli in Italia,” Medioevo Romanzo 19 (1994): 133; Rafael Arnold, Spracharkaden: Die Sprache der sephardischen Juden in Italien im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: Winter, 2006), 33 f.  See Avriel Bar-Levav, “Jewish Rituals for the Sick and Dying,” Sh’ma 34, no. 603 (2003): 11.  Format 8o, 18 pages.

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Fig. 1: Overview of several tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in Venice

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(Prov. 16:24).⁹ That work can be considered “the herald of the new genre.”¹⁰ He wrote it at the request of the leaders of the Venice Ashkenazic burial society (hevra kadisha) for the benefit of the dying and the members of the society of which they were a part. There was a lack of a prescribed Jewish death ritual, as they stated in their introduction to the work. The manual they suggested and which Modena wrote “includes, inter alia, an alphabetical confession of sin, some psalms, a concise credo, and a prayer for health.”¹¹ Modena’s work, which was only reprinted once (1629),¹² was soon replaced by the more successful Sefer Ma’avar Yabok, written by one of Modena’s young relatives, Aaron Berakhiah ben Moses Modena, and published in Mantua in 1626.¹³ The phrase Ma’avar Yabok refers to the place where the patriarch Jacob “crossed over the ford Yabok” (Gen. 32:23), and it came to stand for the passage from life to death as structured by the rituals prescribed in this book and its many later digests and epitomes.¹⁴ Ma’avar Yabok itself is quite a voluminous work. Only one of the 112 chapters is devoted to a ritual for the dying; the rest features deep theoretical discussions related to death and other subjects. The many short booklets that followed on this text bear the title Kitzur, which means abbreviation of the Ma’avar Yabok (see, e. g., the 1682 Prague edition).¹⁵ The attempt to shape the period of death (dying, burying, and mourning) was part of a general process that Jewish society underwent during the early modern period, a process that could be called the ritualization of Jewish life and that included many other aspects such as meals, the Sabbath, and more.¹⁶ Any cultural conservatism notwithstanding, the artistic innovations concerning tombstones and epigraphs reflect a remarkable expression of a self-consciousness that had

 Leon Modena, Tzori la-nefesh u-marpe la-etzem (Venice, 1619). See also Marvin J. Heller, The Seventeenth-Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), vol. 1, 395.  Bar-Levav, “Jewish Rituals,” 11.  Ibid.  However, that edition, printed in Venice in 1629, is open to question.  Aaron Berakhiah ben Moses Modena, Ma’avar Yabok (Mantua, 1626). For further details, see Heller, The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book, 451.  See Bar-Levav, “Jewish Rituals,” 11.  Through the eighteenth century, dozens of editions of manuals for the dying were printed all around the Jewish world, east and west, some with translations into Yiddish and other languages. Only with the beginning of modernity, in the nineteenth century, did the phenomenon almost cease.  Bar-Levav, “Jewish Rituals,” 11; Stefan C. Reif, Andreas Lehnardt, and Avriel Bar-Levav, eds., Death in Jewish Life: Burial and Mourning Customs among Jews of Europe and Nearby Communities (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).

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changed considerably. In her article about the Jewish cemetery of Prague, Rachel Greenblatt notes: “The relationship between history and memory … does not rest solely on the way people think, but also on the physical forms through which they express that thinking.”¹⁷ At the same time, the tombstones “may not only reflect but also help shape modes of memory”¹⁸ – and identity.

Last Wills of Venetian Jews in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia Various last wills of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews housed in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia [ASV] include detailed dispositions regarding the form and conception of funeral venues.¹⁹ Moreover, they clearly illustrate that an increasing number of Sephardim did not wish to continue following the old traditional practices, but rather that their keen awareness of cultural differences had provoked a deliberate dissociation from the local Venetian customs of the Ashkenazim. In other words, testamentary dispositions slowly turned into a means that eventually strengthened their sense of group identity. It is interesting to compare the similarities of the Sephardic cemeteries of this period all over the world (Pisa, Livorno, Ferrara, Ouderkerk [Amsterdam], Glückstadt, Hamburg-Altona, Bordeaux, Thessaloniki, London, New York, Jodensavanne [Suriname], among others),²⁰ which allows us to speak of a globalized phenomenon.²¹

 Rachel L. Greenblatt, “The Shapes of Memory: Evidence in Stone from the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 47 (2002): 66.  Ibid.  The texts of the Sephardic testaments, analyzed in the following pages, were published in full length by Arnold, Spracharkaden, 291– 327.  For essential bibliographical references regarding the different sites, see Michael Studemund-Halévy, “The Persistence of Images: Reproductive Success in the History of Sephardi Sepulchral Art,” in The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History, ed. Yosef Kaplan (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 134– 35.  Thus, we can speak of a globalized funeral art. See Rafael Arnold, “Globalisierte Grabinschriften: Sefardische Sprachzeugnisse des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts,” Forschungsforum Paderborn 5 (2002): 32– 37; and Michael Studemund-Halévy, “Grenzenlos und globalisiert: Sefardische Grabkunst in der Alten und Neuen Welt,” in Jüdische Friedhöfe: Kultstätte, Erinnerungsort, Denkmal, ed. Claudie Theune and Tina Walzer (Vienna: Böhlau, 2011), 131– 70. However, this does not exclude differences among the several Sephardic cemeteries all over the world with respect to the design of the slab, the ornaments, the inscriptions, and so forth. One example is the symbol of a heart, found in Bordeaux and other places, with only one stone as evidence in Curaçao and none in Venice. See Gérard Nahon, “Un espace religieux du XVIIIe siècle: Le premier cimetière

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My selective analysis of material kept in the ASV in this chapter exemplifies such dispositions and shows to what extent and if, at all, the bereaved families or the executors abided by the deceased’s last will and testament.²² In the seventeenth century, as today, different reasons led people to have their last wills recorded, for example, a forthcoming journey, advanced age, or, as in many cases, illness or fear of death. The documents that I looked at here were notarized by two public officials, Giovanni Piccini²³ and Pietro Bracchi seniore.²⁴ Their records indicate different periods of activity in the seventeenth century.²⁵ In one of the testaments under discussion, we read the explicit wish that the matters of inheritance should follow the customs of Venice (all’uso di Venetia).²⁶ This instance as well as the very existence of the will itself (testamentary documentation is traditionally not required by Jewish law) and the use of vernacular languages instead of Hebrew attest to an acculturation process to the surrounding Christian society. Conventionally, testaments were composed according to a certain scheme and order, of which I briefly present the main aspects.²⁷ A document usually begins with an invocation to God and a formal prayer for the forgiveness of one’s sins. Then it names the persons who are assigned to execute the last will, followed immediately by detailed instructions – and they are found in almost all of the testaments – regarding the place and the ceremony of the burial. I discuss this point in greater detail below. In many testaments, the Kaddish – commonly referred to as the “Mourner’s Prayer” – is mentioned together with instructions

des ‘Portugais’ de Bordeaux, 105 cours de la Marne (1724– 1768),” in La mort et ses représentations dans le judaïsme: Actes du colloque organisé par le Centre d’études juives de l’Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne en décembre 1989, ed. Daniel Tollet (Paris: Champion, 2000), 243 – 69, esp. 248 and 248n14.  In Jewish tradition, written testaments are not required. However, in the Middle Ages the custom developed of rabbis and scholars writing testamentary dispositions to their children. Since these consisted not of worldly possessions but of ethical advice, they are commonly called ethical wills. See Jack Riemer and Nathanael Stampfer, eds., Ethical Wills: A Modern Jewish Treasury (New York: Schocken, 1983).  Carla Boccato has described the file inventory in detail. See “Testamenti di Ebrei del ghetto di Venezia (sec. XVII),” Archivio Veneto serie V 135 (1990): 109 – 21.  Carla Boccato, “Testamenti di israeliti nel fondo del notaio veneziano Pietro Bracchi seniore (secolo XVII),” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 42 (1976): 281– 93.  Excerpts from Sephardic testaments from the file collections of the notaries Giovanni Piccini (A–J) and Pietro Bracchi seniore (K) and from an Askenazic testament of the notary Pietro Bracchi (L) are reproduced in the appendix at the end of this chapter.  Handwritten notice on the testament of Gabriel Jesurun Dias (see Appendix A) expresses that wish verbatim.  For a detailed description, see Arnold, Spracharkaden, 227– 35.

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on how to pray in the ritually correct way during the initial mourning period, which is traditionally one week (Shiva), then again for one month (Shloshim), and the last for one year (Shneim asar hodesh). These rather general specifications are followed by a list of the deceased’s properties and belongings as well as the names of their respective beneficiaries. Some wills contain a clause that disposes one or various charitable donations. Since the testaments follow a regular format, we have a large number of relatively homogeneous testamentary texts of Jewish origin at our disposal, which offer us valuable insights into the lives of the inhabitants of the Venetian ghetto between the beginning of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century. These include, among other points, details about living conditions, financial possibilities, commercial contacts, religious attitudes, and, most importantly, customs and traditions. They not only guarantee a high degree of comparability of the information given about the authors’ sociocultural and financial backgrounds, but also offer evidence regarding language choice and usage among the members of the Jewish community. As I have already noted, many of the wills are written in Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian, but in addition to that, we come across interferences with the respective languages,²⁸ lexical borrowings from Hebrew, and traces of the local (i. e., Venetian) dialect (which is not surprising in view of the predominant role of dialects in Italy in daily conversation of that period).²⁹ Moreover, it is also quite remarkable to have a small number of wills of female authorship among the archived documents,³⁰ which belong to the very few written traces of Sephardic women from that era. I now return to the dispositions directing the burial procedure. Most of the testaments decree that the body is to be buried in the Jewish cemetery, but whereas some wills are fairly explicit about the burial place – “lugar solitto dos Ebreos” (G)³¹ – others seem less demanding and merely provide vague allusions – “quero ser sepulto nolugar solitto” (H). Often the Hebrew term Bet Haim (lit.: House of Life) is used in various forms: bedahaim (C); Beth ahajm (K) is sometimes emphasized by using the possessive adjective, for example, in (E) and (F): “no nosso bet ahaim/in our Bet Haim.” It is important to note that for

 The following inscription can serve as an example: “AQUI IAZE SEMUEL HAIIM” [1725], where Spanish yaz interferes with Italian giace.  For instance, we find in some inscriptions instead of gennaio (January) the Venetian word genaro.  Carla Boccato, “Aspetti della condizione femminile nel Ghetto di Venezia (secolo XVII): I testamenti,” Italia 10 (1993): 105 – 36.  The letters in brackets correspond to the testaments in the appendix at the end of this chapter.

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the designation of the cemetery only the Hebrew word was used in the testaments and never the Romance equivalents (neither Spanish cementerio nor Portuguese cemitério nor Italian cimitero). The Sephardic Jews were the first in Italy to use the term Bet Hajim,³² but it was accepted rather quickly by all the local Jewish groups as the appropriate name. In a few cases, the author of the will wrote specifically of the Lido (in Venetian dialect: lio), the island where the cemetery is located, as we can see, for example, in (D): “luocho solito delio Doue se sipuleron li ebrej/the usual place where the Jews are buried” or in the even shorter example of (J): “o lugar de Bet Haim no Lido.” In other cases, however, the burial on the Lido is merely regarded as a temporary solution and the interment would only be considered complete if the mortal remains were brought to the city of Safed in Palestine, which had been developing into a major Jewish religious center since the fifteenth century.³³ As already noted, some indications of place are not only confined to the cemetery but also specify a particular location, as in wills that decree that the remains be buried close to family members.³⁴ Another testament (A) shows us a very detailed disposition in this matter: Gabriel Jesurun Dias, who died in Venice in 1626, obviously knew the conditions of the cemetery very well as he insisted in his last will – written years before his death – that a dry place had to be found for his burial³⁵ – a significant detail when we think of the topography of the area adjacent to the lagoon. In addition, Dias ordered the building of a wall or a small stone barrier of 15 centimeters (or 6 inches) around his grave as a sub-

 For the various spellings of the word in the Roman alphabet, see Umberto Fortis and Paolo Zolli, La parlata giudeo-veneziana (Assisi: Carucci, 1979), 150 f.  Lionel Rodriguez, July 15, 1582: “… y siendo mi cuerpo entterado en placa onde se pueda saber quiero que al tiempo neçesaryo mis huessos se saquem de ally y se llevem a metter en tierra en la ciudade de saffette lo que pido amis testtamenttaryos y executtores de mi testtamyeinto ….” ASV, archivio notarile, Cesare Ziliol, busta 1259, testament No. 647. Sometimes that wish was really fulfilled, or at least members of the family tried to realize it. See Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, Processi del S. Uffizio di Venezia contro ebrei e giudaizzanti, vol. 1, 1548 – 1560 (Florence: Olschki, 1980), 53. For this wish, compare Genesis 49:29. For detailed information about that type of temporary grave, which in Hebrew is called kever she’ulah, see Gustav Cohn, Der jüdische Friedhof: Seine geschichtliche und kulturgeschichtliche Entwicklung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der ästhetischen Gestaltung (Frankfurt a. M.: Franzmathes, 1930), 13 – 19.  “sendo possiuel pegado a sepultura de minha boa jrmãn dona Ester bennun” (E); “junto a minhas caras jrmáas dona ester e dona graçia” (F); “sendo posiuel junto, aonde estaõ os senhores Meus Jrmaõs Semuel e Refael Chabibi, ou de m.a concorte dona Judith” (G); “presso mia moglie” (I); “ao pe de minha querida maj podendo ser ó omais perto que se puder” (J).  “che nel sepultar il mio corpo sia usada particular deligenza aciò che la fossa sia di terra asciuta et in bona parte, et in torno di detta fossa voglio che sia fatto un muro di altezza di un palmo et sopra questo muro sia messa la piera” (A).

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struction and insisted that the tombstone was not (!) to stand upright (et non alsada) as is the ordinary custom, but that it had to be laid down on the wall in a horizontal position.³⁶ Why does he emphasize these instructions? The sepulchral tradition in Italy was dominated by the Ashkenazic custom. Dias, as his name indicates, was of Iberian origin and thus adhered to the Sephardic practice. It seems that he was well aware of the cultural differences between the two and, belonging to a minority, he emphasized his own tradition in contrast to the local one that placed tombstones “normally” (ordinariamente) in an upright position.³⁷ Dias’s awareness of the cultural differences could hardly have been made any clearer, not least because it contrasts with the conceptions found in Ashkenazic testaments, such as the one by Joseph del David ò Medico Ebreo (L), who decreed that “they shall put the stone upright at the head of the grave – following the Jewish custom.”³⁸ Also for his deceased wife, he wanted a stone to be placed at the “head of the grave.”³⁹ In Joseph del David’s perception, the stone standing upright represented the epitome of Jewish custom, which, in this case, was synonymous with the Ashkenazic tradition and seemed so natural and familiar to him that his words left no room for conceptual alternatives. He did not seem to be aware of other Jewish traditions. Otherwise his words would not have identified the Ashkenazic tradition as the true one, the Jewish tradition par excellence. Leon Modena, the author of the Balm for the Soul and Healing for the Bone, noted above, published an account of Jewish customs and rituals in 1637.⁴⁰ In the sixth chapter (“On Illness and Death”) he wrote that in many places the Jews place stones of marble⁴¹ on graves.⁴² We must read this phrase attentively. Mod-

 “et questa piera voglio che sia buttada sopra il muro che voglio che si fascia et non alsada come quele che ordinaria mente si sogliono far.” Compare Fig. 1, where the horizontal slab in the foreground shows this kind of substructure.  See Künzl, Jüdische Grabkunst, 80 f.  “si fara fare una pietra et metterla da cappo de la sepultura al uso ebraicho” (L).  “et similmente una da cappo alla sipultura dela gia mia cara consorte quanto prima” (L).  Leon Modena, Historia De Gli Riti Hebraici: Dove si ha breve, e total relatione di tvtta la vita, costvmi, Riti, Et Osservanze, De Gl’Hebrei di questi tempi di Leon Modena Rabi Hebreo da Venetia (Paris: s. n., 1637).  Unfortunately, very little is known about the material conditions or financial arrangements surrounding the production of the tombstones. For the choice of material and the costs thereof, see Rafael Arnold, “‘selhe ponha húa boa pedra’: Dispositionen zu venezianischen Grabsteinen und -inschriften in sephardischen Testamenten,” in Ein Leben für die jüdische Kunst: Gedenkband für Hannelore Künzl, ed. Michael Graetz (Heidelberg: Winter, 2003), 69 – 86, esp. 76 – 78.

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ena spoke of putting a stone at the grave (alla sepoltura) and not laying it down (sulla sepoltura), which means that, for him, too, the habit was to set the tombstone upright and not to lay a horizontal slab on the grave. Interestingly, in the English and French translations, reference is made to laying slabs (“they lay a Marble stone, upon their graves” resp. “ils couvrent la fosse d’une tombe”).⁴³ The English translator, who translated the book in 1650, could not have seen Sephardic slabs on burial places in his country, as the Sephardim only settled in England after 1655.⁴⁴ The same might be assumed for the French translator. Thus, we can suppose that they knew of horizontal slabs – but not of the different Sephardic tradition. The two sepulchral traditions juxtaposed side by side constitute a peculiarity of the Jewish cemetery on the Lido that facilitates a comparison of the specific differences. Unfortunately, there is no mention in the testaments of two other specific features of Sephardic sepulchral art, namely the heraldic coats of arms or blazons and helmets, even if they catch the visitor’s eye (Fig. 1),⁴⁵ nor of tent-like canopies with prism-shaped covers that belong to the so-called ohel- or ohalim-type (lit.: tent) on the burial places for outstanding religious leaders.⁴⁶ In Venice there are examples of these with Portuguese inscriptions. More examples are found in the Sephardic cemeteries of Jodensavanne (Suriname),

 “… in molti luochi mettono alcune pietre di marmo alla sepoltura del morto …” Modena, Historia, 122.  Compare the English translation of Modena’s book: “… In many places they lay a Marble stone, upon their graves, writing Epitaphs upon them of diverse kinds, some in Prose, and some in Verse: expressing the name of the person that lies buried there and recounting with all Praises, together with the Day, Month, and Year, of his Decease.” Leon Modena, The History of the Rites, Customs, and Manner of Life, of the Present Jews, throughout the World (London: Printed for Jo. Martin and Jo. Ridley, 1650), 242. The French translation reads: “En quelques lieux ils couvrent la fosse d’une tombe, où l’on grave le nom du mort …” Modena, Cérémonies et coustumes qui s’observent aujourd’huy parmy les Juifs: Traduites de l’italien de Léon de Modène; Avec un supplément touchant les sectes des Caraïtes & des Samaritains de nostre temps; Par Don Recared Sçimeon (Paris: Chez Loü is Billaine, 1674), 291– 92.  In 1655, Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, from Amsterdam, arrived in London to try and persuade the English government to allow the Jews to settle in England again. He met Oliver Cromwell, who was favorably disposed to the idea, and after a commission had deliberated on the problem, it was announced that the Decree of Expulsion of 1290 was a Royal decree, and no longer had any relevance. The first Sephardic synagogue opened in 1657. The oldest known Jewish cemetery in the United Kingdom is the Old Velho Sephardi Cemetery, which was opened in 1657 and closed in 1742.  See Künzl, Jüdische Grabkunst, 119 – 20. To this day, they have not been thoroughly analyzed.  For some exceptional cases in which also other persons are honored by an ohel-grave, see Künzl, Jüdische Grabkunst, 135.

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Hamburg-Altona, Ouderkerk (Amsterdam), Livorno, and Pisa. This tradition was shared by Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews as well.⁴⁷ Since the decision to build such an ohel-grave was certainly not made by the deceased person him/herself but by the community, we do not find any mention of it in the testaments. My focus in this essay is on Sephardic testaments. Prior studies of testaments by Ashkenazic Jews in Venice did not relate to funeral or sepulchral aspects.⁴⁸ However, it is also not to be expected that Ashkenazic Jews would think too much about this issue, because, as part of the majority, they could rely on convention or tacit understanding, whereas the Sephardic Jews, who were in the minority, had to express their cultural preferences specifically.

Between Desire and Reality In the following, I ask if the last wills in regard with the dispositions for the burial places and the stones were respected or not.⁴⁹ Fortunately, some of the stones belonging to the authors of the discussed testaments have been preserved on the Lido. The tombstone that was made for Gabriel Jesurun Dias still exists but shows that neither his will nor the Sephardic tradition was respected. As can be seen in Fig. 2, it was cut in a way that only allowed it to be erected vertically.⁵⁰ We do not know why his wife, who is mentioned in the testament and who was charged with executing his last will,⁵¹ did not do what she was supposed to – and, most likely, we will never find out.

 See Künzl, Jüdische Grabkunst, 116, 134.  See Carla Boccato, “Testamenti di israeliti nel fondo del notaio veneziano Pietro Bracchi seniore (secolo XVII),” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 42 (1976): 281– 93; and Carla Boccato, “Testamenti di Ebrei del ghetto di Venezia (sec. XVII),” Archivio Veneto Serie V 135 (1990): 109 – 21.  Sometimes, in non-Sephardic environments, it was forbidden to put the stone in the desired position, as in Denmark: the Portuguese Jews in Denmark were unhappy that they were not allowed to place their tombstones horizontally. See the tombstone for Luna Franco, who died in 1716, and was buried at the Mollegade Cemetery (established 1693). For Denmark, see Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen and Karin Kryger, “Jewish Sepulchral Art in Denmark,” in Danish Jewish Art: Jews in Danish Art, ed. Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen (Copenhagen: Rhodos International Science and Art, 1999), 229 – 63.  Compare also Fig. 1, where the tombstone in the center with the pediment shows that the lower part (approximately a quarter of the stone) was supposed to be underground so that the stone could stand in an upright position.  “et questo domando a mia moglie che esequisa questo come di sopra per l’amor che sempre mi ha portato” (A).

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I now turn to the inscriptions on the tombstones. Most of them are engraved with monolingual epitaphs⁵² in Hebrew, which include the name and the date of death, and sometimes the merits of the deceased. We often read biblical quotations with suitable references to death, grief, and hope.⁵³ Sources indicate that inscriptions prior to the seventeenth century were exclusively monolingual. An unpublished Venetian chronicle written in the second half of the sixteenth century, for instance, refers in its description of the Jewish cemetery to numerous stones that all bear only Hebrew epitaphs.⁵⁴ We could argue that if there had been any epitaphs engraved in Latin characters, a chronicler of a Christian background would surely have commented on it, but in this case, the author wrote only of Hebrew texts. In Venice at the beginning seventeenth century, the traditional ways in this respect were about to change. The oldest still-existing inscriptions, which were written in the Roman alphabet, date from 1617, 1624, 1630, and 1649, but are simply supplements to the Hebrew texts.⁵⁵ Some were written in a different hand, which also gave the characters a somewhat scribbled appearance. We can, therefore, safely assume that these writings were seen as a necessary addendum for family members or friends who would never learn to read Hebrew and would otherwise not have been able to identify their relatives’ graves. As a consequence, by the late 1670s, it had become generally accepted to write the name

 Throughout this chapter, I use the term “epitaph” in its lay meaning of an inscription on a tombstone (and not in the sense of a specific type of grave marker called “epitaph” by art historians).  We know that in some cases, famous authors, such as Leon Modena, were commissioned to compose epitaphs. See Abraham Berliner, Luchot avanim: Hebräische Grabinschriften in Italien; Erster Teil: 200 Inschriften aus Venedig 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a. M.: Kauffmann, 1881); Simon Bernstein, “Luchot avanim: Part II (180 Italian-Hebrew Epitaphs of the Sixteenth–Nineteenth Centuries),” Hebrew Union College Annual 10 (1935): 483 – 552; Dvora Bregman, The Golden Way: The Hebrew Sonnet during the Renaissance and the Baroque [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1995); Dvora Bregman, A Bundle of Gold: Hebrew Sonnets from the Renaissance and the Baroque [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1997); and Arnold, “‘selhe ponha húa boa pedra,’” 82.  “de le sepolture loro di pietra et marmi ne è quantità grandissima con soi epitaphij hebraici.” Cronica Veneziana di Francesco Argenta [?], Cod. PD 655c/III fol. 6r. in Biblioteca Marciana [Marciana Library of Venice], fol. 6r.  In the case of Venice (which was not the same as in Prague, e. g.), we do not know if there were Jewish stonemasons. The perfectly shaped Hebrew letters and the respect for the Jewish tradition of grave inscriptions may well indicate that this was the case, but it is also conceivable that a Christian stonemason, with or without the help of a Jewish assistant, could have followed very detailed drawings. See Studemund-Halévy, “The Persistence of Images,” 129.

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Fig. 2: The tombstone of Gabriel Jesurun Dias (died in 1626)

of the deceased and the date of death (often in accordance with the Christian calendar)⁵⁶ in Spanish or Portuguese and in Roman characters.

 Arnold, Spracharkaden, 129. There are also mixed inscriptions with the Hebrew or Christian names for the months, Arabic numerals for the days and (since the eighteenth century) for years or Roman numerals for, e. g. “ANNO 5433,” “24 TISRI 5417,” “FEVERO (= February) [1]694,” “ADI 20 GENARO 1727,” “NOVEMBRE 1750,” “MDCCXCIV (= 1794), and many others. All of the eightyone inscriptions in the Latin alphabet and in Romance languages are listed in Arnold, Spracharkaden, 331– 43. In Bordeaux, we find another type, where the date of death is given following both the Jewish and the Christian calendars in a stereotypical way, as, for instance: “fallecio a 16 de tamus ano 5501 que corresponde a 29 junio 1741.” Nahon, “Un espace religieux,” 246.

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The gravestones, of course, were always visible to all, not just to the family: “And they always performed social functions for the families, marking their respectability, importance and interconnections.”⁵⁷ Moreover, all the inscriptions from the early period are very similar: They usually begin with “here lies” (Aqui iaz/yaz)⁵⁸ or “rests” (in Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian, respectively: repouza/reposa/riposa), and are followed by the deceased’s name and the date of death.⁵⁹ In the second half of the eighteenth century, writing in the Latin alphabet must have been preponderant, as the Ashkenazic traveler Abraham Levie noted in his Yiddish language travelogue that the stones are not “carved” (getsaykhent) in Hebrew but in Latin characters.⁶⁰ The accuracy of this statement can be discerned by the preserved tombstones, at least as confirmation of a trend, even if not as an exclusive phenomenon. Most of the analyzed testaments only give general information about the epitaph and do not include any details about the favored language or type of writing.⁶¹ Some of them refer explicitly to a custom that must have been generally accepted,⁶² but a few of them provide quite specific instructions. For Gabriel Jesurun Dias, for instance, an inscription in Hebrew was the more appropriate choice for his epitaph. Nevertheless, he also directed that his name and the formula “here lies” (aqui jas) should be engraved “in Roman writing” (lettere volgari) on the tombstone: “il suo epitafio in hebraico come parerà meglio et in lettere volgari dica – aqui jas gabriel jesurun diaz.” At least this time, with regard to the epitaph, his last will was respected by his family (Fig. 2). We are able to identify the vernacular inscription (indicating

 Greenblatt, “The Shapes of Memory,” 64. For this aspect, see also Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 283.  In the dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spain, the so-called Diccionario de Autoridades (Madrid, 1726 – 1739), the definition of iazer reads: “Estár echado, ò tendido. Usase con propriedad por el que está en el sepulchro, ò muerto.” Ibid., 542a, s. v. yacer.  See Arnold, Spracharkaden, 273 – 77.  “Di shtayn zayn nit mit hebreishen bukhshtaben getsaykhent zonderen mit lataynshe.” Shlomo Berger, ed., Travels among Jews and Gentiles: Abraham Levie’s Travelogue; Amsterdam 1764 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 88.  For the Hebrew inscriptions, see Berliner, Luchot avanim: Hebräische Grabinschriften; and Bernstein, “Luchot avanim: Part II.”  For example: “con gli sue lettere come se costuma” (C), “con seu letreiro aho modo que se costuma” (D), or “com seu letreiro” (F).

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the city of his birth and the year he died) on the upper part of the stone, which reads:⁶³ GABRIEL DIAS DE NEL ANO

JESURUN LISBONA DEL 5386 [= 1626]

The last testament I discuss here is that of Dr. Josef Olivier, who drew up his will on May 12, 1667. He expressly refused any mention of titles or praise. In addition, he specified that there be a bilingual inscription in Hebrew and “Ladino,” as he called the vernacular language, on his gravestone,⁶⁴ which was to include only his name and date of death: “sem nenhum titolo de Loivor senaõ somente omeu nome em ebraico e ladino e odia e Anno quando D’s. [Dios] meleuar” (J). He dictated his testament when he was ill in the late 1660s, but he survived, as we learn from another document in the ASV that he passed away on March 24, 1681, at the age of 66.⁶⁵ Josef Olivier’s tombstone has been preserved (Fig. 3), and we can distinguish a bilingual inscription, including the date of his death. But his tombstone that accords with his last will, is nowadays standing upright as are most of the stones. It seems likely that during restoration the vertical position was considered the best way to protect the tombstones from rain and wind.⁶⁶ Thus, many stones simply line the outer walls of the cemetery and are not in any particular date order (Fig. 1). It is therefore difficult to draw exact conclusions from the cemetery. This rearrangement is historically misleading since we lack any information about the original position of the tombstones and, thus, also knowledge about the family relationships, which, in some cases, were manifested through the juxtaposition of the graves, as decreed in the testaments (see, e. g., [E], [F],  For a description of the artistic details of this tombstone, see Arnold, “‘selhe ponha húa boa pedra,’” 80. A translation of the Hebrew part of the inscription into Italian was done by Alfredo Ottolenghi and Riccardo Pacifici, “L’antico cimitero,” 335.  He probably used the term “Ladino” to designate the Romance language and not the special Judeo-Spanish word for word translations of the Bible that we call Ladino. The text in the Latin alphabet is actually a mixture of Portuguese and Italian and therefore rather an echo of the language spoken by the members of the Sephardic community of Venice.  In a list of deceased individuals compiled by the Health Authority of Venice, we read: “E morto Doctor Iseppo Olivers de anni 66 ca. da feb[bre] e cata[r?]o/Doctor Joseph Olivier died at the age of approximately 66 of fever and catarrh.” ASV, Provveditori alla sanità, busta 997.  In the brochure of the Soprintendanza per I Beni Artistici e Storici di Venezia, which offers the above explanation, there is no mention of the different sepulchral traditions. See Venezia ebraica – Il restauro dell’antico Cimitero del Lido (Milan: Electa, 1999), 43.

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Fig. 3: The tombstone of Josef Olivier (died in 1681)

[G], [I], and [J]). Furthermore, the distinction between Ashkenazic and Sephardic sepulchral traditions becomes blurred. In fact, there are no indications as to these traditions at all, not even in the official publications or books about the cemetery. I deem it a loss and an inexcusable error, which completely disregards the Sephardic tradition. The Jewish cemetery on the island of Lido is undeniably among the most important Jewish burial grounds of that period. Since cemeteries reflect different cultural and social backgrounds, identities and conflicts, the circumstances of

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these burial grounds should be explored further.⁶⁷ The awareness of cultural identity expressed in the testaments gives us an insight into identity building and retaining. The admirable craftsmanship shown in the tombstones; the extraordinary accuracy of the stonemasons; the fact that the graves do not show any sign of limitation in terms of the money and labor that was spent to create dignified memorials for the deceased – all these aspects contributed to this ensemble of unique splendor and cultural significance, which not only merits but actually requires recognition and protection.

Appendix Excerpts from Sephardic testaments from the file collections of the notaries Giovanni Piccini (A–J),⁶⁸ Pietro Bracchi seniore (K), and Pietro Bracchi (L)⁶⁹ (emphasis added).

(A) Gabriel Jesurun Dias, April 1, 1623 (last will No. 93) “… 2. Lascio secondaria mente che nel sepultar il mio corpo sia usada particular deligenza aciò che la fossa sia di terra asciuta et in bona parte, et in torno di detta fossa voglio che sia fatto un muro di altezza di un palmo et sopra questo muro sia messa la piera ben fatta et pulita con il suo epitafio in hebraico come parerà meglio et in lettere volgari dica – aqui jas gabriel jesurun diaz &. et questa piera voglio che sia buttada sopra il muro che voglio che si fascia et non alsada come quele che ordinaria mente si sogliono far; et questo domando a mia moglie che esequisa questo come di sopra per l’amor che sempre mi ha portato …”

 See Studemund-Halévy, “The Persistence of Images,” 126.  ASV, Archivio notarile, Giovanni Piccini, testamenti, busta 756 (indicating the internal numbering of the testaments).  ASV, Archivio notarile, Pietro Bracchi sen., testamenti, busta 179 (K) and Pietro Bracchi, protocolli, busta 181 (L) (indicating the internal numbering of the testaments).

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(B) Letitia Abeniacur, March 9, 1625 (last will No. 156) “… Item prego adetti ss.ri che sopra la mia sepultura faciano meter una pietra dela spesa che alor parera … Item prego a detti signori deuano pagar a uno che dica il cadis per la anima mia per tempo di un ano dopo la mia morte …”

(C) Dona Gratia, August 2, 1627 (last will No. 99) “… ho domandato in Grattia a Jacob Lunbrozo abitante in questa Cità di Venettia me façia tanto fauore di voler acetar essere mio testamentero … et metter nella mia sepultura huna bonna Piera come gli Parra con gli sue lettere come se costuma … et dichiaro che … lasso denarri che baste per li despezi della sepultura …”

(D) Josue de Fano alias Manuel de Morais, [?] 14, 1629 (last will No. 141) “… Primo ordino che il mio corpo sia sipulitto nel luocho solito delio [sc. del Lido] Doue se sipuleron li ebrej, nela qual sipultura si metta una pietra come e’ usanza …”

(E) Gracia Nahimias, June 8, 1629 (last will No. 96) “… quero que meu corpo seya enterrado no nosso bet ahaim, sendo possiuel pegado a sepultura de minha boa jrmãn dona Ester bennun que el Dio aya ou donde pareçer ben a minha jrman dona Meriam Nahimias e que en minha sepultura selhe ponha húa boa pedra con seu letreiro aho modo que se costuma …”

(F) Mariem Nahmias, March 10, 1634 (last will No. 183) “… Ordeno que meu corpo seya sepultado no nosso Bedt Haim junto a minhas caras jrmaás dona ester e dona graçia que esteiaõ em gloria e em minha sepultura se pora huá pedra dessente com seu Letreiro como a ellas …”

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(G) Gabriel Cabib, March 16, 1634 (last will No. 92) “… 1. Meu corpo sera sepultado en o lugar solitto dos Ebreos Esendo posiuel junto, aonde estaõ os senhores Meus Jrmaõs Semuel e Refael Chabibi, ou de m. concorte dona Judith, …”

(H) Abraham Habib alias João Lopez Gomez, July 15, 1635 (last will No. 17) “… – quero ser sepulto nolugar solitto como pareçera a Joseph Habib e Samuel Habib meus filhos alias Francisco Gomez chacõn e Rui Lopez chacõn …”

(I) Abraham Camis alias Lope de Fonseca, June 21, 1640 (last will No. 22) “… Voglio esser sepolto presso mia moglie, senza pompa, et que Isaac e Salamon miei figli mi dicano il Cadis …”

(J) Doutor Juzef Oliuier, May 12, 1667 (last will No. 110)⁷⁰ “… e a mina Jrmã ester oliuier e ao senhor Jsache Baruh Craualho pesso fassaõ emterrar meu corpo em oluguar de BetHaim no lido donde se emteraõ os nossos mortos ebreos, ao pe de minha querida maj podendo ser ó omais perto que se puder … e seporá huá pedra ordinaria em minha sepultura, sem nenhum titolo de Loivor senaõ somente o meu nome em ebraico e ladino e odia e Anno quando D’s.[Dios] meleuar …”

(K) Moisse Ferro, February 23, 1644 (last will No. 961) “… omeo corpo seja enterrado em Beth ahajm aonde millor paresçer aos meos testimeñteiros: … ena minha sepultura seponha uma pedra como bem parescer a meos Jrmaos …”

 The numbering is ambivalent because we find “No. 109” written inside, but there is another testament with the same number in the group of documents (filza).

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(L) D. Joseph del David ò Medico Ebreo, June 27, 1631 [day of publication] “… ancora prego et ordino a mio fratello che in capo l’ano si fara fare una pietra et metterla da cappo de la sepultura al uso ebraicho, et similmente una da cappo alla sipultura dela gia mia cara consorte quanto prima …”

Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld

7 Joining the Fight for Freedom Redemption of Captives and the Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam

Introduction It is impossible to ignore the disasters that befell the Jewish world in the early modern period, and that is certainly true in regard to the then newly founded Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. From its establishment at the end of the sixteenth century, the community became part of the web of international philanthropy and remained so all through the eighteenth century and beyond.¹ Requests for help from Jewish communities, as well as from individuals all over the world, made their way to the community, orally or in writing. Emissaries were sent to Amsterdam as to other communities to plead for financial assistance and/or intervention in various crises that afflicted Jews and Conversos.² Moreover, á titre personnel, people were begging their way throughout Jewish Europe and the Levant to ask for help and solicited in Amsterdam as well, even captives themselves, sometimes accompanied by a representative of their oppres-

 Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012), 96, 137, 152, 180, 182; Evelyne Oliel-Grausz, “La diaspora séfarade au XVIIIe siècle: Communication, espaces, réseaux; La diaspora des Nouveaux Chrétiens,” Arquivos do Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian 48 (2004): 55 – 71.  For emissaries in the Jewish world asking for support to redeem captives see, e. g., Eliezer Bashan, Captivity and Ransom in Mediterranean Jewish Society (1391 – 1830) [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1980), index; for the case of the emissary in the late 1640s, beginning 1650s from Constantinople, David Carcassoni, see below note 87; for emissaries from Buda and Belgrade who made it to Amsterdam to ask for help during the war between Christian forces and the Turks at the end of the seventeenth century, see Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, “Balkan Sephardim in Early Modern Amsterdam,” in Caminos de leche y miel: Jubilee Volume in Honor of Michael Studemund-Halévy, ed. Harm den Boer, Anna Menny, and Carsten Wilke, vol. 1, History and Culture (Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2018), 328 – 62, here 331– 32; for emissaries given money to help liberate the captives in Sarajevo, see City Archives Amsterdam (henceforth SAA) entry no. 334, inv. no. 176, p. 329, 26 Tamuz 5459. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-007

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sor or by fellow Jews.³ The issues were apparently very real as they were discussed in the city’s world famous Portuguese yeshiva Ets Haim.⁴ Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jews must have heard many sad stories, but very few details were recorded. In most cases, it was only the amounts granted that were noted in the communal records. The Amsterdam Portuguese defined their activities in connection with the redemption of captives in a broad sense. Apart from assisting Jews from different backgrounds who had been taken captive, they also reached out to Conversos taken prisoner by the Inquisition on the Iberian Peninsula and assisted communities that were suffering from such disasters as serious fires, expulsions, or epidemics.⁵

 For captives who managed to come to Amsterdam in person to ask for money to be set free, see, respectively, the poor person from Italy in 1657, another two captives from Italy for whom the hakham apparently intervened in 1678, and the two captives from Alexandria in that same year (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 240, p. 82r., 13 Tishri 5418; ibid., inv. no. 217, p. 105, 27 Iyyar/1 Sivan/ 4 Sivan 5438); also in other parts of Europe and the Levant captives, sometimes accompanied by a representative of their master, used to travel to Jewish communities to collect money for their own release; for captives passing by in Livorno to ask for money to free them, see the case of H. Juda Aria, on whose behalf the deputies of the Cativos society of the Portuguese community in Livorno sent a letter to their peers in Amsterdam asking them to collect the required sum (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 12, 2 Adar 5426: 150 patacas sent by the Amsterdam Mahamad); for a captive from Malta coming to Civitavecchia to collect money for his own release, see Daniel Carpi, “The Activities of the Officials of the Sephardic Jewish Congregation in Venice for the Redemption of Captives” [Hebrew], Zion 48, no. 2 (2003): 175 – 222, here 191– 92; also in Hamburg, captives were apparently passing by. See “Aus dem ältesten Protokollbuch der portugiesisch-jüdischen Gemeinde in Hamburg,” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft (1913): 249, 1 Iyyar 5413; for more, see Minna Rozen, “The Redemption of Jewish Captives in the 17th-Century Eastern Mediterranean Basin: The Intersection of Religion, Economics and Society,” in Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum: Ein interreligiöser Vergleich, ed. Heike Grieser and Nicole Priesching (Hildesheim: Olms, 2015), 161– 90, here 167, 183 – 84; for this phenomenon in sixteenth-century Ragusa, see Moisés Orfali, “Ragusa and Ragusan Jews in the Effort to Ransom Captives,” Mediterranean Historical Review 17, no. 2 (2002): 14– 31, here 22– 23; for the cases of Jews in Islamic lands during the Middle Ages, see Miriam Frenkel, “‘Proclaim Liberty to Captives and Freedom Prisoners’: The Ransoming of Captives by Medieval Jewish Communities in Islamic Countries,” in Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum, ed. Grieser and Priesching, 83 – 98, here 92– 94.  Menko M. Hirsch, Frucht vom Baum des Lebens: Ozer peroth ez chajim; die Sammlung der Rechtsgutachten Peri Ez Chajim des Rabbinerseminars Ets Haim zu Amsterdam (Berlin: Soncino-Gesellschaft der Freunde des Jüdischen Buches, 1936), nos. 353, 356, 566, 723.  For help extended to the Jews of Mantua in great need after the sack of their community and their banishment from the city, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 13, p. 29/59 – 29v/60, August 26, 5390; ibid., inv. no. 17, p. 37, October 27, 5391: 2250 guilders; for help to “the poor of our nation” on their way to Brazil and taken hostage in Dunkirk, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 172, p. 155, 1 Adar II 5402; for money sent to Livorno to assist the refugees from Oran expelled in 1669, see

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Consequently, when one delves into the archives of the Portuguese Jewish community of seventeenth-century Amsterdam in search of instances of international intervention and welfare, almost the entire world comes into focus. There are hundreds of documents that relate to help given to individuals and communities in distress, but these are generally only brief notes and, as mentioned earlier, do not offer any details regarding the situation. Sometimes this help was provided in the form of unilateral action by the Amsterdam Portuguese community or by some of its members. More often it was part of an international aid program, in close cooperation with leaders of other (Sephardic and Ashkenazic) communities in the early modern world. In 1980 Eliezer Bashan wrote a comprehensive work about the age-old Jewish tradition regarding the redemption of captives, dealing with the period from 1391 through 1830 and embracing the entire Jewish world of the time.⁶ Although Bashan does relate to the Amsterdam Portuguese community, he does not treat its relevant activities in sufficient detail.⁷ Thus in this chapter, I add information and focus more specifically on the Amsterdam Portuguese dealings with international philanthropy throughout the seventeenth century. I highlight the assistance delivered through that community to Jews and Conversos in trouble in the seventeenth-century international arena, which entailed close cooperation between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. I analyze the various interventions achieved through its Cativos organization Pidyon Shevuyim (the ransoming of captives) with a special focus on the examples set, the directions of the initiatives, the entanglement of the networks, the scopes of assistance, the personal involvements, and the ethno-religious priorities.

SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 863, 5429 – 5430: f. 768:10. For money sent to Prague in the throes of epidemics in 1680, see below note 100. When in 1701 the synagogue in Belgrade was burned to the ground, 750 guilders was given to the emissaries coming from Belgrade for help in its restoration (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 176, p. 363, 7 Adar I 5461); for Jews of Avignon and environment such as Carpentras, suffering from the epidemic, see ibid., inv. no. 21, p. 267, 4 Adar 5482; for similar help during the rest of the eighteenth century, see Oliel-Grausz, “La diaspora séfarade,” 63 – 65; for help by the London Sephardic community to communities in trouble in the eighteenth century, see Richard D. Barnett, “The Correspondence of the Mahamad of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England (1959 – 1961) 20 (1964): 19 – 21.  Bashan, Captivity and Ransom.  On Amsterdam in Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, see esp. 263 – 66 and further the index.

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In the Beginning During the first decades of the seventeenth century, the Amsterdam Portuguese were not only busy settling their position legally, economically, and socially within the borders of the city, but they also saw to it that their community was organized beyond its frontiers and would be well connected with the Jewish and Converso world at large. Thus, they not only set up a kahal (Jewish community) with all its ramifications designed to cope with local needs, but also added aspects with an international scope, reaching out to Jews in the Land of Israel and to Converso and Sephardic orphans and poor women beyond their borders and joined the age-old effort of the different Jewish communities to redeem fellow Jews from captivity among non-Jews.⁸ The Amsterdam ex-Conversos had another important aspect to consider: many of their brethren, members of the socalled Spanish Portuguese Jewish nation or nação, were held prisoner by the Inquisition on the Iberian Peninsula or had been taken captive while trying to flee the Inquisition of Spain or Portugal on their way to Jewish centers. They acted alone or in cooperation with other centers of the Sephardic Diaspora to redeem these people and help them reach the Jewish world. In this respect, too, Amsterdam started to play an important role and was associated not only with the different communities in the Sephardic Diaspora, but also with Conversos who remained on the Iberian Peninsula. They not only reached out as far as Brazil in the Western Hemisphere, intervening for and supporting their brethren, but also turned east to assist communities and their leaders in Ashkenaz.⁹

 This intercommunal Jewish activity was very well developed as early as in Antiquity and in Mediterranean society by the High Middle Ages. For some review of biblical, rabbinical, philosophical, and historical sources, see Catherine Hezser, “Der Loskauf von Sklaven und Kriegsgefangenen im antiken Judentum,” in Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum, ed. Grieser and Priesching, 3 – 23; Youval Rotman, “Captives and Redeeming Captives: The Law and the Community,” in Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome: Jews in Antiquity, ed. Benjamin Isaac and Yuval Shahar (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 227– 47; Frenkel, “Proclaim Liberty;” Yvonne Friedman, “Community Responsibility towards its Members: The Case of Ransom of Captives,” in A Holy People: Jewish and Christian Perspectives of Religious Communal Identity, ed. Marcel Poorthuis and Joshua Schwartz (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 198 – 215. In order to keep negotiations at a reasonable level, the Talmud had already tried to set the maximum sum to be paid for the liberation of a prisoner, i. e., no more than his/her economic value, but in many cases there was nothing to be done other than to pay a surplus. See Cecil Roth, “The Jews of Malta,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 12 (1928 – 1931), 217– 18, 228 – 30; see also BT Gittin 45a.  For the crises in Dutch Brazil during its war against the Portuguese Empire during the 1640s and 1650s, see Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 92– 127. For help to the Portuguese Jews under siege from 1646 (until 1654) by the Portu-

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The Portuguese in Amsterdam embraced this enterprise, as did other Jewish communities, mostly on socio-religious grounds based on Jewish principles of solidarity, freeing Jews and Conversos from imprisonment and bringing them back to the centers of Judaism. The Portuguese Jews, who had returned to the faith of their forefathers in Amsterdam, were soon made to understand that the obligation to redeem captives is considered the greatest mitzvah (good deed) in Judaism, as was noted by Rambam (Maimonides) in his Mishneh Torah. Thus, these former Conversos in Amsterdam often took the initiative and/or replied positively to the various requests for assistance.¹⁰ The international Jewish community was not alone in its efforts to redeem people from imprisonment or persecution. Redemption activities were universal and were carried out by secular and religious authorities on their own initiative or in cooperation with others. Jewish activities of extending a helping hand to people in distress in the international arena were quite similar to those in their non-Jewish environment as they had been from times immemorial.¹¹ Moreover, in those societies, both lay and religious communities were involved in the redemption of captives and were equally active in saving lives. In the Dutch Republic, for example, we could follow actions on behalf of the city of Amsterdam, on behalf of the States of Holland and West Friesland, and/or on behalf of the Estates General collecting money and negotiating to free residents of Dutch back-

guese community of Amsterdam through its Cativos fund, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 239, p. 108r., 12 Shevat 5406; ibid., inv. no. 239, p. 116v., 8 Tamuz 5406; ibid., inv. no. 173, p. 9, 25 Tamuz 5407; ibid., inv. no. 239, p. 115r., 2 Nisan 5407; ibid., inv. no. 173, p. 40, 6 Nisan 5408; ibid., inv. no. 173, p. 72, 1 Tevet 5409; ibid., inv. no. 239, p. 136v., 1 Tevet 5409; ibid., inv. no. 173, p. 120. 19 Adar II 5410; ibid., inv. no. 239, p. 148r., 3 Adar II 5410; ibid., p. 169r., 25 Sivan 5411; ibid., p. 187, 25 Sivan 5411; ibid., p. 169r., 20 Tishri 5412; ibid., inv. no. 173, p. 254, 12 Adar II 5413; ibid., inv. no. 240, p. 10v., 6 Kislev 5414; ibid., inv. no. 174, pp. 85 – 86, 2 Tishri 5415.  On the priority accorded to the redemption of captives, see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot matanot aniyim 8:10, accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah% 2C_Gifts_to_the_Poor.8?lang=bi.  Carolyn Osiek, “The Ransom of Captives: Evolution of a Tradition,” The Harvard Theological Review 74, no. 4 (October 1981): 365 – 86; Friedman, “Community Responsibility;” Idris Nassery, “Sklaverei und Loskauf im frühen Islam: Zwischen Theorie und Praxis,” in Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum, ed. Grieser and Priesching, 55 – 77; Yehoshua Frenkel, “The Ransom of Muslim Captives in the Mamlŭk Sultanate,” in Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum, ed. Grieser and Priesching, 143 – 57. See also different articles on topics relating to captivity in Mario Klarer, ed., Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean (London: Routledge, 2019).

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ground.¹² The Amsterdam Reformed Church also assisted its persecuted coreligionists on a global scale.¹³ However, in Judaism the redemption of captives was a much more important theme and principle. As Yvonne Friedman notes, among Jews, captivity was seen as a dual exile, a situation that was virtually unbearable. Only the redemption of prisoners would lead God to redeem the Jews from galut, that is, from their exile from the Land of Israel.¹⁴ Moreover, as Jews did not rule a state in a political sense, they generally lacked the power and influence to start negotiations with different states for the exchange of prisoners. Thus, they were eager to act in cooperation with other Jewish communities and secular authorities that had the power to strengthen their negotiating position. Although Jewish communities could rely on networks and bonds among the different kehilot (communities), interventions and negotiations were led by particular individuals who were sent on missions or appointed to take charge of the transfer of money and negotiations relating to the liberation of prisoners. Naturally the Amsterdam Portuguese community made use of those of its merchants who traded abroad, as well as diplomats and consuls representing different reigning dynasties around the globe. They were able to convince the respective authorities to liberate prisoners, knew people in the area who could act as

 Gerard van Krieken, Kapers en Kooplieden: De Betrekkingen tussen Algiers en Nederland 1604 – 1830 (Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw, 1999), 10 – 17, 52– 53; the Estates General organized in this respect three acts of release between 1660 and 1740: 1664, 1682, 1730 – 1736. See van Krieken, Kapers en Kooplieden, 102– 104. On people taken captive during the English-Dutch wars of the seventeenth century, see Gijs Rommelse, Zeevarenden achter tralies: De krijgsgevangenen van de grote zeeorlogen (Hilversum: Verloren, 2020).  The Amsterdam Reformed Church gave assistance across borders, e. g., to the Huguenots of La Rochelle in the 1620s or to those in France in the 1680s. For early sources on the redemption of captives in Christianity, see Heike Grieser, “Der Loskauf Gefangener im spätantiken christlichen Italien,” in Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum, ed. Grieser and Priesching, 25 – 54; for the Amsterdam Reformed Church: SAA entry no. 376, inv. no. 5, pp. 39, November 18, 1621; ibid., p. 41, December 9, 1621; ibid., 300 – 301, November 18, 1625; ibid., p. 308, December 18, 1625; ibid., p. 311, January 8, 1626; for help to Huguenots around 1685, see SAA entry no. 376, inv. no. 15, p. 117, September 20, 1685; ibid., p. 123, November 8, 1685; ibid., p. 179, April 17, 1687. Likewise the Amsterdam Reformed Church extended help to their fellow Protestants in the German lands and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 1630s, 1640s, and 1650s, see, e. g., SAA entry no. 376, inv. no. 7, p. 218, September 10, 1637; ibid., inv. no. 8, p. 39, July 20, 1645; ibid., p. 156, January 30, 1648; it also sent money to Ireland in the 1640s: SAA entry no. 376, inv. no. 7, p. 536, May 10, 1644; likewise it collected funds to liberate Christians taken captive by Moors in Turkey and on the North African Coast. For Turkey, see SAA entry no. 376, inv. no. 8, p. 121, June 6, 1647; ibid., inv. no. 14, p. 271, September 11, 1681.  Friedman, “Community Responsibility,” 204– 205.

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intermediaries, had the necessary knowledge, and could access the networks through which financial transactions could be arranged. Names of the rich and the famous among the Amsterdam Portuguese in the seventeenth century include different members of the Palache and the de Pinto families and those with family names such as Bueno de Mesquita, d’Azevedo, de Paz, and Cohen.¹⁵ These individuals were known for their contacts abroad, so-

 For Sephardic merchants from Amsterdam, active as intermediaries in North Africa, see Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 49, 62– 63. Especially Salé and its Portuguese Jews were often successful in intervening to save Jews taken captive there with money or goods (ferro) arriving from Amsterdam as part of the deal (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 239, p. 110r., 8 Elul 5406; ibid., p. 121r., 27 Shevat 5408; ibid., p. 136v., 22 Av 5408); Leïla Maziane, Salé et ses Corsaires (1666 – 1727): Un port de course marocain au XVIIe siècle (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2007), 112, talks about goods such as tobacco, spices, or illicit items such as weapons as goods for exchange for the liberation of captives. For specific persons see the following examples: in 1673, Jacob de Pinto brought a letter to the attention of the Amsterdam Portuguese leadership in which he told about eighteen Jews taken captive on their way from Crete to Izmir and brought to Tunis by the pirates. He was given 500 guilders to deal with the matter (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 28, 22 Tamuz 5432/9 Iyyar 5433). For the Bueno de Mesquita family, see the example of Jacob Bueno de Mesquita, who apparently was residing in Morocco and intervened in the case of liberation of the son of Moses Vas Canho, held in Salé in 1673 (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 31, 10 Elul 5433/7 Nisan 5434; see also on this case ibid., inv. no. 174, p. 1022, 7 Nisan 5434); on Joseph and Jacob Bueno de Mesquita in 1682, accompanying the Dutch consul Smits Heppendorp on his way to negotiate a peace treaty with the sultan, see Maziane, Salé et ses Corsaires, 114; on Louis d’Azevedo, see van Krieken, Kapers en Kooplieden, 49. He was appointed as the Dutch representative of the king of Algiers in Holland till 1683. See Alexander H. De Groot, “Ottoman North Africa and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Revue de L’ Occident Musulman et de La Méditerranée 39, no. 1 (1985), 131– 47, here 142; for one of his interventions, in this case to liberate Abraham Baruh, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 722, 11 Tishri 5426; Isaac Cohen d’Azevedo was instrumental in saving Pedro Lopes da Costa in 1666 (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 240, p. 208r., 12 Tishri 5427); see also the actions of David Salom d’Azevedo, who acted as an intermediate in the case of David Franco Drago and only handed over money when liberation of the captive was a fact (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 33v., 1 Iyyar 5435; ibid., 15 Kislev 5436; ibid., inv. no. 174, p. 1103, 15 Kislev 5436); he also intervened in many other cases: e. g., on behalf of the liberation of Jacob Henriques Osuna and his servant and Reyna de Mattos and her husband and another person, who were all taken captives in Cueta in 1698 (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 25, p. 46, 1 Shevat 5458); for Reyna de Mattos as a captive in Cueta four years earlier in 5454 see ibid., p. 32, 18 Menahem 5454. David Salom d’Azevedo’s name comes across often when dealing with other captives; see, e. g., SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, 65r. and v., 13 Tamuz 5444; on other d’Azevedo’s, see Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 65, 265; on Juda Cohen, see van Krieken, Kapers en Kooplieden, 58 – 62; on Jacob de Paz, see van Krieken, Kapers en Kooplieden, 48 – 52; for the Palache family, see Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, Samuel Palache: Koopman, Kaper en Diplomat tussen Marrakesh en Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014); Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 62; the names mentioned above (as well as names of other Amsterdam Se-

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cially, economically, and in the field of diplomacy, and were able to maneuver on a global scale. Of course, their knowledge of languages such as Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch was another significant asset. Some of these Portuguese Jewish families also acted as intermediaries on behalf of the non-Jewish authorities, helping imprisoned Dutch Christians. In turn, on occasion, the Portuguese community of Amsterdam as other Jewish communities asked for help from non-Jewish authorities. Such was the case, for example, when dealing with the Jewish prisoners taken captive in Portuguese Brazil between 1645 and 1647. Apart from the efforts of the Amsterdam Portuguese to reach an agreement toward their liberation, the burgomasters of the city, the Estates General, and the Portuguese king were also called upon to take a hand. In other areas as well, such as North Africa and the Levant, the Amsterdam Portuguese Jews sometimes requested help from the Estates General when their own efforts failed.¹⁶

phardim) can be found in the records of financial transactions relating to transfer of money and intervention for captives, as registered in the financial administration of the Portuguese community of Amsterdam (e. g., SAA entry no. 334, inv. nos., 172, 173, 174, 175, 176); see further on Sephardim active in negotiations on redemption of captives in North Africa, Jews or Christian, Haim Zeev (J. W.) Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 15 – 18, 20 – 25, 213 – 35, 262– 70.  For the rescue of Jewish prisoners taken captive in Bahia in Brazilian areas ruled by Portugal for which intervention through the state authorities was requested, see Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil, 95 – 119; for these cases, see also the rich collection of letters in SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 88, dated in the years between 1645 and 1648: e. g., SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 88, February 27, 1646: extracts from the Resolutions Estates General/Staten Generaal; ibid., October 9, 1646: letter of the burgomasters of Amsterdam to the Estates General on the prisoners of the Inquisition; ibid., July 4, 1647: transcript of the letter of the Estates General to the king of Portugal; copy of the resolutions taken by the Estates General in favor of the Jewish nation, February 7, 1648; the fact that copies of these negotiations, including correspondence among the Portuguese king (see above), the Dutch Estates General, and the burgomasters of Amsterdam can all be found in the archives of the Amsterdam Portuguese community, points not only at close supervision and deep involvement on the part of the Amsterdam Portuguese community to protect their brethren in the Western Hemisphere, but also at its efforts to involve political bodies to reach its goal. For other areas in which the Amsterdam Portuguese community approached the city and state authorities to intervene, see the records of activities in cases of liberation of captives in North Africa, e. g., in 1663 (effort to effectuate through the Estates General the liberation of two Portuguese Jews who were taken captive in Algiers: SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 605, 14 Tishri 5424); for Dutch diplomatic intervention and appointments of consuls and ambassadors to the different cities on the North African coast and Constantinople, see also De Groot, “Ottoman North Africa,” 131– 47; for the unsuccessful effort of 1618 to have the Estates General intervene for two Jewish boys taken captive on a ship from Malta, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 10, p. 57/27, 27 Iyyar 5380; for diplomatic intervention with the assistance of

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Venice, Livorno, and the Amsterdam Cativos Organization Beginning in the sixteenth century, Venice began to play a central role in coordinating the collection of funds from the various Jewish communities for ransoming Jewish captives around the Mediterranean. A Pidyon Shevuyim organization was set up by the Ponentine (Western Sephardic) community, led by different deputies who answered to the central board of administration, the Mahamad, and often acted in coordination with the Levantine community of the city.¹⁷ The Ashkenazic and Italian Jewish communities of Venice did cooperate with the Ponentini and Levantine communities, but the Ashkenazic community had its own organization as well.¹⁸

Dutch authorities in the eighteenth century, see Oliel-Grausz, “La diaspora séfarade,” 66 – 67; for diplomatic intervention elsewhere, see the case of the negotiations between Juda Toledano and the Austrian ambassador in Constantinople to free his brother Joseph Toledano and Salomon Abensabat, captured by the Uskoks near Ancona and taken to Austria around 1555, in Orfali, “Ragusa and Ragusan Jews,” 21; for the case of the intervention of the British ambassador in Madrid in an effort to release Jews taken captive in Ceuta in 5495, see Barnett, “Correspondence,” 24; the Venetian authorities were often called upon by the Cativos deputies of Venice, but in the seventeenth century they had a non-Jewish representative working for them on Malta: see Carpi, “Activities,” 187– 99; for the representative on Malta appointed by the deputies, see also Roth, “Jews of Malta,” 223 – 27; for intervention by Venetian state authorities on behalf of the Venetian deputies, see ibid., 225 – 26: it deals here with the imprisonment of ten Jews – seven men and three women – from a Venetian vessel in 1672 sailing from Alexandria and brought to Malta. The Doge intervened after a petition by the Venetian Cativos deputies.  Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 118 – 19, 193 – 97; idem, “Le rachat des captifs dans la société juive méditerranéenne du XIVe au XIXe siècle,” in La societé á travers l’histoire, ed. Shmuel Trigano, vol. 4 (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 463 – 72, here 468 – 69; Rozen, “Redemption,” 173 – 74; for the structure of the Venetian deputies of the Pidyon Shevuyim organization within the Ponentine Talmud Torah, subordinate to its Mahamad and often in coordination with the Levantine community, see Carpi, “Activities,” 176, 178 – 85. The Livorno Cativos society took over the same structure; see Carpi, “Activities,” 180. For connections between the so-called Levantini and Ponentini in Venice and northern Europe, see Jonathan I. Israel, “Venice, Salonika and the Founding of the Sephardic Diaspora in the North,” in idem, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540 – 1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 67– 96, here 70 – 71, 76 – 77, 93; Carpi, “Activities,” 183; see also Roth, “Jews of Malta,” 218 – 19. Roth wrongly assumed that the Pidyon Shevuyim organization of the Ponentine and Levantine Jews in Venice operated as an independent institution, which was rightly refuted by Carpi.  For the society in Venice as well as in other Italian Jewish communities, see Bracha (Ardos) Rivlin, Mutual Responsibility in the Italian Ghetto [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), 171– 73.

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Meanwhile, the ties between Venice and Amsterdam were forged into strong links of cooperation from the time of the establishment of the Sephardic communities in the north. Close trading contacts and family ties also spurred further cooperation in connection with the liberation of captives.¹⁹ In 1639, the united Amsterdam Talmud Torah congregation copied the organizational structure of the Venice Ponentine kahal and its various public and private features, as the three separate Portuguese Jewish communities had done prior to that date.²⁰ Thus, the Ponentine community of Venice served as an example for Amsterdam when the latter laid the foundations for a new community of its own. Rabbis, such as Josef Pardo and Saul Levi Morteira, who led the new Amsterdam kahal had lived and functioned in Venice and must have been instrumental in shaping the new community in the north.²¹ We find notes in the Amsterdam Portuguese archives referring to examples taken from the Spanish kahal in Venice, for example, from its dowry organization Dotar, albeit in a modified form.²² It is no wonder that the Amsterdam Portuguese Jews, looking for an appropriate structure, also copied the Venice Ponentine community as far as the redemption of captives was concerned and became part of that network.²³ In line with modern ideas of charity, welfare activities around the redemption of captives were dealt with in a coordinated and centralized way through the Ma-

 Most of the Amsterdam Cativos foundation’s interventions during the seventeenth century (forty-eight times) were organized in direct contact with the victims or with their masters (data drawn on basis of Cativos foundation as registered in Livro Grande, Manual and Resolution books of the Amsterdam Portuguese community SAA entry no. 334, inv. nos. 4, 9, 10, 12, 13, 17, 19, 25, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 239, 240); twenty-three payments were channeled through the Venice Cativos funds; ten payments (after 1664) were made through the Livorno foundation. Since 1664, the Venice foundation was only involved in seven interventions out of the total of twenty-three in cooperation with Amsterdam; see, e. g., SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 240, p. 67, 2 Nisan 5418; see also SAA 334, inv. no. 174, p. 245, 26 Tevet 5418.  For the relations between Amsterdam and Venice, see Jonathan I. Israel, “The Jews of Venice and Their Links with Holland and with Dutch Jewry (1600 – 1710),” in Gli Ebrei e Venezia, secoli XIV – XVIII, ed. Gaetano Cozzi (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1987), 95 – 116; Israel, “Venice, Salonika,” 67– 96; Miriam Bodian, “Amsterdam, Venice and the Marrano Diaspora in the Seventeenth Century,” in Dutch Jewish History, ed. Jozeph Michman, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Institute of Research on Dutch Jewry, 1989), 47– 65.  On R. Josef Pardo in 1598 involved in the redemption of captives, see Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 118.  See Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 103 – 104. The inventory of the Amsterdam-based Dotar contained a copy of the escamot of the Venetian dowry organization (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 1141, p. 171, February 28, 1622/5382; ibid., inv. no. 1142, p. 20, March 26, 1623/ 5383).  Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 30, 96, 180, 182.

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hamad, which often, in close consultation with the hakhamim (rabbis), took the decisions about honoring requests, collected the necessary money, and set the conditions to free the captives.²⁴ The Cativos organization of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community was under the strict supervision of the board of governors, in imitation of the aforementioned organization that functioned among the Venice Sephardim and Levantine Jews and often relied, as noted above, on its own group of merchants and/or diplomats to intervene as needed and offer assistance. As noted in Paragraph 13 of the 1639 accords of the community, it chose a policy of ad hoc collection. There it was stated that the Mahamad would decide to collect and distribute money for the redemption of captives when it was deemed necessary.²⁵ One deputy was chosen, who, following the instructions of the communal board of governors, was in charge of administration of the funds gathered through collections, gifts, and legacies. All these gifts to the Cativos fund represented an expression of the bond between the Amsterdam Portuguese with other Jews and Conversos and a concern for their fate in the wider world.²⁶

 See, e. g., the decision supported by the Amsterdam hakhamim to help Conversos taken as captives on their way from Spain to the Jewish world (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 13, p. 59/121, 3 Nisan 5396); see also for a recommendation of the hakham in Amsterdam in case of the two captives from Italy coming to Amsterdam in 1678 to ask for money (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 217, p. 105, 27 Iyyar/1 Sivan/4 Sivan 5438: “a dous Cativos vindos de Ytalia p. Recomõ do Sr H.f 1:4.”) For a letter of recommendation by Hakham Saul Levi Morteira in 1659, see Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 101; for recommendations of other hakhamim and their letters, see Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, index; Rozen, “Redemption,” 169 – 70.  See SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 19, p. 22, para. 13, 22 Tamuz–28 Av 5399: “e pa Cativos (sendo q as necessidades sobrepuyem ao Rendimto desta Misvah) se fara tambem Nedavah quando pareçer ao Mahamad.”  For a treasurer of the Cativos organization in 1639, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 19, p. 59: David del Sotto. Each of the three Portuguese communities that existed prior to the union in 1639 had a Cativos society of its own; see, e. g., the case of Neve Shalom, where the yield from the Cativos box was registered (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 9, p. 7/4, 5376: “Caixinha de Cativos”); ibid., p. 16, 5377 (“Caixinha de Pedion Sebuoim”); in 1617, Neve Shalom sent money to Pisa to help free a captive (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 9, p. 16, 5377); for more information on help by Neve Shalom to free captives such as Isak Franco Rachao and Jacob Atias, see ibid., p. 53/ 27, 5380; in 1622 the activities of the three Cativos organizations were coordinated by the Imposta board, which we can conclude from the instruction of the board that each congregation should contribute to help liberate captives. See SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 13, p. 15/31, 17 Homer 5384. Apart from ad-hoc collections, income was increased by the above-mentioned special box placed for contributions to Cativos and to other charitable institutions such as Eretz Yisra’el, also in the newly unified Talmud Torah congregation. See SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 19, p. 24/109, para. 30, 22 Tamuz–28 Av 5399. For charity boxes in the Ashkenazic synagogues of

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Consequently, the board made certain that the money was being sent either to collective distribution points, to Jewish leaders around Europe in charge of the dissemination of funds, or directly to specific destinations or individuals in need. Moreover, the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam had reserves on hold in Venice and Livorno that would be quickly available in cases of emergency. As early as in 1617, in one of the earliest extant records of the Portuguese communities of Amsterdam, money from the Amsterdam Portuguese Cativos fund was sent as a deposit to Venice so that their deputies could act quickly if the need arose.²⁷ We find another transfer to Venice in 1619, in which the sum of 240 ducados was sent to the treasurers of the Cativos funds in Venice with instructions that this amount should be considered as part of the annual transfer of funds.²⁸ According to Minna Rozen, Venice in this respect acted as an insurance agency.²⁹ Amsterdam was also a coordinating center for the collection of funds, for example, Amsterdam, see Ariane Zwiers, “Inventory of the Moveable Property of the Ashkenazi Community,” Studia Rosenthaliana 37 (2004): 323, 383, 387. Moreover, as in other communities, income to Cativos was also supplemented by gifts (promessas), and legacies from various Portuguese Jews who left the organization money to reach its goals. On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the death of their mother, e. g., Isaac and Jacob de Pinto offered 250 guilders to the Cativos fund specifically to help save Daniel Athias, who was a captive in Algiers (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 66a verso, 28 Hesvan 5446; ibid., inv. no. 175, p. 319, 26 Kislev 5446; in case this Daniel Athias would no longer be alive, the money was to be sent to the Cativos box). Others left money in their wills. For gifts to Cativos in combination with gifts to Eretz Yisra’el, see the last will of Johebed de Casseres (SAA entry no. 5075, inv. no. 3280, Not. H. Outgers, no. 74, November 21, 1685). In 1642 Joseph Bueno Bivas left 1200 guilders to the Portuguese community. This produced an annual yield in interest of 36 guilders, of which he stipulated that one-quarter should go to Cativos and the rest to other charitable organizations (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 19, p. 143/228, 27 Tevet 5403); see also the wills of Isaac Israel Otsen (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 19, p. 502– 503, 1 Elul 5422); that of Dr. Abraham Espinoza Catela, leaving an inheritance of 1300 guilders of which 500 guilders were meant for the Cativos organization (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 18, 5 Hesvan 5438); that of Isaac Alfarin (SAA entry no. 5075, inv. no. 4103 A, Not. D. van der Groe, July 7, 1682); and the one of Debora de Andrade (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 258, 8 Nisan 5444); that of Jacob Aboab Osorio (SAA entry no. 5075, inv. no. 4263, Not. D. van der Groe, 148 – 51, April 24– 25, 1697). For an overview of a yearly income of the Cativos organization, see, e. g., SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 240, p. 82, 15 Adar – 2 Nisan 5418; on legacies by Hamburg Portuguese, see Roth, “Jews of Malta,” 220; for charitable bequests in Italy for this purpose, see ibid., 219; for similar donations elsewhere, see Rozen, “Redemption,” 171; for Jewish benefactors in Islamic lands during the Middle Ages, see Frenkel, “Proclaim Liberty,” 94– 95.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 6, p. 92/183, December 4, 5377/1617.  This transaction was performed by one of the three then existing Portuguese communities in Amsterdam, namely the Bet Israel community: SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 10, p. 32, 8 Hesvan 5380.  Rozen, “Redemption,” 174.

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from London and Hamburg to be sent to Venice or Livorno in instances when those communities did not send the money directly through Cativos organizations of their own.³⁰ Initially, Venice approached the Amsterdam Portuguese Jews to contribute to the Cativos-enterprise, as the leaders of the Venetian Ponentine community (and later those of Livorno) understood that a new Jewish center was developing in northern Europe and that it was an important one! And rightly so: by the early seventeenth century Conversos fleeing the Inquisitions on the Iberian Peninsula, had established a Jewish community in Amsterdam, which quickly became world renowned for its wealth and benevolence. Not only did the poor – Jews and Conversos alike – stream into the city and the new Jewish community to find refuge and assistance, but wealthy merchants also made Amsterdam their home. No wonder, then, that for the deputies from Venice (and later for those from Livorno) it was worthwhile asking for contributions in Amsterdam. From an early stage Venice looked upon Amsterdam in admiration and turned to it. Copies of letters or references from the Cativos society in Venice (and Livorno) in the early notebooks of the Portuguese Amsterdam communities underscore this phenomenon.³¹ Apart from Amsterdam, Venetian Jews tried to collect money in other places – in Italy, among other smaller and larger Sephardic communities around the Mediterranean, in the Levant and also among other Jewish communities in northern Europe.³² In the period between 1654 and 1670 the Venetian Pidyon Shevuyim organization sent out a total of 500 letters to different Jewish communi See the letter of 1667 written by the Venice deputies asking the wardens of the Cativos society of the Portuguese Jewish community of London to send their contribution through João de Castro in Amsterdam, in Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158 – 1917) (London: Soncino Press, 1938), 76 – 78; the Portuguese community of London also used Venice, Livorno, or Constantinople for the transfer of money to redeem captives; e. g., it sent money directly to Constantinople to help rescue 3000 persons in hands of the Tartars in 1694 (Barnett, “Correspondence,” 23 – 24); for an overview of expenses of the London Portuguese Cativos organization between 5436 – 5488, see Barnett, “Correspondence,” appendix 4, 41– 43; for Hamburg, see money from Hamburg going through Amsterdam and sent to Venice in 1661 for liberation of the 13 captives in Algiers (SAA 334, inv. no. 240, p. 134r., 7 Av 5421; ibid., inv. no. 174, p. 459, 7 Av 5421); Hamburg apparently looked at Amsterdam and Venice to set the sum paid for redemption of captives; see “Aus dem ältesten Protokollbuch,” 249; see further Roth, “Jews of Malta,” 220.  See the letter sent by the deputies in Venice addressed to the Bet Israel community of Amsterdam in 1622 (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 10, p. 82, 18 Tevet 5382/received in Amsterdam, January 5382). Letters, often carried by emissaries, had been a usual medium to go around the different Jewish communities to collect money for redemption of captives in earlier times; for Egypt in the Middle Ages, see Frenkel, “Proclaim Liberty,” 89 – 92.  Carpi, “Activities,” 210 – 21; Roth, “Jews of Malta,” 227– 28.

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ties, among others to Livorno, Hamburg, and Amsterdam. Starting in 1655, thirty letters were apparently sent to the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community with requests for financial assistance for the redemption of captives.³³ Yet evidence based on research into that community reveals, as mentioned above, that well before 1654 there was communication from Venice to Amsterdam. Thus, in this case, as in many others, the initiative came from the Venetian Ponentine community, which approached the Amsterdam Portuguese for help.³⁴ Although the cooperation with the Venice organization remained intact throughout the seventeenth century, other communities also approached the Amsterdam Portuguese community for financial assistance. The Portuguese community of Livorno stands out in particular. Its Cativos organization also mediated for Jewish captives.³⁵ In fact, the Venetian society had initiated close cooperation with the Portuguese community in Livorno to coordinate their activities and connect the different Jewish communities involved in liberating captives mostly caught in Mediterranean waters, for example by the Catholic Order of St. John on Malta or by Muslim corsairs. Owing to their location around the Mediterranean, these Spanish-Portuguese and Levantine Jewish communities in Venice as well as in Livorno sought a common approach against the Christian and Muslim pirates.³⁶

 Carpi, “Activities”, 175 – 78, 211, 214; another twenty were sent to Hamburg (ibid., 211); among other communities approached were different communities in Italy, and those of Alexandria, Cairo, Belgrade, Salonika, Tunis and Izmir; see Carpi, “Activities,” 211; for interaction of correspondence between Venice and Jerusalem, see Rozen, “Redemption”, 166 – 67, 182– 85.  See, e. g., the request from Venice to Amsterdam in 1630 to help the Jews of Mantua, above note 5; see also the letter with the request from Venice in 1633 to help to free twenty-seven Jews taken captive in Malta; ibid., inv. no. 13, p. 100, 17 Tamuz 5393; ibid., inv. no. 12, p. 2, July 6, 1633; in 1636 another letter was received from Venice asking for assistance with the effort to liberate captives who were on their way from Spain to the Jewish world and were taken to Algiers as prisoners; see ibid., inv. no. 13, p. 59/121, 3 Nisan 5396; for the first cooperation on redemption of captives between the Portuguese community of Amsterdam and the Ponentini community of Venice after the union of 1639, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 239, pp. 10r. and v., 11 Iyyar/ 19 Sivan 5399.  Renzo Toaff, La Nazione Ebrea a Livorno e a Pisa (1591 – 1700) (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1990), 78 – 80.  Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, ch. 2; for activities around the redemption of captives on Malta in the years 1654– 1667, see Carpi, “Activities,” 185 – 87, 212; according to a survey of a British tourist, some 2000 “Jews, Moors and Turks” were being held prisoner on Malta in 1669; see Rozen, “Redemption,” 168; for the involvement of the Amsterdam Portuguese in Malta, see the example of 1661 when money was given to the Pidyon Shevuyim organization in Venice to deal with captives in Malta (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 455, 24 Sivan 5421); in 1667 money was sent to Venice to prevent captives in Malta from being taken by the king of France to serve on his

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During the course of the seventeenth century, the 1660s in particular, a gentlemen’s agreement divided the tasks between Venice and Livorno, even though the division was not always strictly adhered to: the two communities of Venice would take charge of activities in the eastern Mediterranean dealing with captives who came mostly from that part of the region, such as Egypt, the Land of Israel, Turkey, Greece, and Candia. Letters confirm Venice’s continuous involvement in the efforts to release prisoners from Malta as from other places in the east as far as Persia, Medea, and the Greek islands.³⁷ The Portuguese community of Livorno, strategically located as a place of refuge for Conversos trying to escape the Iberian Peninsula, would be active in the efforts to release prisoners for the western part of the Mediterranean and the Barbary Coast.³⁸ By that time, Livorno had emerged as a leading economic power in the Mediterranean and had established excellent connections with the Levant and North Africa, which enabled the Livornese organization to act more efficiently in an international framework when dealing with the liberation of captives. In fact, it took over from Venice most of the efforts in connection with the redemption of captives.³⁹ In a letter dated 1676, the Venetian society related to the predominant position of the Livorno Cativos organization.⁴⁰ Even though it was decided that the Venice and Livorno societies would divide their tasks, it was clear that the Livorno community had taken over, which could also be ascertained by the

galleys; see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 789, 6 Elul 5427; for activities of corsairs in North Africa, see Maziane, Salé et ses corsaires; and E. Bashan, “The Barbary Corsairs in the XVIth – XVIIIth Centuries,” in The Mediterranean: Its Place in the History and Culture of the Jews and Other Nations; Lectures Delivered at the Fourteenth Convention of the Historical Society of Israel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1970), 86 – 99; for money sent to Salé for the liberation of captives, see, e. g., SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 239, p. 110r., 4 Iyyar 5406.  For the extent of Venetian involvement during the course of the seventeenth century, see Roth, “Jews of Malta,” 223; Meir Benayahu, “R. Shmuel Aboab’s Letters to the Palestinian Sages Held Captive in Malta and Messina,” Journal of Maltese Studies 3 (1966): 68 – 74; for the main issues on captives taken to Malta, Algiers and Candia that were dealt with the Venetian deputies, see Carpi, “Activities,” 184– 85, 212.  For activities through the Livorno society in the middle of the seventeenth century, see Carpi, “Activities,” 184– 85, 210 – 13; Roth, “Jews of Malta,” 221– 22.  For preference of Livorno, see Roth, “Jews of Malta,” 222; Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the EighteenthCentury (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 20, 36 – 39, 81– 85, 115 – 17; idem, “ A Livornese ‘Port Jew’ and the Sephardim,” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 2 (2005): 51– 76; Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Hirschberg, History of the Jews in North Africa, vol. 2, 20 – 25; see also Carpi, “Activities,” 210 – 11, 213.  Benayahu, “R. Shmuel Aboab’s Letters,” 69.

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fact that at this point the Venetian deputies started to talk in the past tense, boasting that they had once been the center for dealing with the mitzvah of the redemption of captives.⁴¹ In any case, by the second half of the seventeenth century, given the predominance of Livorno, we find many requests for assistance from that Cativos organization in the Amsterdam Portuguese files.⁴² Moreover, the Amsterdam Portuguese community asked the Cativos organization of Livorno to participate in various rescue operations.⁴³ Meanwhile other Jewish communities around the Mediterranean also learned to approach the Amsterdam Portuguese for funds for the liberation of captives. In 1684, for example, the Jewish community in Algiers sent a letter to Amsterdam with a request for money to free a woman by the name of Isavel Maria, who together with her three children had been taken prisoner in Algiers when she tried to flee from Lisbon to Bordeaux.⁴⁴ Other requests from Jewish communities around the Mediterranean came in as well, for example, from

 At the same time the Venice deputies talked about the lack of sources, due to the diminishing support from other communities; see Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters, 77.  For contacts between the Portuguese community of Amsterdam and the deputies of the Cativos organization of Livorno for liberation of captives, see the case of Francisco Rodriguez Munis on his way from Lisbon to Livorno and taken captive to Algiers (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 657, 20 Av 5424); see also the request by Livorno in 1664 in the case of Jacob Lopes do Porto and his wife and that of Abraham Baruh, son of Manuel Baruh, who were also taken hostage by the pirates of Algiers (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 2, 6 Shevat 5424); for the letter received from Livorno, with the request for help for the refugees from Oran, see ibid., inv. no. 19, p. 607, 7 Av 5429; ibid., inv. no. 174, p. 863, 22 Av 5429; for money provided by the Amsterdam Portuguese community after intervention by Livorno in 1676 regarding Salomon Coen, son of Abraham Coen from Salonika, taken captive on Malta, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 41, 3 Kislev 5437; in 1683 money was sent to Livorno to liberate the son of Manuel da Silva Calbo, who was a captive in Tunis (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 202, 20 Tevet 5443); in 1685, it was again Livorno that by way of a letter asked that Amsterdam provide money to free three captives, who were serving on the galleys of France (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 66v., 25 Nisan 5445).  See, e. g., the case of the family of Hakham Sasportas, when in 1653 the sum of 600 guilders was sent by the Amsterdam Portuguese community to the Livorno Cativos organization to save the wife and son of Hakham Sasportas, who were imprisoned by “a Moor” (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 25, 2 Kislev 5414); several months earlier 150 guilders money was given to H. Sasportas for the same purpose (ibid., inv. no. 240, p. 2r., 1 Tamuz 5413; ibid., inv. no. 174, p. 9, 1 Tamuz 5413); apparently he was in the city at that time for that purpose; see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 8, 1 Sivan 5413. See also Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 182; Yaacob Dweck, Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 14, 36.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, pp. 65r. and v., 13 Tamuz 5444.

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Nice and Constantinople, but much less often than those from Venice and Livorno.⁴⁵ Redemption of captives was not solely a matter of arranging for help among different institutions. In many cases family and friends got involved working individually or side by side with the community to redeem their loved ones. Most of the interventions on behalf of the Amsterdam Cativos foundation during the seventeenth century were not organized through Venetian or Livornese channels but were initiated and implemented by the Amsterdam Portuguese community at the request of individuals.⁴⁶ In 1620 Aron Franco, a “circumcised Portuguese,” inhabitant of Amsterdam, sent a letter to the Mahamad of one of the three communities that had existed prior to 1639, namely Bet Israel, with a request for funds to ransom his son, who had been taken captive in Algiers.⁴⁷ In 1633 David Machorro addressed the Portuguese community of Amsterdam in writing requesting a contribution for the liberation of his son, who together with three other Jews had been taken captive in Tunis.⁴⁸ In 1648 Roza, the daughter of Rabbi Isaac, returned to Cracow from Amsterdam with cash in hand that she had collected among the Amsterdam Portuguese. The money was meant to save her son, who was

 In 1686 the community of Nice sent a letter to Amsterdam to request help with the costs of freeing twenty-four “souls of Israel” (almas de Israel), apparently fugitives from the Iberian Peninsula (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 67v., 21 Adar 5446; see also ibid., inv. no. 175, p. 346, 12 Tamuz 5446); for a letter that arrived in Amsterdam from Constantinople, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 165, 8 Tishri 5442; however, the payment was channeled through Livorno; some years earlier, in 1676, a shaliah arrived from Constantinople to Amsterdam with letters in which financial assistance was requested to free captives in Constantinople who had been brought there from different parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 36, 27 Tevet 5436; ibid., 11 Shevat 5436; ibid., p. 38, 6 Iyyar 5436).  We noted forty-eight cases in which the Amsterdam Portuguese intervened without involvement of Venice or Livorno (data drawn on the basis of the Cativos foundation as registered in Livro Grande, Manual and Resolution books of the Amsterdam Portuguese community: SAA entry no. 334, inv. nos. 4, 9, 10, 12, 13, 17, 19, 25, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 239, 240); in twentythree cases, payments were channeled through the Venice Cativos funds; ten payments (after 1664) took place through the Livorno foundation. Since 1664, the Venice foundation was only involved in seven interventions out of the total of twenty-three in cooperation with Amsterdam (see, e. g., SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 240, p. 67, 2 Nisan 5418; see also SAA 334, inv. no. 174, p. 245, 26 Tevet 5418).  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 10, p. 29/61, 12 Tamuz 5380. The three communities had paid 1000 guilders earlier.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 13, p. 49/99, 10 Iyyar 5393.

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being held captive in the area that was once called Tartary.⁴⁹ In another case, a captive from Italy decided to go around on his own, arrived in Amsterdam, and pleading by himself for liberation managed to collect money there.⁵⁰ The Amsterdam Portuguese community had to act cautiously as it was involved in other social welfare efforts.⁵¹ Some individuals, for example, asked for financial assistance pretending that their families or friends were in trouble or had been taken captive. We find many resolutions that were annulled, which points at a frequently recurring phenomenon. It happened in the case of help to be extended to the family of Seadia Taman, who they claimed had been taken prisoner by the Algerians on her way from Tunis. The story seemed to be untrue.⁵² In another case, money was promised to free the wife, motherin-law, and three children of Naftaly Asquenazi, supposedly taken prisoner on Cyprus, but the claim was found to be fraudulent.⁵³ Further, the professed captivity of Jeuda Argal, his wife and two children, taken to Malta, turned out to be incorrect.⁵⁴ There were some supplicants who falsely claimed to be Jewish.⁵⁵ All these cases caused the Amsterdam Portuguese community to be on guard. As becomes clear, we are not dealing here solely with Conversos or with Spanish Portuguese Jews, but with Jews from various backgrounds who traveled to different Jewish communities, including Amsterdam, to ask for help. Yet, when it came to accepting an application and granting funds, the Amsterdam Portuguese community built a certain order and hierarchy into the system and set specific priorities.

Ethnicity and Redemption of Captives Safeguarding Conversos enabling them to flee the Iberian Peninsula was one of the Amsterdam Portuguese goals. As I noted earlier, the newly arrived New Christians turning into New Jews in Amsterdam were very motivated and much involved in getting members of the nação out of the claws of the Inquisition. This was also a goal elsewhere, as in Venice, where in letters directed to the Am-

 SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 176, p. 331, 1 Kislev 5460; for individual cases see also Carpi, “Activities,” 187– 97.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 281, 12 Tishri 5419.  Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 88, 91, 133, 150.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 25, p. 37, 6 Av 5456.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 25, p. 38, 6 Av 5456.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 25, p. 57, 2 Hesvan 5460/August 20, 1700.  See Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 72.

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sterdam kahal, the deputies insisted that it had to come to help captives of “our nation.”⁵⁶ As I noted earlier, the Amsterdam Portuguese community participated indirectly in this enterprise through Venice, Livorno, and other communities. In 1661, for example, money was sent to Venice for the liberation of thirteen people taken captive in Algiers on their way from Lisbon to Livorno.⁵⁷ In an effort to ransom Isavel Maria, money was sent to the Jewish community of Algiers, which took the lead in collecting the funds.⁵⁸ However, often matters were coordinated and settled in Amsterdam itself with wealthy Amsterdam Portuguese managing privately to help family and friends still on the Peninsula or elsewhere by sending money or ships so that they could reach Jewish communities safely. Amsterdam Portuguese with fewer means often approached the Amsterdam Mahamad asking for assistance through the Cativos funds to liberate their loved ones. In 1729, for example, Dr. Jacob Idanha walked into the administrative office of the Amsterdam Portuguese community and, in the most dramatic terms, described the fate of his parents and other members of his family in Spain. Having been tortured by the Inquisition, he said, they were now imprisoned in Burgos, “plunged into idolatry and unable to escape.” Since it was possible to use intermediaries to free the prisoners “from their slavery and seeing that he himself lacked the means to pay them,” he asked the Mahamad for a donation. The administrators favored the application and made money available from the Cativos pool. We find many such rescue operations led by the Amsterdam Portuguese community to take Conversos out of the Iberian Peninsula and enable them to reach the Jewish world.⁵⁹ The Portuguese of Amsterdam had a preference for redeeming members of the Spanish Portuguese Jewish nation, eager to join communities in the Sephardic Diaspora, and petitioners pleading their case before the community, personally or in writing, aware of these ethno-religious priorities, stressed their Spanish Portuguese Jewish background or that of their families and friends and their wish to join the Jewish world. In 1739, for example, the Amsterdam parnasim (community leaders) received a written request for a financial contribution toward the release of three people in Ávila de los Cavalleros in Spain, who were anxious to convert to “Judesmo” but lacked the means to get out of the country

   

Carpi, “Activities,” 214– 15, 218: letter May 26 and July 2, 1655. SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 458, 24 Tamuz 5421. See above note 44. Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 30.

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in order to do so.⁶⁰ This example dates from the eighteenth century, but in fact early on, Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam approached the community to help free their brethren on the Peninsula, stressing their wish to join Jewish centers. Moses Levy, for example, made his intention clear: in 1635 he asked the Bet Israel community for money to free his mother and sister in Lisbon and help them to come “to the Jewish world.”⁶¹ In his petition of 1622, Eliau Mansebo alias Manual Alvares, taken captive in Morocco on his way from Lisbon to Sevilla, underscored his Jewish background, apparently to elicit the good will of the Amsterdam Portuguese.⁶² Similarly in the 1620 case mentioned earlier when during synagogue services Moses Zacuto requested funds to free two Jewish boys taken prisoner on Malta on their way from the Land of Israel to Amsterdam, he underscored the fact that they were Portuguese and under threat of being taken to Rome and accused of being Christians engaging in Judaizing practices.⁶³ Further, Samuel Ramirez taken captive and brought to Tetuan on his way from Zeeland to Italy in 1636 was being assisted by the Amsterdam community “because he is our Portuguese to whom we are obliged to help and to give priority.”⁶⁴ The same argument was used in the case of Daniel Athias, who was taken captive in Algiers on his way from Salé to Amsterdam.⁶⁵ When Jacob Ben Magina from Tetuan (his father was burned at the stake – in Spain? – for his fidelity to Judaism) was taken captive in Spain, the hakhamim of Tetuan sent in a letter to the Amsterdam Mahamad to ask for financial assistance to ransom him and return to the Jewish world.⁶⁶ The case obviously justified an intervention. In 1684 the Amsterdam Mahamad decided to help liberate the nephew of Rachel Gomez Neta, captive in Algiers, because he was a Portuguese “from our nation.”⁶⁷ This was also the case

 Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 30.  Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 30; SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 12, p. 11, 5395; ibid., inv. no. 9, p. 187, 5395.  He mentioned that he was circumcised. Moreover, he said that he was being made a slave in Morocco and that his liberation would cost the huge sum of 1000 guilders (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 10, p. 82, February 3, 5382).  For the source, see above note 16.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 13, p. 121, 3 Nisan 5396; the action was successful since he seemed to be on his way from Tetuan to Italy (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 10, p. 171, 2 Nisan 5396); see also the above-mentioned case of the two boys taken captive on Malta on their way from the Land of Israel to Amsterdam, who were identified as Portuguese captives (captivos portuguezes) and thus had to be helped (see above note 16).  See above note 26  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 19, p. 145/230, 10 Adar 5403.  The woman sent in the petition with the request (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a, p. 65v., 12 Menahem–Av 5444). The captivity lasted for some time as there were still negotiations a

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when it came to giving money for the liberation of Manuel da Costa, brother of Abraham Vaz Enriquez, taken captive in Algiers. It was noted he was of the Portuguese nation as well.⁶⁸ There is proof enough to show that among the Amsterdam Portuguese the ethno-religious component played an important role in the redemption of captives. David de Pinto emphasized this principle in his will, leaving a bequest to the Cativos organization on the condition that the money was to be used solely for the benefit of Spanish and Portuguese Jews.⁶⁹ In quite a few cases, though, matters were not so clear and demanded further investigation: apparently fraud among Conversos was often at play as well, especially when it came to verification of their Jewish background and their wish to come to the Jewish world. Therefore, the community decided to set some rules. It had no wish to be duped and so insisted that money be paid only when all concerned would have been taken to and accepted by a Jewish community. Thus, for the brother of David Lopes from Florence, who was taken captive in Algiers, the sum of 135 guilders was sent by the Amsterdam kahal in 1658 on condition that he would indeed join a Jewish community.⁷⁰ Likewise, it was only when a confirmation had reached Amsterdam that Isabel Vaz Monis and her three children, who had been on their way from Lamego (in Portugal) and had been taken to Algiers, were safe and in Jewish lands, that money was disbursed.⁷¹ In 1660, in a written request, Jacob de Torres asked for money to liberate his 14-year old wife, who had been taken captive in Algiers on her way from Lisbon to Bayonne, and was working as a slave. The amount was to be given on condition that a paper would be received, signed by the Mahamad of Algiers and approved by Livorno, that the woman had been freed. Despite the above-mentioned preferences, activities were not limited to ethnic divides: the Amsterdam Portuguese leadership as that in other Sephardic communities also responded to different requests for help on behalf of the Ashkenazic community, at home and abroad. During the course of the seventeenth century slowly but surely the different ethnic subgroups – particularly Ashkenazim and Sephardim – began to cooperate with one another. Stronger links among the different ethnic divisions of the Jewish world became apparent, from north to south and from east to west, in connection with international phi-

year and a half later, with more money offered (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 24a., p. 66v., 28 Hesvan 5446).  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 19, p. 476, 18 Tamuz 5420; see also ibid., inv. no. 174, p. 398, 25 Tamuz 5420.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 166, 4 Hesvan 5442.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 267, 2 Nisan 5418.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 303, 6 Tamuz 5445.

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lanthropy and intervention, as David Ruderman and Matthias Lehmann observed as well. The Jewish world got more interconnected and managed to overcome ethnic divides.⁷²

The Amsterdam Portuguese and the Ashkenazic World in Terms of International Solidarity Despite its focus on southern Europe and the Mediterranean and later also on the Western Hemisphere, the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community and its Cativos organization did not ignore the fate of Jews and Jewish communities elsewhere in the world. Other Sephardic communities had a similar attitude. Even though the Amsterdam Portuguese had always taken a distant stand toward the influx of Ashkenazim from the German lands and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, they never ignored the Jewish principle of mutual responsibility, both at home and abroad, and acted benevolently toward the Ashkenazic world as well. The plight of Polish Jewry was high on the Portuguese agenda. In fact, the Amsterdam Portuguese held Polish Jewry in higher esteem than German Jewry.⁷³ Therefore, the Amsterdam Portuguese did not refrain from serious assistance, as became clear through direct help they extended during the Chmielnicki pogroms in 1648 – 1649 and the ransom of Polish prisoners in Constantinople in 1651.⁷⁴ There were collections in Livorno and Venice for the liberation of captives from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth taken by the Tartars between 1648 and 1660.⁷⁵ But in 1654 the Venetian deputies wrote to the Jewish community of Rome complaining that these funds from the Amsterdam Portuguese community came at the expense of Amsterdam’s contributions to Venice for the redemption

 On this theme of interconnection of the Jewish world in the early modern period, see David Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Lehmann, Emissaries, esp. 1– 22.  Yosef Kaplan, “The Portuguese Community in 17th Century Amsterdam and the Ashkenazi World,” in Dutch Jewish History, ed. Jozeph Michman, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Institute of Research on Dutch Jewry, 1989), 23 – 45, here 36.  Kaplan, “Portuguese Community,” 40 – 41; SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 173, p. 57, 7 Tishri 5409; ibid., p. 157, 20 Hesvan 5411; ibid., p. 159, 8 Kislev 5411; ibid., p. 170, 1 Nisan 5411.  Carpi, “Activities,” 220 – 21; many more communities sent money to Venice including Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, and Posen; see Rozen, “Redemption,” 171; for redemption of those in Constantinople in 1651, see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 239, p. 169, 1 Iyyar 5411; the payment was channeled through Venice.

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of captives on Malta, whether Sephardim or Ashkenazim.⁷⁶ The same complaint was repeated in 1657, when the Venetian deputies maintained that help from the Portuguese in Amsterdam for Polish-Lithuanian Jews should not be placed above all mitzvot and should not be at the expense of the activities of Venice and its efforts to ransom captives on Malta, who were suffering as well.⁷⁷ In 1659 Venice complained again to the leadership of Amsterdam and Hamburg about the meager Cativos funds and asked for more money in aid of liberation of the captives in Malta and Candia.⁷⁸ The Amsterdam Portuguese community continued to maintain an independent position: in 1648, during the Chmielnicki pogroms, it sent its Cativos funds without consulting Venice and Livorno. A special collection was set up after a letter had reached the community from the one in Bar relating to the persecution of poor Jews by the Cossacks, who had been taken to Russia or left in captivity in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.⁷⁹ In 1655 the Amsterdam Portuguese community was very generous in setting 3375 guilders aside and once more in 1656 the sum of 3947 guilders to deal with the Lithuanian refugees coming into Amsterdam in the wake of the persecutions during the invasion by the Swedes and Muscovites.⁸⁰ In 1670 money was sent again, via Hamburg, to Cracow to help thirteen Polish Jews taken captive by the Tartars.⁸¹ In 1676 the community assisted Constantinople in the redemption of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth captives who were taken to that city.⁸² As we saw earlier, the Portuguese community did not turn a deaf ear to Ashkenazim or to Jews from any other nation traveling around Europe including the Low Countries who approached it for assistance to liberate family members. For  Carpi, “Activities,” 212, 220.  Carpi, “Activities,” 215 – 16, 220.  Carpi, “Activities,” 217.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 239, p. 136v., 7 Tishri 5409; ibid., inv. no. 173, p. 57, 7 Tishri 5409; ibid., inv. no. 173, p. 54– 56, 1 Elul 5408. Bar (Vinnytsia Oblast) was a city in Poland, which today is in Ukraine.  Kaplan, “Portuguese Community,” 37; see further SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, pp. 173 – 75, 19 Sivan 5416; ibid., p. 196, 16 Adar 5417; in fact the expenses for reception of the Jews from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth reached much higher amounts as we learn from the note in the financial register; a sum of 13,000 guilders was mentioned as registered via the Abodat Hahesed organization, but this amount might also have included expenses for Jews from the German lands: SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 196, 16 Adar 5417. On the Abodat Hahesed organization, see Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 117– 21.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 888, 1 Iyyar 5430; money was promised to Joel and his son Mathatia from Poland.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 1154, 23 Elul 5436; ibid., inv. no. 240, p. 335v., 23 Elul 5436; money was channeled through Venice.

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instance, when in 1619 an Italian Jew came to Amsterdam asking for money to free his brother, he was assisted with money that was to be sent to Venice.⁸³ Likewise in 1630, a Polish Jew requesting financial assistance from Amsterdam to free his son was provided with a letter so that he would be given the needed cash in Venice.⁸⁴ In 1657 a Polish Jew named David Barkia first traveled to Amsterdam before appearing in Venice with a letter from the Amsterdam Mahamad to help him collect money for his two sons.⁸⁵ Finally, in 1672 money was given by the Amsterdam Portuguese community to another Polish Jew, who had come to the city to collect funds to rescue his family.⁸⁶ Other requests were formulated through (Ashkenazic) shlihim (emissaries) sent out by their respective communities to plead for aid, orally and/or with the help of supporting letters. In 1650 David Carcassoni, for example, came to Amsterdam, as well as to other places in Jewish Europe, to ask for money to redeem some 3000 Jewish prisoners who had been taken captive by the Cossacks in cooperation with Crimean Tartars during the pogroms in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They had then been sent to the slave markets in Crimea and were being offered for ransom to the Jewish community of Constantinople. Carcassoni carried letters from the leaders of the communities in Constantinople as well as letters of recommendation from Hakham Moses Zacuto, who was then in Venice, addressed to Hakham Saul Levi Morteira in Amsterdam.⁸⁷ In 1699/1700 shlihim from Brody, Przemyśl, Vilnius, and Kovel came to the Portuguese community of Amsterdam to ask for money to assist the Jews suffering during the Great Northern War.⁸⁸ Looking at the scope of different collections in a quantitative way, we realize that the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community collected the largest sums for help to Jews and Conversos belonging to the nação on the Iberian Peninsula or on their way to the Jewish world. In response to a letter from Venice in 1636, Conversos on their way from Spain to Judesmo who had landed in captivity in Algiers were even given priority over Jews from Salonika in terms of the amount of  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 4, p. 142, Hesvan ultimo 5380.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 17, p. 32, January 13, 1630/5390.  This case took five years and implied a collaboration among Amsterdam, Venice, and Livorno, in which the father was involved as well; see Carpi, “Activities,” 216, 220.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 958, 2 Nisan 5432.  David Kaufmann, “David Carcassoni et le rachat par la communauté de Constantinople des Juifs prisonniers durant la persecution de Chmielnicky,” Revue des Études Juives 25 (1892): 202– 16; for the letters addressed to Morteira, see ibid., 208 – 209.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 25, p. 58, 8 Kislev 5460: 250 guilders to the shlihim from Vilnius; ibid., p. 60, 7 Iyyar 5460: for the shlihim from Przemyśl 150 guilders; ibid., p. 60, 26 Sivan 5460: for the shlihim of Brody 100 guilders; ibid., p. 60, 24 Tamuz 5460: for the shlihim from Kovel.

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money allotted for their cause.⁸⁹ There was clearly a difference in treatment toward Sephardim in the West in contrast to those in the Southeast.⁹⁰ The sums collected for help to Ashkenazic individuals and communities were often much smaller than those gathered in aid of people of Portuguese or Spanish background. The average gift in 1648 for the masses of Jews persecuted in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was 6:16 guilders for a total of 1725 guilders, whereas in 1661, more than three times that amount, some 20:80 guilders, was given on average for a total of 4667 guilders for the thirteen people taken captive in Algiers on their trip from Lisbon to Livorno.⁹¹ Moreover, a few years later, only 175 guilders were collected by the Portuguese kahal for thirteen people taken captive in Tartary.⁹² The same conclusion can be drawn by comparing the 5620 guilders collected for the poor returning from Brazil in 1654, with an average of around 26 guilders a gift as against the 3375 guilders collected to cope with the influx of refugees from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1656, for an average gift of 10 guilders.⁹³ Apparently solidarity among Jews was partially dependent on the ethno-religious context. The same pattern can be discerned in the welfare policy of the Portuguese community in relation to Jews living in the city.⁹⁴ Ashkenazim could not rely on the same level of financial assistance. Nevertheless, we can discern the development of closer cooperation between the Portuguese and the Ashkenazic communities of Amsterdam than had ever been the case before. The latter must have been instrumental in taking the initiative to help the shlihim from the German lands and Central and Eastern Europe gain entry to the Portuguese community across the canal. That same community must also have been very helpful in transferring the money and finalizing the various transactions. In 1684, for example, money was channeled through the Amsterdam Ashkenazic community via parnas Jacob Fles, in particular, to assist the community in Frankfurt to free “our imprisoned brothers” (nosos irmaos precos) or the “Ashkenazim in Germany” (tudescos en Alemania).⁹⁵ In 1685, money  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 13, p. 59/121, 3 Nisan 5396.  See more on this in Levie Bernfeld, “Balkan Sephardim.”  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 173, pp. 54– 56, 12 Elul 5408; ibid., inv. no. 174, pp. 456 – 58, 20 Tamuz 5421; ibid., inv. no. 240, p. 134r., 20 Tamuz 5421; see also Kaplan, “Portuguese Community,” 40 – 41.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 888, 1 Iyyar 5430.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, pp. 58 – 60, 2 Tishri 5415; ibid., pp. 173 – 75, 3 Sivan 5416. Interesting enough the number of contributors for help to the Polish Jews during this period was around 100 people more (324) than for help to the Jews from Brazil (214).  Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 17– 18, 62, 117– 20, and index.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 259, 21 Iyyar 5444; ibid., inv. no. 24 A, p. 64v., 26 Adar 5444.

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was once more given by the Amsterdam Portuguese community to the treasurer of the Ashkenazic community of Amsterdam to help save the lives of an Ashkenazic family.⁹⁶ Again in 1700 the money requested by the emissaries for help to the communities in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was transferred to the Amsterdam Ashkenazic parnasim as well.⁹⁷ Apart from the Ashkenazic community in Amsterdam, Ashkenazic centers abroad played an important role in the network of connections from West to East and the transfer of money for the liberation of captives. The Jewish community of Frankfurt, for example, seems to have been in close contact with the Amsterdam Portuguese community, and was an important link in organizing assistance from Amsterdam to Central and Eastern Europe: in 1642, for example, rescue operations were set up and money transferred from the Amsterdam Portuguese community through Frankfurt to Prague to help the latter’s community during the Thirty Years’ War.⁹⁸ In 1643, Frankfurt again played a key role when that city’s rabbi sent a letter to the Portuguese leaders in Amsterdam together with letters he had received from Vienna and Krems/Kromĕříž after Krems was occupied by the Swedes.⁹⁹ During the plague in Prague in 1680, Portuguese money was transferred through Frankfurt once more, not only to help the community in Prague but also to pay the transfer costs for bringing some Portuguese Jews from Prague to Amsterdam.¹⁰⁰ In the war between the Christian forces and the Ottoman Empire in the southeastern part of Europe during the last decades of the seventeenth century, Portuguese and Ashkenazic Jews tended to cooperate. Transactions starting in the Amsterdam Portuguese community found their way through Ashkenazic communities and their private entrepreneurs, with Frankfurt often taking a central role. In 1686, for example, money was sent by the Amsterdam Portuguese to the parnasim of the Frankfurt community via Aron Beer and Jacob Izaqs Zurkan-

 It deals here with the rescue of the family of Abraham Switers (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 319, 1 Tevet 5446): the sum of 37:10 guilders to be transferred to the “gabaij da sedaca of the K.K. dos tudescos,” named Gomprich.  SAA entry 334, inv. no. 176, p. 354, 24 Iyyar 5460; see also note 102.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 172, p. 162, 1 Nisan 5402.  In the letters, one pleaded for help to the Jewish community of Krems/Kromĕříž in Moravia, where Jewish houses were burned to the ground, and Jews were killed or taken captive (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 19, p. 157/242, 24 Menahem–Av 5403; money was transferred via Verona through Hakham Samuel Aboab; see ibid, inv. no. 239, p. 71, 1 Adar 5404); Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 237.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 118, 1 Tamuz 5440.

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den to help save the captives of Buda.¹⁰¹ Again in 1687, money was transferred to Frankfurt to set captives in Berlin free.¹⁰² In 1691, the Frankfurt parnasim were again instrumental with the transfer of money from the Amsterdam Portuguese community to Prague to help with reconstruction as a fire in 1689 had burned down a large part of the Jewish ghetto, including the graveyard and several synagogues and shlihim from Prague visited Amsterdam to ask contributions for restoration.¹⁰³ But it was not only Frankfurt that played an important role. Other cities and communities to the east also acted as intermediaries. Many transactions, for example, went through Portuguese and Ashkenazic communities such as those in Hamburg and Hannover. In 1670 money was transferred by Isaac de Pinto, a member of the Amsterdam Portuguese community, to his brother in Hamburg to reach Cracow for the liberation of the above-mentioned thirteen captives in Tartary.¹⁰⁴ In 1689, networks led from Amsterdam through Hamburg to Vienna for help for captives in Belgrade.¹⁰⁵ Here again, we see Portuguese and Ashkenazic Jews being instrumental in the effort: the treasurer Aron Curiel in Amsterdam sent the money to Isaac Senior Teixeira in Hamburg, which then was sent on to Samuel Oppenheimer in Vienna.¹⁰⁶ In 1698, the Amsterdam Portuguese approached the banker Moses Gomperts of the Amsterdam Ashkenazic community to help in sending money via Hamburg to Cracow.¹⁰⁷ In 1696, another link came to the fore in the person of the banker and court Jew Leffman Behrends of Hannover, who was instrumental in moving the money he received from Moses Curiel in Amsterdam to the rabbis of the kahal of Kalisz in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.¹⁰⁸ Danzig also came into the picture, as the Amsterdam Portuguese

 SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 175, p. 358, 21 Hesvan 5447: it deals here with the sum of 2200 guilders; on the Sephardic captives taken in the Balkans during the war between the Christian forces and the Turks in the 1680s and 1690s, see Levie Bernfeld, “Balkan Sephardim,” 328 – 62; for help to Buda, see ibid., 332n18; see also Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 142– 46.  Levie Bernfeld, “Balkan Sephardim,” 332n18; Bashan, Captivity and Ransom, 145.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 20, p. 140, 8 Elul 5450; ibid., inv. no. 176, p. 73, 2 Nisan 5451.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 174, p. 888, 1 Iyyar 5430; see also above note 95.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 176, p. 3, 20 Iyyar 5449; see also Levie Bernfeld, “Balkan Sephardim,” 332– 333n18.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 176, p. 5, 15 Tamuz 5449.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 176, p. 299, 10 Tamuz 5458.  SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 25, p. 34, 7 Adar II 5456; ibid., inv. no. 176, p. 239, 4 Iyyar 5456; see for help to different Jewish communities in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by the Amsterdam Portuguese community in 1708/1709 via Leon Gompers to Lazarus Zacharias from Breslau and through Ms. Lipman in Berlin (SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 90, pp. 48 – 49, 15 Tevet 5469 and 25 Shevat 5469). Also, the London Portuguese community used these and

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sent money from there to Cracow to help the Jews during the Chmielnicki pogroms.¹⁰⁹ Thus, we can see close cooperation between the Sephardim and Ashkenazim, both in Amsterdam and in the German lands and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in connection with negotiations and the transfer of money into Central and Eastern Europe.

Conclusion Notes made on behalf of the Cativos foundation in the books recording resolutions and the financial registers of the Portuguese Jewish community in seventeenth-century Amsterdam read like a history book relating to the tragedies that befell the Jewish people on a global scale. The Amsterdam Portuguese community played its part in helping those who were taken captive or were suffering owing to other calamities and in need of funds. Interestingly but not surprisingly, the community gave priority to members of its Spanish Portuguese Jewish nation on the Iberian Peninsula, on their way to freedom, or otherwise in trouble. The Amsterdam Portuguese community attached great importance to the support of those projects, especially that of attracting New Christians to Judaism. Nevertheless, it did not ignore requests from the Ashkenazic world to help Jews in the German lands and in Central and Eastern Europe, but with somewhat less investment. The Portuguese community of Amsterdam was one of the many Jewish centers that offered such assistance. Often it acted on its own, helping individuals or responding to shlihim knocking on its doors and/or to written requests. Moreover, it was not afraid to ask for intervention from the Amsterdam burgomasters, the Dutch State authorities, or foreign heads of state. However, in many cases, it also turned to the deputies of the Cativos organizations of Venice and Livorno for assistance in transferring money to help solve crises in the Mediterranean area. Nor were other Sephardic centers excluded and they often played important roles as well. Such close cooperation among the various Sephardic communities in the north, in the west, in the south, and in the

other contacts: in 1710 it transferred money to these Polish communities in trouble via Amsterdam and then through Lazarus Zacharias and Lipman Beers in Vienna; see Barnett, “Correspondence,” 20 – 21, 42.  Letters with such requests were written on behalf of the community of Bar; see SAA entry no. 334, inv. no. 173, p. 57, 7 Tishri 5409; for the collection, see ibid., entry no. 334, inv. no. 173, 54– 56, 1 Elul 5408; see also above note 93.

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southeast underscores the strong relationships in the Sephardic world at the time. Meanwhile, cooperation between the Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, and Vienna grew closer when dealing with the distribution of money from Amsterdam to help Jews in trouble in communities in central, eastern, and southeastern Europe. Networks of Ashkenazim and Sephardim in the seventeenth-century Jewish world seem to have been stronger than was thought earlier, and they grew ever closer as time went on, overcoming ethnic divides. The activities of the Jewish world around the redemption of captives represent another example that highlights this phenomenon. As the Amsterdam Portuguese community coordinated actions for the ransoming of captives in many directions and came to the rescue of Conversos and Jews from various backgrounds, it took part from its very beginnings in the biggest mitzvah in Judaism, which helped to create an ever stronger bond among Jewish communities and individuals, whether Sephardic, Ashkenazic, or any other Jewish nation in the early modern world.

Jonathan Schorsch

8 Kabbalah and Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Amsterdam The Sephardic and Ashkenazic Producers of Sefer Raziel ha-Malakh (1701) Often cited as a cradle of the so-called republic of letters, both in general and for Jews in particular, Amsterdam was also a well-known site of cooperation between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in book printing. One particular arena of joint bibliographic ventures seems to have embraced the publication of Kabbalah. In this essay I explore, in particular, the brief partnership between Mosseh b. Avraham Mendes Coutinho and Yitzḥak b. Avraham of Neustadt, who published the (in)famous first edition of Sefer Raziel ha-Malakh, a compilation of ancient and medieval mystical and magical texts. There is some evidence that Sabbatian inclinations may have motivated their kabbalistic and magical choices. I see the publication of Sefer Raziel as a self-aware contribution to an intraand inter-communal dialogue involving Sephardim and Ashkenazim, as well as Jews and Christians, concerning the shared but contested intellectual-spiritual science known as Kabbalah/Cabala.¹ The Sephardic Mendes Coutinho and the Ashkenazic Yitzḥak of Neustadt were drawn together, seemingly by magic/Kabbalah and possibly by Sabbatianism, into a temporary partnership that sought to promulgate a spiritual-intellectual program designed to transcend intra-Jewish differences, if only indirectly. This study thus has a dual focus, one that is both sociological and intellectual-spiritual. Its main frame comprises the Sephardic-Ashkenazic networks that resulted in publications such as Sefer Raziel. But in order to understand the book’s features and significance I touch on Mendes Coutinho’s and Yitzḥak of Neustadt’s backgrounds, careers, and intentions, their possible Sabbatian leanings and affiliations, the place of their Sefer Raziel edition in the very complicated history of magic, Kabbalah, kabbalistic publications, and natural science, and their indirect dialogue with Christian cabalists.²

 I use the term Kabbalah to refer to the relevant mystical traditions and productions of Jews and Cabala for those of Christians.  Research for this study was aided by a grant from the Gomez Foundation for Mill House. My deep gratitude goes to those colleagues who helped me with questions or reviewed early drafts of this study: Daniel Abrams, Yossi Chajes, Matt Goldish, Boaz Huss, Admiel Kosman, Sina Rauschenbach, David Sclar, and Gal Sofer. I thank Ton Tielen and Michael Waas for their invaluable https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-008

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Jewish Printing and Intra-Communal Jewish Relations Printing and publishing may have always been relatively polyglot ethnically and even religiously. This feature had everything to do with economics, geography, ethno-religious politics, and the mobility of printing equipment, as well as with printers and publishers and, perhaps less centrally, the utopian aspect of the bibliographic and bibliophilic life. Since the medieval juncture when Sephardim and Ashkenazim self-consciously distinguished themselves as groups (and beforehand as well), texts by authors from both groups conversed and comingled. The Shulḥan Arukh combines of the Sephardic text of Yosef Karo with the Ashkenazic commentary of Moshe Isserles. David Ruderman understands this combination as being an example of “a unified culture fusing Sephardic law with Ashkenazic custom,” reflecting the way the printing press and book circulation reshaped early modern Jewry.³ Ruderman goes on to describe how the printing presses of Italy, Constantinople, and Amsterdam made Sephardic texts available to Ashkenazim, who previously had had little familiarity with this corpus.⁴ Soon after, this process was reversed. As has been shown by many scholars, examples of Sephardic-Ashkenazic cooperation in the bibliographic field abound. As the veritable center of Jewish publishing at the time, Amsterdam saw the production of books from Sephardic communities throughout the European Sephardic Diaspora (Italy, North Africa, and the Land of Israel) and from Ashkenazic communities all through Europe. More than 200 printers and publishers are known to have been active in Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Until the 1680s they were overwhelmingly Sephardim, but even after that time, Ashkenazim made up only a small minority. What scholars of Jewish printing and historians of Jewish Amsterdam often overlook, however, is that cooperation between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in the Amsterdam printing and publishing sector stood out at a time when Sephar-

help searching for material in various Dutch archives, some of which Tielen also transcribed and/or translated for me. Unfortunately, Moshe Idel’s “Sefer Raziel ha-Mal’akh: New Inquiries,” in L’eredità di Salomone: La magia ebraica in Italia e nel Mediterraneo, ed. Emma Abate (Florence: Giuntina, 2019), 143 – 68, came out after my essay was already submitted.  David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 100.  See also Shlomo Berger, “Ashkenazim Read Sephardim in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam,” Studia Rosenthaliana 35, no. 2 (2001): 253 – 65.

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dim looked down on Ashkenazim, excluded them from participation in Sephardic institutions and life, and refused to interact with them on a number of fronts. Both groups had been recent arrivals, first the Sephardim, toward the end of the sixteenth century, and then the first Ashkenazim, early in the seventeenth. In some ways Sephardim distinguished between Jews from Poland (polacos), which included Lithuania, and those from Germany (tudescos). The former were generally more educated, for which Sephardim held them in more respect. Yet in other ways both Askenazic groups formed a single Other in Sephardic eyes. The socio-economic contrast between Sephardim and Ashkenazim was stark, as at first most of the Ashkenazim in Amsterdam were refugees from persecution, economic deprivation, and war. Masses of Ashkenazim arrived in the mid-seventeenth century, fleeing the Swedish invasion of the German Lands and later the Chmielnicki massacres in Poland. In many respects, the Sephardim treated the Ashkenazim as kin, as fellow Jews, providing much help and aid when they first began to arrive. Still, Sephardic negativity stemmed from Ashkenazic poverty, neediness and disorderliness, perceived growing dependence of Ashkenazim on Sephardic charity, embarrassment vis à vis the non-Jewish Dutch authorities, Sephardic dismissal of or distaste for Ashkenazic Judaism or a general Sephardic sense of cultural-ethnic supremacy.⁵ One important communal ordinance dating from the 1639 unification of the three Amsterdam Sephardic congregations noted that many of the Ashkenazim “have their vices, [which are] distant from virtue and good Judaism/m[ui]tos dos quais tem seus vicios alheos da virtude e bom judesmo.”⁶ Continued anxieties concerning the maintenance of bom judesmo (“proper” Judaism), a fixation of Western Sephardim, particularly in Amsterdam, led to renewed ordinances in 1645, 1658, and 1664, which also featured strong language.⁷

 See Yosef Kaplan, “The Self-Definition of the Sephardic Jews of Western Europe and Their Relation to the Alien and the Stranger,” in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391 – 1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 121– 45; idem, “Amsterdam and Ashkenazic Migration in the Seventeenth Century,” Studia Rosenthaliana 23 (1989): 22– 44.  Cited in Kaplan, “The Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews to the Ashkenazi Jews in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” in Transition and Change in Modern Jewish History: Essays Presented in Honor of Shmuel Ettinger [Hebrew], ed. Shmuel Almog et al. (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel/Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1987), 400; Livro de Ascamoth, K. K. Talmud Torah, vol. 1, Stadsarchief Amsterdam (hereafter SAA) 334, no. 19, p. 20.  On bom judesmo, see Yosef Kaplan, “Bom Judesmo: The Western Sephardic Diaspora,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 639 – 69.

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In Amsterdam, Jews of Spanish and Portuguese background would not accept Ashkenazim as members of their synagogue or community,⁸ would not marry with Ashkenazim,⁹ and would not allow them to be buried in their cemeteries.¹⁰ As of 1639, community leaders rejected the kashrut of Ashkenazic butchers and periodically condemned Sephardim who bought meat from those shops.¹¹ In 1654, Ashkenazic (serving) girls and women were forbidden from attending the Sephardic synagogue (in the women’s section, obviously). It was understood that they often came in order to reserve a place for their employers; if they did appear, their mistresses had to pay a fine.¹² A communal ordinance of 1657 asserted that tudesco boys (along with Italians and mulattos) would no longer be accepted into classes run by Sephardic instructors for the Sephardic community.¹³ Evidence suggests that Ashkenazim were not allowed to study in the Sephardic community’s flagship Ets Haim Yeshiva until 1728, when the institu In 1671, a communal ordinance decreed that Ashkenazim – German or Polish – who married Spanish or Portuguese women would not be able to become members (yaḥedim) of the Sephardic congregation, nor could their descendants; see Kaplan, “Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese,” 405; Livro de Ascamoth, 643. The general prohibition against membership for non-Sephardim was renewed as late as 1697.  As late as 1709, the Mahamad proclaimed in a communal ordinance that any Sephardic member of the congregation who married a woman who was not of Spanish or Portuguese background would lose his status as yaḥid, as would his descendants; see Kaplan, “Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” 406; Livro de Ascamoth, 510.  . At first it seems individual Ashkenazim were buried in the Sephardic cemetery at Ouderkerk. But as of 1614, individual Ashkenazim were to be buried in a separate place, the same place assigned to “slaves, servants and Jewish serving girls who are not of our nation.” With the unification of the three Sephardic congregations, the joint communal ordinance of 1642 prohibited further burial of Ashkenazim at Ouderkerk: “since so many from their people came to these lands … there are no free spots in our cemetery; and as we have seen the disrespect with which they have behaved around this matter we have decided to refuse them (and to inform them) that they will no longer be permitted to bury their dead there;” cited in Kaplan, “Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” 392, 392n10, and 394.  Kaplan, “Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” 408; Livro de Ascamoth, 15; Yosef Kaplan, “Deviance and Excommunication in the Eighteenth Century,” in Dutch Jewish History, ed. Jozeph Michman, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: The Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry, 1993), 103 – 15; Daniel Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004), 199. As Kaplan notes, part of the motivation for such legislation was to protect Sephardic butchers against competition. Prohibitions were renewed in 1645, 1670, 1677, and 1708.  Kaplan, “Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” 397.  Ibid. 403; Livro de Ascamoth, p. 426; Jozeph Michman, David Franco Mendes, a Hebrew Poet (Jerusalem: Massada, 1951), 21; and M. C. Paraira and J. S. da Silva Rosa, eds., Gedenkschrift uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van het 300-jarig bestaan der onderwijsinrichtingen Talmud Tora en Ets Haïm bij de Portug. Israel. gemeente te Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Roeloffzen-Hübner, 1916), 33.

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tion was restructured under a new chief rabbi, although even then they were denied funding.¹⁴ Sephardic assistance to Ashkenazim often came with palpable condescension and distaste. The Sephardic community in Amsterdam ran an orphanage and a work house for poor Ashkenazim but spoke of them as unevolved and undercivilized.¹⁵ In 1670 the pious society Abodad a Hesed, which had been extending support to Ashkenazim, decided to restrict its monthly assistance to needy Portuguese Jews.¹⁶ Similar attitudes and behavior manifested in other Sephardic centers, such as Hamburg¹⁷ and London.¹⁸ Sephardic cooperation with Ashkenazim in printing thus appears to have been a counter-intuitive crossing of communal borders. Ashkenazim in Europe saw the Western Sephardic communities as more developed, worthy of admiration, even emulation. The oft-cited praise heaped by Shabtai Bass on the Amsterdam Sephardic pedagogical approach and educational institutions, especially of the Ets Haim Yeshiva, in his Siftei Yeshenim (1680) reflects this Ashkenazic perspective. Bass’s book discloses some of the cosmopolitan currents I discuss in this study: Bass had picked up his love of books working as an assistant in a non-Jewish bookstore. Siftei Yeshenim was the first bibliography of Hebrew books compiled by a Jew, a contribution to the genre that was established some 150 years earlier by non-Jews and was printed by the well-known Amsterdam Sephardic printer David de Castro Tartas. Bass admits to a motivation that was both comparative and ethnographic: Do not wonder at my desire to write things that are known even to small schoolchildren, such as selihot [penitential prayers], mahzorim [festival prayer books], prayers, and piyyutim

 SAA 334, Portuguese-Israelite Community (PIC), no. 1053, p. 14; cited in David Sclar, “Adaptation and Acceptance: Moses Ḥayim Luzzatto’s Sojourn in Amsterdam among Portuguese Jews,” AJS Review 40, no. 2 (2016): 340.  Kaplan, “Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” 397, 410 – 11; idem, “Self-Definition of the Sephardic Jews,” 138 – 39. Deceased unknown and/or poor Ashkenazim were often recorded in the Sephardic burial register merely according to ethnic epithet: “a German infant/hũa crianca todesqa,” “a poor German/hũ judeo tudesco pobre,” etc.; see Kaplan, “Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” 394n16.  Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, “Financing Relief in the Jewish Community in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture (1500 – 2000), ed. Jonathan Israel and Reinier Salverda (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 70n21. The decision likely stemmed from the serious economic slump of the period. Amsterdam Portuguese exclusiveness is summarized well in Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 125 – 31.  Kaplan, “Self-Definition of the Sephardic Jews,” 122– 23, 131, 132– 33, 137.  Ibid., 123 – 24, 133.

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[liturgical hymns]. I will answer this: while they are known and revealed to the Ashkenazim, since this is their custom, the Sephardim and Italians [literally, loazim, those speaking a foreign tongue] will want to learn the prayers, piyyutim, and practices of other lands, and vice versa.¹⁹

An Amsterdam Ashkenazic Jew voiced a similar sentiment. In 1679, the year before Bass published Siftei Yeshenim, Uri Phoebus Halevi finally completed the printing of his Yiddish Bible. He wrote in his introduction that he “wanted the text of the Old Testament to be known among Ashkenazic Jewry, that they might become as versed in the Holy Writings as the members of the Sephardic congregations.”²⁰ That such similar sentiments arose in seventeenth-century Amsterdam reflects the multicultural intra-Jewish urban scene there that nurtured a particularly polyglot Jewish republic of letters. This comparative autoethnography implicitly suggests that a full “modern” Jewish self-understanding requires knowledge of Jewish culture that transcends borders between Jewish subgroups. Here lies the construction of a larger whole through internal difference. Around the same time, in 1685, cosmopolitan, commercial Sephardic Amsterdam produced another such instance of Jewish auto-ethnography, both actual and textual, when Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva sailed with a group of Dutch Portuguese Jewish men to India and wrote a report the following year about their exotic “cousins,” the Jews of Cochin.²¹

The Producers of Sefer Raziel The first publication of Sefer Raziel – actually titled This Is the Book of Primordial Adam, Which Was Given Him by the Angel Raziel – in Amsterdam in 1701 was an example of a particularly fascinating Sephardic-Ashkenazic partnership. The book itself is a compilation of mystical and magical texts, including several from what is known as the Raziel or Solomonic corpus – works attributed to King Solomon – that date back to at least the early Middle Ages and which have appeared in a dizzying variety of permutations in manuscripts over the cen Translated in Avriel Bar-Levav, “The Religious Order of Jewish Books: Structuring Hebrew Knowledge in Amsterdam,” Studia Rosenthaliana 44 (2012): 13 – 14. Comments in brackets are those of Bar-Levav.  Leo Fuks and Rena G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands, 1585 – 1815: Historical Evaluation and Descriptive Bibliography, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1984), vol. 2, 239.  See Jonathan Schorsch, “Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva: An Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Merchant Abroad in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History, ed. Yosef Kaplan (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 63 – 85.

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turies. Some of the textual units derive from the Hebrew collection known as Sefer ha-Razim (Book of Secrets). The material making up Sefer Raziel includes explicitly magical tools such as charms, amulets, and angelic writing.²² The partners who issued the first printed edition, the printer Mosseh b. Avraham Mendes Coutinho and the editor and publisher Yitzḥak b. Avraham of Neustadt, seem to have shared an inclination toward Kabbalah.²³ The latter comes across as a staunch advocate of Kabbalah and the former printed a notable series of kabbalistic texts and may have had Sabbatian leanings. The only works that the two published together were Sefer Raziel and a new edition of the Zohar Ḥadash (The New Zohar, also in 1701), the latter comprising zoharic material that did not appear in the first two printed editions of the Zohar. Yitzḥak brought the manuscript of Razielic material that he and Mendes Coutinho published as Sefer Raziel to press, and also “edited and corrected” the Zohar Ḥadash. ²⁴ Along with Mendes Coutinho’s other kabbalistic publications, Sefer Raziel and Zohar Ḥadash seem to reflect a joint program of promulgating Kabbalah and, in the case of Sefer Raziel, Jewish magic, although Yitzḥak, at least, considered the work to be kabbalistic. The biographies of the two collaborators offer some clues regarding their personalities and orientations, but not many. Mosseh b. Avraham Mendes Coutinho (or Coitinho) was raised in Amsterdam. Yitzḥak b. Avraham lived in Amsterdam, though it is not clear whether he was born or grew up there. I discuss him further below. Mendes Coutinho bought the typographic equipment and privileges of the well-known printer David de Castro Tartas, to whom he may have been distantly related, in 1696 or 1697. He began his own printing career in 1699, assisted by Tartas’s son-in-law Samuel Texeira Tartas de Castro, but

 See, inter alia, Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer. eds., Sefer ha-Razim: Das Buch der Geheimnisse, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009); Bill Rebiger, “Zur Redaktionsgeschichte des ‘Sefer Razi’el ha-Malakh,’” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 32 (2005): 1– 22; Don Karr and Stephen Skinner, eds., Sepher Raziel: A Sixteenth Century English Grimoire (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2010). I use italics for titles of published books, but no italics for titles of works that circulated in manuscript; thus Sefer Raziel vs. Sefer ha-Razim.  The terms for the various publishing functions are not entirely clear to me. I understand the printer to be the person who owns – and operates? – the printing press. The publisher or presenter is the one who brings the manuscript to the printer, often also financing the publication, alone or with others. The editor prepares, edits, or revises the manuscript and/or the typeset pages. The typesetter produces the pages used for the printing process. Sometimes a single person carries out multiple functions, as when the publisher also serves as editor.  Fuks and Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography in the Netherlands, #570.

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by 1711 seems to have left the business.²⁵ Both Sephardim and Ashkenazim worked at his press, and his network of collaborators included some of the Amsterdam professional intellectuals of the age, including a noticeable preponderance of Ashkenazim.²⁶ From the very beginning of his publishing career Mendes Coutinho embarked on the production of a series of mystical works: Ḥesed Shmuel (or Ḥesed Sh’mo El), a kabbalistic commentary on Genesis by Shmuel b. David Auerbach of Lublin (1699, a first edition); Sefer Raziel and Zohar Ḥadash (1701); Sefer Shiv’im Tikkunei Zohar, with a new commentary, Ḥemdat Tzvi, by Tzvi Hirsch b. Yeraḥmiel Ḥotsch of Cracow (1706); Seder Tikkunei Shabbat, prayers and hymns for the Sabbath, Shavuot, and Sukkot by Yitzḥak Luria, along with Sefer Yetzirah (1707); and a fifth edition of Shlomo Molcho’s Sefer ha-Mefo’ar (1709). His book on the order for studying on the eve of Shavuot, Seder Keri’ah ve-Tikkun: le-Lele Ḥag Shavu’ot ve-Hosh’ana Rabba (1705), printed at his own instigation, includes two readings from the Zohar, following the Lurianic custom, and prayers to be said before and after the learning that come from Horowitz’s Shnei Luḥot haBrit. It could well have been Mendes Coutinho’s mystical interests that led him to issue translations of the Song of Songs in Aramaic, Ladino, and Spanish in 1701. Of course, these were by no means the first or only kabbalistic works printed in Amsterdam; such publications appeared throughout the seventeenth century, but Mendes Coutinho clearly had a particular focus on kabbalistic works. Little is known about Mendes Coutinho himself. I was unable to determine the dates of his birth and death, nor could I find any records regarding his birth, death, or marriage. There is no extant evidence of his paying the various types  On Coutinho’s career as a printer, see Fuks, Hebrew Typography in the Netherlands, vol. 2, 342, 345 – 46, 412, 424– 41; Marvin J. Heller, Printing the Talmud: A History of the Individual Treatises Printed from 1700 to 1750 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 214– 24.  His first editions of Shmuel Oyerbakh/Auerbach of Lublin, Sefer Ḥesed Shmuel … al Bereshit … (1699) and Shmuel Tzarfati, Sefer Divrei Shmuel (1699/1700) were brought to press by R. Elyakim Ḥazan of Amsterdam b. R. Ya’akov Ḥazan from the holy community Komarna, called in the former text “one of the masters of publishing-proofreading-editing/‫אחד מבעלי חכמת ההגהה‬.” A cantor and Hebrew teacher, Elyakim wrote or produced a number of linguistic and liturgical works and translated Menasseh ben Israel’s Esperança de Israel into Yiddish in 1697: Sefer Mikve Yisrael (Amsterdam: Anshel b. R. Eliezer Ḥazan and Yissachar Ber b. Avraham Eliezer, 1697). Both Mendes Coutinho’s Kinot le-Tisha be-Av (1704) and Shiv’im Tikkunei Zohar (1706) were typeset by Ya’akov bar Moshe Segal (‫ )סג’’ל‬of Hamburg, the son-in-law of Jacob Maarssen of Amsterdam (‫)חתן יאקב מארשׁן ע’’ה‬, a Yiddish author: on their family relationship, see Marvin J. Heller, Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 320. Ya’akov’s brother Yosef typeset Shimon Frankfurter’s Sefer ha-Ḥayyim for Mendes Coutinho (1702– 1703); he was a publisher and a translator, who also wrote pedagogical books for students and translated some of Boccaccio into Yiddish.

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of communal taxes (fintas or imposta or promesas), nor was he on any of the poor lists. His parents were most likely Abraham Mendes Coutinho, alias Manuel or Emanuel Coutinho, born in Peyrehorade (birthdate unknown), Gascony, and his wife Abigail Aboab (b. 1635), who married in Amsterdam in 1659. Neither the groom nor the bride signed his/her name in Hebrew.²⁷ Abigail’s father was Abraham Aboab, also known as Denis Yanes/Jenes (b. Lisbon, 1596), a banker and merchant who arrived in Amsterdam in 1619 from Hamburg. Aboab/ Yanes/Jenes was active in trading with merchants in Danzig, among other places, at least until 1675, and seems to have been the first Portuguese Jew to acquire a landed estate in the Netherlands. Abigail’s mother was Sara Osorio, daughter of the prominent merchant Bento/Baruch Osorio.²⁸ If this Abraham and Abigail were our Mosseh’s parents, which seems likely from all of the collated evidence, then his lineage typifies both the hidden and open backgrounds of Portuguese Jewish existence in Amsterdam. His father might well have been born in Portugal as an ostensible Christian, as Peyrehorade was one of several French towns to which Portuguese Conversos fled throughout the seventeenth century.²⁹ On his mother’s side, our Mosseh descended from some prominent and long-standing Amsterdam Portuguese families, also originally Portuguese Conversos. Mosseh might have had a son named David. The name David b. Zlateh (‫ )זלאטה‬Mendes Coutinho appears in several of the amulets within Sefer Raziel, leading scholars to suspect that his name had been inserted (either by Mosseh or one of the typesetters?) as an example for the reader of where to place a name

 Dave Verdooner and Harmen Snel, Trouwen in Mokum: Jewish Marriage in Amsterdam, 2 vols. (‘s-Gravenhage: Warray, 1992), Sephardic Marriages, #684– 221. The widow Rachel Coutinho served as his witness.  For more on Abraham and Abigail, see E. M. Koen, W. Hamelink-Verweel, S. Hart, and W. C. Pieterse, “Notarial Records in Amsterdam Relating to the Portuguese Jews in that Town up to 1639,” Studia Rosenthaliana 17, no. 1 (1983), 75n67; Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 437n75.  For descriptions of New Jewish life in Peyrehorade through the eyewitness testimony of New Christians/New Jews from the town who were caught by the Inquisition in Spain and testified (in 1679 and the early 1690s, respectively), see David Graizbord, “Researching the Childhood of ‘New Jews’ in the Western Sephardi Diaspora in Light of Recent Historiography,” in Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora, ed. Julia R. Lieberman (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England, 2011), 234– 38; Nathan Wachtel, The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths, trans. Nikki Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 171– 80; and David Graizbord, “Becoming Jewish in Early Modern France: Documents on Jewish Community-Building in Seventeenth-Century Bayonne and Peyrehorade,” Journal of Social History 40, no. 1 (2006): 147– 80.

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when using any given amulet.³⁰ If David was Mosseh’s son, since Zlateh is a common girl’s name in Yiddish, then Mosseh was married to an Ashkenazic woman. If that was indeed the case it adds an intriguing personal significance to his cross-boundary connections – working so closely with Ashkenazim, printing texts in Yiddish and for a Yiddish audience – and may explain his near total absence from the records of the Sephardic community.³¹ Some sense of the person of Mosseh Mendes Coutinho might be inferred from elements in his publications. On the title page of one of his first books, from 1699, he refers to himself as “the amiable and dear youth/‫הבחור הנחמד‬ ‫והיקר‬.”³² This is an unusual statement to make about oneself and perhaps the young Mendes Coutinho’s projected genteel self-image marked an attempt to emphasize his communal and economic status from his mother’s side.³³ He referred to his father, who clearly had passed away by then, in even loftier terms as “the respected, pious, and humble elder, his Honor … a tzadik of blessed memory/‫הישׁישׁ הנכבד החסיד ועניו כבוד …זצ’’ל‬,” epithets that highlighted his personal and spiritual qualities, rather than his social standing.³⁴ By the next year, Mendes Coutinho was still calling himself “the youth,” but had dropped his self-adulation, while his father became “the respected elder, the lofty gentleman … of blessed memory/‫הישׁישׁ הנכבד הגביר הנעל’ … ז’’ל‬.”³⁵ A number of the works that Mendes Coutinho printed, overwhelmingly liturgical texts, both Sephardic and Ashkenazic, include a note indicating that they were printed at his own initiative (‫)במצות‬, and a translation of the Song of Songs into Spanish, Paraphrasis Caldayca (1701), informs the reader of his covering the  David b. Zlateh appears, for instance, on 36b and 37a. Moritz Steinschneider, Lectures on Hebrew Manuscripts [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1965), 62, seems to be the first to notice the appearance of this name.  There is no evidence to confirm that David b. Zlateh was Mosseh’s son. Matt Goldish finds my hypothesis far-fetched (personal communication; July 2019). David could have been a cousin or nephew. Probable (older?) relative David Mendes Coutinho was a member of the charitable organization Shaare Sedec, which was founded in 1678 to shelter strangers; see Richard Gottheil and Meyer Kayserling, “Coutinho,” Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer, Cyrus Adler, et al. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901– 1906), vol. 4, 317. Was this older David Mendes Coutinho the figure whose name appears in the amulets?  Shmuel b. David Auerbach of Lublin, Sefer Ḥesed Shmuel (Amsterdam, 1699).  David Sclar made the first point to me (personal communication; July 2019).  In light of Mosseh’s laudatory description, Manuel/Abraham’s arrival in Amsterdam in 1659, if not earlier, may indicate that he or his parents sought a more rigorously Jewish life than what was the norm in Peyrehorade. Wachtel speculates that those Portuguese who remained in the southern French towns evinced “the most tepid” religiosity (Faith of Remembrance, 172).  Seder Kinot le-Tisha be-Av ke-Minhag Ashkenaz ve-Polin, with a short commentary by Elyakim b. Ya’akov of Komarna (Amsterdam: Mosseh b. Avraham Mendes Coutinho, 1704), title page.

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costs of publication (en casa y costa de).³⁶ It is unclear what, exactly, be-mitzvat means. Does it mean that publishing that particular book was his idea? That he financed the publication? In his approbation for the Zohar Ḥadash, R. Shlomo Aaillion commended Mendes Coutinho for paying for the book’s publication out of his own money (‫)לתת כסף מוצא ולהדפיסו בבית דפוסו‬. All this appears to reflect his concern for making available to the Jewish public lore concerning rituals for the sacred days of the calendar as well as knowledge that he deemed spiritually vital. In the note to the reader preceding Paraphrasis Caldayca, en los Cantares de Selomoh, he explained that he brought the text to press “at the request of some friends/apedimiento de algunos amigos,” even though it had been printed by David Castro Tartas in 1664 and again in 1683, since it was the custom “in our [Spanish and Portuguese] congregations” to read the Song of Songs in Aramaic between Passover and Shavuot, as well as those chapters of it translated into Spanish by Doctor Moseh Belmonte. He produced the text “with [all] the correction and care possible in order that the disciples of Ishac Saruco, rabbi of the third medras of the schools in Amsterdam, could sing these sacred hymns from the Tebah/con la en mienda y curiosidad posible para la exercitacion en la Tebah cantar estos Sacros Himnos los Disipulos de Ishac Saruco, Rabi del Tercer Medras de las Escuelas en Amsterdam.” In his concern for communal needs, Mendes Coutinho was a typical printer of his time. He produced editions of three talmudic tractates, Beitzah in 1702, Ḥagiga in 1706, and Megillah in 1709, all of which relate to holidays. Two of these eminently useful tractates were purchased in quantity by the Ets Haim Yeshiva for its advanced students.³⁷ Even less is known about Yitzḥak b. Avraham of Neustadt, who was apparently Ashkenazic. His name is also given as Izak b. Abraham Neustadt.³⁸ Several European municipalities were named Neustadt, the largest of which was Neustadt an der Haardt, in the Rhineland-Palatinate, which leaves Yitzḥak’s person-

 Shmuel b. David Auerbach/Oyerbakh, Sefer Ḥesed Shmuel (1699); Seder Tefilot … ke-Minhag Sefaradim … (1700); Seder Arba Ta’aniot (1701); Paraphrasis Caldayca, en los Cantares de Selomoh; con el texto Hebrayco, y Ladino, tradusida en lengua Española (1701); Seder Keri’ah ve-Tikkun: ke-Lele Ḥag Shavu’ot ve-Hosha’na Raba (1705); Maḥzor mi-Kol ha-Shanah: ke-Minhag ‘Ashkenaz ve-Polin (1706); Seder Tefilot: Mide Ḥodesh be-Ḥodsho ‘im Parashiyot she-Korin be-Yom Sheni u-ve-Yom Ḥamishi; ‘Im Sefer Tehilim u-Ma’amadot … ve-Gam Yesh be-Lo Tehilim u-Ma’amadot; ke-Minhag k“k Sefardim (1707); Yitzḥak Luria, Seder Tikkunei Shabbat (1707); Seliḥot mi-Kol ha-Shanah: ke-Minhag k”k Pehem Polen Merheren Estrayk … Nidpesu me-Hadash (1707) and Isaac b. Jacob Campanton, Sefer Darkei ha-Gemara (1711).  SAA, PIC 1052, Decisions of Ets Haim, 1637– 1728 (5397– 5488), for 150 gemarot in 1706 and 400 in 1710.  Encyclopaedia Sefardica Neerlandica, ed. J. Meijer (Amsterdam: Press of the Portuguese-Israelite Community, 1949), vol. 1, 175.

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al and family origins uncertain. In Sefer Raziel he was described as “the youth Yitzḥak b. he-ḥaver (friend or member)³⁹ Avraham, his memory for a blessing, judge of the holy congregation of Amsterdam/‫הצעיר יצחק בן החבר אברהם ז’’ל דיין‬ ‫דק’’ק אמשׁטרדם‬.”⁴⁰ Although this does not clarify whether it was Yitzḥak or his father, Avraham, who was the judge, in their approbations for Zohar Ḥadash, R. Efraim Radosh (‫)רעדשׁ‬, Yehuda Leib b. R. Moshe of Greater Glogau, and Meir Meroiznitz all specified that it was Yitzḥak who was a judge in Amsterdam, the former calling him “an exemplary judge/‫ ”דיין מובהק‬of the community there and the last honoring him as “an excellent judge/‫דיין מצויין‬.” In Zohar Ḥadash he is described with an honorific as our teacher and rabbi Yitzḥak b. he-ḥaver Avraham from the holy community New City (in Hebrew: ‫)עיר חדשׁ‬, that is, Neustadt. In his approbation for Zohar Ḥadash, R. Moshe Yehuda b. R. Kalonymus ha-Kohen, rabbi of the Ashkenazic community of Amsterdam, called Yitzḥak “the leader in Torah/‫ ”האלוף התורני‬and “one of the judges of our community.” One biographical encyclopedia entry names him an assistant rabbi in Amsterdam.⁴¹ At the end of Zohar Ḥadash there is a glossary of words found in the Zohar, Perush ha-Milot me-Zohar Gadol u-me-Zohar Ḥadash/Explanation of the Words from the Great Zohar and the New Zohar, by the son of the editor, our Yitzḥak, named Yehuda [Leib] b. Yitzḥak. Leib was honest enough to admit that he based his work on an earlier glossary of words in the Zohar by Yissachar Ber b. Petaḥya Moshe of Kremnitz, Imre Binah (Prague, 1610 – 1611). Moreover, he noted that the final draft was corrected by his father, Yitzḥak.⁴² Perhaps Kabbalah was an intergenerational passion within the family.

 The term ḥaver ordinarily refers to a full-fledged member of the community or, less frequently, a sage.  Foreword of the presenter, Zohar Ḥadash (Amsterdam: Mosseh b. Avraham Mendes Coutinho, 1701), 2a.  Kaufmann Kohler and Isaac Broydé, “Isaac ben Abraham of Neustadt,” in Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer, Cyrus Adler et al. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901– 1906), vol. 6, 619. The authors noted that Isaac edited a number of kabbalistic works, such as Sefer ha-Malbush, Sefer Noaḥ, Sefer ha-Mazalot, Shi’ur Ḳomah, Ma’aseh Bereshit. However, these were all elements of the Sefer Raziel corpus.  Many thanks to Admiel Kosman for alerting me to an article by Naftali Ben-Menachem, “Shibolim bi-Sdeh ha-Sefer,” Sinai 61 (5727 [1966 – 1967]): 191– 92, in which he points out this fatherson connection.

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Yitzḥak of Neustadt and Sefer Raziel It appears that Sefer Raziel was published at the same time as Zohar Ḥadash; they might have been issued as a single volume that ended up being divided into two.⁴³ The rabbinic approbations of the latter are said to also relate to the former. In his foreword to Sefer Raziel, Yitzḥak noted that he hoped to produce the volume of Zohar Ḥadash, so we know the sequence of publication. It is obvious that he was particularly fixated on Sefer Raziel; much of his foreword to Zohar Ḥadash actually relates to Sefer Raziel. The explanation for the texts’ joint publication may rest in this Amsterdam kabbalist’s personal predilection but is also grounded in the mystical tradition. He suggested that “the two [texts] are [as] good as one; what one cannot understand in this one will be understood in that one.”⁴⁴ Indeed, there is overlap between zoharic texts and the material brought together in Sefer Raziel. Zoharic texts also mention the Book of Adam frequently. In one passage, Rabbi Abba teaches that “an actual book was brought down to Adam, from which he discovered supernal wisdom.”⁴⁵ This book was understood by various medieval believers to have been conveyed to Adam by the angel Raziel. Further information about the publication of Sefer Raziel can be gleaned from these two forewords by this young man (‫הצעיר‬/ha-tza’ir), who brought the manuscript of Sefer Raziel to Mendes Coutinho for publication.⁴⁶ In his foreword to Sefer Raziel, Yitzḥak declared that he wanted to set the record straight, as the book Tziyur Otiyot mi-Kol ha-Olam (A Depiction of Letters from the Whole World) had already been published in French and although it was full of mistakes it was becoming known to those ignorant of Torah. In other words, a faulty non-Jewish version of some of this kabbalistic material in the Liber Razielis corpus seems to have spurred him to produce a better, Jewish edition.⁴⁷ Yitzḥak claimed to have

 Daniel Abrams suggested the possibility of the originally single volume being divided into two (personal communication; January 2019). The latest rabbinic approbation in Zohar Ḥadash dates from mid-August 1701. The frontispiece gives the date of publication as 5461. No approbations appear in Sefer Raziel – Yitzḥak’s foreword refers to earlier approbations, no doubt meaning those from the Zohar Ḥadash edition – whose frontispiece also lists the date of publication as 5461, while no other dates seem to be indicated within.  Foreword of the presenter, Zohar Ḥadash, 2a.  Zohar, vol. 1, 37b; for an English version, see The Zohar, ed. and trans. Daniel Matt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), vol. 1, 237.  Matt Goldish suggests that tza’ir means “humble” rather than “youth” (personal communication; July 2019).  Rebiger, “Redaktionsgeschichte,” 21– 22, comes to the same conclusion.

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spent a good sum ordering two manuscripts from abroad in order to check into the textual history and accuracy. He wrote that he realized that his manuscript was indeed the original from which the others were copied, an autograph copy produced by R. Eliezer b. R. Yehuda, who had learned ma’aseh merkavah (the mysteries of the chariot described by the prophet Ezekiel) from R. Yehuda ha-Ḥasid, who had been taught such wisdom by his father, R. Shimon haḤasid. The names Yitzḥak cited provided the traditional spiritual genealogy of some of this mystical material. It is not clear which French book Yitzḥak had in mind, although several researchers have offered answers. Johann Christoph Wolf, the first scholar to mention Yitzḥak’s foreword, suggested that he was referring to Jacques Gaffarel (1601– 1681), Curiositez inouyes sur la sculpture talismanique des Persans, horoscope des Patriarches et lecture des estoiles (Paris: Hervé du Mesnil, 1629).⁴⁸ While meditating extensively on angelology, astrology, magic, and the history and significance of languages, especially Hebrew, the scholar and priest Gaffarel occasionally cited Kabbalah and material from the Raziel or Solomonic corpora. He discussed different rabbinic or kabbalistic ways of playing with the Hebrew letters, such as gematriah (dealing with the numerical values of the letters), notarikon (using the first and last letters of words to derive other words) and temurah (letter substitution to derive other words) and offered some examples of angelic writing. Gaffarel’s book enjoyed tremendous success.⁴⁹ François Secret proposed that Yitzḥak’s reference was to Claude Duret (1570 – 1611), Thrésor [sic] de l’Histoire des Langues de Cest Univers, contenant les origines, beautés … décadences, mutations … et ruines des langues hébraïque, chananéenne … etc., les langues des animaux et oiseaux (Cologny [Geneva]: Matth. Berjon, 1613).⁵⁰ Before learning of Secret’s opinion I arrived at the same conclusion. The first part of the title is closer to the one given by Yitzḥak than that of any other printed book dealing with this magical material in French that I could find, espe-

 Johann Christoph Wolf et al., Bibliotheca Hebraea (Hamburg and Leipzig, 1715 – 1733), vol. 1, 112; Saverio Campanini, “The Quest for the Holiest Alphabet in the Renaissance,” in A Universal Art: Hebrew Grammar across Disciplines and Faiths, ed. Nadia Vidro, Irene E. Zwiep, and Judith Olszowy-Schlanger (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 200n12. The full text of Gaffarel’s book can be found at https://archive.org/details/hin-wel-all-00000773-001/page/n706.  On Gaffarel, see Hiro Hirai, ed., Jacques Gaffarel: Between Magic and Science (Pisa: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2014); Saverio Campanini, “Eine späte Apologie der Kabbala: Die Abdita divinae Cabalae Mysteria des Jacques Gaffarel,” in Topik und Tradition: Prozesse der Neuordnung von Wissensüberlieferungen des 13. bis 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. Thomas Frank, Ursula Kocher, and Ulrike Tarnow (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 325 – 51.  François Secret, “Sur quelques traductions du Sefer Razi’el,” Revue des Études Juives 128 (1969): 223 – 45.

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cially if one imagines that Yitzḥak playfully, mistakenly, or unconsciously transposed the French Thrésor into the Hebrew tziyur. Duret, a judge, a botanist, and a scholar was a follower of Francesco Giorgi, a Neoplatonic friar from Venice, whose work was heavily influenced by Kabbalah.⁵¹ The enormous, widely distributed, and syncretistic Thrésor de l’Histoire des Langues de Cest Univers included a great deal of Jewish Kabbalah and Christian Cabala. Duret included several illustrations of esoteric Hebrew alphabets used for composing talismans or sigils. He claimed that one such alphabet was taught to Adam by “the angel Raphiel,” referencing the Italian humanist Theseus Ambrosius (b. 1469), who had included that alphabet in his Introductio ad chaldaicam linguam (1539), where he attributed it to the Book of Fire (Liber ignis), associated with the angel Raphiel.⁵² Thus there is an explicit overlap of material between our printed Sefer Raziel and Duret’s text. The latter had been cited by Menasseh ben Israel and perhaps a copy, whether belonging to Ben Israel or not, remained in Amsterdam and was seen by Yitzḥak.⁵³ Beyond wishing to correct false Christian presentations of Kabbalah, Yitzḥak’s foreword to Sefer Raziel offers us further substantive understanding of his spiritual-intellectual orientation and intentions. He noted that he was aware that, as the midrash states, some believe that the angels were reassigned (‫ )התחלפו‬following the destruction of the Temple.⁵⁴ Further, he wrote, such naysayers do not understand that the angels are always coming and going and replacing one another in their shifts and assignments. Hence those who call on them must know and be attentive to the times and seasons (in this Sefer Raziel served as a necessary aid). The Temple’s destruction introduced nothing new in this eternal circulation. Similarly, Yitzḥak preemptively rebutted the opinion of those who insisted that anyone who dwelled on such celestial matters was a heretic who denied the Torah of Moses and the prophets. He lamented such nonsense, as he contended, sounding very much like many devotees of Kabbalah,

 Allison Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614 – 1698) (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 92.  A reprint edition of Duret’s work (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1972) can be viewed online in its entirety at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k4386k/f3.item.r=.zoom. Tables of angelic alphabets appear on 117, 119, 124, and 126; an Enochian alphabet on 127; two Solomonic alphabets on 131; the alphabet of Appolonius of Tyana (first-century Neoplatonic philosopher to whom talismans were later attributed) on 132.  Menasseh ben Israel, Esperança de Israel (Amsterdam: Semuel ben Israel Soeiro, 1650), 105.  Yitzḥak cites Lamentations 2:1 (‫)השׁליך משׁמים ארץ‬. I could not find anything relevant in the midrash. Perhaps he was referring to Zohar Ḥadash, Midrash ha-Ne’elam, on Song of Songs, #51– 53, which describes how various classes of angels ceased their functions in the wake of the Temple’s destruction. However, this material does not cite the verse in Lamentations.

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that the goal of Kabbalah was the very purpose of the Torah.⁵⁵ Once the mystic masters the heavenly secrets “his status will be greater than [that of] the angels,” whereas one who masters the material in Sefer Raziel, “God will be with him. And he will be like Enoch, whom God took.” Even just having the book in one’s house, near one’s valuables, he wrote, brings about apotropaic divine help.⁵⁶ In his foreword to Zohar Ḥadash, Yitzḥak waxed eloquent about the continuing debased state of the Jews and/or Judaism. He resorted to the polemical ancient and medieval anti-Christian trope of the maidservant and her mistress, where the maidservant represented the Jews/Judaism and the mistress Christianity. According to Yitzḥak, sounding again like many committed kabbalists, the maidservant “has no comfort other than at the hands of the masters of the secrets of Torah/‫אין לה נייחא אלא ע’’י מארי דסתרי תורה‬,” that is, the kabbalists.⁵⁷ Telling older readers that they, too, could learn the deep wisdom and secrets of Kabbalah, he suggested that they might do so even without an expert rabbi to instruct them. He listed a number of mystical works that could be read as part of a self-directed program of study, “and above them all” his own “respected book Sefer Raziel the Great,” which he obviously considered kabbalistic and zoharic.⁵⁸ In the final paragraph of the foreword, which focused on Sefer Raziel, Yitzḥak concluded by quoting at length from the Zohar (parshat bereshit, 1:37b) on the verse “this is the book of the generations of Adam (Gen. 5:1),” the source for the idea of a celestial book given to Adam. In line with messianic claims long made by admirers of the Zohar and then Lurianic Kabbalah, he noted that the redemptive revelation of the mysteries now hidden from us will come by means of Sefer Raziel. Yitzḥak was clearly offering reasons for printing what Saverio Campanini rightfully called this “far from unproblematic publication.”⁵⁹ When the two producers of Sefer Raziel described themselves as “youths” or “humble,” it may have been more than the typical self-deprecation of holy men. Despite the faddish popularity throughout Europe of the occult, Kabbalah, and magic, it is important to keep in mind that many authorities in the Jewish world and beyond opposed such interests and endeavors, an opposition fueled by the back-

 Foreword of the presenter (‫)בעל המגיהה‬, Zeh Sifra de-Adam Kadma’a (Amsterdam: Mosseh b. Avraham Mendes Coutinho, 1701), 1.  Foreword of the presenter, Zeh Sifra de-Adam Kadma’a, 2.  Foreword of the presenter, Zohar Ḥadash (Amsterdam: Mosseh b. Avraham Mendes Coutinho, 1701), 2a.  Foreword of the presenter, Zohar Ḥadash, 2b.  Campanini, “Quest for the Holiest Alphabet,” 200n12.

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lash against Sabbatianism in the seventeenth century. The publication of books of Kabbalah was sometimes opposed because it permitted esoteric material to reach a wider and often unlearned audience, and the printing of works of practical Kabbalah aroused even greater suppression.⁶⁰ Indeed, the contemporary German bibliographer Johann Christoph Wolf, writing at the latest in 1715, mentioned that “The Jews did not approve of [Sefer Raziel’s] publication to such an extent that I have heard some thought about burning and suppressing it.”⁶¹ Intriguingly, thus, while there were approbations for Zohar Ḥadash by R. Selomoh de Oliveyra (Amsterdam), R. Solomon b. R. Ya’akov Aaillion (Amsterdam), R. Moshe Yehuda b. R. Kalonymus Ha-Kohen (Amsterdam), R. Yosef Shmuel of Crakow (Frankfurt am Main), R. Gavriel b. R. [Yehuda Leib Eskeles (‫])עשׂקעלעס‬ of Crakow (Metz), R. Efraim Radosh (‫( )רעדשׁ‬Lissa), R. Shemaya b. R. Abraham Yissachar Ber (Berlin), R. Yehuda Leib b. R. Moshe (Gross-Glogau, in Silesia), and R. Meir [b. R. Abraham] Meroiznitz (‫)מרויזניץ‬, temporarily of Wesel and Kleve (?) only those of Moshe ha-Kohen, Yosef Shmuel, Gavriel Eskeles, and Meir Meroiznitz noted that their views extended to Sefer Raziel as well.⁶² In other words, neither of the Sephardic rabbis and only a few of the Ashkenazic ones wrote approbations for Sefer Raziel. ⁶³ Interestingly, in their praise the two  Yaacob Dweck, The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); J. H. (Yossi) Chajes, “‘Too Holy to Print’: Taboo Anxiety and the Publishing of Practical Hebrew Esoterica,” Jewish History 26 (2012): 247– 62.  Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea, vol. 1, 112; cited and translated in Chajes, “‘Too Holy to Print,’” 254– 55. According to Chajes, Scholem points this out in his marginal notes to his copy of the first edition; reproduced in The Library of Gershom Scholem on Jewish Mysticism Catalogue, ed. Joseph Dan et al. (Jerusalem: The Jewish National and University Press, 1999), vol. 1, 369b (#4821).  I could find no evidence of explicit or extensive kabbalistic interest on the part of these rabbis. Gavriel Eskeles (1655 – 1718), student of Aaron Samuel Kaidanover (or Koidonover), served as the rabbi of several cities, including Metz. In his sermons, he popularized kabbalistic ideas; see, for instance, his Emunat Shmuel (1683). Eskeles was renowned as a talmudist. When he became head of the yeshiva in Nikolsburg (after 1709) he issued a ban on the Sabbatian Nehemia Ḥayon (in 1712) and expelled kabbalists and Sabbatians from the town.  A decade later, the “ethnic” configuration was reversed. As David Sclar puts it, the controversy around the Sabbatian Neḥemiah Ḥiya Ḥayon “exhibited a sharp ethnic divide: the Ashkenazic rabbis of Amsterdam, Ḥakham Ẓevi Ashkenazi and Moses Ḥagiz, came down hard on Ḥayon and his Sephardic enthusiasts, and the latter responded by running Ḥakham Ẓevi and Ḥagiz out of town.” In the 1730s, the Ashkenazic rabbinic opponents of Moshe Ḥayyim Luzzatto “urged the Amsterdam rabbinates to guard their print shops, indicating that [they] distrusted Portuguese judgment.” Sclar, “Adaptation and Acceptance,” 340, 356– 57. On the other hand, the Prague rabbi Naftali Katz, on meeting Ḥayon and his Venetian scribe, Yehuda Peretz b. Yosef when they came through Prague in 1712, avowed that “it is my way since then to draw close to Sephardim, all the more so to their scholars.” Naftali Katz, Le-Einei Kol Yisrael, quoted

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Sephardic rabbis mentioned only Mendes Coutinho, whereas the Ashkenazic rabbis referred only to Yitzḥak b. Avraham, indicating clearly which of the men involved with the publication had requested approval from whom.

A Project to Print Kabbalah? Mendes Coutinho and Yitzḥak seem to have been collaborators in a project to bring Jewish mysticism to public awareness. Many of the books that Mendes Coutinho published were works of Kabbalah or had kabbalistic elements. The network of associates with whom Mendes Coutinho cooperated in the printing of his works included individuals with kabbalistic interests. R. Ze’ev Wulf b. R. Shmuel of Yaroslav penned two commentaries printed by Mendes Coutinho in 1709, one to Pirke Avot and one to the prayers. Several years earlier Ze’ev Wulf had helped finance – and perhaps had been an editor and proofreader of – a reprint of the Shnei Luḥot ha-Brit (Amsterdam: Imanuel b. Yosef Attias, 1698), as well as of an abridged edition of the same work (Amsterdam: Imanuel b. Yosef Attias, 1701).⁶⁴ R. Elyakim b. Ya’akov of Komarna, who worked with Mendes Coutinho on a number of texts, produced an anthology of passages from the Shnei Luḥot ha-Brit to be recited or studied by the bedside of a person who is dying.⁶⁵ Tzvi Hirsch Ḥotsch was another figure with kabbalistic interests (I discuss him below). Mendes Coutinho seems to have been interested in producing both central as well as more marginal works of Kabbalah. Apart from the unconventional Sefer Raziel (which, it must be kept in mind, Yitzḥak understood to be a kabbalistic work), in 1709 he printed Shlomo Molcho’s Sefer ha-Mefo’ar, a previously issued work by a controversial figure with strongly messianic inclinations. Many kabbalists, especially in the wake of Shabtai Tzvi, campaigned for even wider circulation of kabbalistic works and urged even lay Jews to study Kabbalah. It would seem that Yitzḥak seemed to be doing this when he urged the elderly (and uneducated?) to study Kabbalah and called upon individual Jews to study Kabbalah on their own. Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ḥotsch of Cracow, au-

in Gal Sofer, “The Hebrew Manuscripts of Mafte’aḥ Shelomoh and an Inquiry into the Magic of the Sabbateans” [Hebrew], Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 32 (2014): 171.  Ze’ev Wulf’s son Jacob Kopel had prepared Mendes Coutinho’s 1701 edition of Nathan Nata Hannover’s glossary of mostly biblical words, Safah Berurah. Although Hannover was a student of Kabbalah, his glossary seems not to have had a kabbalistic aspect. See Shimeon Brisman, History and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances (Hoboken: KTAV, 2000), 44– 45.  Sefer Refu’ot Nefesh (Wilhermsdorf: Tzvi Hirsch, 1712).

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thor of a 1706 commentary to the Tikkunei Zohar (mentioned above), also produced a Yiddish adaptation of the Zohar, Naḥalat Tzvi (Frankfurt, 1711), in which he declared that “everyone should study Kabbalah according to his perception and comprehension.”⁶⁶

A Sabbatian Connection? Shabtai Tzvi’s deep involvement with the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah is well known. Even after the conversion and death of their master, Sabbatians maintained this passion, many engaging as well in practical Kabbalah, as did Tzvi himself. Might the interest of the two producers of Sefer Raziel and Zohar Ḥadash in publishing Kabbalah be connected to the afterlife of the Sabbatian fervor in Amsterdam and the continued hopes for redemption circulating in the Jewish world? Both circumstantial and personal connections are evident. Scholars note that Sabbatians were often vocal advocates of teaching the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah even to those who were not among the intellectual elite, including women. Moreover, Sabbatians often believed that these texts contained a theurgic power linked to the hoped-for redemption.⁶⁷ Solomon Aaillion, who wrote in praise of Zohar Ḥadash, was a Sabbatian, although it is not clear whether he was known as such, as his Sabbatian loyalties erupted in public only a decade later, in 1713 – 1714.⁶⁸ Why he did not offer an approbation for Sefer Raziel cannot be determined. However, we are aware of further connections between Mendes Coutinho and Sabbatianism. Tzvi Hirsch Ḥotsch, the publisher of the 1706 edition of the Tikkunei Zohar printed by Mendes Coutinho, was a Sabbatian, and the commen-

 Jean Baumgarten, “Yiddish Ethical Texts and the Diffusion of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem 18 (2007): 86. Matt Goldish adds to this sense of a trend: in this period “a whole series of Northern Italian kabbalists, particularly from the circle of R. Judah Briel and his students, wrote introductions to Kabbalah study for the neophyte. In Amsterdam, R. Moses Zacuto dedicated much of his energy to spreading the practice of Lurianic practices” (personal communication; July 2019).  Boaz Huss, The Zohar: Reception and Impact, trans. Yudith Nave (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2016), ch. 6.  Scholars agree regarding Aaillion’s Sabbatianism. See Meir Benayahu, “The Sabbatean Movement in Greece” [Hebrew], Sefunot 14 (1971): 147– 60. Benayahu quoted Moshe Ḥagiz, who contended that Aaillion’s Sabbatianism was known even to those who asked him to serve as rabbi in London and Amsterdam, but that they looked the other way. Benayahu interpreted this to mean that either they did not take his faith seriously or felt that he had repented of it (157– 58).

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tary he penned for his edition, named Ḥemdat Tzvi, contained “clear Sabbatian allusions.” According to Gershom Scholem, this was the first publication in which the fairly well-known kabbalist Ḥotsch revealed his Sabbatian leanings.⁶⁹ Elliot Wolfson notes that the frontispiece for this 1706 edition includes several Sabbatian allusions. Among them is a depiction in the page’s top frame of two deer holding a crown on which there is a quote from Isaiah 28:5, a verse often used to refer to Shabtai Tzvi’s messianic incarnation.⁷⁰ This Sabbatian frontispiece suggests that Ḥotsch and Mendes Coutinho most likely discussed the book’s images and texts, as I assume that the latter would have communicated with the engraver who produced the page.⁷¹

 Boaz Huss, “The Text and Context of the 1684 Sulzbach Edition of the Zohar,” in Tradition, Heterodoxy, and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period, ed. Chanita R. Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2007), 131– 32; quote from 132. See also Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1995 [1946]), 421n74; idem, “The Sabbatian Movement in Poland” [Hebrew], in The House of Israel in Poland [Hebrew], ed. Yisrael Heilpern (Jerusalem: Youth Dept. of the Zionist Organisation, 1954), vol. 2, 55; idem, “Chotsch, Ẓevi Hirsch ben Jerahmeel,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Cecil Roth et al. (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), vol. 4, 502– 503. Huss gives his name as Chotesh. Scholem states that Ḥotsch evidently belonged to the circle of the well-known Sabbatian activist Heschel Tzoref; see Scholem, “Sabbatian Movement in Poland,” 55. On Ḥotsch’s 1711 Yiddish adaptation of the Zohar, see Baumgarten, “Yiddish Ethical Texts,” 84– 90.  Elliot R. Wolfson, “The Engenderment of Messianic Politics: Symbolic Significance of Sabbatai Sevi’s Coronation,” in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schäfer and Mark R. Cohen (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 252– 55.  The rabbis who gave approbations to this printing (probably without ever seeing the frontispiece and likely without having read Ḥotsch’s commentary carefully) were all Ashkenazim and included some of the same rabbis who provided approbations for Mendes Coutinho’s Zohar Ḥadash and Sefer Raziel (R. Moshe Yehuda b. R. Kalonymus Ha-Kohen, the only one of these rabbis living in Amsterdam, R. Gavriel b. R. Yehuda Leib [Eskeles], and R. Yehuda Leib b. R. Moshe). Ḥotsch opened the second section of his foreword with an allusion to Shabtai Tzvi (he rearranged the words of the verse “This is the gateway to the Lord, the righteous will enter through it/‫[ ”זה השׁער לה’ צדיקים יבאו בו‬Ps. 118:20] as ‫ צדיקים בו יבאו‬so that the letters tzadi, bet, and yod, enlarged, would spell out tzvi). He then proceeded to lavish praise on the workers of Mendes Coutinho’s press, who worked tirelessly to complete the printing (‫הפועלים‬ ‫ ואת אשׁר יכינו היום יביאו מחר מנחה‬.‫אצים למלאכתם לכלות מעשׂיהם דבר יום ביומו על מזבח הדפוס להעלה‬ ‫ גם להשׁקות המים גם דלה דלה‬.‫ וגם להגיה מרישׁא לסיפא עלי הזה מטולא‬.‫)בלולה‬. When describing his own lengthy and detailed toil – the first printing in Fürth was interrupted by a fire from which the manuscript was miraculously saved – he seemed to include the printers in his thanks to God (‫ על שׁלחן מלכי דרבנן עולה‬.‫( )האומנים עלי תולע‬6a–b). In a brief closing statement at the end of the text, the only people whom Ḥotsch thanks by name for their assistance in the printing process are Ashkenazim: ‫ האלוף הקצין והנעלה‬R. Naftali Hertz b. Moshe of Hanover and ‫האלוף הקצין‬ R. Yosef Hanover b. Shlomo (162a). On the final page, after the errata, in the colophon marking the completion of the printing, written by either the typesetter or Mendes Coutinho himself, the

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Other connections to Sabbatianism are more tenuous. R. Moshe Yehuda b. R. Kalonymus Ha-Kohen (Amsterdam), who wrote approbations for Zohar Ḥadash/Sefer Raziel and another of Mendes Coutinho’s publications, along with several other rabbis who supported the publication of Zohar Ḥadash – Shlomo de Oliveyra, Shlomo Aaillion, Yosef Shmuel of Cracow, and Gavriel b. Yehuda Leib Eskeles – also praised R. Abraham b. Levi Conque or Cuenque’s commentaries and sermons, Avak Sofrim (Amsterdam: Netaniel Foa, 1704). Cuenque was an ardent supporter of Shabtai Tzvi, remaining a follower even after Tzvi’s conversion to Islam. Cuenque’s 1689 recollections of Shabtai Tzvi were excerpted in Ya’akov Emden’s Torat ha-Kena’ot (Altona, 1752), but it is not clear whether his Sabbatian views were known during his lifetime. The title page of Avak Sofrim mentioned Abraham and Ya’akov Pereira, who had funded a yeshiva in Hebron, whence Cuenque came, and Abraham, at least, had been a supporter of Shabtai Tzvi in Amsterdam. In 1713 Eskeles insisted that the approbations for two works of the Sabbatian Ḥayon attributed to him had been forged and that he was horrified to find out that a new book of Ḥayon’s had been published (in 1711).⁷² However, there is also some evidence that links Mendes Coutinho’s partners with opponents of Shabtai Tzvi. The man who brought Shlomo Molcho’s Sefer haMefo’ar for publication (this was the second edition) to Mendes Coutinho in 1709 and financed the work, R. Yeḥiel b. Tzvi of Kovel/Kavela (Volhya Oblast, northwest Ukraine), wrote a heavily eschatological foreword to the volume in which he noted that R. Nathan Neta Shapira hinted at and R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller stated explicitly that 1724 would be the year of the redemption. In that year, as it turned out, the “preacher (mokhiah) and peddler” Yehuda Leib b. Yakov Holleschau Prossnitz, who traveled through Moravia and Silesia, and was supposedly “converted” to Sabbatian beliefs by none other than Tzvi Hirsch Ḥotsch in 1696, proclaimed himself Messiah son of Yosef.⁷³ This does not necessarily mean that Yeḥiel b. Tzvi or those who declared 1724 the year of redemption

following men are thanked: ‫ האלוף הראשׁ והקצין‬R. Anshel b. Avraham Charlover (‫)שׁרלוויר‬, ‫האלוף‬ ‫ התורני הראשׁ והקצין‬R. Leib b. Yoḥanan Luria and his brother-in-law or son-in-law ‫האלוף הקצין‬ Yuzpe (?) Katz b. ‫ האלוף הראשׁ והקצין הפרנס והמנהיג‬R. Mordeḥai Katz (164b), none of whom I could identify. None of these last men are named as printers. Were these five men, all Ashkenazim, the book’s sponsors?  Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 119, 121, 124.  Jean Baumgarten, “The Printing of Yiddish Books in Frankfurt-on-the-Main (17th and 18th Centuries),” Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (online) 20 (2009): 7, http:// journals.openedition.org/bcrfj/6225, from whom the quotes are taken; Gershom Scholem, “Prossnitz, Judah Leib ben Jacob Holleschau,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Cecil Roth et al. (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), vol. 13, 1240 – 41.

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were expressing a Sabbatian hope. Yeḥiel arranged for a second edition of the Hebrew translation of various zoharic passages, Me’ulefet Sapirim (Amsterdam: Casper Steen, 1703) by R. Nissim Shlomo Algazi, who had been one of the staunchest opponents of Shabtai Tzvi.⁷⁴ Owing to the anti-Sabbatian attitude of the Portuguese Jewish leadership and the general tendency of Jews to eliminate evidence of Sabbatianism, little is known about the extent of Sabbatian fervor in Amsterdam in the second half of the seventeenth century.⁷⁵ A group of Sabbatians met regularly at least into the early 1670s (Tzvi apostatized in 1666 and died in 1676), included the wealthy merchant Abraham Pereyra and the poet Daniel Levi de Barrios, who joined in 1674. A controversy about an unusual kabbalistic prayer custom erupted in Amsterdam in 1706 and a far more serious scandal regarding Sabbatianism in 1713 culminated in the termination of the appointment of Rabbi Solomon Aaillion. These constitute some of the only public manifestations of Sabbatianism in Amsterdam within the time frame of this study. Gal Sofer shows that a number of eighteenth-century Sabbatians helped produce and made use of manuscripts of the Solomonic material known as mafte’aḥ shlomo (the key or clavicle of Solomon), and thus that kabbalists and Sabbatians shared an interest in practical Kabbalah.⁷⁶ Yet nothing within Sefer Raziel itself indicates a definite Sabbatian connection. If the publication of Sefer Raziel and Zohar Ḥadash was motivated by Sabbatian leanings, the evidence, while suggestive, remains inferential.

Sefer Raziel and Its Inter- and Intra-Communal Contexts Various elements in the text convince me that in publishing Sefer Raziel the publisher and/or printer demonstrated a rather scientific consciousness, combining historicist awareness and critical textual skills. A similar consciousness can also be seen in the 1684 Sulzbach publication of the Zohar (which was produced by Christians in collaboration with Jews).⁷⁷ I frame the forewords of Yitzḥak and the  Jacob Barnai, Sabbateanism: Social Perspectives [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2000), 27, 95, 147.  See Yosef Kaplan, “Attitude of the Leadership of the Portuguese Community in Amsterdam to the Sabbatean Movement, 1665 – 1671” [Hebrew], Zion (1974): 198 – 216, esp. 211; Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626 – 1676 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 762– 63.  Sofer, “Hebrew Manuscripts of Mafte’aḥ Shelomoh.”  Huss, “Text and Context.”

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book’s redactorial context within the larger orbit of Lurianic Kabbalah’s attractiveness for natural scientists and its complementary parallels with natural science.⁷⁸ Sefer Raziel, itself including texts of practical Kabbalah and magic, is not Lurianic Kabbalah, although its formulae for manipulating things in the world and its strongly visual aspects (such as angelic writing, symbols or images to be copied, schematic renderings) certainly might have made its editor and publisher think of it as a contribution to scientific knowledge. Like so many magical and scientific texts, Sefer Raziel assumed and demanded from readers objective discernment of the world and provided efficacious ways of manipulating it. The text expected that readers would conduct experiments, as it were, on its basis. All this helps us imagine how Yitzḥak and Mendes Coutinho might have understood the necessity of getting the text right as a theosophical and theurgic obligation. Perhaps they knew of and were even influenced by Knorr von Rosenroth’s publication of his unprecedentedly bold visual renderings of kabbalistic ideas in Kabbala denudata (1684)? From the list of other publications in which Yitzḥak and Mendes Coutinho were involved it is hard to discern any strong inclination toward science in its secular or Christian form, other than a few dictionaries or word lists. In his foreword to Sefer Raziel, Yitzḥak offered a hint about his stance. As he cited from classical rabbinic opinion, all of the mitzvot have a double aspect: pleasure but also spiritual redemption: This is what was said: “The hidden things belong to God” [Deut. 29:28]. In order to cleave to God. “And the revealed things are for us and our children” [ibid]. To give us pleasure in this world, when the son and father are united. But in the world to come each tzadik has a torch of his own. And it also hints at body and soul. And in gematria nature (ha-teva) is the throne of god (elohim), for this world was created by/through the name of god (elohim), as it is written “In the beginning god created …” [Gen. 1:1]. Elohim in gematria is nature. For this world was spoken [into being] by/through nature/‫זהו מה שׁאמר הנסתרות לה’ לדבק‬ ‫לה’ והנגלות לנו ולבנינו להנאותינו בעולם הזה כשׁיהיה הבן והאב כאחד אבל בעלמא דאתו כל צדיק ישׁ לו‬ ‫מדור בפני עצמו ועוד רמז לנ’’ו ובגימ’ הטבע כסו אלהים שׁעה’’ז נברא בשׁם אלהים כמ’’שׁ בראשׁית ברא‬ ‫( אלהים בגמטריא הטבע שׁעה’’ז נדבר ע’’י טבע‬2).

In a confrontation with a seemingly dualistic existence in which the invisible is the metaphysical/spiritual and the visible is the known physical universe, Kabbalah teaches that all is one. In this two-level, bidirectional chain of cause and

 J. H. (Yossi) Chajes, “Kabbalah and the Diagrammatic Phase of the Scientific Revolution,” in Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Adam Shear, and Elchanan Reiner (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press/Hebrew Union College, 2014), 109 – 23.

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effect, the natural world and our sins leave us in a one-dimensional state of loss. Our only hope is to regain the whole through wisdom, through cleaving to the divine aspect of existence. This means shattering the kelipot (shells, obstacles) “through the sweat of pilpul,” the sharp analytical dialectics usually meant to indicate halakhic study and disputation rather than the mystical study entailed in Kabbalah. The sweat of Torah study reverses the biblical curse of being able to obtain bread only through the sweat of earthly labor, enabling us instead to reassemble the broken whole of material existence by means of learning the divine wisdom through which existence was made possible.⁷⁹ The other means of repair is weeping. These two (seemingly contrasting) classical kabbalistic – and rabbinic – methods held the promise for Yitzḥak and his readers of attaining the secrets of the universe. Nature, a permutation of elohim, would be rectified by means of the theosophical wisdom of the divine science, Kabbalah, and the theurgic knowledge of practical Kabbalah.⁸⁰ Yitzḥak’s words here echo those of other admirers of the Razielic corpus and reflect the ubiquitous early modern comingling of mysticism, magic, and natural science. An introductory letter to a 1564 Latin translation of Sefer Raziel discussed “how inferior nature can be purged by an artificial fire that betroths it to the superior realm; this is the work of inferior astronomy, of Kabbalah.”⁸¹ In language also reminiscent of Yitzḥak’s, the English Henry More cited Knorr von Rosenroth as his source for the idea of kabbalistic integration of the natural and divine elements of the material world, the latter of which comprises “the vehicle of the holy spirit, and truly that heavenly manna, which is the food and bread of

 For slightly later expressions of the importance of labor in the thought of the Italian kabbalists Moshe Ḥayyim Luzzatto and Moshe David Valle, see Jonathan Garb, “The Circle of Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto in Its Eighteenth-Century Context,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 44, no. 2 (2011): 189 – 202.  Yitzḥak’s recourse to the equation of Elohim/God and nature makes him an heir to a kabbalistic outlook also held by Abraham Abulafia and Joseph Gikatilla, among others. See Moshe Idel, “‘Deus Sive Natura’: The Metamorphosis of a Dictum from Maimonides to Spinoza,” in Maimonides and the Sciences, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Hillel Levine (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), 87– 110. Yet in another register it makes him a contemporary of Jewish thinkers influenced by humanism and deism, such as David Nieto. See, e. g., Matt Goldish, “The Spirit of the Eighteenth Century in the Anti-Sabbatean Polemics of Hakham David Nieto,” in Legacies of Richard Popkin, ed. Jeremy Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2010), 229 – 43.  Susanna Åkerman, “Queen Christina’s Latin Sefer-ha-Raziel Manuscript,” in Judeo-Christian Intellectual Culture in the Seventeenth Century: A Celebration of the Library of Narcissus Marsh (1638 – 1713), ed. Allison P. Coudert, Sarah Hutton, Richard H. Popkin, and Gordon M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 20.

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holy souls and angels.”⁸² A different parallel can be found in the kabbalistically (or cabalistically)-inclined Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), whose imagined utopia in the Pacific, Bensalem, had an ancient wise king named Salomona, who founded a scientific order or society. The Bensalem representative linked his country’s scientific society to lost Solomonic wisdom. It was named Salomon’s House, he thought, not after their ancient King Salomona but after Solomon “the King of the Hebrewes,” as the inhabitants of this wise state “have some Parts of his Works, which with you are lost; Namely that Naturall History, which hee wrote of all Plants, from the Cedar of Libanus, to the Mosse that groweth out of the Wall; And of all things that have Life and Motion.” The magicalmystical Solomonic corpus was turned by Bacon’s Bensalem spokesperson into a font of natural science. In his preface, Bacon described the scientific society as humanistic, dedicated “for the Interpreting of Nature, and the Producing of Great and Marvellous Works for the Benefit of Men,” but within the text a representative of Bensalem considers its mission theological: “dedicated to the Study of the Works, and Creatures of God.” This tension in Bacon’s text regarding science’s proper domain reflects widespread seventeenth-century debates.⁸³ Yitzḥak’s formulation sounds like a refutation of Bacon’s experimental scientific approach, remaining thoroughly religious and metaphysical, insisting against critics that practical Kabbalah comprises the true and only salvific version of experimental science. The producers of Sefer Raziel seemed anxious to legitimate their decision to move such previously esoteric and ambivalently perceived illustrations into the very public realm of print. They might have been responding to Christian attacks on Jewish magical “superstition.”⁸⁴ Or, contrarily, they might have been ad-

 Translated in Sarah Hutton, “Henry More, Anne Conway and the Kabbalah: A Cure for the Kabbalist Nightmare?” in Judeo-Christian Intellectual Culture in the Seventeenth Century: A Celebration of the Library of Narcissus Marsh (1638 – 1713), ed. Allison P. Coudert, Sarah Hutton, Richard H. Popkin, and Gordon M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 31.  Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (London, 1627); repr. in Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, ed. Sara H. Mendelson (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2016), quotes on 169, 184 (italics in the original). Bacon’s imagined society is said to have served as the model for the English Royal Society (1662).  Numerous seventeenth-century Christian thinkers critiqued or ridiculed Kabbalah. In England, differently motivated and inclined opponents included Thomas Browne, Isaac Casaubon, Margaret Cavendish, and even, in his own way, Henry More. See C. Perrin Radley, “Margaret Cavendish’s Cabbala: The Empress and the Spirits in The Blazing World,” in God and Nature in the Thought of Margaret Cavendish, ed. Brandie R. Siegfried and Lisa T. Sarasohn (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), 161– 70; and Sara Mendelson, “Margaret Cavendish and the Jews,” in ibid., 178 – 81. Such rhetoric even found its way into legislation. For instance, clauses of a 1655 agree-

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dressing Christian Cabala’s “hostile takeover of this entire segment of Jewish tradition.”⁸⁵ As discussed, Yitzḥak referenced the French edition of Tziyur Otiyot. Rosicrucian thinkers and other Christians read Sefer Raziel with interest.⁸⁶ Gaffarel’s text, mentioned above, became widely popular, which, it is easy to imagine, galled an “authentic” kabbalist such as Yitzḥak. Mendes Coutinho and/or Yitzḥak might have known that Christian cabalists frequently used Kabbalah as a means of converting Jews, as was explicitly acknowledged by Von Rosenroth in the first volume of his Kabbala denudata (Sulzbach, 1677).⁸⁷ It seems plausible that Yitzḥak and/or Mendes Coutinho were familiar with some trends in Christian Cabala.

Conclusion I have described here a specific example of intra-Jewish cooperation in the production of kabbalistic works. Two bibliophiles, one Sephardic and one Ashkenazic, came together in Amsterdam to produce kabbalistic and magical texts not just for commercial reasons, but in order to bring about what they understood as Jewish and human advancement. The Sephardic printer Mosseh Mendes Coutinho collaborated with a notably extensive network of Ashkenazic Jews and seems to have been quite eager to help circulate Kabbalah in cooperation with them.

ment allowing Jews to settle in the Dutch town of Middelburg forbade them from using Christians as servants, prohibited “kabbalistic magic” or other Jewish superstitions, lest Christians be exposed to them, and banned polygamy and marriage between “close grades of relations,” as marriage between cousins was common among Sephardim. See J. H. van ‘t Hoff, “De vroegere Portugeesch-Joodsche gemeente en de kerkeraad der hervormde gemeente te Middelburg,” in Archief uitgegeven door het Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Wetenschappen (Middelburg: J. C. & W. Altorffer, 1922), 19.  Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry, 104– 105, treats the wider context of Christian interloping into the publication of Kabbalah; the quote is from Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755 – 1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 84. See also Huss, “Text and Context.” This would hardly have been the first Jewish response to Christian Hebraism; see, for instance, Miriam Bodian, “The Biblical ‘Jewish Republic’ and the Dutch ‘New Israel’ in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Thought,” Hebraic Political Studies 1, no. 2 (2006): 186 – 202.  Åkerman, “Queen Christina’s Latin Sefer ha-Raziel Manuscript,” 13. Scholars such as Frances Yates have connected Bacon to the Rosicrucians. His New Atlantis revels in the angelic.  Huss, “Text and Context,” 125 – 26; Coudert, Impact of the Kabbalah, 112– 24.

8 Kabbalah and Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Amsterdam

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Gad Freudenthal reminds us of the important financial challenges of book production in this era, where printers often could not choose what to publish.⁸⁸ However, some printers seem to have been able to and/or chose to focus on specific themes.⁸⁹ Mosseh Mendes Coutinho seems to have chosen or financed some of his own publications, perhaps made possible by his father-in-law’s wealth. It seems difficult to believe that the large number of his kabbalistic publications had nothing to do with his personal inclinations. It is plausible that his interest in mysticism was known and/or that he developed a reputation for printing works with kabbalistic leanings, which was the reason that so many such projects were brought to him. Whereas some kabbalists and Sabbatians shared an interest in practical Kabbalah, it cannot be definitively proven that Sefer Raziel originated from Sabbatian motivations, although indirect evidence suggests that this is possible. In at least one text, Sefer Raziel, Yitzḥak of Neustadt and Mendes Coutinho expressed an awareness of contemporary intellectual-spiritual trends and a sense of historiographical and theosophical accuracy. Although they thought comparatively, however, their caution, if not negativity, vis-à-vis Christian Cabala and influence comes across strongly. In the case of Mendes Coutinho, Yitzḥak of Neustadt, and their networks, the effort to promote the advancement of knowledge and to contest Christian cabalistic misreadings of Kabbalah connected Sephardim and Ashkenazim in a way similar to the manner in which Sabbatianism may have brought them together. On another level, both trends, Kabbalah and Sabbatianism, helped bring Sephardim and Ashkenazim to what Matthias Lehmann calls pan-Judaism, a sense of a single Jewish nation.⁹⁰

 Gad Freudenthal, “Court Jews, Printers, Book Publishing, and the Beginning of the Haskalah in the German Lands: The Life History of the Wulffian Printing Press as a Case-Study,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 12, no. 1 (2008): 47– 48.  David Sclar, “Books in the Ets Haim Yeshivah: Acquisition, Publishing, and a Community of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam,” Jewish History 30 (2016): 207– 32, gives examples.  Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014).

Martin Stechauner

9 Vienna

A Cultural Contact Zone between Sephardim and Ashkenazim When we think about the history of Jews in Vienna, we generally perceive the former Habsburg capital as a major center of Ashkenaz (i. e., the German Lands). However, in the early eighteenth century, the city also became home to a small but thriving community of Sephardic Jews, who came primarily from the Ottoman Empire.¹ Up to the beginning of the twentieth century, most of the members of the Sephardic community or the Türkisch-israelitische Gemeinde zu Wien (Turkish-Israelite community of Vienna)² maintained close relations to the Sublime Porte, but they were also deeply influenced by their immediate cultural and socio-religious milieu, first of all by their reform-oriented Ashkenazic coreligionists in the city and, owing to them, by German-Austrian culture. In the following pages I highlight the most important outcomes of these intercommunal and intercultural contacts, which brought about a significant transformation in the congregational and social life of the Viennese Sephardim. The principal sources that helped me reconstruct and analyze these changes were newspapers and chronicles that were printed in Austria and Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century. The selected citations give detailed accounts regarding the communal and social affairs of the Turkish-Israelite community at the time. Although some of them appeared in German sources, others were in periodicals that were originally published in Judezmo, the traditional vernacular of Sephardic Jews, most commonly known today as Judeo-Spanish or Ladino. The most relevant and revealing source in this respect was El Koreo de Viena, Vienna’s most important and most durable Judezmo periodical, which was edited and published by Shem Tov Semo (1810 – 1881) from 1869

 Even before the arrival of Jews from the Ottoman Empire, there had been Sephardic Jews residing temporarily in the Habsburg capital. Most of them were merchants and bankers of Western Sephardic (Portuguese-Jewish) descent from the northern German Lands (Altona and Hamburg), visiting Vienna for a short period of time. See Christian Kaul, “Die spanischen Juden (Sefardim) in Wien: Eine kulturwissenschaftlich-historische Betrachtung” (Diploma thesis, Universität Salzburg, 1989), 14– 24. See also Mordche Schlome Schleicher, “Geschichte der spaniolischen Juden (Sephardim) in Wien” (PhD diss., Universität Wien, 1932), 23, 198.  See Adolf von Zemlinsky and Michael Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde zu Wien von ihrer Gründung bis heute nach historischen Daten (Vienna: Papo, 1888). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-009

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until his death. Afterwards the owner- and chief-editorship passed to his sons, who continued to publish El Koreo until it had to discontinue in 1883/1884.³ With regard to the intercommunal contacts between the Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Vienna during that time, the Habsburg capital should not be perceived simply as a place where the two groups mingled casually with each other and where both eventually got in touch with Austrian-German culture. Rather, according to Mary Louise Pratt, the city should be regarded as a vivid “contact zone,” in which “members of subordinated or marginal groups” – through a purposeful process of “transculturation”⁴ – were able to “select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture.”⁵ Although Pratt’s primary intention was to examine the linguistic and cultural appropriations of marginal groups within (post‐)colonial societies, her model of the “contact zone” serves perfectly as a basis for analyzing Sephardic-Ashkenazic encounters in the late Habsburg Empire. As a matter of fact, the Habsburg monarchy itself, especially in the nineteenth century, has often been compared to a colonial enterprise, pursuing an inner colonialization from below, especially of its non-German subjects.⁶ Transculturation has also become a well-established concept for analyzing minority groups. In regard to contemporary migration societies, “transculturation refers to the development of a hybrid culture between the original and the host one”⁷ or – on an individual level – to a migrant’s ability to “acquire a new identity in a second culture.”⁸

 For more details about Shem Tov Semo and his publications, see David M. Bunis, “Shem Tov Semo, Yosef Kalwo, and Judezmo Fiction in Nineteenth-Century Vienna,” in Sefarad an der Donau, ed. Michael Studemund-Halévy et al. (Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2013), 44– 59.  Pratt adopted this term from the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz (1881– 1969), who “aimed to replace concepts of acculturation and assimilation used to characterize culture under conquest.” Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession 91 (1991): 36.  Ibid.  See Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Peter Plener, and Clemens Ruthner, eds., Kakanien Revisited: Das Eigene und das Fremde (in) der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (Tübingen: Francke, 2002); Johannes Feichtinger, “Habsburg (post)-colonial: Anmerkungen zur inneren Kolonisierung in Zentral Europa,” in Habsburg postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis, ed. Johannes Feichtinger, Ursula Prutsch, and Moritz Csáky (Innsbruck: Studien-Verlag, 2003), 13 – 31.  Emily Sáez-Santiago and Guillermo Bernal, “Depression in Ethnic Minorities: Latinos and Latinas, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans,” in Handbook of Racial and Ethnic Minority Psychology, ed. Guillermo Bernal, Joseph E. Trimble, A. Kathleen Burlew, and Frederick T. L. Leong (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003), 406.  Lillian Comas-Díaz and Julia Ramos Grenier, “Migration and Acculturation,” in Test Interpretation and Diversity: Achieving Equality in Assessment, ed. Jonathan Sandoval, Craig L. Frisby, Kurt F. Geisinger, Janice Dowd Scheuneman, and Julia Ramos Grenier (Washington, DC: American Psychology Association, 1998), 219.

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Transculturation is not to be confused with the closely related, but by now broadly obsolete terms “assimilation” (i. e., absorption into a dominant cultural group) and “acculturation” (i. e., acquiring prominent elements of a dominant culture).⁹ Especially when it comes to the analysis of the complex and multifarious experiences of Jewish immigrants in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Vienna, the classical assumptions and premises underlying the terms “assimilation” and “acculturation” have turned out to be too vague. Whereas both these terms focus primarily on the unilateral adaptation of Jews to a non-Jewish majority – thus largely ignoring reciprocal interdependencies between the two groups – they also bear the risk of essentializing rather processual and performative categories, such as (non‐)Jewish “identity” and “culture.”¹⁰ In turn, “transculturation” as it occurs in cultural contact zones best explains the Viennese Jews’ strong and self-imposed determination to conform to the hegemonic cultural ideals¹¹ stipulated by the non-Jewish mainstream by simultaneously contributing to the city’s common popular culture.¹² As for the Viennese Sephardim, I show that their “transculturation” gave rise to a particular metropolitan Viennese-Sephardic culture, which again was largely influenced by the – for their part – likewise strongly transculturated Ashkenazim in the city. I also look at a convenient strategy employed by younger members of the Sephardic commu-

 See ibid.  According to Klaus Hödl, neither identity nor culture – regardless of whether Jewish or nonJewish – should be perceived as a static or monolithic entity but rather as a performative or “positioning” act. Klaus Hödl, Wiener Juden – jüdische Wiener: Identität, Gedächtnis und Performanz im 19. Jahrhundert (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2006), 30 – 31, 38 – 42; see also Lisa Silverman, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 7– 8.  This self-imposed urge strongly resembles a phenomenon that Antonio Gramsci once described as the deliberate conformation to “cultural hegemony,” by which he meant “the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), 12; T. J. Jackson Lears, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,” The American Historical Review 90, no. 3 (1985): 586.  As pointed out by Hödl, one should not only focus on the well-documented contributions of Jews to Vienna’s elitist high culture (e. g., in theatre and music) but also on their influence on the popular culture of the Viennese suburbs (Vorstadt). See Hödl, Wiener Juden – jüdische Wiener, 49. For example, we can point to the great number of Yiddish words that found their way into the popular Viennese dialect. See Heidi Stern, Wörterbuch zum jiddischen Lehnwortschatz in den deutschen Dialekten (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000), 18 – 19.

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nity of Vienna, who were born and brought up in the city, to reconcile different aspects of belonging within the tense atmosphere of the contact zone. However, before turning further attention to the Sephardic-Ashkenazic encounters in the cultural, political, and social context of the late Habsburg Empire, it is important to take note of the historical and economic circumstances that brought about the founding of a Sephardic or Turkish-Israelite community in the Habsburg capital in the first place. Since the late Middle Ages, the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empires had been fierce rivals, fighting over supremacy in southeastern Europe. In 1529 and 1683, the militant struggle between the two powers culminated in two major sieges of Vienna, as Ottoman armies attempted to capture the Habsburg capital. The peace treaties of Passarowitz (1718) and Belgrade (1738) finally initiated an era of political and economic rapprochement between the two empires. According to these treaties, Ottoman subjects were free to trade within the Habsburg domains and vice versa. Thus, while the Austrians immediately started to open trade missions in Istanbul, the Ottomans were likewise allowed to maintain their own trading posts in the Habsburg capital. Rather than by Muslims, these posts were held predominantly by Ottoman Greeks, Armenians, and Jews.¹³ The roots of the Jewish traders coming to Vienna – as of most Ottoman Jews – were on the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, the Alhambra Decree, issued by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, had forced all Jews to choose conversion to Christianity, exile, or death. The Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II (r. 1491– 1512) was pleased to receive a large number of the Jews who chose exile.¹⁴ Once in Turkey, the Spanish refugees had an enormous cultural influence on the old-established Romaniote (i. e., Greek-speaking) Jewish community, which had existed there continuously since Byzantine times. There were also the much smaller communities of Italian and Ashkenazic Jews, who had arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the late Middle Ages. The “gradual process of Judeo-Hispanization,” which was about to begin with the new arrivals from Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth century, was so massive and far-reaching that most old-established Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, especially those in the large urban centers,

 See Amelie Lanier, Die Geschichte des Bank- und Handelshauses Sina (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1998), 17– 22; Anna Ransmayr, “Untertanen des Sultans oder des Kaisers: Stuktur und Organisationsformen der beiden Wiener griechischen Gemeinden von den Anfängen im 18. Jahrhundert bis 1918” (PhD diss., Universität Wien, 2016), 26 – 28.  See Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th – 20th Centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 7.

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gradually adopted the liturgy, culture, and customs as well as the language of the Sephardic newcomers.¹⁵ When the first Sephardic Jews from the Ottoman Empire arrived in Vienna in the early eighteenth century, there was no proper Jewish community in the city that they could have joined or with which they could have established contact.¹⁶ Jews had officially been banned from the Habsburg capital since 1670.¹⁷ The only Jews that had been allowed to stay were so-called Court Jews, the wealthy individuals who had been called to the imperial court to render their financial and diplomatic services to the Austrian emperor.¹⁸ Unlike in most cities in the German Lands, the Court Jews in Vienna had to pay a considerable toleration tax in order to acquire a residence permit, but the Jewish merchants coming from the Ottoman Empire were exempt from paying such a tax, as they were protected by the above-mentioned bilateral treaties. Furthermore, unlike the tolerated Court Jews, the Ottoman Jews in Vienna were allowed to establish a small congregation. From the year of 1736, they were given permission to gather in a house inside the city walls for their religious services.¹⁹ An affluent Court Jew by the name of Diego d’Aguilar (c. 1699 – 1759) was among the first members of the community.²⁰ As the Jewish merchants from the Ottoman Empire, d’Aguilar was of Sephardic descent, but unlike his Ottoman brethren, he came from a Portuguese Converso²¹ family, originally based in Porto.²² After his formal conversion to Ju-

 Ibid., 14.  See Zemlinsky and Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde, 6.  The expulsion of the Jews from Vienna in 1670 was ordered by Emperor Leopold I (r. 1657– 1705), but the driving force behind it was Leopold’s wife Margaret Theresa of Spain (1651– 1673). See Kurt Schubert, Geschichte des österreichischen Judentums (Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), 44– 47.  Following the expulsion of the Viennese Jews in 1670, the most important Court Jews in the Habsburg capital were Samuel Oppenheimer (1650 – 1703) and Samson Wertheimer (1658 – 1724). See ibid., 50 – 55.  See Zemlinsky and Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde, 2, 5.  According to Ludwig August Frankl, the house in which the first Viennese Sephardim gathered for their daily prayers was d’Aguilar’s own residence. See Ludwig August Frankl, “Geschichte Diego de Aguilar’s: Von Ludw. Aug. Frankl in Wien,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums: Ein Jüdisches Organ für alles jüdische Interesse 18, no. 50 (December 11, 1854): 630 – 34, here 633.  Conversos (also known as New Christians or Marranos) were the descendants of Iberian Jews who had converted or been forced to convert to Christianity. For further information about the history and complex identity of Spanish and Portuguese Conversos, see António José Saraiva, The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536 – 1765 (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: The Marranos; Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

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daism, probably in London or Amsterdam, d’Aguilar also became known by his Jewish name, Moses Lopes Pereira. In 1726, he was called to the Habsburg capital by Charles VI (r. 1711– 1740) and charged with reorganizing the Austrian emperor’s tobacco monopoly.²³ As other affluent Court Jews elsewhere in Europe, d’Aguilar made use of his relationships at court in support of his Jewish brethren in need. He not only arranged for the small prayer room for the first Sephardic merchants coming to Vienna, but in the Jewish year of 5496 (1737/1738), he donated two valuable rimonim (i. e., Torah ornaments in the shape of pomegranates) to the small congregation. The Viennese Sephardim always considered Diego d’Aguilar the official founder of their community,²⁴ but his dedication to the Ottoman Jewish merchants should not be thought of as a preference for supporting fellow Sephardim exclusively. As a matter of fact, d’Aguilar did not seem to care much about the actual background and origin of those he mentored, for he repeatedly aided the Ashkenazic Jews in the Habsburg realms as well.²⁵ At the time the Turkish-Israelite community of Vienna was established, there were only three Ottoman Sephardic families living in that city.²⁶ The community

 Most historical biographies and legendary accounts published during the nineteenth and twentieth century claim that Diego d’Aguilar was a Converso not of Portuguese but of Spanish descent who served as an inquisitor in Madrid before coming to Vienna. See Michael Studemund-Halévy and Gaëlle Collin, “The Wonderous Story of Diego de Aguilar,” in Sefarad an der Donau, ed. Michael Studemund-Halévy et al. (Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2013), 239 – 94. However, as early as in 1856, Ludwig August Frankl provided solid information about d’Aguilar’s actual Portuguese origins. See Frankl, “Geschichte Diego de Aguilar’s;” and idem, “Geschichte Diego de Aguilar’s: Von Ludw. Aug. Frankl in Wien; Schluss aus Nr. 50,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums: Ein Jüdisches Organ für alles jüdische Interesse 18, no. 52 (December 1854): 656 – 61. See also Martin Stechauner, “Imagining the Sephardic Community of Vienna: A Discourse-Analytical Approach,” in Religion in Austria, vol. 2., ed. Hans Gerald Hö dl and Lukas Pokorny (Vienna: Praesens Verlag, 2014), 67– 69; Carsten Wilke, “Ludwig August Frankl als historischer Mythograph der Marranen,” in Ludwig August Frankl (1810 – 1894): Eine jü dische Biographie zwischen Okzident und Orient, ed. Louise Hecht (Cologne: Böhlau, 2016), 237– 38.  See Studemund-Halévy and Collin, “The Wonderous Story of Diego de Aguilar,” 240.  See Frankl, “Geschichte Diego de Aguilar’s,” 630; Zemlinsky and Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde, 2.  For instance, together with other Jewish and non-Jewish advocates, he successfully intervened to revoke the expulsion of the Jews from Prague (1745) and Moravia (1748), which had been ordered by the anti-Jewish Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa (r. 1740 – 1780). See Studemund-Halévy and Collin, “The Wonderous Story of Diego de Aguilar,” 240. See also Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von der dauernden Ansiedelung der Marranen in Holland (1618) bis zum Beginn der Mendelssohnschen Zeit (1760) (Leipzig: Leiner, 1867), 392.  The official chronicle published by the Turkish-Israelite community of Vienna in 1888 mentions the families of Abraham Kamondo (from Istanbul), Aron Nissim, and Naftaly Eskenasy. See Zemlinsky and Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde, 6.

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remained very small throughout the eighteenth century, and by 1798, there were only twenty families.²⁷ It was only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the number of Sephardic Jews living in Vienna grew noticeably for the first time, as more and more Sephardic immigrants from the Balkans settled there.²⁸ In 1818, the Austrian authorities registered forty-five Turkish Jewish families (i. e., 214 individuals) residing in Vienna,²⁹ who then made up about 12.5 % of the city’s total Jewish population.³⁰ Even at that time, the far more numerous Ashkenazic Jews in the city still had to pay the prescribed toleration tax, and the Austrian authorities continued to deny them permission to establish an official community of their own. Despite their awkward legal status, the Viennese Ashkenazim were given permission to erect a synagogue to meet their religious needs. The Ashkenazic Stadttempel in the Seitenstettergasse was finally consecrated in 1826,³¹ that is nine years after the Viennese Sephardim had been given the privilege to have a house of worship.³²

 See Xavier Selle´s-Ferrando, Spanisches Ö sterreich (Vienna: Böhlau, 2004), 365.  One reason for the increase in the number of Sephardic Jews in Vienna at that time was the looming bankruptcy of the Austrian state right after the Napoleonic Wars (1803 – 1815). In their financial distress, the Austrian authorities were interested in attracting foreign merchants – mainly from the Ottoman Empire – to live and do business in Vienna. However, another reason that prompted some Sephardic Jews to settle down on Austrian soil, including Vienna, was the growing political unrest in the Balkan Peninsula at the beginning of the nineteenth century, primarily in Serbia. See Ransmayr, “Untertanen des Sultans oder des Kaisers,” 257– 67; Milan Ristović, “The Jews of Serbia (1804– 1918): From Princely Protection to Formal Emancipation,” in The Jews and the Nation-States of Southeastern Europe from the 19th Century to the Great Depression: Combining Viewpoints and a Controversial Story, ed. Tullia Catalan and Marco Dogo (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 26; David M. Bunis, “Yisrael Haim of Belgrade and the History of Judezmo Linguistics,” Histoire E´piste´mologie Langage 18, no. 4 (1996): 153.  According to Nathan Gelber, these families, including their servants, “came from Turkey, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Asia Minor and Palestine.” There were also Ashkenazic Jews from Moldavia coming to Vienna with Ottoman Passports. See Nathan M. Gelber, “The Sephardic Community in Vienna,” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 4 (1948): 367n19.  Two years later, in 1820, Vienna counted 1560 tolerated Austrian (i. e., Ashkenazic) Jews, making up about 0.6 % of the city’s entire population, which in that year had reached the total of 260,759 individuals (inner city and suburbs). See Ingo Harr, “Jüdische Migration und Integration in Wien: Vom Toleranzpatent Josephs II. bis in den Vormärz 1790 – 1830/47,” in Übergänge und Schnittmengen: Arbeit, Migration, Bevölkerung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Diskussion, ed. Annemarie Steidl, Thomas Buchner et al. (Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), 476 – 77; “Historisches Ortslexikon: Statistische Dokumentation zur Bevö lkerungs- und Siedlungsgeschichte; Vienna. Datenbestand,” accessed January 8, 2018, https://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/subsites/Institu te/VID/PDF/Publications/diverse_Publications/Historisches_Ortslexikon/Ortslexikon_Wien.pdf.  See Schubert, Geschichte des österreichischen Judentums, 72.

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Moreover, it was only after the revolutionary years of 1848/1849 that the Viennese toleration system was finally abolished. In 1852, the hitherto tolerated Ashkenazic Jews of Vienna were further allowed to form an official community of their own, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, most commonly known as IKG. ³³ From that time on, the increasing liberal atmosphere and the freedom of Jewish life caused more and more Ashkenazic Jews from the eastern parts of the empire – primarily from Hungary and Galicia – to settle in the city.³⁴ In consequence of these demographic changes, the Viennese Sephardim turned into a tiny minority compared to the ever-growing Ashkenazic population. Although, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Sephardic community had grown continuously as well, in 1888, when it officially celebrated its 150th anniversary, Sephardic Jews made up less than 1 % (approx. 700 individuals³⁵) of Vienna’s entire Jewish population (approx. 100,000).³⁶ Of course, the Viennese Sephardim had not remained unaffected by these demographic shifts in the Habsburg capital. By the second half of the nineteenth century, these changes had resulted in an ever-increasing convergence between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. However, in actual fact, this process had actually begun about half a century before and can be traced back to the appointment of Ḥakham³⁷ Reuven Barukh (1811– 1875), who served the Sephardic community of Vienna as a spiritual leader for more than 36 years.³⁸ Reuven Barukh (also spelled Ruben Baruch in most German sources) was born in the east Hungarian town of Temesvár, which after the Treaty of Passarowitz transferred from the Ot-

 Whereas we know about the location of the community’s first house of worship (house n° 307 inside the city walls, today Naglergasse 6), the exact location of the community’s subsequent synagogue, which had been in use at least since 1778, is unknown. A chronicle published by the community in 1888 mentions a Bethaus (house of prayer) in the Untere Donaustraße in the Viennese Leopoldstadt, which was destroyed by fire in 1824. From 1825 onward, the community rented another house in the Große Hafnergasse 321 (now Große Mohrengasse). In 1860, the community had become so big that its members decided to have a proper synagogue built, the Turkish Temple (Türkischer Tempel), which was consecrated in 1868. See Zemlinsky and Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde, 6 – 8.  See Schubert, Geschichte des österreichischen Judentums, 79; William O. McCagg, A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670 – 1918 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 120.  See Robert S. Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 62.  See Zemlinsky and Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde, 2. Whereas Zemlinsky mentions 800 members, Papo, in his Judezmo translation, mentions only 600 individuals.  In 1890, some 118,500 Jews were living in Vienna, making up 8.7 % of the city’s population. See Schubert, Geschichte des österreichischen Judentums, 80.  Ḥakham (‫ )חכם‬is the traditional Hebrew term for designating a Sephardic rabbi.  La Polítika: Folyo gratis del El Koreo de Viena 12 (June 15, 1875): 39 – 41.

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toman to the Habsburg Empire.³⁹ Before coming to Vienna in 1837, he had served as the chief rabbi of the Sephardic community of Belgrade, but in the eyes of the congregation’s conservative board members, he was far too liberal a rabbi. When he attempted to carry out a number of reforms, the communal board urged the Serbian authorities to dismiss and eventually expel him from the city. Right after his dismissal from Belgrade, he answered a call from Vienna, where he was offered the leadership of the local Turkish-Israelite community. In contrast to their coreligionists in Belgrade, the Turkish Jews in Vienna immediately accepted Barukh as their religious leader, not despite of but precisely because of his liberal attitudes.⁴⁰ Once in Vienna, Barukh initiated relationships with the leaders of the not yet legally recognized Ashkenazic congregations in the city. Hence, shortly after assuming office as the Sephardic chief rabbi in Vienna, he was also named as one of the three dayanim (rabbinical judges) in the Viennese Bet Din (the local rabbinical court), together with Salomon Spitzer (1826 – 1893), the rabbi of the Orthodox Schiffschul, and Lazar Horowitz (1803 – 1868), the reform-oriented Orthodox rabbi of what later would become the IKG. ⁴¹ Barukh also maintained noticeably close ties with Adolf Jellinek (1820 – 1893), the liberal preacher of the Stadttempel, the IKG’s main synagogue. In 1863, Barukh was one of the keynote speakers at the inauguration of Jellinek’s newly established reform-oriented Bet Midrash. ⁴² Three years later, he joined Jellinek to take part in an official audience before Emperor Franz Joseph I (r. 1848 – 1916) in honor of the Austrian-Jewish soldiers who had fought and died for His Majesty in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.⁴³  The Sephardic communities of Temesvár (Timișoara, in present day Romania) and Vienna had been closely connected from the time that they were established. Both communities were founded by Ottoman Jewish merchants. However, when the Treaty of Passarowitz (1716) permanently ended Ottoman rule in Temesvár, the remaining Jews had to become Austrian subjects in order to be allowed to stay in the city. See György Haraszti, “Timişoara,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 2, ed. Gershon David Hundert (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 1882– 83.  See Jennie Lebel, Until “The Final Solution”: The Jews in Belgrade 1521 – 1942 (Bergenfield: Avoteynu, 2007), 78.  See Gerson Wolf, Geschichte der Juden in Wien (1156 – 1876) (Vienna: Geyer, 1876), 175; Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach, eds., Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbiner, Teil 1: Die Rabbiner der Emanzipationszeit in den deutschen, bö hmischen und großpolnischen Lä ndern 1781 – 1871, newly ed. Carsten Wilke, vol. 1: AACH–Juspa (Munich: Saur, 2004), 172.  See Moses Rosenmann, Dr. Adolf Jellinek: Sein Leben und Schaffen; Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien in der zweiten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Schlesinger, 1931), 95.  See El Nasional 1 (Trial no., November 16, 1866): 6.

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Barukh’s open-minded attitude toward his Ashkenazic coreligionists in Vienna might have been due to the fact that his native town Temesvár, since its annexation to the Habsburg Empire, had not only been home to a small Sephardic congregation, but also of a rapidly growing Ashkenazic community, which was made up of immigrants from Hungary, Austria, and Moravia. Intermittently, both communities cooperated at a very high level and until the 1760s even used the same synagogue.⁴⁴ Although this background might explain Barukh’s open and liberal mindset in his early years, it is important to note that toward the end of his life, he was taking a more conservative, but still reform-oriented, stance. However, even this late ideological turnaround was rather the result of a growing convergence than of an alienation between the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities in Vienna. In the late 1860s, Barukh became a close friend of Moritz Güdemann (1835 – 1918), an eminent conservative-oriented rabbi, who had been trained in the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau. In 1866, Güdemann was appointed as a preacher in the Leopoldstädter Tempel, the IKG’s largest synagogue, which had been established in 1856. In 1868, after the death of Lazar Horowitz, Güdemann also assumed his role as a dayan of the Viennese Bet Din. Like his predecessor Horowitz, Güdemann cared intensely about the unity of the local Ashkenazic community, which was made up of a considerable number of reform-oriented Jews, on the one hand, and a growing number of Orthodox traditionalists from the eastern parts of the empire, on the other hand. In 1872, Güdemann apprehended the community’s irreversible split when the board of the IKG, presided over by the liberal politician Ignaz Kunrada (1811– 1884), tried to reform the official Viennese prayer book (siddur) by eliminating the traditional prayers for Zion. The proposed adjustment to the prayer book was strongly opposed by the Orthodox factions as well as by Güdemann and Barukh.⁴⁵ Thus, in support of his conservative-oriented and Orthodox colleagues, Barukh – together with Güdemann and Spitzer, the two other dayanim in Vienna – threatened to resign from all his offices in the city’s rabbinical court. This seemingly drastic threat helped prevent the looming schism of the Viennese IKG. ⁴⁶ Apart from the institutional collaboration between Barukh and his Ashkenazic colleagues, his late ministry was also a time when the ongoing transculturation of the Viennese Sephardim gained new momentum. As pointed out by Edwin Seroussi, it was from at least the beginning of the 1870s that many cus Bis  

See Haraszti, “Timişoara,” 1882; Moritz Löwy, Skizzen zur Geschichte der Juden in Temesvár: zum Jahre 1865 (Szegedin: s. n., 1890), 31– 42. See Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, 110, 110n48, 122. See El Koreo de Viena 3, no. 3 (February 1, 1872): 5.

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toms including “the religious music of the Sephardic community of Vienna [were] being reshaped to suit new aesthetic concepts borrowed from the surrounding culture.”⁴⁷ A prominent innovation in this respect was the adoption of many elements from the moderately liberal conservative rite of the Viennese Ashkenazim. This so-called Wiener Minhag (Viennese rite) was developed during the first half of the nineteenth century by Isaak Noah Mannheimer (1793 – 1865), a famous liberal reformer and – before Jellinek – preacher of the Stadttempel, and by Salomon Sulzer (1804– 1890), the Stadttempel’s first chief cantor. Despite its innovative character, the Wiener Minhag must be valued as a moderate compromise between the radical liturgical innovations of the Jewish liberal movement in northern Germany and the traditional way of celebrating Jewish liturgy among Orthodox Jews.⁴⁸ The reason behind this compromise was the specific socio-religious environment in which the Austrian Jews found themselves after the turbulent years of the Counter-Reformation. In contrast to many Protestant parts of Germany, where Jews had been compelled to recite their traditional prayers in German (i. e., the language of the state), Austrian Jews preferred to retain their traditional sacred languages (i. e., Hebrew and Aramaic) for their divine services. According to Kurt Schubert, this preference can be explained by their inclination to follow the example of the Austrian Catholics, who – unlike the Protestants – continued to use Latin as their sacred language of worship.⁴⁹ Thus, in accordance with their socio-religious milieu, Mannheimer and Sulzer arranged a new religious service featuring musical pieces that were aesthetically appealing to the Western ear and were usually supported by a choir. The actual compromise was that while the liturgical melodies continued to be sung in Hebrew, the sermon at the core of the service was in German.⁵⁰ In 1839, Sulzer published the first volume of his monumental hymnbook Schir Zion,⁵¹ which is still

 Edwin Seroussi, “Sephardic Fins de Siècles: The Liturgical Music of Vienna’s Türkisch-Israelitische Community on the Threshold of Modernity,” in Jewish Musical Modernism: Old and New, ed. Philip V. Bohlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 60.  See Barbara Boisits, “‘Diese gesungenen Bitten um Emancipation’: Akkulturationsdiskurse am Beispiel von Salomon Sulzers Wirken am Wiener Stadttempel,” in Musikwelten – Lebenswelten: Jüdische Identitätssuche in der deutschen Musikkultur, ed. Beatrix Borchard and Heidy Zimmermann (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009), 91– 94.  In turn, in the established churches (Staatskirchen) in Protestant countries, the clerics preferred to celebrate the religious service in German, the official state language. See Schubert, Geschichte des österreichischen Judentums, 73.  See Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, 24.  See Salomon Sulzer, Schir Zion: Gottesdienstliche Gesänge der Israeliten; Erster Teil (Vienna: H. Engel and Sohn, 1839).

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considered the most important collection of musical pieces conforming to the Wiener Minhag. Apart from his own compositions, Schir Zion also includes music written by other, non-Jewish artists, such as Franz Schubert (1797– 1828) and Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried (1776 – 1841), the latter a former student of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791).⁵² With reference to those contributors, the Wiener Minhag must also be valued as a direct response to the rich musical tradition of the so-called Wiener Klassik. What had taken place among the Viennese Ashkenazim in the first half of the nineteenth century, namely the effort to apply modern aesthetics and tunes to a traditional synagogal service, was adapted by Viennese Sephardim only a few decades later. Interestingly, it was precisely the close relationship between Ḥakham Barukh and Moritz Güdemann that brought this development about. There were several occasions when Güdemann supported Barukh in his role as congregational leader of the Turkish Temple (Türkischer Tempel), the first newly constructed synagogue of the Sephardic community of Vienna, which was consecrated in 1868.⁵³ The adoption of the word Tempel indicates that the Viennese Sephardim had been inspired by many principles of the Ashkenazic reform movement. Although the term was first used in 1812 by the reform-oriented Western Sephardic (Portuguese) community of Bordeaux for designating their newly built sanctuary – the Temple israélite – it was later on taken up by religious reformers in Germany. In so doing, German reformers wanted to contrast their own sanctuaries to the rather profane synagogue. According to traditional belief, the only purpose of a synagogue was to keep the Torah scrolls safe while the Jews were dwelling in the Diaspora. As they did not see any need to eventually return to the Holy Land, many German reformists conceived their Gotteshaus (i. e., House of God) as a stylized replica of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Unlike diasporic synagogues, the Holy Temple had been the place that accommodated God’s divine presence, the shekhinah. ⁵⁴ In direct reminiscence of the divine Temple in Jerusalem, the term “temple” (Tempel) became the preferred designation for liberal and even conservative synagogues in Germany and Austria, as in the case of the Viennese Stadttempel, the Leopoldstädter Tempel, and later also the Türkischer Tempel of the Viennese Sephardim.

 See Heidy Zimmermann, “Schir Zion: Musik und Gesang in der Synagoge,” in Jüdische Musik? Fremdbilder – Eigenbilder, ed. John Eckhard and Heidy Zimmermann (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), 68.  See Pierre Genée, Wiener Synagogen (Vienna: Löcker, 2014), 101– 104.  See Philipp Lenhard, Volk oder Religion? Die Entstehung moderner jüdischer Ethnizität in Frankreich und Deutschland 1782 – 1848 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 189, 191.

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As a matter of fact, Güdemann was a frequent guest in the Turkish Temple, where he conducted joint services together with his years-long friend and colleague Barukh. Moreover, Josef Goldstein (1836 – 1899), the Hungarian-born ḥ azan (i. e., precentor or cantor) of the Leopoldstädter Tempel, and his choir were frequently hired to perform in the Turkish Temple.⁵⁵ They were usually asked to sing on the occasion of an extravagant wedding, in order to coat these ceremonies with an aesthetically more appealing (i. e., modern or Western European) veneer. One of the first sources that documented the performance of Goldstein and his choir in the Turkish Temple was an article reporting on a festive wedding that took place in 1872. Entitled Una Boda Famoza en Viena (A Famous Wedding in Vienna), the article was published in El Trizoro de la Kaza, a supplement of El Koreo de Vienna, Vienna’s most important Judeo-Spanish newspaper. It also depicts a Sephardic worship service, largely following the ceremonial procedures of the Wiener Minhag. The service was alternately led by Barukh and Güdemann, who both delivered edifying sermons at the zenith of the ceremony. Furthermore, the article reveals that the strongly Westernized style of Jewish weddings in Vienna not only appealed to local Sephardic families but, evidently, also to the wealthy Sephardim from southeastern Europe, who chose the Turkish Temple as the venue for their weddings. Apart from revealing a very modernized service, the same article also gives an account of yet another groundbreaking innovation in the Turkish Temple, which must have appeared very controversial even in the eyes of many open-minded Ashkenazim: On 13 Elul [September 16] of this year [1872] a brilliant wedding was celebrated in our Sephardic community of Vienna [as] Mr. Hayim B[en] Menachem Eliyahu … from Bucharest married lady Rachel, the daughter of Mr. Samuel Russo … from Semlin [i. e., Zemun]. Since the existence of the Sephardic community of Vienna, such a pompous wedding has never taken place … The synagogue was decorated with a huge number of roses (said to have cost 500 florins) [and] with silver and bronze panels. The lobby and the yard were also decorated with roses and precious fabrics and the entire building resembled a mikdash katan [i. e., a small version of the Temple in Jerusalem] … One hour before the kiddushin [i. e., the marriage ceremony], the synagogue, which was illuminated by a large number of gas lamps, was filled with gentlemen …, [and also] the women’s section was crowded with elegant ladies of the high society [.] [E]ventually, the synagogue’s yard became so filled with people that nobody was able to move and it was only thanks to the police that nothing unfortunate happened. At half past 2, the famous ḥ azan of the Ashkenazim, Mr. Goldstein, together with his choir arrived in several carriages [and] then assembled

 Goldstein and his choir were even asked to perform at Ḥakham Barukh’s funeral service in 1875. The service took place in the Turkish Temple and was led by Güdemann, who, on this occasion, also wanted to pay his respect to his years-long friend and colleague. See El Koreo de Viena 6, no. 10 (May 24, 1875): 39.

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inside the synagogue before the Holy of Holies. A few minutes before 3 o’clock, the groom and the bride arrived together with their parents, relatives, and a number of Sephardic and Ashkenazic bankers, as well as bankers of other nations [i. e., denominations], from both Vienna and outside the country … [A]fter the groom and the bride had signed the protocol in the lobby, they were led into the synagogue underneath the ḥ upa [nuptial canopy]. At that very moment, ḥ azan Goldstein went up the stairs onto the Holy of Holies and began to sing, accompanied by the choir and by the instrumento órgano [the organ] (this instrument was then played for the first time in our synagogue) and there, next to the Holy of Holies, he sang the verses: “Ma tovu ohalekha Yaakov mishkenotekha Yisrael [.]” [A]fter this song the rabbi and preacher of the Ashkenazim of Vienna, Dr. Güdemann …, delivered a sermon which lasted for half an hour. After that sermon, again, the ḥ azan accompanied by the “organ” chanted a psalm. Afterward, the kiddushin took place and [finally] our eminence … Reuven Barukh … ascended [onto the Holy of Holies] and delivered a spirited derasha [i. e., homiletic sermon], which lasted for an hour and a half. In the end, once again the choir sang [a song] and the ceremony concluded with a blessing issued by morenu i rabenu [our teacher and rabbi] … Reuven Barukh.⁵⁶

As is vividly illustrated in the article, the Viennese Sephardim, as well as their coreligionists from the Balkans, very much appreciated the overall Western aesthetics and reformist style of the weddings celebrated in the Turkish Temple, augmented by Goldstein and his choir. In view of the richly adorned synagogue, the author of the article even presumed to compare the Sephardic house of worship with the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, exactly in the fashion of German and Austrian reformists. However, the most striking detail mentioned in that article was the inauguration of a new, however, controversial liturgical instrument: the organ. Not only was this organ the first one to be played in an Eastern Sephardic synagogue⁵⁷ but, surprisingly, was also the first ever installed in a major Viennese synagogue. Although in many parts of Germany, France, and Italy, the introduction of organs into synagogues had become the ultimate “shib-

 El Trizoro de la Kaza (Supplement of El Koreo de Viena 15) (October 1, 1872): 2. If not otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.  Tina Frühauf mentions four other Sephardic congregations – Charleston (South Carolina), London, New York, and Bayonne (France) – which in the course of the nineteenth century decided to have an organ installed. However, all of these sanctuaries were founded by Portuguese Jews belonging to the Western Sephardic Diaspora, who were generally more receptive to introducing reform elements. Furthermore, Frühauf, as well as Seroussi, assumes that the Viennese Sephardim had their first organ installed only much later in the newly built New Turkish Temple in 1887. However, as the above-mentioned article shows, the previous building had been equipped with such an instrument. See Tina Frühauf, “Jewish Liturgical Music in Vienna: A Mirror of Cultural Diversity,” in Vienna: Jews in the City of Music 1870 – 1938, ed. Leon Botstein and Werner Hanak (Hofheim am Taunus: Wolke, 2004), 87, 91; Seroussi, “Sephardic Fins de Siècles,” 67.

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boleth of assimilation,”⁵⁸ in the first half of the nineteenth century most Jewish community leaders in Vienna were strongly opposed to it.⁵⁹ According to Tina Frühauf, “it was not until the late nineteenth century that the [IKG] purchased an instrument” for the Leopoldstädter Tempel. ⁶⁰ However, the IKG never installed an organ in the Stadttempel. ⁶¹ Unfortunately, there are no documents that give an account of Barukh’s stand on the organ in his synagogue, but the mere fact that he made use of the instrument during his own services gives us reason to believe that he had endorsed its installation. In turn, for Goldstein and his choir, the performances in the Turkish Temple must have been a great opportunity for testing their artistic abilities with the unprecedentedly modern tunes of an organ, which had not then been possible in their own synagogue. These speculations notwithstanding, the acquisition of an organ for the Turkish Temple was rather a concession to the younger members of the Sephardic community of Vienna, who had been dissatisfied with the slow pace of modernization within their own congregation. However, the central demand of the young community members was not necessarily the installation of an organ but for the steady services of a modern-style cantor. In 1870, the community repeatedly placed an advertisement in El Koreo de Vienna for the position of an experienced shaliaḥ tzibur (messenger in a public prayer, i. e., precentor or cantor).⁶² Interestingly, at the time these advertisements were placed, the community already had a ḥ azan of Italian origin, who had been appointed some two years earlier. In 1871, a reader of El Koreo de Vienna from the port city of Trieste felt obliged to defend his Italian compatriot against accusations by some of the younger members of the Viennese community, who were demanding “a ḥ azan who was fit for a community of an [imperial] capi-

 See Max Grunwald, Der Kampf um die Orgel in der Wiener israelitischen Kultusgemeinde (Vienna: Verlag von Dr. Blochs Wochenschrift, 1919), 23 – 27 (“Die Orgel als Schibboleth der Assimilation”).  See ibid., 27– 36.  Tina Frühauf, The Organ and its Music in German-Jewish Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 39.  Apart from the Leopoldstädter Tempel and the Turkish Temple, the only Viennese synagogues with an organ were four so-called Vereinstempel, independent community synagogues, which were usually more liberal than the synagogues directly administered by the IKG. See Evelyn Adunka, “Tempel, Bethäuser und Rabbiner,” in Wien und die jüdische Erfahrung 1900 – 1938: Akkulturation – Antisemitismus – Zionismus, ed. Frank Stern and Barbara Eichinger (Vienna: Böhlau, 2009), 132– 33.  See El Koreo de Viena 1, no. 15 (August 1, 1870): 7; ibid. 1, no. 16 (August 15, 1870): 7. See also Seroussi, “Sephardic Fins de Siècles,” 64.

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tal.”⁶³ In fact, this demand caused other readers of El Koreo de Vienna to assume that the Sephardic community of Vienna had already become enmeshed in a serious intergenerational conflict. According to another letter sent to the editor of the Koreo in 1871, there was a rumor circulating in the Balkans that the members of the Viennese community were experiencing serious discord. Whereas “the older members of the community” were said to want to employ “an [old-fashioned] ḥ azan from the Orient,” the younger ones reportedly “prefer[red] a [modern] musical ḥ azan with a choir.”⁶⁴ In clarifying this matter, the editor of the Koreo assured the anonymous writer “that [the Viennese community] would not choose a ḥ azan without the consent of the majority,” further emphasizing that the older members “would never pick a ḥ azan against the will of the … community’s beloved children.”⁶⁵ In order to reaffirm this assertion, the editor also published a statement that had been issued by the board of representatives of the Sephardic community of Vienna on the matter in which they firmly endorsed the wish of the younger community members: We want a ḥ azan with a choir so that we will not have to bring the ḥ azan and the choir of the Ashkenazim for weddings in our synagogue. We want a ḥ azan with a choir for whenever there is a special ceremony in our synagogue, in which foreign gentlemen also take part, for example, when we celebrate the jubilee of the sultan or the birthday of the Austrian emperor, we don’t want to feel embarrassed, and we want a ḥ azan with a choir for neither we nor our children comprehend the Oriental chant, nor do we have any interest in [this kind of] chanting. [However,] we are well aware of the fact (this is what the young members say) that the maintenance of a ḥ azan with a choir requires huge expenses, expenses that our community is not able to meet at the moment. This we know very well, but we hope that until the time has come [that we can afford a ḥ azan with a choir], the ḥ azan that we currently have⁶⁶ will remain and there is no need to employ another one at this very the moment.⁶⁷

The purpose of this official statement obviously was to affirm and justify the wish of the majority to have a similar aesthetic veneer and investment as their  El Koreo de Viena 2, no. 20 (November 1, 1871): 7. Unfortunately, the anonymous correspondent from Trieste did not give any other indications about the current ḥ azan’s identity, except for his Italian origin.  El Koreo de Viena 2, no. 19 (October 12, 1871): 1.  Ibid.  Unfortunately, the editors of the Koreo did not clarify whether the “Italian” cantor was, in fact, a Sephardic Jew, an indigenous italki (a Jew conforming to the Italian rite), or an Ashkenazic Jew from Italy. However, we may assume that the current ḥ azan was most probably a traditional levantino, as Eastern Sephardic Jews were called in Italy (in distinction to the Portuguese “Western” ponentini).  El Koreo de Viena 2, no. 19 (October 12, 1871): 1– 2.

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reform-oriented Ashkenazic coreligionists in the city. This wish was an urgent matter insofar as the Sephardic Jews were hiring the Ashkenazic ḥ azan and choir for weddings or state-linked ceremonies in the Turkish Temple. The great dependency on their Ashkenazic coreligionists was definitely something about which many community members felt quite embarrassed. Once again, we lack an official and reliable statement by Ḥakham Barukh on this matter. However, in view of the frequent employment of Goldstein and his choir for Sephardic services, we can assume that Barukh was largely bowing to the will of the younger community members. In any case, Barukh must have been quite cautious when dealing with the demands of the community board because he had previously been dismissed from his post as a chief rabbi in Belgrade, but that was at a time when he was trying to introduce new reforms there.⁶⁸ Despite the urging of the younger members of the community and the endorsement of the overall reform-oriented community board, a modern-style cantor and a choir would not be employed any time soon. The official reason given for that decision was the high expense involved in maintaining a professional liturgical ensemble. In turn, the one-time purchase of an organ in 1872 seemed to have been a convenient and affordable compromise for calming the voices demanding modernization and reforms, precisely because installing such an instrument appeared to be too groundbreaking and modern even to many Ashkenazim in the city. It would take nine more years until the wishes of the reformist board and the young members of the Sephardic community of Vienna were finally granted. However, unable to find a moderate Sephardic ḥ azan who would meet the high expectations of most of the community, the Viennese Sephardim eventually had to settle for an Ashkenazic cantor. In November 1880, El Koreo de Viena proudly announced that the congregation was finally ready to the employ “a ḥ azan of the Ashkenazic nation,” who – despite being Ashkenazic – had “taught himself [the] Sephardic pronunciation [i. e., nusaḥ ] [and] gave us a demonstration of his great talent [which inspired us with confidence that] in a short period of time he will learn our pronunciation entirely.”⁶⁹ The new cantor, Jacob Bauer (1852– 1926), effectively assumed office a few months later in January 1881. Like Goldstein, the chief cantor of the Leopoldstädter Tempel, Bauer had been born in Hungary. In the same year that he was named as cantor of the Sephardic community of Vienna, he founded the Österreichisch-ungarische Cantoren-Zeitung, a periodical that claimed to be the central organ for the interests of all Jew-

 See Lebel, Until “The Final Solution,” 78.  El Koreo de Viena 11, no. 42 (November 5, 1880): 161.

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ish cantors in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.⁷⁰ In 1883, with the help of other venerated cantors, including Josef Goldstein, Bauer established an organization known as the Oesterr.-ungarischer Kantorenverein (Austro-Hungarian Society of Cantors). Salomon Sulzer, the famous creator of the popular Wiener Minhag, was named as the new group’s first honorary president.⁷¹ In his official capacity as cantor at the Turkish Temple in Vienna, Bauer was responsible for introducing a flood of innovations into the Sephardic synagogal service. In 1889, he published a choral hymnbook entitled Schir Hakawod, most likely in response to Sulzer’s Schir Zion, which comprised modernized and rearranged traditional Sephardic melodies to be sung on Shabbat and the High Holidays. According to Seroussi, it was the first reform-oriented hymnbook of its kind in an Eastern Sephardic community.⁷² Its conceptualization and publication were sponsored by a charity association of the same name (Schir Hakawod), supervised by Leon Adutt (1843 – 1890) and Marcus M. Russo (1836 – 1910), the latter being the president of the Turkish-Israelite community of Vienna at the time. The aim of this association was to create a fund for the maintenance of a proper choir, which was led by the young Ashkenazic choirmaster Isidor Löwit (1864 – 1942).⁷³ Löwit, who had been contracted in 1881, shortly before Bauer’s appointment as cantor to organize a professional choir in the Turkish Temple, similar to the one in the Ashkenazic IKG, seemed to be the ideal candidate for this task, as he had sung in the choir of the Leopoldstädter Tempel as a child.⁷⁴ Following the appointments of Bauer and Löwit, the Viennese Sephardim no longer had to resort to the ḥ azan and the choir of the Leopoldstädter Tempel. In 1882, Goldstein was given an official thank-you note for his years-long services to the Sephardic community.⁷⁵ Bauer and Löwit continued to build on the liturgical repertoire of their revered predecessor; for example, they followed Goldstein’s approach to the wedding ceremonial but further refined and elaborated on it. As noted by Seroussi, from the 1880s onward, the Sephardic community offered four styles of weddings: “[a] first-class wedding includ[ing] a large choir, organ,  See Österreichisch-ungarische Cantoren-Zeitung: Organ für die Interessen der Cantoren und Cultus-Beamten 1, no. 1 (December 30, 1881): 1.  See Aron Friedmann, ed., Lebensbilder berühmter Kantoren: Zum 100. Geburtstage des verdienstvollen Oberkantors der Breslauer Synagogengemeinde weiland Moritz Deutsch; Teil 1 (Berlin: Boas, 1912), 212.  See Seroussi, “Sephardic Fins de Siècles,” 57– 60.  See El Koreo de Viena 14, no. 5 (February 10, 1883): 18.  Seroussi, “Sephardic Fins de Siècles,” 65.  See Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz, “Die sefardische Diaspora in Wien,” in Die Tü rken in Wien: Geschichte einer jü dischen Gemeinde, ed. Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (Vienna: Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 2010), 142– 43.

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and two harps; a second-class wedding [with] a small choir and organ accompaniment; a third-class wedding [with an] unaccompanied male choir; and for less well-situated families a wedding involv[ing] only a rabbi and a cantor as his assistant.” There was a similar ranking for other festive ceremonies as well as for funerals.⁷⁶ As the choral and ceremonial question had finally been resolved in the early 1880s, the Viennese Sephardim could deal with some other pending issues concerning their community. Although it had opened its doors less than 17 years earlier, in 1868, owing to construction defects, in 1885, Marcus M. Russo, the president of the city’s Sephardic community, convinced the board to demolish the “Old Turkish Temple,” and to construct a new sanctuary on the same spot in the Fuhrmanngasse (later renamed Zirkusgasse 22) in the Viennese Leopoldstadt. The “New Turkish Temple” was designed and built by the Viennese architect Hugo Ritter von Wiedenfeld (1852– 1925) and was inaugurated in 1887.⁷⁷ According to an official brochure that was published to celebrate the consecration of the new synagogue, as well as the community’s 150th anniversary,⁷⁸ “the new Turkish Temple of the Sephardic-Turkish community in Vienna was built in a pure Moorish style, according to motifs of the Alhambra in Spain [and] must be called a masterpiece of architectural beauty.”⁷⁹ Although the Moorish style of the New Turkish Temple must be thought of as an allusion to the ancient Spanish homeland of the Sephardic Jews of Vienna,⁸⁰ the design had little to do with the traditional architecture of Sephardic synagogues in southeastern Europe. Actually, the Viennese Turkish Temple served as a model for synagogues built later in the Balkans, such as the synagogue of Sofia (completed in 1909).⁸¹ In fact, the synagogue’s design and decoration corresponded to the principles of a strict historicism, which, in the course of the nine-

 Edwin Seroussi, “Schir Hakawod and the Liturgical Music Reforms in the Sephardi Community of Vienna, ca. 1880 – 1925: A Study of Change in Religious Music” (PhD diss., University of California, 1988), 93. See also Frühauf, “Jewish Liturgical Music in Vienna,” 87; Frühauf, The Organ and its Music, 42.  See Zemlinsky and Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde, 10 – 11.  The brochure was published by Adolf von Zemlinsky, the community secretary, and Michael Papo, a functionary and later chief rabbi of the community.  Zemlinsky and Papo, Geschichte der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde, 12.  See Genée, Wiener Synagogen, 103.  See Fani Gargova and Ulrike Unterweger, “The Synagogue of Sofia: A Reassessment of the Role of the Bulgarian Sephardic Community at the Turn of the 20th Century through its Architecture,” in Serdika – Sredec – Sofia: Urban Reinventions Through Three Millennia, ed. Galina Fingarova, Asen Kirin, and Lioba Theis (Münster, forthcoming).

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teenth century, was very popular in Vienna⁸² and had also been adopted by the reformist Ashkenazim in the city.⁸³ The first synagogue in Vienna constructed in an “Orientalized” style, which, according to John Efron, bore “all the typical features of neo-Moorish urban synagogues, frequently referencing the Alhambra,” was the Leopoldstädter Tempel. ⁸⁴ Inaugurated in 1856, almost 30 years before the New Turkish Temple, it was only one of many synagogues in Europe designed in a neo-Oriental style. Other synagogues whose design was apparently inspired by the Alhambra were the Semper Synagogue in Dresden (basically its interior, consecrated in 1840), the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest (consecrated in 1859), and the impressive New Synagogue of Berlin (consecrated in 1866).⁸⁵ Like the Leopoldstädter Tempel, all these houses of worship had been commissioned by conservative or liberal Ashkenazic communities. For most Western and central European Ashkenazim, who had been under the influence of the Haskalah (the Jewish enlightenment), these houses of worship served as an architectonic embodiment of what Ivan Marcus called the “Sephardic Mystique.”⁸⁶ According to Ismar Schorsch, this mystifying concept was rooted in a strong belief in the supposed civilizational and cultural superiority of Sephardic Jewry in medieval Spain – also known as the “Myth of Sephardic Supremacy” – which had been very popular among German maskilim (agents of the Haskalah) since the beginning of the nineteenth century.⁸⁷ Forward-thinking Ashkenazic intellectuals tried to justify their own emancipatory efforts by drawing parallels between the reputedly exceptional role of the Jews in Spain and the – to their mind – exceptional role of the enlightened Jewish intelligentsia in the German Lands. Often, this was done by contrasting the so-called Golden Age of Iberian Jewry to the alleged degenerated condition of the Jews in contemporary Eastern Europe, including those in the Balkans. The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy was also seen

 The most impressive ensemble of historicist architecture in Vienna is the collection of monumental buildings on the Viennese Ringstraße, which were erected in the second half of the nineteenth century. See Barbara Dmytrasz, Die Ringstraße: Eine europäische Bauidee (Vienna: Amalthea, 2014).  See Genée, Wiener Synagogen, 99 – 100, 104.  John M. Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 144.  Ibid., 136 – 38, 149 – 60.  See Ivan G. Marcus, “Beyond the Sephardic Mystique,” Orim 1, no. 1 (1985): 35 – 53.  See Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34, no. 1 (1989): 47– 66; Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” in Sephardism: Spanish Jewish History and the Modern Literary Imagination, ed. Yael Halevi-Wise (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 35 – 57; See also Efron, German Jewry, 16.

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as the key narrative for yet another ideological concept known as “Sephardism.” According to Yael Halevi-Wise, in its purpose and function, Sephardism can be compared to “orientalism, hispanism, medievalism, and other politicized discourses that grew out of the clash between authoritarian, progressive, and romantic ideologies during the age of modern revolutions.”⁸⁸ As an affirmative egalitarian concept, it was first made use of by the Berlin-based Haskalah movement,⁸⁹ which, by means of a goal-driven Biblical Orientalism⁹⁰ and Sephardism, “intended to promote an ideology of Jewish acculturation, accommodation, and compatibility with the majority.”⁹¹ Of course, it was only a question of time until the reform-oriented Sephardim in Vienna discovered and eventually adopted this very meaningful concept from their German-Jewish counterparts in order to create their own version of Sephardism. As other Orientalized synagogues in Germany and Austria, the neoMoorish décor of the New Turkish Temple served principally as a historicist backdrop against which the Viennese Sephardim displayed their own emancipatory and reformist endeavors, but on a broader public level. This notion of a deliberate adaptation to hegemonic norms is further supported by an observation made by the popular Jewish periodical Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums in 1887, which, of course, did not miss out on covering the festive inauguration ceremony of the New Turkish Temple. While the editors of the paper praised the new temple for being a veritable “ornament of Vienna,” they were also very much intrigued by the observance of local etiquette during the service, noting that “nobody dared to breathe a word [i. e., no tittle-tattle] apart from the usual prayers.”⁹² Their explanation for this very civilized conduct was the apparently far advanced process of transculturation that the Viennese Sephardim had gone through in previous decades. As was noted by the editors: Until 30 or 40 years ago, the members of the Turkish community, men and women, were wearing oriental costumes and were speaking mostly spaniolisch [i. e., Judezmo], [while] now they dress exclusively in a German or a French [style], which means in a modern fashion, and speak German. They have a school where German is the language of instruction and many of their children are attending the common elementary and secondary schools.

 Yael Halevi-Wise, preface to Sephardism: Spanish Jewish History and the Modern Literary Imagination, ed. Yael Halevi-Wise (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), xiv.  Efron, German Jewry, 11.  For example, the already mentioned comparison or even identification of German and Austrian reform synagogues (“temples”) with the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.  Efron, German Jewry, 14.  Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums: Ein jüdisches Organ für alles jüdische Interesse 51, no. 40 (October 10, 1887): 633.

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As far as we know, the boys and young men hardly engage themselves in the common sciences in general or in the Jewish sciences in particular. They celebrate the Spanish rite in their synagogue. However, they have recently appointed a German cantor, whose name is Bauer, and they also maintain a choir.⁹³

Over the course of somewhat less than two generations, the Viennese Sephardim had not only adopted a markedly modern and Western lifestyle, but they also tended to abandon their ancestral vernacular in favor of German. Moreover, the fact that they appointed a German cantor and a choir seemed worthy of note. However, the editors of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums neglected to mention that the Sephardic community of Vienna had decided to acquire an even larger organ than the one they had had in the old sanctuary. According to an article in Jacob Bauer’s Cantoren-Zeitung, the New Turkish Temple was equipped with a twelve-register organ, which was constructed by the Viennese organ maker Franz Strommer (1846 – 1912). As a matter of course, the inauguration of the synagogue commenced with a festive prelude on the new organ, which was performed by no less an artist than Joseph Sulzer (1850 – 1926), Salomon Sulzer’s son, who was a cellist with the Vienna Philharmonic.⁹⁴ During regular services, the community was able to call upon yet another notable organist, the famous Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871– 1942), the son of Adolf von Zemlinsky (1845 – 1900), the congregation’s secretary, who had played the organ in the old temple.⁹⁵ Since Löwit’s appointment as choirmaster, Alexander had sung with the newly formed choir of the Old Turkish Temple, but after his voice broke in 1884, he began to play the organ, first during rehearsals and then also on weekdays and minor holidays, as well as on other special occasions. For example, in 1892, when a special service was held in honor of Sultan Abdülhamid II’s (1842– 1918) 50th birthday, the Viennese newspaper Wiener Punsch wrote:

 Ibid.  See Österreichisch-ungarische Cantoren-Zeitung 7, no. 31 (September 22, 1897): 5; See also Frühauf, “Jewish Liturgical Music in Vienna,” 87; Seroussi, “Sephardic Fins de Siècles,” 67.  The Zemlinsky surname hints at a non-Sephardic, in fact, not even Jewish origin of the family. Adolf von Zemlinsky was born a Catholic but converted to Judaism, in order to marry Clara Semo (1848 – 1912), the daughter of the famous Viennese Sephardic author and publisher Shem Tov Semo, who was the editor of El Koreo de Viena. After his marriage, Zemlinsky became deeply involved in the Sephardic community of Vienna, as well as in his father-in-law’s publishing business. See Stechauner, “Imagining the Sephardic Community of Vienna,” 74– 75.

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[S]pecially for the occasion Herr Heinrich Elias⁹⁶ [had] composed a spirited festive hymn, which met with such success that at the end of the service the well-deserving composer was requested to be presented to his Excellency the ambassador. It should also be noted that the distinguished organ playing of Herr Alex. Zemlinsky and of the harp virtuosi Herr and Frau Professor Moser made a notable contribution to the complete success of the occasion.⁹⁷

As pointed out by Antony Beaumont, Alexander von Zemlinsky’s musical work was greatly influenced by Jacob Bauer’s and Isidor Löwit’s modernized sacred music.⁹⁸ However, it is important to note that the Viennese Sephardim not only adopted Western tunes and aesthetics to enhance their synagogal service but also turned to them in other, more earthly contexts. As early as in 1875, El Koreo de Viena published an article about yet another costly wedding that took place in the Turkish Temple. After the ceremony, which was conducted by Reuven Barukh and, of course, featured Goldstein, his choir, and the lofty tones of the organ, the wedding guests were invited to a reception in the famous Hotel Métropole.⁹⁹ After a lavish gala dinner, the guests were further invited to take part in a ball in the same hotel, where the music was performed by the famous orchestra of the Imperial Opera House of Vienna.¹⁰⁰ A couple of years later, the prestigious glamor of the Imperial Opera House would even find its way into the Turkish Temple itself. In his memoirs, Manfred Papo (1898 – 1966), the son of Michael Papo (1843 – 1918), one of the community’s last rabbis, wrote that as soon as the Viennese Sephardim had established their own choir, they would even recruit professional singers from the choir of the Imperial Opera. Furthermore, Papo noted that while some older community members initially had some reservations concerning the implementation of such practices, “their children, since they came from wealthy homes, had [already] acquired a taste for Western music, exemplified in the operas they went to hear and the concerts

 Heinrich Elias was the son of Abraham Elias, a board member of the Sephardic congregation. See Frühauf, “Jewish Liturgical Music in Vienna,” 89.  Wiener Punsch 26, no. 836 (April 5, 1892): 836, trans. taken from Antony Beaumont, Zemlinsky (London: Faber and Faber, 2000), 15; see also Frühauf, “Jewish Liturgical Music in Vienna,” 89.  See Beaumont, Zemlinsky, 15.  Owing its location in the city’s second district, the Leopoldstadt, the hotel became extremely popular among the wealthy Jewish bourgeoisie. This popularity caused it to be called the “Jewish Sacher” (jüdisches Sacher), in reference to the famous Hotel Sacher, which was on the opposite side of the city. The hotel gained notoriety when, only a few days after the Anschluss, it became the headquarters of the Gestapo in March 1939. See Roman Sandgruber, Traumzeit für Millionäre: Die 929 reichsten Wienerinnen und Wiener im Jahr 1910 (Vienna: Styria Premium, 2013), 102– 103.  El Koreo de Viena 6, no. 6 (March 24, 1875): 24.

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they attended. After all, Vienna was the city of music in those days. It was not only the city of Salomon Sulzer, but also of Johann Strauss.”¹⁰¹ Indeed, the Viennese Sephardim had great affection not only for Sulzer but also for the famous Strauss family. Sephardic Jews born and brought up in Vienna considered themselves very much a part of the city’s mainstream culture. For example, during Vienna’s traditional ball season,¹⁰² they even organized their own ball in the fashion of the city’s high society. Of course, El Koreo de Viena did not miss out on reporting this outstanding social event, noting that the spectators must have been amazed: On beholding the flowers, the candles, and the bouquets that adorned the party and, of course, when listening to the music conducted by the rey de los valses i polkas [king of waltzes and polkas] Eduard Strauss, under whose excited command the ladies and gentlemen cheered and kept on dancing until 7 o’clock in the morning.¹⁰³

Eduard (1835 – 1916) was the son of Johann Strauss I (1804– 1849) and the younger brother of Johann Strauss II (1825 – 1899), and both brothers were known as “kings of waltz” (Walzerkönige).¹⁰⁴ His hiring is proof of the high musical standards the Viennese Sephardim sought to achieve when hosting a ball. The notable event was organized by the committee of the Klub Turko, a social club formed by young members of the Sephardic community of Vienna. The club’s programmatic name illustrates that, despite hosting a genuine Viennese event, the young Sephardim had no intention of dissimulating their Turkish origins. Like their parents and grandparents, many of them continued to hold on to their Ottoman citizenship even though they had long ago adapted to the local cultural and social milieu. Thus, in its final remarks about the dancing Jewish Turks in Vienna, El Koreo de Viena virtuously concluded: In actual fact, we may say that we, the levantinos [Levantines, i. e., Oriental Jews] of Vienna, are a chosen people, kissed by fortune for all the good things at our disposal [and] for [the

 Manfred Papo, “The Sephardi Community of Vienna,” in The Jews of Austria: Essays on their Life, History and Destruction, ed. Josef Fraenkel (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1967), 332. See also Seroussi, “Sephardic Fins de Siècles,” 60 – 61, 65.  The Viennese ball season officially lasts from November 11 to Shrove Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday), but most of the balls are organized during the main carnival season in January and February.  El Koreo de Viena 14, no. 6 (February 17, 1883): 22.  See Johannes Kunz, Der Wiener Opernball (Vienna: Molden, 2002), 14– 22.

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fact] that we may become whomever we want, at times Turks and at times alemanes [i. e., German Austrians¹⁰⁵].¹⁰⁶

As this striking statement reveals, the younger generation of Sephardim living in Vienna must have had a very fluid or chameleon-like notion of identity, which allowed them to align with their Ottoman origins, on the one hand, and their immediate Austrian environment, on the other, depending on the particular situation and circumstances. As a matter of fact, at least from a socio-psychological point of view, the adoption of a “situational/chameleon identity” turned out to be quite a natural behavior or strategy among young people with more than one ethnic background.¹⁰⁷ Given the fact that since the emancipation of their Austrian coreligionists in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Sephardic Jews of Vienna did not derive any significant benefit from their status as Ottoman expatriates in terms of their legal status in Vienna, it seems surprising that even the most transculturated young Viennese Sephardim preferred to remain Ottoman citizens. Even when the legal and civic status of the Austrian Ashkenazim improved most Viennese Sephardim decided to retain their Ottoman citizenship. Following the ratification of the so-called Israelitengesetz in 1890 – a law regulating the legal relationship between the Austrian State and its Jews¹⁰⁸ – their status as foreign citizens ap-

 Since the Austro-Hungarian compromise of 1867, the German speaking people of the Austrian half of the empire overwhelmingly defined themselves as “German Austrians” (Deutschö sterreicher or ö sterreichische Deutsche), analogous to the “citizens of the German Empire” (Reichsdeutsche) and in order to distinguish themselves from the non-German-speaking peoples of the Habsburg Empire. See Ernst Bruckmü ller, “Die Entwicklung des Ö sterreichbewusstseins,” in Ö sterreichische Nationalgeschichte nach 1945 – Die Spiegel der Erinnerung: Die Sicht von innen; Band 1, ed. Robert Kriechbaumer (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998), 370.  El Koreo de Viena 14, no. 6 (February 17, 1883): 22.  See Sultana Choudhry, Multifaceted Identity of Interethnic Young People: Chameleon Identities (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 6. This concept of “situational identities” was originally drafted to analyze the ethnic consciousness of Hispanic immigrants in the United States in the early 1970s. In its broadest sense, a situationally projected identity can be described as a “purposeful, socially constructed, selection of group association … chosen by individuals in an effort to broaden the parameters of traditional group boundaries, expand group size and prospective resources, and increase group visibility to the larger society.” John A. García, “Latinos and Political Behavior: Defining Community to Examine Critical Complexities,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Elections and Political Behavior, ed. Jan E. Leighley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 399.  The Israelitengesetz stipulated that there could only be one officially recognized Jewish community in one place, represented by only one legal body. See “Gesetz vom 21. März 1890: Betreffend die Regelung der äußeren Rechtsverhältnisse der israelitischen Religionsgesell-

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peared to be very useful. From that year on, the Ashkenazic IKG repeatedly attempted to absorb the hitherto independent but relatively wealthy Turkish-Israelite community into its own corporate body, which is why the Sephardic Jews eventually felt obliged to engage the legal assistance of the Ottoman Embassy.¹⁰⁹ Despite the ongoing alienation between the two communities following the dispute in 1890, it is important to note that, up to that time, the contact between them had been close and friendly. As I have shown, the gradual convergence between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Vienna eventually called for the continuous transculturation of the Ottoman Jews. This convergence eventually resulted in the emergence of a particular Viennese-Sephardic culture, which was strongly influenced by the cultural imperatives of Viennese high society, Jewish and non-Jewish. Although this process was initially marked by personal contacts between single individuals from the two communities – such as those between Ḥakham Reuven Barukh and Adolf Jellinek and Moritz Güdemann – at a later stage, those contacts evolved into an ever-closer cooperation on a broad communal level. However, those close relationships did not result in a reciprocal intercultural exchange of equal value between the two groups. Rather, as a twofold minority, the Viennese Sephardim followed the hegemonic patterns prevailing within a cultural contact zone, which increasingly urged them to align themselves with the social and cultural norms of their Jewish and non-Jewish environment. Thus, by the second half of the nineteenth century, the Turkish Sephardim in Vienna – like their Ashkenazic coreligionists before them – had largely adopted a Western lifestyle. This adaptation also brought about a radical reformation of their traditional liturgy, according to the standards of the earlier consolidated Wiener Minhag, which itself was an exemplary result of transculturation. The driving forces behind this process were, first and foremost, the younger members of the community, who were born and brought up in the Habsburg capital. Owing to their multiethnic backgrounds, they eventually developed a chameleon-like identity, which, depending on the given situation, allowed them to accentuate either their ties to the Ottoman Empire or their deep rootedness in German-Austrian culture.

schaft,” in Reichsgesetzblatt für die im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (Vienna, 1890), 109 – 13, accessed January 8, 2018, http://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi–content/alex?aid=rgb&da tum=1890&size=45&page=145.  The conflict continued until 1909. In that year, the Turkish-Israelite community of Vienna was officially incorporated into the IKG, but it managed to retain a semiautonomous status. In 1918, after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish-Israelite community of Vienna once again obtained its independence from the IKG, which it maintained until its final destruction in World War II. See Kaul, “Die Rechtsstellung der türkischen Juden in Wien,” 46 – 69.

Carsten Schapkow

10 Max Nordau’s View on Sephardic Judaism and the Emergence of Political Zionism

In the following pages I discuss how, and to what extent, the eminent Zionist thinker Max Nordau, himself of Sephardic ancestry, viewed the history of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula in the context of his general critique of assimilation not only in regard to Jews, but in a more comprehensive understanding as well. My focus here is on the significance of assimilation in the history of the Jews on the Iberian Peninsula as reflected in Nordau’s writings, with an additional emphasis on his two visits to Spain, the first in 1875 and again between 1914 and 1920.¹ In so doing, I attempt to integrate Ashkenazic and Sephardic history into one field of Jewish Studies. The relationship between the two has not yet been researched comprehensively, particularly in the context of the historical study of Zionism.

Sephardic Judaism and German-Jewish History According to some estimates, Jews lived on the Iberian Peninsula from the beginning of the first century CE, but other scholars place the first traces of Jewish settlement as early as the First Temple Period.² The perception of Jewish settlement in Spain was shaped by the idea of a “Golden Age,” in which Jews were not only integrated, but were active in the society’s intellectual life, particularly during the Islamic Period, as well as in the first centuries of the growing Reconquista in the Christian states. Representatives of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism), primarily in Germany, especially during the nineteenth century, pointed explicitly to the fact that Jews had found a home in Spain. Maskilim such as Hartwig Wessely (1725 – 1805), al-

Note: I would like to thank Corey Twitchell who translated an earlier version of this text, Tryce Hyman for editing the article, and Sina Rauschenbach for providing insightful feedback.  Carsten Schapkow, Vorbild und Gegenbild: Das iberische Judentum in der deutsch-jüdischen Erinnerungskultur 1779 – 1939 (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag 2011), 400 – 10.  Alan D. Core, “Sephardim,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 18 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 292– 305. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-010

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though of Ashkenazic descent, went so far as to represent themselves as Sephardic Jews in what James Lehmann describes as “biographical imagination.”³ Until the years leading up to the expulsion in 1492, life in Spain was described as a desirable form of cohabitation with the non-Jewish majority society and became an exemplar for Jews in Germany during the nineteenth century. The expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula did not play a central role in historiographical depictions or literary and journalistic debates, in part because of the perception of the pre-expulsion “Golden Age.” To the extent that the expulsion was mentioned during the nineteenth century, a fundamental principle of its perception lay in emphasizing that it had thrown Spain into a state of backwardness from which it never recovered. Moreover, the Inquisition was not officially banned until 1808. It was not until 1992 that King Juan Carlos II officially apologized to Jewish representatives at the 500-year commemoration of the expulsion and repealed the expulsion order.⁴ The famous 1854 intervention with the Cortes by the German rabbi Ludwig Philippson in the name of freedom of religion caused a stir in Germany and Spain – but did not directly lead to success.⁵ In 1869 the Republican Constitution introduced principles of religious tolerance,⁶ and from that point on Jews were allowed to live as individuals in Spain – but not yet as part of an organized Jewish community. During the course of the nineteenth century, despite the religious freedom that had been granted in Spain, only a limited number of German Jews emigrated. In the 1877 census, only 416 individuals declared themselves to be Jewish. Unlike in the rest of Europe,

 James H. Lehmann, “Maimonides, Mendelssohn and the Me’asfim: Philosophy and the Biographical Imagination in the Early Haskala,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 20 (1975): 87– 108. See also the contemporary scholarly analysis of Philo-Sephardic rhetoric or Sephardic self-fashioning regarding a “myth of Sephardic supremacy” (Ismar Schorsch) or “the allure of the Sephardic” (John Efron); Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989): 47– 66; John Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). Concerning a critical analysis of the perception of this supposedly Golden Age, see Darío Fernández-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, 2nd ed. (Wilmington, DE: ISI Press, 2016).  Eliyahu Ashtor et al., “Spain,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 19 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 67– 83, accessed December 1, 2019, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2587518938/GVRL?u=norm94900&sid=GVRL&xid=e1d 46058.  Carsten Schapkow, Role Model and Counter Model: The Golden Age of Iberian Jewry and German Jewish Culture during the Era of Emancipation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 237– 57.  Jonathan Prato, “Modern Period,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 19 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 80.

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where anti-Semitism increased from the 1880s on, the trend in Spain was in the opposite direction. The anti-Semitism that had been a feature in Spain for centuries – even without the presence of Jews – now gave way to a politically initiated campaign for the return of the Sephardim, primarily from the Balkans, in a movement known as Philosephardism. Following Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the subsequent loss of its overseas colonies, some viewed efforts to attract the Sephardim as a compensation for these losses. Liberal-conservative politician Angel Pulido Fernández (1852– 1932), in particular, advocated for contact on cultural and economic levels between Spanish nationals and Sephardic Jews, whom he called “Spaniards without fatherland” living in the Balkans and still speaking Ladino. On the basis of a survey of Ladino speakers, Pulido Fernández wrote a treatise on the areas where Ladino was spoken, where he discussed the ways it differed from Castilian Spanish.⁷ The prevailing view among researchers of his generation was that the Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews hindered their assimilation into the culture of the Balkan states.⁸ They maintained their Spanish identity, language, and customs for centuries in exile and as the “elite class of the Jewish race”⁹ engaged in patriotic acts as Spaniards. Pulido Fernández’s involvement led to the Hispanismo movement, which was, in turn, followed by the founding of the Alianza Hispano-Israelita under the patronage of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Further, Spanish Philosemites attempted to profit from the economic importance of the Sephardim for the Spanish state. Sephardim living outside of Spain were able to enter into a protectorate relationship with the Spanish state. In order to engage the Sephardic elite in Spanish interests, Spanish teachers were sent to Sephardic centers in the Balkans, but the attempt to establish schools based on the Alliance Israélite Universelle model was ultimately a failure. Nevertheless, “the Philosephardism of the past decades peaked in the early republican period with proclamations that the new political system would retract the Edict of Expulsion of 1492.”¹⁰ In fact, Jews in the Second Republic (1931–

 Angel Pulido Fernández, Españoles sin patria y la raza sefardí (Madrid: E. Teodoro, 1905); see also Michal Friedman, “Jewish History as ‘Historia Patria’: Amador de los Rios and the History of the Jews of Spain” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2009), 36 – 37.  Bernd Rother, Spanien und der Holocaust (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001), 36.  Ernesto Giménez Caballero, “Mi regreso a España,” Gaceta Literaria 72 (December 15, 1929): 1; in regard to the category of race and Sephardic Jewry, see John M. Efron, “Scientific Racism and the Mystique of Sephardic Racial Superiority,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 38 (1993): 75 – 96.  Manfred Böcker, Antisemitismus ohne Juden: Die Zweite Republik, die antirepublikanische Rechte und die Juden; Spanien 1931 bis 1936 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000), 135. My translation.

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1939) were granted complete legal equality. Following the fall of the Second Republic, the quality of life for Jews in Spain deteriorated drastically even though many representatives of the Philosephardism movement later organized themselves in Franco’s Falange. At the same time, some traces of earlier Philosephardism remained.¹¹ The perception of the role of Jews as preservers of the cultural identity of a nation-state appears to have been unique to the Spanish case. Seen from a Jewish perspective in the context of stalled acceptance and an increase in anti-Semitism in many European countries from the 1880s on, complete assimilation was harshly criticized by Zionist writers. However, it is important to note that the roots of a critical examination of Iberian-Jewish culture and the associated assimilation into the majority society developed before the rise of Zionist positions. The first author to formulate a radical critique of contemporary Iberian-Jewish culture – even though he admired medieval Iberian Jews for their contributions to the general culture – was Abraham Geiger (1810 – 1874), one of the founding fathers of Reform Judaism. Geiger viewed German Jews as cultural mediators in the tradition of the Sephardim in al-Andalus and as exemplars for other Jews in Europe. He was thus particularly critical of what he saw as the lethargy of the Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands, who did not want to integrate into the majority society and thought of their Sephardic roots in arrogant and romanticized ways. According to Geiger, then, the integration of contemporary Sephardim into a modern state did not work.¹² The first Zionist representatives radically changed Jewish readers’ perception of Jewish history on the Iberian Peninsula. The political Zionism that developed in the last third of the nineteenth century began as the ideology of an outsider group, but one that received significant support owing to such anti-Semitic episodes as the pogroms in Russia since 1881 and the Dreyfus Affair of 1896, growing thereafter into an alternative for the Jews of Eastern and Western Europe. Zionism remained, at least in Western Europe, a minority position until after World War I. The opposition of the so-called “Protest Rabbis” to the calling of a Zionist congress in Germany was so great that the congress could not be held in Munich, so Basel was chosen as the host site.¹³ This, too, was proof that the vast majority of Jews in Germany were not inclined to support Zionism,

 Anna Lena Menny, Spanien und Sepharad: Über den offiziellen Umgang mit dem Judentum im Franquismus und in der Demokratie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 41– 80.  Schapkow, Role Model and Counter Model, 170 – 99.  Michael Brenner, “Warum München nicht zur Hauptstadt des Zionismus wurde: Jüdische Religion und Politik um die Jahrhundertwende,” in Zionistische Utopie – Israelische Realität: Religion und Nation in Israel, ed. Michael Brenner and Yfaat Weiss (Munich: Beck, 1999), 39 – 52.

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as they viewed it as being in opposition to their desire for assimilation. It took some time before this view began to change.¹⁴ Zionist thinkers agreed in their rejection of assimilation. From their perspective, Sephardic Jews in particular were integrated into their majority society in such a way that it was impossible for them to recognize that they were in fact not – nor could they be – truly integrated and protected, but rather that their lives were massively threatened. Zionist authors began attacking the passivity of contemporary Jews, which Geiger had criticized for completely different reasons. Assimilation was seen as the wrong answer. The Zionist concept of history proceeds from a negation of exile. It views Jewish history primarily as a chronicle of persecution and pleads from a position for ending the galut. ¹⁵ From the Zionist perspective of history, Iberian-Sephardic culture and the role of Sephardic Jews as go-betweens were rejected because of their high degree of assimilation. Instead, from the Zionist perspective, the expulsion from Spain took on the central role in this historical experience. The Zionist concept of history advocated for dissociation from the influence of the non-Jewish majority societies, seeing the fulfillment of Jewish history in the dissolution of the Diaspora through the establishment of a Jewish state. As early as in 1862 in his book Rome and Jerusalem, Zionist author Moses Hess (1812– 1875) noted that “the Spanish-Jewish cultural epoch” had shown “how one can both remain a national, patriotic Jew and nevertheless participate in the cultural and political life of the country of which one is a citizen, so much that this country becomes a second native country.”¹⁶ He emphasized the national Jewish image that had been preserved through, for example, writing. In his analysis of contemporary Jewry, Hess reached the conclusion, also arrived at later by Theodor Herzl, that anti-Semitism made integration and acceptance of the Jews impossible. Hess’s book also explicitly emphasizes the role of nationalism, which had turned such countries as Italy into national states. It must be possible for Jews to have a state in which they could live without oppression and hate, he wrote. Particularly in the context of the stalled societal acceptance of the Jews by the majority society in Germany, Hess concluded that the complete

 Mark H. Gelber, Melancholy Pride: Nation, Race, and Gender in the German Literature of Cultural Zionism (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000); David N. Myers, ed., Re-inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).  Michael Brenner, Propheten des Vergangenen: Jüdische Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 2006), 230.  Moses Hess, Rom und Jerusalem: Die letzte Nationalitätenfrage (Vienna and Jerusalem: R. Löwit, 1935 [1862]), here 73.

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assimilation model of the Iberian Jews no longer appears to be suitable for his own times. As a result, the idealization of this culture, particularly as it was practiced by the Wissenschaft des Judentums, faded into the background.

Max Nordau’s 1875 Voyage to Spain Max Simon Südfeld, who changed his name to Nordau in 1875, was born in 1849 in the Hungarian city of Pest, the son of Rabbi Gabriel ben Asser Südfeld. Although he received a traditional Jewish education, he attended a Catholic school until 1862. That year he transferred to a Calvinist school because, owing to Magyarization, Hungarian became the language of instruction at the Catholic school, which was a step that he did not favor.¹⁷ Until he was eighteen, Nordau lived as an observant Jew. Thereafter, he became a radical naturalist and a proponent of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. His name change from the supposedly Jewish sounding Südfeld to the German Nordau, which can be translated into English as “northern meadow,” showed his strong desire to assimilate into the majority culture. It is possible, as posited by Reizbaum, that Jewish self-hatred played a role in this development.¹⁸ Nordau was undoubtedly influenced as a youth by two major factors: the rise of anti-Semitism and Magyarization. He completed his medical studies at the University in Pest in 1880 and then settled in Paris, where he practiced medicine and also gained recognition and prominence as a journalist. In 1867, he began working for the Pester Lloyd and was a correspondent for major European periodicals. In 1873, he traveled to Russia, Scandinavia, England, Iceland, France, Italy, and Spain, where he crossed half of the peninsula from Catalonia in the north to Andalusia in the south. He published his experiences in his two-volume travelogue, From the Kremlin to the Alhambra, in 1880. The description of his trip through Spain was also translated into Spanish under the title Impresiones Españolas. ¹⁹ His trip to Spain lasted from the end of April until mid-August 1875. This was a turbulent time in the country, but Nordau did not refer to the ongoing conflict

 Hedvig Ujva´ri, “Die exemplarische Schulkarriere eines ‘deutschen’ Juden im Pest des 19. Jahrhunderts: Max Nordau,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 54, no. 2 (2002): 138 – 52.  Compare Marilyn Reizbaum, “Max Nordau and the Generation of Jewish Muscle,” Jewish Culture and History 6 (2003): 130 – 51, esp. 132.  Max Nordau, Impresiones Españolas (Barcelona: Arte y Letras, 1915). For the original edition, see Max Nordau, Vom Kreml zur Alhambra (Leipzig: Bernhard Schlicke, 1881 [1880]).

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there.²⁰ He was then 25 and 26 years old, respectively, had just received his medical degree, and was already working as a correspondent for a number of German-language newspapers. Clearly, he identified culturally as a German, but unlike the authors of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, he actually traveled to Spain. His trip led him from Marseille on April 30, 1875, to Sant Feliu in the province of Gerona. From there he sailed to Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena, Almeria, Málaga, and finally traveled by train to Granada, where he stayed for a week. From Granada he visited Cádiz, Jerez de la Frontera, Sevilla, and Córdoba – staying a week in each of the latter two cities. He also visited Madrid, but that stop is not included in the travelogue. On August 17, 1875, he left Alicante by ship and sailed to Marseille; he did not set foot on Spanish soil again for the next 39 years. Nordau gained fame as a cosmopolitan and writer living in Paris, where he met Theodor Herzl, and their lifelong friendship became a cornerstone of political Zionism. But nothing like that could have been foreseen in 1875. Nordau viewed Spain from the perspective of a cultured man looking at the native life of Spaniards with a kind of fascination. He visited the places of “Golden Age” Spain as discussed by the authors of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. ²¹ For the Wissenschaft scholars, the history of Sephardic Jewry developed into a historic example with its distinctive valence and signature against the pressure to assimilate and the emergence of anti-Semitism in Germany. Moreover, in their understanding, it provided a forum for internal dialogue among Jews and external dialogue with the German majority society regarding challenging questions of religious, political, and national identity. The perceived role of Sephardic Jews as cultural mediators on the Iberian Peninsula was key in this respect. We do not know for certain how much Nordau knew at this point about Spanish Jewish history or about the relevant debates among scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. How, then, did he perceive Spain? Moreover, how did he relate Jewish history in Spain to events in Spanish history? Clearly, Nordau’s ambivalent perception of the role of the Jews in medieval and contemporary Spain in From the Kremlin to the Alhambra led him to focus on the idea of assimilation. He noted at the beginning of the chapter on Spain

 Hedwig Herold-Schmidt, “Vom Ende der Ersten zum Scheitern der Zweiten Republik (1874– 1939),” in Kleine Geschichte Spaniens, ed. Peer Schmidt (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007), 329 – 442.  This simple black and white contrast – “Dark Ages” in medieval Ashkenaz and “Golden Times” in medieval Sepharad – does not reflect recent scholarship but has to be seen in the ideology of the time. For a more well-balanced approach, see Jonathan Elukin, Living Together – Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007)

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that Jewish history was invisible for visitors. By chance he discovered a piece of a gravestone serving as a cobblestone with a Hebrew inscription.²² He wrote: Nothing remains of this unfortunate lineage except for the memory of the great crime that Spain committed against its most loyal inhabitants. Like a corpse buried too shallowly, this ‘encoffined’ crime sticks out of the blanket of the past with the hundred dead bones of the past and raises its unlimited accusation in all cities and on all country roads.²³

Nordau contended that this crime, that is, the expulsion, against the most loyal inhabitants of Spain was never atoned for.²⁴ The adjective “encoffined” (eingesargt) was a central metaphor for the ghetto existence of German Jews before their emancipation. According to the perceptions in the nineteenth century, it was only in medieval Spain that things were different and that Spanish Jews participated in the broader culture as mediators between Jewish culture and the majority cultures, both Muslim and Christian. However, as Nordau noted in From the Kremlin to the Alhambra, even in medieval Spain, although Jews contributed to the general culture, they never received anything in return.²⁵ For Nordau, the condition of being “encoffined” meant being reminded of the historical injustice of the expulsion. He also contended that Spain was still haunted by religious fanaticism and unhappy and without culture up to his own day. However, he insisted that the Catholic Monarchs were not really at fault, but that they had been led in that direction by fanatic clerics. The argument for seeing protectors of the Jews in Christian rulers is a very old one and can be found throughout the nineteenth century, based, for instance, on earlier eminent works such as Shevet Yehudah by Solomon ibn Verga.²⁶ The expulsion had influenced the Jews and the Spanish state in very serious negative ways. Nordau turned to the history of the Moriscos – Muslims who were converted to Christianity – to explain the expulsion as a crime against humanity in general so as to take it out of the narrower frame of Jewish history. The expulsion was, for Nordau, still visible and palpable. On that basis, he viewed himself as being in a “haunted castle,” uncanny and dead, carrying countless secrets.²⁷

 Nordau, Vom Kreml zur Alhambra, 260.  Ibid. All translations, if not otherwise indicated, are mine.  Ibid., 260 – 61.  Ibid., 692.  Salomon ibn Verga, Schevet Jehuda: Ein Buch über das Leiden des jüdischen Volkes im Exil; In der Übersetzung von Meir Wiener, ed. Sina Rauschenbach (Berlin: Parerga, 2006).  “Mir war’s als wandelte ich in einem Geisterschlosse; die Ausgestorbenheit rings um mich war mir unheimlich; ich wagte kaum aufzutreten, unholde Geheimnisse zu erwecken, die in diesem geborstenen Gemäuer schlummerten.” Nordau, Vom Kreml zur Alhambra, 264.

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This despairing sense of abandonment changed for Nordau with his visit to the Alhambra. He was full of excitement when he wrote about Islamic Spain and the Jewish contributions to that culture. For him, the Alhambra was the symbol of Spain’s glorious past. The visit gave him the feeling of no longer being a stranger, but rather of belonging to a country that had made him one of its own: As I walked through this beauty and contentedness, it was as if I were no longer a stranger, but rather had been adopted by this elysian land, and were allowed to share with its children the common legacy of godlike pleasure in being and countless riches of nature.²⁸

For Nordau, Andalusia was the “most enchanting land in Europe.”²⁹ His memories and feelings overwhelmed him, and he felt as though he was in a fairy tale.³⁰ In this context, Nordau introduced the adjective “encoffined” again, when he compared the past glorious culture with the present, which is no longer a city, but rather a “mausoleum,” “a monstrous grave monument to the old Moorish rule, which was ‘encoffined’” here. The present was “shameful and desolate.” Cultural symbiosis was part of the past. Now, brutalization and blind faith determined life in Spain. “The Plaza de Toros replaced the university in Spain, and the ignorant populace seeks the enlightenment in the churches that it once found in science.”³¹ During his visit to the former mosque in Córdoba, which as many others had been converted into a church, Nordau observed a man in traditional North African dress meditating. He described the man in terms of his appearance and demeanor as a proud figure. When Nordau spoke to him, the man refused to answer. This changed when the man realized that he was not facing a Spaniard, but rather a foreigner. During the ensuing conversation, the man indicated he was a Morisco, whose ancestors had been driven from Spain because they were accused of still being Muslims. The historical Moriscos were entirely banned from Spain between 1609 and 1614 despite earlier guarantees of freedom of religion, and only Christians without Muslim descent were allowed to remain in the country. With this example, Nordau made it clear that Christian fanaticism persecuted and expelled not only the Jews, but also the descendants of the Muslims in Spain. Nordau was ex-

 Ibid., 268 – 69.  Ibid., 268.  “Man konnte sich ein Märchenprinz zu sein dünken, der auf weichen Kissen von Seide ruht und dem junge Sklavinnen mit mächtigen Pfauenfächern die üppige, parfümierte Luft des Harems zuwehen.” Nordau, Vom Kreml zur Alhambra, 268.  Ibid., 314– 15.

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cited about talking with the man and asked him: “And so the memories of your Spanish magnificence are still alive for you today?”³² The man replied that memories of a glorious past in general no longer exist and that they are only present among the “descendants of the noble and the great.”³³ The man did not appear to count himself among this group, telling next about the house key that his family had kept for nine generations after the expulsion in memory of their home in Spain. He took Nordau to the door of the house, which had remained unchanged for 250 years. For Nordau the Morisco embodied a way of connecting the present to the past.³⁴ His present was filled with desperation and his existence was that of a beggar; he secured his survival as a vendor of small goods to “those who had robbed his family” in various Spanish cities.³⁵ Although his ancestors tried to assimilate into Christian society, they were unable to prevent their societal fall. Like the wanderer symbolizing the homeless Jew, for Nordau it was the Morisco, who, homeless and without peace, only had his memory of the past. His occupation as a salesman was reminiscent of most of the German Jews before the age of emancipation as well as of the contemporary East European Jews, who at the time Nordau composed his travelogue were suffering and in great need. Although the Morisco’s family had assimilated, they stayed loyal to Islam in secret, so they were expelled by a fanatical, exclusive, and, consequently, criminal Christendom. This history is starkly reminiscent of the fate of the New Christians after 1391, who, in the following decades under accusations of Judaizing, also found themselves facing the Inquisition.³⁶ For Nordau the expulsions from Spain assumed a universal character. Moreover, he used the memory of the Moriscos as evidence that assimilation did not and could not ever work – neither in Jewish nor non-Jewish culture, as was clear from the history of the Moriscos. Although Nordau had become convinced during a visit to Seville that every family had Moorish and Jewish blood,³⁷ this assumed hybridity had no value for

 Ibid., 322.  Ibid.  “Diese vergessen auch in ihrer gegenwärtigen Erniedrigung nicht den Glanz ihrer Ahnen und sie pflegen treu jedes Andenken an die Vergangenheit.” Nordau, Vom Kreml zur Alhambra, 322.  Ibid., 321.  “Als auch Granada fiel, da drohte man meinem Geschlechte mit der Vertreibung, wenn es nicht seinen Glauben aufgeben wollte. Es wurde äußerlich katholisch, blieb aber im Geheimen dem Glauben der Väter treu. Das dauerte so drei Generationen, dann trieb man meine Familie und alle Mauren, die noch in Spanien waren, eines Tages von Haus und Hof, raubte ihnen alles, was sie hatten, misshandelte sie und schickte diejenigen, die nicht getötet wurden, nach Marokko hinüber.” Nordau, Vom Kreml zur Alhambra, 323.  “Die Stadt, in der es kaum eine Familie geben dürfte, die nicht maurisches und jüdisches Blut in den Adern hätte.” Nordau, Vom Kreml zur Alhambra, 291.

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the Jews. “The Jews were always givers, never receivers.”³⁸ This statement was the basis for Nordau’s later conviction that Zionism was the only alternative for the Jews, although in this early writing he put it in a more comprehensive context. Nordau included another group, “Spanish gypsies,” in his travelogue. When describing them, he used a range of stereotypes such as “human move of grasshoppers.”³⁹ However, and this is striking, he noted that Spain became the homeland of these people, known as gitanos, who saw themselves as “real Andalusians,”⁴⁰ and who were so treated by the rest of the population.⁴¹ Their being Andalusian could be seen, according to Nordau, in the gitanos’ ability to promote the traditional flamenco as well as the accompanying signing. He considered this clear evidence that gitanos were not only able to integrate into Spain, but could also help to create and preserve the cultural identity of Andalusia. He concluded that this stood in stark contrast to his native country, Hungary. After the publication of his travelogue, Nordau developed into an increasingly cosmopolitan multilingual individual and took an ambivalent position in regard to Judaism. In Paris, he observed the fin de siècle society and published several very successful books.⁴² Through his role as a cultural conduit in his work as a journalist far from Budapest, he also contributed to and became known for popularizing such modern theories as Darwinism, neurasthenia, degeneration, and hysteria;⁴³ it was particularly his 1892 treatise Degeneration that brought him fame. That book deals with both the writings of Nietzsche and the theories of Darwin. Here, Nordau described and analyzed the psychological and material conditions facing Jews in the East and the West, which eventually led to his thoughts on the regeneration of Jewish life though the development of “muscular Judaism.”⁴⁴ However, there is no mention of Sephardic Jewry or the history of the Jews on the Iberian Peninsula in these very popular works. In addition to Nordau the citizen of the world, there was also Nordau the individual, who was proud of his Sephardic Jewishness and skeptical of East Euro Ibid., 692.  Ibid., 305.  Ibid., 308.  Ibid., 305.  Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001).  Petra Zudrell, Der Kulturkritiker und Schriftsteller Max Nordau: Zwischen Zionismus, Deutschtum und Judentum (Würzburg: Kö nigshausen & Neumann, 2003), 273.  Todd Samuel Presner, “Clear Heads, Solid Stomachs, and Hard Muscles: Max Nordau and the Aesthetics of Jewish Regeneration,” Modernism/Modernity 10, no. 2 (2003): 269 – 96; compare with Reizbaum, “Max Nordau and the Generation of Jewish Muscle.”

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pean Judaism. In his 1928 posthumously published memoirs, written in the third person, he noted that he viewed himself as a descendant of the Abrabanel family and that his heritage came to him through language: He [his father] also taught him the Ladino of his ancestors, even at a time when that heritage was not yet comprehensible to the little one. But the boy had a great interest in the history of the Jews from early on, and for the Abrabanel family, of which he, as he knew, was a distant scion.⁴⁵

To what extent this aspect of his own Sephardic family history influenced Nordau as a Zionist author cannot be established with any certainty. However, his knowledge of Spanish might well have gone back to the Ladino lessons he claimed to have had with his father as an adolescent.⁴⁶ Only later in life, after he had met Theodor Herzl in 1892 in Paris,⁴⁷ did Nordau become one of the leading Zionist thinkers. There is no clear divide between Nordau as the author of Degeneration and as a proponent of Zionism.⁴⁸ As a cultural critic, he had found fault with the assimilation of Jews in Western Europe. He saw the burgeoning of anti-Semitism as an indication that Jews were being completely reduced to the status of outsiders.⁴⁹ Herzl acknowledged his agreement with Nordau in his diaries, writing: “Nordau and I were in agreement on the point that it was anti-Semitism that had turned us into Jews.”⁵⁰ Concerning anti-Semitism in Europe, Nordau contended that it was present everywhere, which made him “aware of his duties towards his people.” ⁵¹ He related to his own family history as descendants of Sephardic Jews when he wrote: “Those among us who are of Spanish lineage remember Spain with affection despite

 Max Nordau, Erinnerungen (Leipzig: Renaissance Verlag, 1928), 12.  On the linguistic foundations of Ladino and its connection to Hebrew, see Ruth Overbeck de Sumi, “Urtext und Übersetzung der Hebräischen Bibel im sefardischen Judentum: Eine sprachliche Analyse von Ladinoversionen zum Buch Ruth,” in Judenspanisch 9 (= Neue Romania 34) (2005): 109 – 216.  Jacques Kornberg, Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).  George Mosse, “Nordau, Liberalism and the New Jew,” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 4 (1992): 565 – 81, esp. 567.  Meir Ben-Horin, “Max Nordau,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 15 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 297– 99.  Theodor Herzl, Briefe und Tagebücher, 7 vols., ed. Alex Bein, Hermann Greive, Moshe Schaerf, Julius H. Schoeps, and Johannes Wachten (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1983 – 1996), vol. 2, 21.  Max Nordau, “Meine Selbstbiographie,” in idem, Zionistische Schriften, ed. Zionistisches Aktionskomitee, 2nd ed. (Cologne: Jü discher Verlag, 1923), 486.

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the horrible ill-treatment and atrocities that stand between us and the memory of the former homeland.”⁵² Along with Herzl, Nordau advocated the establishment of a Jewish state that would build on the cultural, technical, and scientific achievements of Western Europe, but remain independent.⁵³ In contrast to the generation that succeeded him, Nordau had no nostalgic sympathy for the East European Jews, nor did he seek a Jewish renaissance as posited by Martin Buber. Nordau called for a practical change of Jews in the Diaspora, which is most evident in his image of the “Muscular Jew.” In his opening speech at the Second Zionist Congress in Basel on August 28, 1898, Nordau used the term “Muscular Jew” to call for a change from an assimilated Jew to a new, self-confident Jew.⁵⁴ Only a turn to Zionism would allow the Jews to awaken,⁵⁵ to change their situation, and to inwardly become “new Jews.” On the basis of this inner change, the Jews’ galut experience would come to an end. The spread of anti-Semitism was the only deciding, essential, constant for Nordau. He also spoke in the same terms at the Fourth Zionist Congress in August 1900, and talked about the rapid spread of anti-Semitism throughout the world. Nordau’s role in the Zionist movement was generally popular, but there were some critical voices because he had married Anna Kaufmann, a Protestant with four children, and had allowed their daughter Maxa to be baptized as a Protestant. Nordau’s plea for “Muscular Judaism” led, for example, to the founding of a series of Jewish athletic clubs, as Jews were not accepted as members in the existing general clubs. Zionism was also featured in art. For instance, the works of the painter E. H. Lilien suggest a view of Judaism that reflects strong and attractive Jewish figures. These new heroes no longer needed the intermediary characters from Iberian-Sephardic history. According to Nordau, it was the increase and the ineradicability of anti-Semitism that reminded him of his Jewishness and the unsolved Jewish question.⁵⁶ In his 1909 book The Meaning of History, he com “Diejenigen unter uns [my emphasis; C.S.], die spanischer Abkunft sind, denken noch heute mit Zärtlichkeit an Spanien, obschon die schauerlichsten Misshandlungen und Gräuel zwischen uns und der Erinnerung an das ehemalige Vaterland stehen.” Max Nordau, “Ein Tempelstreit (Die Welt, Nr. 2, 1897),” in idem, Zionistische Schriften, ed. Zionistisches Aktionskomitee (Cologne: Jü discher Verlag, 1909), 12– 13.  Christoph Schulte, Psychopathologie des Fin de siècle: Der Kulturkritiker, Arzt und Zionist Max Nordau (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1997), 275.  Stenographische Protokolle der Verhandlungen des II. Zionisten-Congresses (Vienna: Verlag des Vereines Erez Israel, 1898), 24.  Ibid., 15.  Schulte, Psychopathologie, 273.

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pared this contemporary anti-Semitism to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, which had also been preceded by a lengthy period of discrimination.⁵⁷ Nordau’s criticism of the Sephardic Jews related to their complete assimilation into Christian Spanish society. It is important to note that there is no reference in his work to a negative assessment of Jews living under Muslim rule. Assimilation was a central factor in Nordau’s analysis, as he contended that it left the Jews defenseless because it deprived them of internal bonds and solidarity. They no longer had an internal core, and every form of assimilation left them even more separated from one another. It is critical for an understanding of Nordau’s view of Zionism to realize that he was convinced that it was not only the spread of anti-Semitism that led to the rise of the Zionist movement but that the decadence of the fin-de-siècle was a contributing factor as well.⁵⁸ For Nordau, anti-Semitism was a phenomenon among other contemporary forms of degeneration that he had often described in his works as a cultural critic. Anti-Semitism was a component of contemporary culture and was based on a “cultural code.” A separate Jewish state would not eliminate anti-Semitism from the world, but it would offer Jews protection from it. Herzl, however, argued that the existence of a Jewish state would bring an end to anti-Semitism.⁵⁹ Nordau’s rejection of assimilation is formulated bluntly in his Zionist Writings from 1909, where he related the history of the Jews in Spain to the contemporary Western and Central European Jews, who in his perception were and are completely assimilated. Moreover, he insisted that Jews no longer had the ability to recognize that assimilation was the wrong way for them. It had led to death and expulsion in Spain, which, he predicted, contemporary Jews would experience as well. Nordau first articulated this in a lecture in Amsterdam on April 17, 1899: You don’t know Jewish history, but you have certainly heard it told that … in Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella there were Jewish millionaires who lived in palaces, had court and state offices, provided the nobility in the country with meals featuring truffles, and that then, suddenly, without warning, a terrible day arrived that turned these laughing millionaires into mangled corpses, and the fortunate of them into roving beggars, whose descendants are hungry and disheveled in the Jewish districts in Poland and Romania.⁶⁰

 Max Nordau, Der Sinn der Geschichte (Berlin: Carl Duncker, 1909).  Schulte, Psychopathologie, 271; Schulte refers to Moshe Halevi, “Max Nordau, His Zionist Attitude and His Work in the Zionist Movement” [Hebrew] (PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 1988).  Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (New York: Dover Publications, 1988), 156.  Nordau, Zionistische Schriften (1909), 298.

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Nordau maintained that death and persecution were the consequences of the assimilated lifestyle of the Sephardic Jews, whose descendants could then be found in contemporary Poland and Romania. Unlike his predecessor Rabbi Joseph of Salonika, who left Salonika via Vienna for Posen in 1681, most of the Jews expelled from Spain who settled in the Ottoman Empire ended up in areas that later became part of the Principality and then Kingdom of Romania. In a lecture in Berlin in 1905, Nordau stated that Sephardic Jews including Sephardic Jews in Romania, who remembered Spain with fondness, had “a more affectionate love for the fatherland compared to other, quieter, nations”:⁶¹ The displaced cried as much about their sunny homeland as about their massacred children and parents and even more so than about their stolen property. And even today, more than four hundred years since this happened the descendants of these expelled ones maintained their Spanish mother tongue, their Ladino, as a dear legacy of their lost fatherland.⁶²

In a lecture in 1911, Nordau contended that in contrast to Christian Europe, Jews had been very much appreciated “in the countries of Islam with Moorish culture,”⁶³ and that such a cross-cultural experience had never existed between Jews and Christians in medieval Europe. Ghetto existence was crucial for the inner cohesion of unassimilated Jews. Assimilation destroyed this cohesion and left the Jews vulnerable and without an inner bond. In Nordau’s analysis of the history of the Sephardic Jews under Muslim rule there was no force that pushed them to assimilate. Clearly, Nordau did not pay any attention to the persecution of Jews in Muslim Spain. For him, Islam as a culture rather than a religion offered the Jews the possibility of integration as Jews into al-Andalus. The goal of the Reconquista, conversely, was to build a Christian country, and the elite among the Sephardic Jews assimilated into Christian society. Nordau maintained that the Jews lost their inner core and that any form of assimilation moved them away from one another. Using Sephardic Jewry as a model, he related to

 Max Nordau, Der Zionismus und seine Gegner: Vortrag (Berlin: F. Lenz, 1905), 18.  “Als Spanien seine Juden unter Gräueln verjagte, die in der Geschichte ohne Vorbild sind, da weinten die Vertriebenen um ihre sonnige Heimat ebenso sehr wie um ihre niedergemetzelten Kinder und Eltern und mehr als um die ihnen geraubte Habe. Und noch heute, vier Jahrhunderte später, pflegen die Nachkommen jener Hinausgestoßenen ihre spanische Muttersprache, ihr Ladino als ein teures Vermächtnis ihres verlorenen Vaterlandes [my emphasis].” Nordau, Der Zionismus und seine Gegner, 18.  Nordau, “Vortrag 1911,” quoted from Norbert Rehrmann, Das schwierige Erbe von Sefarad: Juden und Mauren in der spanischen Literatur; Von der Romantik bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag, 2002), 692.

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the more recent history of German Jewry, arguing that loyalty and love for the German fatherland left them without any connection to Judaism and other Jews. That, he said, transformed them into “new Marranos” like the “old Marranos” in Spain, who were forced to convert to Christianity by the Inquisition and were filled with self-hatred: “These new Marranos separated from Judaism with fury and bitterness, but in the depths of their hearts, although unacknowledged, carried their own dishonesty, the hatred that forced them to this lie, toward the Christians as well.”⁶⁴ Nordau compared the contemporary situation of the Jews in Romania with the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain. In his lecture at the Fourth Zionist Congress in 1900, he noted: “In Romania a catastrophe came into being that the Jewish people had not experienced for centuries. In fact, we need to go back to the year 1492 to find something similar.”⁶⁵ He was referring to the fate of 500,000 Jewish residents of Romania, who lived in an environment of hatred against them, without any rights, awaiting despotism and deportation at any time. Despite international intervention following the de facto independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1859, Jews were not granted civic equality in the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia, which would later become the Kingdom of Romania. After the Berlin Congress of 1878, the Jews’ living conditions deteriorated even further. With reference to the graveyard analogy evident throughout his writings, Nordau noted: “They left nothing at home except the bones of their fathers in their graves, which constituted their only share of the soil of their native country.”⁶⁶ It was again the term “native country” that Nordau employed here as if to illuminate the Jews’ estranged situation with even greater emphasis. Further, in the same speech he made it clear that the Romanian Jews had to be encouraged to go to Palestine because even in America they would not be safe.⁶⁷

 “Die neuen Marranen scheiden aus dem Judentum mit Grimm und Erbitterung, aber im innersten Herzen, wenngleich von ihnen uneingestanden, tragen sie ihre eigene Unehrlichkeit, den Hass, der sie zu ihrer Lüge gezwungen, auch dem Christen nach.” Max Nordau, “I. Kongressrede, Basel, 29. August 1897,” in idem, Zionistische Schriften (1909), 39 – 57, here 52.  Max Nordau, “IV. Kongressrede, London, 13. August 1900,” in idem, Zionistische Schriften (1909), 93 – 111, here 96.  “Daheim haben sie nichts zurückgelassen, als die Gebeine der Väter in den Gräbern, die ihren einzigen Anteil am Boden ihres Geburtslandes darstellten.” Nordau, “IV. Kongressrede,” 97.  Ibid., 98 – 99.

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Max Nordau in Spain during the Great War An involuntary second stay in Spain during World War I gave Nordau a more extended opportunity to learn about contemporary Spain.⁶⁸ An Austrian citizen who had to flee Paris at the beginning of the war, he settled in Madrid, which gave him the opportunity to survey the conditions in Spain more extensively.⁶⁹ While residing in Madrid, he participated in the events of the “Athenee” literary circle, and although he did speak Spanish, he delivered a lecture there in French. In his memoirs he explained: “The antiquated accent with which he pronounces Spanish – like the Jews in Salonika do today – embarrasses him. He learned the idiom of his ancestors as a boy with his father.”⁷⁰ This time, however, Nordau took advantage of the chance to visit the house of his ancestors in Segovia.⁷¹ In Madrid, Nordau met with Angel Pulido Fernández, whom he called the representative of Philosephardism in Spain, “the champion of the Sephardic cause” and a “great Philo-Semite.”⁷² His uncritical praise of Pulido Fernández was probably a result of Nordau’s immigrant status. His relationship with Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877– 1955), who had been a professor of Hebrew and rabbinic literature at the University of Madrid since 1915, also caused him to modify his previously negative opinion of Spain. Yahuda’s chair had been established because of the friendly climate for Sephardim and their culture. In addition to his friendship with various members of Spanish society, after Pulido Fernández had advocated on his behalf, Nordau was named a member of the Medical Academy in Madrid.⁷³ In his preface to El Alma Nacional by Fernando Antón del Olmet, Marqués de Dos-Fuentes, from 1915, Nordau again placed the responsibility for the expulsion of the Jews squarely on the Catholic Church, which had led to “greatness

 “Während der ‘junge’ Autor vor allem die Leidensgeschichte der spanischen Juden herausstellt und ein Bild des Landes zeichnet, das von der europäischen Spanienkritik durchdrungen ist, markieren die Madrider Jahre des ‘späten’ Autors einen deutlichen Wandel – hin zu Positionen, die zwar kritische Elemente beibehalten, den ‘Triumph’ der Sephardenkampagne jedoch überschätzen und Ansichten zur spanischen Geschichte kolportieren, die einen hohen Grad an traditionalistischen Ideologien und argumentativen Widersprüchen aufweisen.” Rehrmann, Das schwierige Erbe von Sefarad, 699.  On Nordau’s ideas of Spain, see Rehrmann, Das schwierige Erbe von Sefarad, 688 – 99.  Nordau, Erinnerungen, 88.  Ibid., 275.  Ibid., 274; see also Tabea Alexa Linhard, Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 18.  Nordau, Erinnerungen, 286.

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outside” and “misery inside.”⁷⁴ Dos-Fuentes’s book was based on a series of lectures from that same year. There the author characterizes the Sephardim as the aristocrats among the Jews, who were truly Spaniards in their being. Dos-Fuentes also contended that the Habsburgs had imported religious fanaticism to Spain against the will of the Spanish people. In his preface to Dos-Fuentes’s book, Nordau shared the belief that the Spanish people had in fact been manipulated and that the religious elites were truly responsible. Nordau again gave voice to his opinion regarding Spain when he discussed Yahuda’s appointment as a professor at the University of Madrid in the Jewish Chronicle in 1916, in which he praised the tolerance and recognition by the current Spanish government for the Jewish contribution to Spain’s history.⁷⁵ Nordau was of the opinion that the expulsion of the Jews had been initiated by the Catholic Church, and as his predecessors in the nineteenth century, he insisted that the monarchs were innocent of the resultant injustices. The Spanish people overall were an irreligious people who had been used as an instrument by the religious elite. To be clear, Nordau was a refugee in the country, which might explain his cautious analysis of contemporary Spain.

Conclusion Unlike the proponents of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, Max Nordau actually traveled to Spain, and he began to formulate his critique of Jewish assimilation based on what he observed there. This critique became the salient feature of his Zionist writings and eventually turned into a key element in Zionist writings overall. Without Nordau’s journey to Spain in 1875, his analysis of the role of Jews in history and his emergent understanding of assimilation, this might not have come into being. His analysis of Sephardic history also assisted him in developing his theoretical discussions within political Zionism. He believed himself to be of Sephardic ancestry and discussed that in his posthumously pub-

 See Max Nordau’s preface to Fernando Anto´n del Olmet, Marque´s de Dos-Fuentes, El Alma Nacional: Sus vicios y sus causas; Genealogía psicológica del pueblo español (Madrid: Imprenta Cervantina, 1915), 10, where he states: “Aristocracia hebrea, una especie de subraza que no es judía, que se llama Española.”  In Nordau’s view, the contemporary Spanish government tried to express its appreciation for what Jews had done for Spain, when he stated: “Spain throws a veil over the piles of the Inquisition, dissipates their pestilent fumes and makes an official profession of tolerance, of human brotherhood, and of the recognition of Jewish merit.” Max Nordau, “Dr. Yahuda’s Triumph,” Jewish Chronicle (January 7, 1916): 12; see also Rehrmann, Das schwierige Erbe von Sefarad, 694.

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lished memoirs. His analysis of transnational points of reference should be investigated further, not only for a broader understanding of Sephardic Jewry beyond Spain and its supposedly “Golden Age” in the Balkans, but also in Palestine. Of interest for future research are also questions of language, such as the use of Ladino vs. Hebrew, as well as the matter of Sephardic Jews as cultural mediators before and during the time that political Zionism “settled” the land of Israel. The Zionist historians who followed Nordau similarly rejected the earlier positive and exemplary view of Sephardic participation in the majority culture on the Iberian Peninsula articulated by Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars. Zionist historian Fritz Yitzhak Baer (1888 – 1980), founder of the Jerusalem School in the Department of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was particularly critical of Iberian Sephardic Jewry for its tendency to assimilate. Undoubtedly, the emergence of political Zionism in Europe cannot be studied properly without referencing and contextualizing the Sephardic historical experience.

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Bashan, Eliezer. “Le rachat des captifs dans la société juive méditerranéenne du XIVe au XIXe siècle.” In La société à travers l’histoire. Vol. 4, edited by Shmuel Trigano, 463 – 72. Paris: Fayard, 1993. Baskind, Samantha. “Distinguishing the Distinction: Picturing Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam.” The Journal for the Study of Sephardic & Mizrahi Jewry 1 (2007): 1 – 13. Baumgarten, Jean. “Yiddish Ethical Texts and the Diffusion of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (online) 18 (2007): 73 – 91. Baumgarten, Jean. “The Printing of Yiddish Books in Frankfurt-on-the-Main (17th and 18th Centuries).” Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (online) 20 (2009): 1 – 25, http://journals.openedition.org/bcrfj/6225. Beaumont, Antony. Zemlinsky. London: Faber and Faber, 2000. Beinart, Haim, ed. Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992. Beit-Arié, Malachi. “Joel ben Simeon’s Manuscripts: A Codicologer’s View.” Journal of Jewish Art 3 – 4 (1977): 25 – 39. Reprinted in The Making of the Medieval Hebrew Book: Studies in Palaeography and Codicology, edited by Malachi Beit-Arié, 93 – 108. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993. Beit-Arié, Malachi. Hebrew Codicology: A Typology of the Production of Hebrew Books and Their Design in the Middle Ages – Historical and Comparative Aspects Analyzed in a Quantitative Approach of Dated Manuscripts [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: National Library of Israel, continuously updated, http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/Hebrew/collections/manu scripts/hebrewcodicology/Pages/default2.aspx. Ben-Horin, Meir. “Max Nordau.” In Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd edition, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 15, 297 – 99. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Ben-Menachem, Naftali. “Shibolim bi-sdeh ha-sefer.” Sinai 61 (1966 – 1967): 174 – 86. Ben-Naeh, Yaron. “‘Are we not Brothers?’ Relations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Late 17th Century Jerusalem” [Hebrew]. Katedra 103 (2002): 33 – 52. Ben-Naeh, Yaron. “Poverty, Paupers and Poor Relief in Ottoman Jewish Society.” Revue des Études Juives 163 (2004): 151 – 92. Ben-Naeh, Yaron. Jews in the Realm of the Sultans: Ottoman Jewish Society in the Seventeenth Century. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Ben-Shalom, Ram. “Kidush ha-Shem and Jewish Martyrdom in Aragon and Castile in 1391: Between Spain and Ashkenaz” [Hebrew]. Tarbiz 70 (2001): 227 – 82. Ben-Shalom, Ram. “Jewish Martyrdom and Conversion in Sepharad and Ashkenaz in the Middle Ages: An Assessment of the Reassessment” [Hebrew]. Tarbiz 71 (2001): 279 – 300. Ben-Ur, Aviva. Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Ben-Ur, Aviva. “Atlantic Jewish History: A Conceptual Reorientation.” In Constellations of Atlantic Jewish History, 1550 – 1890: The Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica; A Companion Volume to an Exhibition Held in the Goldstein Family Gallery of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, edited by Arthur Kiron, 25 – 46. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

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Ben-Ur, Aviva. “The Absorption of Outsiders: Gibraltarian and North Africans in London’s Portuguese Jewish Community.” In From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardic Orbit from Medieval to Modern Times; Essays in Honor of Jane S. Gerber, edited by Federica Francesconi, Stanley Mirvis, and Brian M. Smollett, 255 – 78. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Benayahu, Meir. “R. Shmuel Aboab’s Letters to the Palestinian Sages Held Captive in Malta and Messina.” Journal of Maltese Studies 3 (1966): 68 – 74. Benbassa, Esther, and Aron Rodrigue. Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th – 20th Centuries. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. Benmelech, Moti. Shlomo Molcho: The Life and Death of Messiah Ben Joseph [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2016. Berger, Shlomo. “Ashkenazim read Sephardim in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam.” Studia Rosenthaliana 35, no. 2 (2001): 253 – 65. Berger, Shlomo, ed. Travels Among Jews and Gentiles: Abraham Levie’s Travelogue, Amsterdam 1764. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Berger, Shlomo. “Functioning within a Diasporic Third Space: The Age of Early Modern Yiddish.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 15 (2008): 68 – 86. Berger, David. “Sephardic and Ashkenazic Messianism in the Middle Ages: An Examination of the Historiographical Controversy.” In idem, Cultures in Collision and Conversation: Essays on the Intellectual History of the Jews, 289 – 311. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011. Berkovitz, Jay R. Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650 – 1860. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Berliner, Abraham. Luchot avanim: Hebräische Grabinschriften in Italien; Erster Teil: 200 Inschriften aus Venedig 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1881. Bernstein, Simon. “Luchot avanim: Part II (180 Italian-Hebrew Epitaphs of the Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries).” Hebrew Union College Annual 10 (1935): 483 – 552. Biale, David. Cultures of the Jews: A New History. 3 vols. New York: Schocken, 2002. Boccato, Carla. “San Niccolò di Lido, oggi e ieri.” Giornale economico di Venezia 1 (1970): 15 – 26. Boccato, Carla. “Testamenti di israeliti nel fondo del notaio veneziano Pietro Bracchi seniore (secolo XVII).” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 42 (1976): 281 – 93. Boccato, Carla. “Testamenti di Ebrei del ghetto di Venezia (sec. XVII).” Archivio Veneto serie V 135 (1990): 109 – 21. Boccato, Carla. “Aspetti della condizione feminile nel Ghetto di Venezia (secolo XVII): I testamenti.” Italia 10 (1993): 105 – 36. Böcker, Manfred. Antisemitismus ohne Juden: Die Zweite Republik, die antirepublikanische Rechte und die Juden; Spanien 1931 bis 1936. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000. Bodian, Miriam. “The ‘Portuguese’ Dowry Societies in Venice and Amsterdam.” Italia 6 (1987): 30 – 61. Bodian, Miriam. “Amsterdam, Venice and the Marrano Diaspora in the Seventeenth Century.” In Dutch Jewish History. Vol. 2, edited by Jozeph Michman, 47 – 65. Jerusalem: Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry and Assen: Van Gorcum, 1989. Bodian, Miriam. “‘Men of the Nation’: The Shaping of ‘Converso’ Identity in Early Modern Europe.” Past and Present 143 (1994): 48 – 76.

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Bodian, Miriam. Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001 [1997]. Bodian, Miriam. Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Boisits, Barbara. “‘Diese gesungenen Bitten um Emancipation’: Akkulturationsdiskurse am Beispiel von Salomon Sulzers Wirken am Wiener Stadttempel.” In Musikwelten – Lebenswelten: Jüdische Identitätssuche in der deutschen Musikkultur, edited by Beatrix Borchard and Heidy Zimmermann, 91 – 107. Cologne: Böhlau, 2009. Bollati, Milvia, Flora Cassen, and Marc M. Epstein. The Lombard Haggadah. New York: Les Enluminures, 2019. Bonfil, Robert. “How Golden was the Age of the Renaissance in Jewish Historiography?” In Essays in Jewish Historiography: In memoriam Arnaldo Dante Momigliano 1908 – 1987, edited by Ada Rapoport-Albert, 78 – 102. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1988. Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Anthony Oldcorn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991. Bonfil, Robert. “Italy: The Bridge between West and East and between East and West” [Hebrew]. In The Sephardic Jewish Diaspora after the Expulsion from Spain, edited by Robert Bonfil et al., 73 – 93. Jerusalem: Shazar, 1993. Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994. Bonfil, Robert. “Ashkenazim in Italy.” In Yiddish in Italia: Yiddish Manuscripts and Printed Books from the 15th to the 17th Century, edited by Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm, 219 – 23. Milan: Associazione Italiana Amici dell’Università di Gerusalemme, 2003. Braden, Jutta. Hamburger Judenpolitik im Zeitalter lutherischer Orthodoxie (1590 – 1710). Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2001. Brann, Ross, and Adam Sutcliffe, eds. Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From al-Andalus to the Haskalah. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Bregman, Dvora. The Golden Way: The Hebrew Sonnet during the Renaissance and the Baroque [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1995. Bregman, Dvora. A Bundle of Gold: Hebrew Sonnets from the Renaissance and the Baroque [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1997. Bregoli, Francesca. Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. Brenner, Michael. “Warum München nicht zur Hauptstadt des Zionismus wurde – Jüdische Religion und Politik um die Jahrhundertwende.” In Zionistische Utopie – Israelische Realität: Religion und Nation in Israel, edited by Michael Brenner and Yfaat Weiss, 39 – 52. Munich: Beck 1999. Brenner, Michael. Propheten des Vergangenen: Jüdische Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: Beck 2006. Breuer, Mordechai. “Hashpaah sefaradit be-Ashkenaz be-sof yemei ha-beinayim u-ve-reshit ha-et ha-hadashah.” Peamim 57 (1994): 17 – 28. Brisman, Shimeon. History and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances. Hoboken: KTAV, 2000. Brocke, Michael, and Julius Carlebach, eds. Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbiner: Teil 1 Die Rabbiner der Emanzipationszeit in den deutschen, bö hmischen und großpolnischen Lä ndern 1781 – 1871, edited by Carsten Wilke. Vol. 1, AACH–Juspa. Munich: Saur, 2004.

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Brubaker, Rogers. “Ethnicity without Groups.” European Journal of Sociology 43, no. 2 (2002): 163 – 89. Bruckmü ller, Ernst. “Die Entwicklung des Ö sterreichbewusstseins.” In Ö sterreichische Nationalgeschichte nach 1945: Die Spiegel der Erinnerung; Die Sicht von innen. Vol. 1, edited by Robert Kriechbaumer, 369 – 96. Vienna: Böhlau, 1998. Bunis, David M. “Yisrael Haim of Belgrade and the History of Judezmo Linguistics.” Histoire Épistémologie Langage 18, no. 1 (1996): 151 – 66. Bunis, David M. “Shem Tov Semo, Yosef Kalwo, and Judezmo Fiction in Nineteenth-Century Vienna.” In Sefarad an der Donau, edited by Michael Studemund Halévy, Christian Liebl, and Ivana Vučina Simović, 39 – 146. Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2013. Burnett, Stephen G. “A Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy and Anti-Jewish Polemic in Sebastian Münster’s Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews (1529/39).” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 91 (2000): 168 – 90. Calabi, Donatella, ed. Venice, the Jews, and Europe (1516 – 2016). Venice: Marsilio, 2016. Campanini, Saverio. “Eine späte Apologie der Kabbala: Die Abdita divinae Cabalae Mysteria des Jacques Gaffarel.” In Topik und Tradition: Prozesse der Neuordnung von Wissensüberlieferungen des 13. bis 17. Jahrhunderts, edited by Thomas Frank, Ursula Kocher, and Ulrike Tarnow, 325 – 51. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Campanini, Saverio. “A Neglected Source Concerning Asher Lemmlein and Parida da Ceresara: Agostino Giustiniani.” European Journal of Jewish Studies 2 (2008): 89 – 110. Campanini, Saverio. “The Quest for the Holiest Alphabet in the Renaissance.” In A Universal Art: Hebrew Grammar across Disciplines and Faiths, edited by Nadia Vidro, Irene E. Zwiep, and Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, 196 – 245. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Caputo, Nina. “‘In the Beginning …’: Typology, History, and the Unfolding Meaning of Creation in Nahmanides’ Exegesis.” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 1 (1999): 54 – 82. Cardoso, José Luís, and António de Vasconcelos Nogueira. “Isaac de Pinto (1717 – 1787) and the Jewish Problems: Apologetic Letters to Voltaire and Diderot.” History of European Ideas 33, no. 4 (2007): 476 – 87. Carlebach, Elisheva. The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Carlebach, Elisheva. Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism in Ashkenaz and Sepharad; Third Annual Lecture of the Victor J. Selmanovich Chair of Jewish History. New York: Touro College Graduate School of Jewish Studies, 1998. Carpi, Daniel. “The Activities of the Officials of the Sephardic Jewish Congregation in Venice for the Redemption of Captives” [Hebrew]. Zion 68, no. 2 (2003): 175 – 222. Casteel, Sarah Phillips. Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Cavendish, Margaret. The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, edited by Sara H. Mendelson. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2016. Chajes, J. H. (Yossi). “Kabbalah and the Diagrammatic Phase of the Scientific Revolution.” In Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David R. Ruderman, edited by Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Adam Shear, and Elchanan Reiner, 109 – 23. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press/Hebrew Union College, 2014. Chajes, J. H. (Yossi). “‘Too Holy to Print’: Taboo Anxiety and the Publishing of Practical Hebrew Esoterica.” Jewish History 26 (2012): 247 – 62.

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Choudhry, Sultana. Multifaceted Identity of Interethnic Young People: Chameleon Identities. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010. Cohen, Gerson D. Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Jerusalem: Leo Baeck Institute, 1967. Reprinted in idem, Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Culture, 115 – 56. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991. Newly reprinted in Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, edited by Marc Saperstein, 202 – 33. New York: New York University Press, 1992. Cohen, Julia Phillips. Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Cohen, Mark R. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Cohen, Richard I. “Der Kampf der Kulturen: Europäische und orientalische Juden in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart.” In Judentum und Islam, edited by Lehrstuhl für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur an der LMU München (= Münchner Beiträge zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur 2), 31 – 53. Munich: Lehrstuhl für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur, 2008. Cohen-Skalli, Cedric. “Authorship in the Age of Early Jewish Print: Isaac Abravanel’s ‘Ma’ayanei ha-Yeshu’a’ and the First Printed Edition in Ferrara 1551.” In Tradition, Heterodoxy and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period, edited by Chanita Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel, 185 – 201. Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2006. Cohen-Skalli, Cedric. Don Isaac Abravanel [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Shazar, 2017. Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Revised and expanded edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. Cohn, Gustav. Der jüdische Friedhof: Seine geschichtliche und kulturgeschichtliche Entwicklung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der ästhetischen Gestaltung. Frankfurt am Main: Franzmathes, 1930. Comas-Díaz, Lillian, and Julia Ramos Grenier. “Migration and Acculturation.” In Test Interpretation and Diversity: Achieving Equality in Assessment, edited by Jonathan Sandoval, Craig L. Frisby, Kurt F. Geisinger, Janice Dowd Scheuneman, and Julia Ramos Grenier, 213 – 39. Washington: American Psychology Association, 1998. Core, Alan D. “Sephardim.” In Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd edition, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 18, 292 – 305. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Coudert, Allison P. The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614 – 1698). Leiden: Brill, 1999. Coudert, Alison, and Jeffrey S. Shoulson, eds. Hebraica veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Cozzi, Gaetano, ed. Gli Ebrei e Venezia, secoli XIV – XVIII: Atti del convegno internazionale organizzato dall’Istituto di storia della società e dello Stato veneziano della Fondazione Giorgio Cini; Venezia, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, 5 – 10 giugno 1983. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1987. Crespo Álvarez, Macarena. “El cargo de Rab Mayor de la corte durante el reinado de Juan II: El camino hacia la centralización.” El Olivo 61, no. 2 (2005): 51 – 64.

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David, Abraham. To Come to the Land: Immigration and Settlement in 16th-century Eretz-Israel. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999. David, Abraham. “Bein Ashkenaz la-mizrah ba-meah ha-shesh esreh: Yehudei Ashkenaz be-Eretz Yisrael u-ve-Mitzraim le-orah shel ha-genizah ha-Kehirit.” In From Sages to Savants: Studies Presented to Avraham Grossman [Hebrew], edited by Joseph R. Hacker, Yosef Kaplan, and Benjamin Z. Kedar, 309 – 28. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2010. Davis, Joseph M. “The Reception of the ‘Shulhan ‘Arukh’ and the Formation of Ashkenazic Jewish Identity.” American Academy for Jewish Research Review 26 (2002): 251 – 76. De Sumi, Ruth Overbeck. “Urtext und Übersetzung der Hebräischen Bibel im sefardischen Judentum: Eine sprachliche Analyse von Ladinoversionen zum Buch Ruth.” In Judenspanisch 9 (= Neue Romania 34) (2005): 109 – 216. Dmytrasz, Barbara. Die Ringstraße: Eine europäische Bauidee. Vienna: Böhlau, 2014. Dodds, Jerrilynn D. “Mudejar Tradition and the Synagogues of Medieval Spain: Cultural Identity and Cultural Hegemony.” In Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, edited by Vivian Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds, 112 – 31. New York: George Braziller, 1992. Dodds, Jerrilynn D., María Rosa Menocal, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, eds. The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Dubin, Lois. The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Dweck, Yaacob. The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Dweck, Yaacob. Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. Efron, John M. “Scientific Racism and the Mystique of Sephardic Racial Superiority.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 38 (1993): 75 – 96. Efron, John M. “Orientalism and the Jewish Historical Gaze.” In Orientalism and the Jews, edited by Ivan Kalmar and Derek Penslar, 80 – 93. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005. Efron, John M. German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Elazar, Daniel. “Sephardim and Ashkenazim: The Classic and Romantic Traditions in Jewish Civilization.” Judaism 33 (1984): 146 – 59. Elazar, Daniel. The Other Jews: The Sephardim Today. New York: Basic Books, 1989. Elbaum, Jacob. “The Influence of Spanish-Jewish Culture on the Jews of Ashkenaz and Poland in the Fifteenth-Seventeenth Centuries.” Binah 3 (1994): 179 – 97. Elbaum, Jacob “Ikvot sifrut megorshei Sefarad bi-ytzirat yehudei Polin ba-meah ha-16,” Peamim 80 (1999): 33 – 44. Elukin, Jonathan. Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Endelman, Todd M. “Benjamin Disraeli and the Myth of Sephardi Superiority.” Jewish History 10, no. 2 (1996): 21 – 35. Engel, Edna. “Immigrant Scribes’ Handwriting in Northern Italy from the Late Thirteenth to the Mid-Sixteenth Century: Sephardi and Ashkenazi Attitudes toward the Italian Script.”

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In The Late Medieval Hebrew Book in the Western Mediterranean: Hebrew Manuscripts and Incunabula in Context, edited by Javier del Barco, 28 – 45. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015. Epstein, Marc M. The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Escandell i Proust, Isabel. “La Hagadà d’Or, revisada: Aproximació al seu context historicoartístic i noves propostes.” Lambard 23 (2011 – 2012): 103 – 30. Feichtinger, Johannes. “Habsburg (post)-colonial: Anmerkungen zur Inneren Kolonisierung in Zentral Europa.” In Habsburg postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis, edited by Johannes Feichtinger, Ursula Prutsch, and Moritz Csáky, 13 – 31. Innsbruck: Studien-Verlag, 2003. Feliu, Eduard. “Cataluña no era Sefarad: Precisiones Metodológicas.” In La Cataluña judía, edited by Mariona Companys, 25 – 35. Barcelona: Museu d’Historia de Catalunya, 2002. Fernández Morera, Darío. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise. 2nd edition. Wilmington, DE: ISI Press, 2016. Ferziger, Adam S. “Between ‘Ashkenazi’ and Sepharad: An Early Modern German Rabbinic Response to Religious Pluralism in the Spanish-Portuguese Community.” Studia Rosenthaliana 35 (2001): 7 – 22. Filippini, Jean-Pierre. “Da ‘Nazione ebrea’ a ‘Comunità israelitica’: La comunità ebraica di Livorno tra Cinquecento e Novecento.’” Nuovi Studi Livornesi 1 (1993): 11 – 23. Filippini, Jean-Pierre. “Il Granduca e la Nazione ebrea di Livorno nel Settecento, tra la prepotenza degli ‘spagnoli,’ e le pretese degli ‘italiani.’” Nuovi Studi Livornesi 9 (2001): 37 – 51. Foa, Anna. The Jews of Europe after the Black Death. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. Fontaine, Resianne, Andrea Schatz, and Irene Zwiep, eds. Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007. Fortis, Umberto, and Paolo Zolli. La parlata giudeo-veneziana. Assisi: Carucci, 1979. Fram, Edward. “Regarding the Order of the Printed Edition of ‘Terumat ha-Deshen.’” Alei Sefer: Studies in Bibliography and in the History of the Printed and the Digital Hebrew Book 20 (1999): 81 – 96. Fram, Edward. “Piety Pietism and German Pietism: ‘Sefer Hasidim I’ and the Influence of ‘Hasidei Ashkenaz.’” Jewish Quarterly Review 92 (2002): 455 – 93. Frankel-Goldschmidt, Hava. “On the Periphery of Jewish Society: Jewish Converts to Christianity in Germany during the Reformation” [Hebrew]. In Culture and Society in Medieval Jewry, edited by Menahem Ben-Sasson, Robert Bonfil, and Joseph R. Hacker, 623 – 54. Jerusalem: Shazar, 1989. Freidenreich, Harriet Pass. “Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Inter-War Yugoslavia: Attitudes toward Jewish Nationalism.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 44 (1977): 53 – 80. Freidenreich, Harriet Pass. The Jews of Yugoslavia: A Quest for Community. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979. Frenkel, Miriam. “‘Proclaim Liberty to Captives and Freedom Prisoners’: The Ransoming of Captives by Medieval Jewish Communities in Islamic Countries.” In Gefangenenloskauf

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García-Arenal, Mercedes, and Gerard Wiegers. Samuel Palache: Koopman, Kaper en Diplomat tussen Marrakesh en Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014. Garel, Michel. “The Rediscovery of the Wolf Haggadah.” Journal of Jewish Art 2 (1975): 22 – 27. Gargova, Fani, and Ulrike Unterweger. “The Synagogue of Sofia: A Reassessment of the Role of the Bulgarian Sephardic Community at the Turn of the 20th Century through its Architecture.” In Serdika – Sredec – Sofia: Urban Reinventions Through Three Millennia, edited by Galina Fingarova, Asen Kirin, and Lioba Theis. Münster, forthcoming. Geary, Patrick J. The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Geary, Patrick J., and Gábor Klaniczay, eds. Manufacturing Middle Ages: Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Gelber, Mark H. Melancholy Pride: Nation, Race, and Gender in the German Literature of Cultural Zionism. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000. Gelber, Nathan M. “The Sephardic Community in Vienna.” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 4 (1948): 359 – 96. Gelfer-Jørgensen, Mirjam, and Karin Kryger. “Jewish Sepulchral Art in Denmark.” In Danish Jewish Art: Jews in Danish Art, edited by Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen, 229 – 63. Copenhagen: Rhodos International Science and Art, 1999. Genée, Pierre. Wiener Synagogen. Vienna: Löcker, 2014. Gerber, Jane. “Pride and Pedigree: The Development of the Myth of Sephardic Aristocratic Lineage.” In Reappraisals and New Studies of Modern Jewish Experience: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Seltzer, edited by Brian M. Smollett and Christian Wiese, 85 – 103. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Goitein, Tal. “The Erna Michael Haggadah: An Ashkenazi Manuscript in the Israel Museum.” MA Thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2010. Goldish, Matt. “The Spirit of the Eighteenth Century in the Anti-Sabbatian Polemics of Hakham David Nieto.” In Legacies of Richard Popkin, edited by Jeremy Popkin, 229 – 43. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2010. Goldstein, David, ed. The Ashkenazi Haggadah: A Hebrew Manuscript of the Mid-15th Century from the Collections of the British Library. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997. Gorosch, Max, ed. El Fuero de Teruel. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1950. Gottesman, Itzig Nakhmen. Defining the Yiddish Nation: The Jewish Folklorists of Poland. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003. Gottheil, Richard, and Meyer Kayserling. “Coutinho,” in Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Isidore Singer, Cyrus Adler, et al. Vol. 4, 317 – 18. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901 – 1906. Graizbord, David L. “Becoming Jewish in Early Modern France: Documents on Jewish Community-Building in Seventeenth-Century Bayonne and Peyrehorade.” Journal of Social History 40, no. 1 (2006): 147 – 80. Graizbord, David L. “Religion and Ethnicity among ‘Men of the Nation’: Toward a Realistic Interpretation.” Jewish Social Studies n. s. 15, no. 1 (2008): 32 – 65. Graizbord, David L. “Researching the Childhood of ‘New Jews’ in the Western Sephardi Diaspora in Light of Recent Historiography.” In Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora, edited by Julia R. Lieberman, 234 – 38. Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England, 2011.

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Graizbord, David L. “Between Ethnicity, Commerce, Religion, and Race: The Elusive Definition of an Early Modern Jewish Atlantic.” In Theorising the Ibero-American Atlantic, edited by Harald E. Braun and Lisa Vollendorf, 117 – 40. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971. Graziani Secchieri, Laura. “Ebrei Italiani, Askenaziti e Sefarditi a Ferrara: Un’analisi topografica dell’insidiamento e delle sue trasformazioni (secoli XIII – XVI).” In Gli Ebrei nello Stato della Chiesa, edited by Marina Caffiero and Anna Esposito, 163 – 90. Padua: Esedra, 2012. Greenberg, Mark I. “A ‘Haven of Benignity’: Conflict and Cooperation between Eighteenth-Century Savannah Jews.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2002): 544 – 68. Greenblatt, Rachel L. “The Shapes of Memory: Evidence in Stone from the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 47 (2002): 43 – 67. Grieser, Heike. “Der Loskauf Gefangener im spätantiken christlichen Italien.” In Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum: Ein interreligiöser Vergleich, edited by Heike Grieser and Nicole Priesching, 25 – 54. Hildesheim: Olms, 2015. Gritsch, Eric W. Thomas Müntzer: A Tragedy of Errors. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. Groot, Alexander H. de. “Ottoman North Africa and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Revue de L’ Occident Musulman et de La Méditerranée 39, no. 1 (1985): 131 – 47. Gross, Abraham. “On the Ashkenazi Syndrome of Martyrdom in Portugal in 1497” [Hebrew]. Tarbiz 64 (1994): 83 – 114. Gross, Abraham. “Conversions and Martyrdom in Spain in 1391: A Reassessment of Ram Ben-Shalom” [Hebrew]. Tarbiz 71 (2002): 269 – 78. Grossman, Avraham. “Bein Sefarad le-Tzarfat.” In Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday [Hebrew], edited by Aaron Mirsky, Avraham Grossman, and Yosef Kaplan, 75 – 101. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1988. Grossman, Avraham. “Relations between Spanish and Ashkenazic Jewry in the Middle Ages.” In Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardic Legacy, edited by Haim Beinart. Vol. 1, 220 – 39. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992. Grossman, Avraham. Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004. Grunwald, Max. Der Kampf um die Orgel in der Wiener israelitischen Kultusgemeinde. Vienna: Verlag von Dr. Blochs Wochenschrift, 1919. Gutmann, Joseph. “The Illuminated Medieval Passover Haggadah: Investigations and Research Problems.” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 7 (1965): 3 – 25. Guttstadt, Corry. “Sepharden auf Wanderschaft: Vom Bosporus an die Spree, Elbe und Isar.” In Galut Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Sepharden im deutschsprachigen Kulturraum (= PaRDeS 19: 17 – 159), edited by Amor Ayala, Rebekka Denz, Dorothea M. Salzer, and Stephanie von Schmädel, 89 – 112. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2013. Gutwirth, Eleazar. “Abraham Seneor: Social Tensions and the Court Jew.” Michael 11 (1989): 169 – 229.

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Hacker, Joseph. “On the Intellectual Character and Self-Perception of Spanish Jewry in the Late Fifteenth Century” [Hebrew]. Sefunot 2 (1983): 47 – 59. Hacker, Joseph. “The Intellectual Activity of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” In Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus, 95 – 135. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Halevi, Moshe. “Max Nordau: His Zionist Attitude and His Work in the Zionist Movement” [Hebrew]. PhD Diss., Tel Aviv University, 1988. Halevi-Wise, Yael, ed. Sephardism: Spanish Jewish History and the Modern Literary Imagination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. Haraszti, György. “Timişoara.” In The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, edited by Gershon David Hundert. Vol. 2, 1882 – 83. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Harr, Ingo. “Jüdische Migration und Integration in Wien: Vom Toleranzpatent Josephs II. bis in den Vormärz 1790 – 1830/47.” In Übergänge und Schnittmengen: Arbeit, Migration, Bevölkerung und Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Diskussion, edited by Annemarie Steidl and Thomas Buchner, 457 – 84. Vienna: Böhlau, 2008. Harris, Julie A. “Good Jews, Bad Jews, and No Jews at All: Ritual Imagery and Social Standards in the Catalan Haggadot.” In Church, State Vellum, and Stone: Essays on Medieval Spain in Honor of John Williams, edited by Therese Martin and Julie A. Harris, 275 – 96. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. Heller, Marvin J. Printing the Talmud: A History of the Individual Treatises Printed from 1700 to 1750. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Heller, Marvin J. The Sixteenth-Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus. Vol 1. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. Heller, Marvin J. Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Herold-Schmidt, Hedwig. “Vom Ende der Ersten zum Scheitern der Zweiten Republik (1874 – 1939).” In Kleine Geschichte Spaniens, edited by Peer Schmidt, 329 – 442. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007. Herzl, Theodor. Briefe und Tagebücher. Edited by Alex Bein, Hermann Greive, Moshe Schaerf, Julius H. Schoeps, and Johannes Wachten. 7 vols. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1983 – 1996. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Earth is the Lord’s & The Sabbath. New York: Harper Row, 1966 [1950]. Hess, Moses. The Revival of Israel: Rome and Jerusalem; the Last Nationalist Question. Translated, with introduction and notes, by Meyer Waxman. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Hezser, Catherine. “Der Loskauf von Sklaven und Kriegsgefangenen im antiken Judentum.” In Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum: Ein interreligiöser Vergleich, edited by Heike Grieser and Nicole Priesching, 3 – 23. Hildesheim: Olms, 2015. Hirsch, Menko M. Frucht vom Baum des Lebens: Ozer peroth ez chajim; die Sammlung der Rechtsgutachten Peri Ez Chajim des Rabbinerseminars Ets Haim zu Amsterdam. Berlin: Soncino-Gesellschaft der Freunde des Jüdischen Buches, 1936. Hirschberg, Haim Zeev (J. W.). A History of the Jews in North Africa. Vol. 2. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Hödl, Klaus. Wiener Juden – jüdische Wiener: Identität, Gedächtnis und Performanz im 19. Jahrhundert. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2006. Huss, Boaz. “The Text and Context of the 1684 Sulzbach Edition of the Zohar.” In Tradition, Heterodoxy, and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period,

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edited by Chanita R. Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel, 117 – 38. Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2007. Huss, Boaz. Like the Radiance of the Sky: Chapters in the Reception History of the Zohar and the Construction of Its Symbolic Value [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute and Bialik Institute, 2008. Hutton, Sarah. “Henry More, Anne Conway and the Kabbalah: A Cure for the Kabbalist Nightmare?” In Judeo-Christian Intellectual Culture in the Seventeenth Century: A Celebration of the Library of Narcissus Marsh (1638 – 1713), edited by Allison P. Coudert, Sarah Hutton, Richard H. Popkin, and Gordon M. Weiner, 27 – 42. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999. Ibn Verga, Salomon. Schevet Jehuda: Ein Buch über das Leiden des jüdischen Volkes im Exil; In der Übersetzung von Meir Wiener. Edited by Sina Rauschenbach. Berlin: Parerga, 2006. Idel, Moshe. “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance.” In Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Bernard Dov Cooperman, 186 – 242. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Idel, Moshe. “Encounters Between Spanish and Italian Kabbalists in the Generation after the Expulsion.” In Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391 – 1648, edited by Benjamin R. Gampel, 189 – 222. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Idel, Moshe. “‘Deus Sive Natura’: The Metamorphosis of a Dictum from Maimonides to Spinoza.” In Maimonides and the Sciences, edited by Robert S. Cohen and Hillel Levine, 87 – 110. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000. Idel, Moshe. “Sefer Raziel ha-Mal’akh: New Inquiries.” In L’eredità di Salomone: La magia ebraica in Italia e nel Mediterraneo, edited by Emma Abate, 143 – 68. Florence: Giuntina, 2019. Israel, Jonathan I. “The Jews of Venice and Their Links with Holland and with Dutch Jewry (1600 – 1710).” In Gli Ebrei e Venezia, secoli XIV – XVIII: Atti del convegno internazionale organizzato dall’Istituto di storia della società e dello Stato veneziano della Fondazione Giorgio Cini; Venezia, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, 5 – 10 giugno 1983, edited by Gaetano Cozzi, 95 – 116. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1987. Israel, Jonathan I. “Venice, Salonika and the Founding of the Sephardi Diaspora in the North.” In idem, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540 – 1740), 67 – 96. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Italiener, Bruno. Die Darmstädter Pessach-Haggada: Codex orientalis 8 der Landesbibliothek zu Darmstadt aus dem vierzehnten Jahrhundert. Leipzig: Karl W. Hirsemann, 1927. Jacobs, Martin. Islamische Geschichte in jüdischen Chroniken: Hebräische Historiographie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004. Jakóbiec-Semkowowa, Milica. “Sarajevo’s Sephardim and Ashkenazim in a Literary Mirror of Their Own and Foreign Authors.” In Ashkenazim and Sephardim: A European Perspective, edited by Andrzej Kątny, Izabela Olszewska, and Aleksandra Twardowska, 41 – 56. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, 2013. Kalmár, Ivan Davidson, and Derek Penslar, eds. Orientalism and the Jews. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005. Kanarfogel, Ephraim. Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000.

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Kaplan, Yosef. “Attitude of the Leadership of the Portuguese Community in Amsterdam to the Sabbatian Movement, 1665 – 1671” [Hebrew]. Zion (1974): 198 – 216. Kaplan, Yosef. “The Attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews to the Ashkenazi Jews in Seventeenth Century Amsterdam.” In Transition and Change in Modern Jewish History: Essays Presented in Honor of Shmuel Ettinger [Hebrew], edited by Shmuel Almog et al., 389 – 412. Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel/Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1987. Kaplan, Yosef. “Amsterdam and Ashkenazic Migration in the Seventeenth Century.” Studia Rosenthaliana 23 (1989): 22 – 44. Kaplan, Yosef. “The Portuguese Community in 17th Century Amsterdam and the Ashkenazi World.” In Dutch Jewish History. Vol. 2, edited by Jozeph Michman, 23 – 45. Jerusalem: Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry and Assen: Van Gorcum, 1989. Kaplan, Yosef. “The Portuguese Community of Amsterdam in the 17th Century between Tradition and Change” In Society and Community: Proceedings of the Second International Congress for Research of the Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Heritage 1984, edited by Abraham Haim, 141 – 71. Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, 1991. Kaplan, Yosef. “Deviance and Excommunication in the Eighteenth Century,” In Dutch Jewish History. Vol. 3, edited by Jozeph Michman, 103 – 15. Jerusalem: Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry and Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993. Kaplan, Yosef. “The Self-Definition of Sephardic Jews of Western Europe and their Relation to the Alien and the Stranger.” In Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391 – 1648, edited by Benjamin R. Gampel, 121 – 45. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Reprinted in idem, An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe, 51 – 77. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Karr, Don, and Stephen Skinner, eds. Sepher Raziel: A Sixteenth Century English Grimoire. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2010. Kątny, Andrzej, Izabela Olszewska, and Aleksandra Twardowska, eds. Ashkenazim and Sephardim: A European Perspective. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, 2013. Katz, David. The Jews in the History of England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 [1994]. Katz, Ethan B. The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Katz, Ethan B., Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel. Introduction to Colonialism and the Jews, edited by Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, 1 – 25. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. Katz, Jacob. Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times. New York: Behrman House, 1961. Kaufmann, David. “Une Haggadah de la France Septentrionale.” Revue des Études Juives 25 (1892): 65 – 77. Kaufmann, David. “David Carcassoni et le rachat par la communauté de Constantinople des Juifs prisonniers durant la persecution de Chmielnicky.” Revue des Études Juives 25 (1892): 202 – 16. Kaul, Christina. “Die spanischen Juden (Sefardim) in Wien: Eine kulturwissenschaftlichhistorische Betrachtung.” Diploma Thesis, Universität Salzburg, 1989. Kaul, Christina. “Die Rechtsstellung der türkischen Juden in Wien: Auf Grund der österreichisch-türkischen Staatsverträge.” Diploma Thesis, Universität Salzburg, 1990.

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Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie. The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Racidal Diasporism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Kelman, Tirza, “The Use of Ashkenazi Decisors in Beit Yosef, Yoreh De’ah, 183 – 200 as a Case Study.” MA Thesis, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2002. Kelman, Tirza. “‘Written with Iron and Lead Letter in Print’: The Print Revolution and the Creation of the ‘Beit Yosef’” [Hebrew]. Peamim 148 (2017): 9 – 25. Klarer, Mario, ed. Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean. London: Routledge, 2019. Koen, E. M., W. Hamelink-Verweel, S. Hart, and W. C. Pieterse. “Notarial Records in Amsterdam Relating to the Portuguese Jews in that Town up to 1639.” Studia Rosenthaliana 17, no. 1 (1983): 66 – 79, 210 – 17. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. Die Zweite Nürnberger und die Jehuda Haggada: Jüdische Künstler zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. “Hebrew Manuscript Painting in Late Medieval Spain: Signs of a Culture in Transition.” Art Bulletin 84 (2002): 246 – 73. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. Illuminated Haggadot from Medieval Spain: Biblical Imagery and the Passover Holiday. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2006. Kogman-Appel, Katrin, and David Stern. The Washington Haggadah: A Fifteenth-Century Manuscript from the Library of Congress. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. “Another Look at the Illustrated Sephardic Haggadot: Communal and Social Aspects of the Passover Holiday.” In Temps i espais de la Girona Jueva, edited by Silvia Planas i Marcé, 81 – 102. Gerona: Patronat Call de Girona, 2011. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. “The Audiences of the Late Medieval Haggadah.” In Patronage, Production, and Transmission of Texts in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Cultures, edited by Jonathan Decter and Esperanza Alfonso, 99 – 143. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. “Joel ben Simeon: Looking at the Margins of Society.” In Intricate Interfaith Networks in the Middle Ages: Quotidian Jewish-Christian Contacts, edited by Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, 287 – 314. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. “‘And You Shall Tell Your Son on this Day’: The Didactic Elements of Medieval Haggadah Illustration.” In Prodesse et delectare: Case Studies on Didactic Literature in the European Middle Ages/Fallstudien zur didaktischen Literatur des europäischen Mittelalters, edited by Norbert Kössinger and Claudia Wittig (= Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung; Beihefte), 138 – 73. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Kohlbauer-Fritz, Gabriele. “Die sefardische Diaspora in Wien.” In Die Tü rken in Wien: Geschichte einer jü dischen Gemeinde, edited by Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, 142 – 43. Vienna: Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 2010. Kohler, Kaufmann, and Isaac Broydé. “Isaac ben Abraham of Neustadt,” in Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Isidore Singer, Cyrus Adler et al. Vol. 6, 619. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901 – 1906. Kornberg, Jacques. Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Kosover, Mordecai. “Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Palestine: A Study in Intercommunal Relations.” In Homenaje a Millás-Vallicrosa. Vol. 1, edited by Roberto Almagià, 753 – 84. Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1954.

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Menny, Anna Lena. Spanien und Sepharad: Über den offiziellen Umgang mit dem Judentum im Franquismus und in der Demokratie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Metzger, Mendel. La Haggada enluminée: Étude iconographique et stylistique des manuscrits enluminés et decorés de la Haggada du XIIIe au XVIe siècle. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Michman, Jozeph, David Franco Mendes, a Hebrew Poet. Jerusalem: Massada, 1951. Minervini, Laura. “‘Llevaron de acá nuestra lengua …’: Gli usi linguistici degli ebrei spagnoli in Italia.” Medioevo Romanzo 19 (1994): 133 – 92. Mirvis, Stanley. “Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Colonial Jamaica (1692 – 1786).” In A Sephardic Pepper-Pot in the Caribbean, edited by Michael Studemund-Halévy, 109 – 23. Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2016. Morgensztern, Janina. “Notes on the Sephardim in Zamość, 1588 – 1650” [Polish]. BZIH 38 (1961): 62 – 82. Mosse, George. “Nordau, Liberalism and the New Jew.” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 4 (1992): 565 – 81. Müller-Funk, Wolfgang, Peter Plener, and Clemens Ruthner, eds. Kakanien Revisited: Das Eigene und das Fremde (in) der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. Tübingen: Francke, 2002. Myers, David N., ed. Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Naar, Devin E. Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016. Nahon, Gérard. “Sépharades et Achkénazes en France: La conquête de l’émancipation.” In Les Juifs dans l’histoire de France: Premier colloque international de Haifa, edited by Myriam Yardeni, 121 – 45. Leiden: Brill, 1980. Nahon, Gérard. “Un espace religieux du XVIIIe siècle: Le premier cimetière des ‘Portugais’ de Bordeaux, 105 cours de la Marne (1724 – 1768).” In La mort et ses représentations dans le judaïsme: Actes du colloque organisé par le Centre d’études juives de l’Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne en décembre 1989, edited by Daniel Tollet, 243 – 69. Paris: Champion, 2000. Nalle, Sara. “The Millennial Moment: Revolution and Radical Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain.” In Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, edited by Peter Schäfer and Mark Cohen, 151 – 71. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Narkiss, Bezalel. The Golden Haggadah: A Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Hebrew Manuscript in the British Museum. London: Eugrammia, 1970. Narkiss, Bezalel, Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, and Anat Tcherikover, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Isles. Vol. 1, Spanish and Portuguese Manuscripts. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Narkiss, Bezalel. Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts [Hebrew]. Expanded Hebrew version of the earlier English edition Jerusalem, 1969. Jerusalem: Keter, 1984. Nassery, Idris. “Sklaverei und Loskauf im frühen Islam: Zwischen Theorie und Praxis.” In Gefangenenloskauf im Mittelmeerraum: Ein interreligiöser Vergleich, edited by Heike Grieser and Nicole Priesching, 55 – 77. Hildesheim: Olms, 2015. Netanyahu, Benzion. Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher. 3rd edition. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972. Nirenberg, David. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998 [1996].

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Zwiep, Irene E. “From ‘Dialektik’ to Comparative Literature: Steinschneider’s ‘Orientalism.’” In Studies on Steinschneider, edited by Reimund Leicht and Gad Freudenthal, 137 – 50. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Zwiers, Ariane. “Inventory of the Moveable Property of the Ashkenazi Community.” Studia Rosenthaliana 37 (2004): 309 – 97.

About the Authors Rafael D. Arnold studied Romance Linguistics and Jewish Studies at the University of Heidelberg and the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg. He earned a PhD in Heidelberg in 2002, was first named a junior professor of Romance Linguistics at the University of Paderborn and has been a professor of Romance Linguistics at the University of Rostock since 2010. He is the author of Spracharkaden: Die Sprache der sephardischen Juden in Italien im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Winter, 2006) and several other important publications on Italian Jews. Moti Benmelech is a senior lecturer in the History Department at Herzog College (Alon-Shvut, Israel). His research focuses on early modern European social, cultural, and religious history, with special attention to the Mediterranean, Jews and their interrelationships, as well as messianism and the search for the lost tribes of Israel during the Age of Geographical Discoveries. He is the author of Shlomo Molcho: The Life and Death of Messiah ben Joseph [Hebrew] (Ben Zvi Institute, 2016). Tirza Kelman is a post-doctoral candidate in the Center for the Study of Conversion and InterReligious Encounters at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She received her MA in Jewish Thought in 2012 and went on to earn her PhD in 2018 with a dissertation entitled “‘I Shall Create Halakhic Ruling … for That Is the Objective’: The Dimension of Halakhic Ruling in Joseph Karo’s Beit Yosef,” both under the supervision of Prof. Rami Reiner, in the GoldsteinGoren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Katrin Kogman-Appel has published on Hebrew manuscript painting, Jewish book culture, and the relationship of Jewish visual culture to Christian and Islamicate arts. Her books include A Mahzor from Worms: Art and Religion in a Medieval Jewish Community (Harvard University Press, 2012) and Catalan Maps and Jewish Books (Brepols, 2020). Formerly affiliated with the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, she assumed an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the University of Münster in 2015. Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld holds a PhD in Jewish Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is now living and working in Amsterdam as an independent scholar. Primarily interested in European Jewish History of the Early Modern Period, she is concentrating in particular on social and cultural aspects of the Sephardic community of early modern Amsterdam. Her book Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews of Early Modern Amsterdam (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012) won the American National Jewish Book Award of 2012 in the category of Sephardi Culture. Sina Rauschenbach is Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Thought at the University of Potsdam. She has published in the field of medieval and early modern Jewish-Christian history of knowledge and thought, with a special interest in the Iberian, Dutch, and Atlantic worlds. Her recent books include Judaism for Christians: Menasseh ben Israel (Lexington Books, 2019) and (edited with Jonathan Schorsch) The Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

258

About the Authors

Jonathan Ray is the Samuel Eig Professor of Jewish Studies at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Cornell University Press, 2006), After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry (NYU Press, 2013), and several articles on Sephardic history and culture. Carsten Schapkow, who received his PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin in 2000, is L. R. Brammer Presidential Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Among his research interests are the history of Sephardic Jewry and German-Jewish history. His most recent monograph is entitled Role Model and Countermodel: The Golden Age of Iberian Jewry and German-Jewish Culture during the Era of Emancipation (Lexington Books, 2016). Jonathan Schorsch is Chair of Jewish Religious and Intellectual History, University of Potsdam (Germany). He has published Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century (Brill, 2009), among other books and essays. Together with Sina Rauschenbach, he co-edited The Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Martin Stechauner recently completed his PhD dissertation, entitled “The Sephardic Jews of Vienna: A Jewish Minority Crossing Borders,” within the framework of a joint study program between the University of Vienna and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2015 to 2018 his project was funded by the Doctoral Fellowship Program of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. During the summer of 2019 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg.

Index of Names Aaillion, Solomon b. R. Ya’akov (also: Solomon Aaillion; Shlomo Aaillion) 165, 171, 173, 175 f. Abate, Emma 156 Abba, Rabbi 167 Abdülhamid II (Sultan of the Ottoman Empire) 204 Abeniacur, Letitia 121 Abensabat, Salomon 133 Aboab, Abigail 163 Aboab, Shmuel 139, 150 Aboab Osorio, Jacob 136 Abrams, Daniel 155, 167 Abravanel, Isaac 78 – 81, 83 Abulafia, Avraham 82, 178 Adelman, Howard 43 Adler, Cyrus 164, 166 Adunka, Evelyn 197 Adutt, Leon 200 Aharon of Lunel 93 Åkerman, Susanna 178, 180 Akiva (ben Yosef; also: Rabbi Akiva) 59, 62 Alfarin, Isaac 136 Alfasi, Isaac (also: Rif) 91, 93 f., 96 Alfonso XIII (King of Spain) 211 Alfonso, Esperanza 48 Algazi, Nissim Shlomo 176 Almagià, Roberto 11, 39 Almog, Shmuel 157 Altmann, Alexander 25 Ambrosius, Theseus 169 Amirov, Franziska 47 Anderson, Benedict 4, 27 Aptroot, Marion 35 Arbel, Benjamin 41 – 43 Argal, Jeuda 142 Aria, Juda H. 126 Arnold, Rafael D. 2, 8, 18, 103 – 105, 108 f., 112, 115 – 118 Aschheim, Steven 13 Ashkenazi, Yisrael 81 Ashkenazi, Ẓevi 171 Ashtor, Eliyahu 210 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695410-013

Asquenazi, Naftaly 142 Assis, Yom Tov 3, 49 Athias, Daniel 136, 144 Atias, Jacob 135 Attias, Immanuel ben Yosef 172 Auerbach/Oyerbakh, Shmuel ben David of Lublin 162, 164 f. Avraham of Perugia 81 Avraham son of David (also: Ra’avad) 94 Ayala, Amor 2, 6, 15 Ayoun, Richard 6 Backhaus, Fritz 7, 25 Bacon, Francis 179 f. Baer, Fritz Yitzhak 31, 33, 227 Balbale, Abigail Krasner 31 Bar-Itzhak, Haya 39 Bar-Levav, Avriel 91, 105, 107, 160 Barkia, David 148 Barlow, Jane 63 Barnai, Jacob 176 Barnett, Richard D. 127, 133, 137, 152 Baron, Salo W. 32 Baruh, Abraham 131, 140 Baruh, Manuel 140 Barukh, Reuven (also: Ruben Baruch) 190 – 192, 194 – 197, 199, 205, 208 Bashan, Eliezer 125, 127, 131, 133 – 135, 138 f., 142, 150 f. Bashyatsi, Eliyahu (also: Eliyahu Bashiazi) 38 Baskind, Samantha 9 Basola, Moses 81 Bass, Shabtai 159 f. Bauer, Jacob 199 f., 204 f. Baumgarten, Elisheva 64 Baumgarten, Jean 173 – 175 Bayezid II (Sultan of the Ottoman Empire) 186 Beaumont, Antony 205 Beer, Aron 150 Beers, Lipman 152 Behrends, Leffman 151

260

Index of Names

Bein, Alex 220 Beinart, Haim 3 f., 28, 91 Beit-Arié, Malachi 50, 52, 70 f. Belmonte, Moseh 165 Ben Aderet, Shlomo (also: Shlomo son of Aderet; Rashba) 93, 95 Ben Asher, Jacob (also: Ya’akov/Yaakov ben Asher; R. Jacob son of Rabbenu Asher; R. Jacob; Rabbi Ya’akov) 4 f., 28 f., 30, 89 f., 95 Ben Azaria, Eleazar 58 f. Ben-Horin, Meir 220 Ben Israel, Menasseh 9, 25, 113, 162, 169 Ben-Menachem, Naftali 166 Ben-Naeh, Yaron 12, 34, 38 Ben-Sasson, Menahem 77 Ben-Shalom, Ram 6, 34, 49 Ben Sheshet, Isaac (also: R. Isaac son of Sheshet; Rivash) 94 Ben Simeon, Joel 17, 47 f., 51 – 53, 58 f., 61 – 63, 68, 70 f. Ben Tzvi of Kovel/Kavela, Yeḥiel (also: R. Yeḥ iel b. Tzvi of Kovel) 175 Ben-Ur, Aviva 3, 7, 15 Ben Ya’akov of Komarna, Elyakim (also: R. Elyakim Ḥ azan of Amsterdam b. R. Ya’akov Ḥ azan) 162, 164, 172 Ben Yehiel, Asher (also: Asher b. Yehi’el; Asher son of Yehiel; Rosh) 4 f., 27 – 29, 90, 92 f., 95 f. Ben Yehuda, Eliezer (also: R. Eliezer b. R. Yehuda) 168 Benayahu, Meir 139, 173 Benbassa, Esther 186 Benmelech, Moti 6, 17, 73, 81, 84 Ber, Shemaya ben Abraham Yissachar (also: R. Shemaya b. R. Abraham Yissachar Ber) 171 Ber, Yissachar b. Avraham Eliezer 162 Ber, Yissachar b. Petaḥya Moshe of Kremnitz 166 Berakhiah ben Moses Modena, Aaron 107 Berenbaum, Michael 209 f., 220 Berger, David 6, 74 Berger, Shlomo 35, 117, 156 Berkovitz, Jay R. 10 Berliner, Abraham 115, 117

Bernal, Guillermo 184 Bernfeld, Tirtsah Levie 1, 8 – 10, 12, 18, 22, 38, 125, 134, 140, 142 – 144, 147, 149, 151, 159 Bernstein, Simon 115, 117 Biale, David 31, 36 f., 157 Bland, Kalman P. 25 Boccato, Carla 104, 109 f., 114 Bockelson von Leyden, Jan 75 Böcker, Manfred 211 Bodian, Miriam 6, 38, 41, 44, 134, 159, 180 Bohlman, Philip V. 193 Boisits, Barbara 193 Bollati, Milvia 52 Bonaparte, Napoleon 8, 189 Bonfil, Robert 5, 48 f., 64, 73, 77, 117 Borchard, Beatrix 193 Botstein, Leon 196 Boustan, Ra’anan S. 43 Bracchi, Pietro 120 Bracchi seniore, Pietro 109, 114, 120 Braden, Jutta 7 Brann, Ross 14 Braun, Harald E. 11 Bregman, Dvora 115 Bregoli, Francesca 8, 11 Brenner, Michael 212 f. Breuer, Mordechai 5, 76 Briel, Judah 173 Brisman, Shimeon 172 Brocke, Michael 191 Browne, Thomas 179 Broydé, Isaac 166 Brubaker, Rogers 4 Bruckmüller, Ernst 207 Brumlik, Micha 1 Buber, Martin 221 Buchner, Thomas 189 Bueno Bivas, Joseph 136 Bueno de Mesquita, Jacob 131 Bueno de Mesquita, Joseph 131 Bunis, David M. 184, 189 Burlew, A. Kathleen 184 Burnett, Stephen G. 77 Cabib, Gabriel

122

Index of Names

Caffiero, Marina 41 Calabi, Donatella 105 Cambio, Matteo di Ser 50 Camis, Abraham (also: Lope de Fonseca) 122 Campanini, Saverio 76 f., 82, 168, 170 Campanton, Isaac b. Jacob 165 Canho, Moses Vas 131 Caputo, Nina 58 Carcassoni, David 125, 148 Cardoso, José Luis 10, 105 Carlebach, Elisheva 6, 74, 175 Carlebach, Julius 191 Carpi, Daniel 126, 133, 137 – 139, 142 f., 146 – 148 Casaubon, Isaac 179 Cassen, Flora 52 Casteel, Sarah Phillips 14 Catalan, Tullia 189 Cavaciocchi, Simonetta 32 Cavendish, Margaret 179 Chabibi, Refael 111, 122 Chabibi, Semuel 111, 122 Chajes, J. H. (Yossi) 155, 171, 177 Charles VI (Holy Roman Emperor) 188 Charlover, Anshel ben Avraham 175 Chevedden, Paul E. 32 Chmielnicki, Bogdan 146 – 148, 152, 157 Choudhry, Sultana 207 Christ, Georg 43 Coen, Abram from Salonika 140 Coen, Salomon 140 Cohen, Gerson D. 5 f., 16, 31, 74, 83 Cohen, Jeremy 13 Cohen, Juda 131 Cohen, Julia Phillips 40 Cohen, Mark R. 31, 174 Cohen, Richard I. 13, 15, 177 Cohen, Robert 178 Cohen-Mushlin, Aliza 49 Cohen-Skalli, Cedric 79 f. Cohn, Gustav 111 Cohn, Norman 75 Collin, Gaële 188 Colon, Joseph (also: Maharik) 94 Columbus, Christopher 42 Comas-Díaz, Lillian 184

261

Companys, Mariona 26 Conque/Cuenque, Abraham ben Levi 175 Conway, Anne 179 Cooperman, Bernard Dov 82 Core, Alan D. 209 Coudert, Alison P. 9, 169, 178 – 180 Coutinho, Abraham Mendes (also: Manuel Coutinho; Emanuel Coutinho) 163 Coutinho, David b. Zlateh Mendes (also: David b. Zlateh) 163 f. Coutinho, Mosseh Mendes (also: Mosseh ben Avraham Mendes Coutinho, Moshe b. Abraham Coutinho) 19, 155, 161 – 165, 167, 170; 172 – 175; 177, 180 f. Coutinho, Rachel 163 Cozzi, Gaetano 104, 134 Crespo Álvarez, Macarena 33 Cromwell, Olivier 113 Csáky, Moritz 184 Curiel, Aron 151 Curiel, Moses 151 D’Aguilar, Diego (also: Moses Lopes Pereira) 187 f. D’Azevedo, David Salom 131 D’Azevedo, Isaac Cohen 131 D’Azevedo, Louis 131 Da Ceresara, Parida/Paride 82, 76 Da Costa, Manuel 145 Da Costa, Pedro Lopes 131 Da Silva Calbo, Manuel 140 Da Silva Rosa, Jacob S. 158 Dan, Joseph 171 Darwin, Charles 214, 219 David, Abraham 12, 44 Davis, Joseph M. 4, 10, 26 f., 30, 42 – 44 Davis, Robert C. 41 De Andrade, Debora 136 De Barrios, Daniel Levi 176 De Casseres, Johebed 136 De Castro, João 137 De Fano, Josue (also: Manuel de Morais) 121 De Groot, Alexander H. 131 f. De Mattos, Reyna 131 De Medina, Samuel 43 De Oliveyra, Selomoh/Shlomo 171, 175

262

Index of Names

De Pinto, David 145 De Pinto, Isaac 9 f., 136, 151 De Pinto, Jacob 131, 136 De Sumi, Ruth Overbeck 220 De Torres, Jacob 145 Decter, Jonathan 48 Del Barco, Javier 51 Del David, Joseph 112, 123 Del Olmet, Fernando Antón Marqués de DosFuentes 225 f. Del Sotto, David 135 Della Reina, Joseph 83 Den Boer, Harm 125 Denz, Rebekka 2, 6, 15 Dias, Gabriel Jesurun 109, 111 f., 114, 116 f., 120 Disraeli, Benjamin 7, 14 Dmytrasz, Barbara 202 Dodds, Jerrilynn D. 30 f. Dogo, Marco 189 Dohrmann, Natalie B. 177 Drago, David Franco 131 Dreyfus, Alfred 212 Dubin, Lois 11 Duran, Simon son of Tzemach (also: Rashbatz) 94 Duret, Claude 168 f. Dweck, Yaacob 140, 171 Eckhard, John 194 Efron, John M. 6, 13 f., 23, 202 f., 210 f. Eichinger, Barbara 197 Elazar, Daniel 1, 16, 20, 25 Elbaum, Jacob 6 – 7, 29 Elias, Abraham 205 Elias, Heinrich 205 Eliezer, Rabbi 60, 62 Eliezer of Worms (also: the Roke’ah) 94, 96 Eliezer son of Yoel the Levi (also: Ra’avya) 96 Eliyahu, Hayim ben Menachem 195 Elukin, Jonathan 2 f., 31, 215 Emden, Ya‘akov 175 Endelman, Todd M. 7, 14 Engel, Edna 50 f. Engel, Gisela 7, 25

Enriquez, Abraham Vaz 145 Epstein, Isidore 54 Epstein, Marc M. 51 f. Escandell i Proust, Isabel 54 Eskeles, Gavriel ben Yehuda Leib of Cracow 171, 174 f. Eskenasy, Naftaly 188 Espinoza Catela, Abraham 136 Esposito, Anna 41 Fagius, Paulus 77 Farissol, Abraham 50, 76 f., 85 Feichtinger, Johannes 184 Feldman, Leon 32 Feliu, Eduard 26, 28, 215 Ferdinand II (King of Aragón) 222 Ferdinand III (Grand Duke of Tuscany) 8 Fernández-Morera, Darío 210 Ferro, Moisse 122 Ferziger, Adam S. 43 Filippini, Jean-Pierre 8 Fingarova, Galina 201 Fles, Jacob 149 Foa, Anna 73, 89 Foa, Netaniel 175 Fontaine, Resianne 14 f., 39 Fortis, Umberto 111 Fraenkel, Josef 206 Fram, Edward 39, 96 Francesconi, Federica 7 Franco, Aron 141 Franco, Francisco 212 Franco, Luna 114 Franco Mendes, David 158 Franco Rachao, Isak 135 Frank, Jacob 180 Frank, Thomas 168 Frankel-Goldschmidt, Hava 77 Frankfurter, Shimon 162 Frankl, Ludwig August 187 f. Franz Joseph I (Emperor of Austria) 191 Freidenreich, Harriet Pass 11, 20 Frenkel, Miriam 126, 136 f. Frenkel, Yehoshua 129 Freudenthal, Gad 40, 181 Friedman, Jerome 77 Friedman, Michal 211

Index of Names

Friedman, Yvonne 128 – 130 Friedmann, Aron 200 Friedmann, Mira 59 Friesen, Abraham 75 Frisby, Craig L. 184 Frojmovic, Eva 63 Frühauf, Tina 196 f., 201, 204 f. Fuks, Leo 160 – 162 Fuks-Mansfeld, Rena G. 160 – 162 Gaffarel, Jacques 168, 180 Galinsky, Judah (Dov) 5, 28 f., 93 Gampel, Benjamin R. 25, 43, 157 Gans, David 5, 76, 78 f., 85 Garb, Jonathan 178 García, John A. 207 García-Arenal, Mercedes 131 Garel, Michel 50 Gargova, Fani 201 Geary, Patrick J. 27 Geiger, Abraham 212 f. Geisinger, Kurt F. 184 Gelber, Mark H. 213 Gelber, Nathan M. 189 Gelfer-Jørgensen, Mirjam 114 Genée, Pierre 194, 201 f. Gerber, Jane S. 7, 9 Gerondi, Jonah (also: Yonah Gerondi; Jonah of Gerona; Rabbenu Yonah) 5, 27 Gershom Meor ha-Golah (also: Rabbenu Gershom) 3 Gikatilla, Joseph 178 Giménez Caballero, Ernesto 211 Giorgi, Francesco 169 Giustiniani, Agostino 76, 82 Glick, Thomas F. 30 Goitein, Tal 52, 59 Goldish, Matt 155, 164, 167, 173, 178 Goldstein, David 63 Goldstein, Josef (also: Ḥazan Goldstein) 195 – 197, 199 f., 205 Gomez Neta, Rachel 144 Gompers, Leon 151 Gomperts, Moses 151 Goodblatt, Chanita R. 81, 174 Gorosch, Max 32 Gottesman, Itzig Nakhmen 40

263

Gottheil, Richard 164 Graetz, Heinrich 40, 188 Graetz, Michael 104, 112 Graizbord, David A. 11, 163 Gramsci, Antonio 185 Gratia, Donna 121 Graziani Secchieri, Laura 41, 43 Grebner, Gundula 7, 25 Greenberg, Mark I. 20 Greenblatt, Rachel L. 108, 117 Greive, Hermann 220 Grenier, Julia Ramos 184 Grieser, Heike 126, 128 – 130 Gritsch, Eric W. 75 Gross, Abraham 6 Grossman, Avraham 3, 5, 12, 27 f. Grözinger, Karl E. 36 Grunwald, Max 197 Güdemann, Moritz 192, 194 – 196, 208 Gutmann, Joseph 52 Guttstadt, Corry 15 Gutwirth, Eleazar 33 Habib, Abraham (also: João Lopez Gomez) 122 Hacker, Joseph R. 12, 39, 77 Ḥagiz, Moses/Moshe 171, 173, 175 Ha-Ḥasid, Shimon 168 Ha-Ḥasid, Yehuda 168 Ha-Kohen, Joseph 77, 85 Ha-Kohen, Moshe Yehuda ben Kalonymus 166, 171, 174 f. Halevi, Avraham 78, 81, 83 Halevi, Moshe 222 Ha-Levi, Uri Phoebus 160 Halevi, Zrahya (also: Raza) 94 Halevi-Wise, Yael 14, 202 f. Ḥalfan, Elia 81 Hamelink-Verweel, W. 163 Hanak, Werner 196 Hananel (ben Hushiel; also: Rabbenu Hananel) 94 Hannover, Nathan Nata 172 Hanover, Yosef b. Shlomo 174 Haraszti, György 191 f. Harr, Ingo 189 Harris, Jay M. 28

264

Index of Names

Harris, Julie A. 63 Hart, Simon 163 Ḥayon, Neḥemia Ḥiya 171, 175 Hayoun, Maurice Ruben 54 Hecht, Louise 188 Heilpern, Yisrael 174 Heimann-Jelinek, Felicitas 200 Heller, Marvin J. 107, 162 Hen, Yitzhak 91 Heppendorp, Joan Smits 131 Herold-Schmidt, Hedwig 215 Hertz, Naftali ben Moshe of Hanover 174 Herzl, Theodor 213, 215, 220 – 222 Heschel, Abraham Joshua 1, 16 Hess, Moses 213 Heuschtat, Yossel 96 Hezser, Catherine 128 Hirai, Hiro 168 Hirsch, Menko M. 126 Hirschberg, Haim Zeev (J. W.) 132, 139 Hoare, Quintin 185 Hödl, Hans Gerald 188 Hödl, Klaus 185 Horowitz, Isaiah 162 Horowitz, Lazar 191 f. Ḥotsch, Tzvi Hirsch b. Yeraḥmiel of Cracow (also: Ẓevi Hirsch ben Jerahmeel Chotsch) 162, 172 – 175 Hundert, Gershon David 191 Huss, Boaz 92, 155, 173 f., 176, 180 Hutton, Sarah 178 f. Ibáñez-Sperber, Raquel 49 Ibn Paquda, Bahya 33 Ibn Shraga, Joseph 76, 78, 81 Ibn Verga, Solomon/Salomon 216 Ibn Yaḥya/Ibn Yahya, Gedaliah 5, 77 f., 85 Idanha, Jacob 143 Idel, Moshe 43, 82, 156, 178 Isaac of Corbeil (also: the Smak) 94 f. Isaac, Benjamin 128 Isabella I (Queen of Spain) 222 Isavel, Maria 140, 143 Israel, Jonathan I. 133 f., 159 Isserlein, Israel (also: R. Isserlein) 18, 94, 96 – 101

Isserles, Moshe (also: Rema) Italiener, Bruno 50

4, 91, 156

Jabotinsky, Wladimir Zeev 219 Jacobs, Martin 5 Jakóbiec-Semkowowa, Milica 15 Jellinek Adolf 191, 193, 208 Joseph of Salonika 223 Jost, Isaac Marcus 40 Juan Carlos II (King of Spain) 210 Kagay, Donald J. 32 Kaidanover, Aaron Samuel 171 Kalmár, Ivan Davidson 13, 23 Kalwo, Yosef 184 Kamondo, Abraham 188 Kanarfogel, Ephraim 27 Kanito Tzarfati, Avraham 81 Kaplan, Yosef 3, 5, 7 f., 12, 25, 27, 38, 43 f., 91, 108, 146 f., 149, 157 – 160, 176 Karkov, Catherine E. 63 Karo, Joseph (also: RJK; Yosef Karo/Caro; Joseph son of Ephraim Karo) 4, 17 f., 29, 43, 89 – 101, 156 Karr, Don 161 Kątny, Andrzej 8, 13, 15 Katz, David 7 Katz, Ethan 15 Katz, Jacob 23 Katz, Naftali 171 Katz, Yuzpe (?) b. Mordeḥai 175 Kaufmann, Anna 221 Kaufmann, David 50, 148 Kaul, Christina 183, 208 Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie 20 f. Kayserling, Meyer 164 Kedar, Benjamin Z. 12, 49 Kelman, Tirza 4, 17, 93, 97 Kirin, Asen 201 Kiron, Arthur 4 Klaniczay, Gábor 27 Klarer, Mario 129 Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian 177 f. Kocher, Ursula 168 Koen, E. M. 163 Kogman-Appel, Katrin 17, 31, 47 f., 53 f., 58 f., 63, 70 f.

Index of Names

Kohlbauer-Fritz, Gabriele 200 Kohler, Kaufmann 166 Kopel, Jacob 172 Kornberg, Jacques 220 Kosover, Mordecai 11 f., 39 Kössinger, Norbert 58 Kreisel, Howard 80, 174 Kriechbaumer, Robert 207 Kryger, Karin 114 Kunrada, Ignaz 192 Kunz, Johannes 206 Künzl, Hannelore 104, 112 – 114 Kupfer, Ephraim 76, 82 Langmuir, Gavin I. 32 Lanier, Amelie 186 Lasker, Daniel L. 5 Lawee, Eric 5 Lears Jackson, T. J. 185 Lebel, Jennie 191, 199 Leff, Lisa Moses 15 Lehmann, James H. 210 Lehmann, Matthias B. 12, 38, 43 f., 86, 139, 146, 181 Lehnardt, Andreas 107 Leib, Yehuda b. Moshe of Greater Glogau 166, 171, 174 Leib, Yehuda b. Yitzḥak 166 Leibman, Laura A. 11 Leicht, Reimund 40 Leighley, Jan E. 207 Lemlein, Asher (also: Asher Laemmlein; Asher ben Meir Lemlein Roitlingen) 17, 76 – 78, 81 – 87 Lenhard, Philipp 194 Leong, Frederick T. L. 184 Leopold I (Holy Roman Emperor) 187 Levie, Abraham 117 Levine, Hillel 178 Levita, Johannes Isaac 77 Levy, Moses 144 Liberles, Robert 7, 25 Lieberman, Julia R. 163 Liebl, Christian 15 Lilien, E. H. 221 Limor, Ora 5, 91 Linhard, Tabea Alexa 225

265

Loewe, Raphael 58 Lopes, David 145 Lopes do Porto, Jacob 140 Löwinger, Samuel 76 f. Löwit, Isidor 200, 204 f. Löwy, Moritz 192 Luria, Isaac (also: Yitzḥak Luria) 26, 162, 165 Luria, Leib b. Yoḥanan 175 Luria, Solomon 26 Luzzati, Michele 105 Luzzatto, Aldo 104 Luzzatto, Moses Ḥayim (also: Moshe Ḥayyim/Hayyim Luzzatto) 159, 171, 178 Luzzatto, Simone 25 Maarssen, Jacob 162 Machorro, David 141 Maciejko, Pawel 180 Maimonides, Moses (also: Rambam) 50, 85, 91, 93, 96, 129, 178, 210 Malkiel, David 24, 34 Mandel, Maud S. 15 Mann, Vivian 30 f. Mannheimer, Isaak Noah 193 Mansebo, Eliau (also: Manual Alvares) 144 Mantino, Yaakov 81 Marcus, Ivan G. 31, 63, 202 Margaret Theresa of Spain (Holy Roman Empress) 187 Maria Theresa (Holy Roman Empress) 188 Martin, Therese 63 Marx, Alexander 76 Marx, Karl 83 Mattys, Jan 75 May, Sam 11 Maziane, Leïla 131, 139 McCagg, William O. 190 Meijer, Jaap 165 Mendelson, Sara H. 179 Mendelssohn, Moses 22, 210 Menny, Anna Lena 125, 212 Menocal, María Rosa 31 Meroiznitz, Meir ben Abraham 166, 171 Metzger, Mendel 52, 71 Michael, Erna 52, 59 Michman, Jozeph 7, 41, 134, 146, 158

266

Index of Names

Minervini, Laura 105 Mirsky, Aaron 3, 5, 27 Mirvis, Stanley 7, 20 Modena, Leon 105, 107, 112 f., 115, 171 Molcho, Shlomo 76, 79, 81, 83 f., 162, 172, 175 Monis, Isabel Vaz 145 Mordekhai (ben Hillel ha-Kohen; also: the Mordekhai) 94 – 96 More, Henry 178 f. Morgensztern, Janina 7 Morteira, Saul Levi 134 f., 148 Moser, Prof. (Franz) 205 Moses of Coucy (also: the Smag) 94 f. Mosse, George 220 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 194 Mueller, Reinhold Christopher 73 Müller-Funk, Wolfgang 184 Munis, Francisco Rodriguez 140 Münster, Sebastian 77 Müntzer/Muentzer, Thomas 75 Myers, David N. 6, 213 Naar, Devin E. 40 Nahimias, Gracia 121 Nahmanides, Moses (also: Moses ben Nahman of Gerona; Ramban) 26 – 28, 58, 85 Nahmias, Mariem 121 Nahon, Gérard 10, 108, 116 Nalle, Sara 75 Narkiss, Bezalel 49 f., 52, 63 Nassery, Idris 129 Netanyahu, Benzion 79 – 81 Neustadt, Yitzḥak b. Avraham of (also: Izak b. Abraham Neustadt; Isaac ben Abraham of Neustadt) 19, 155, 161, 165 – 167, 181 Nieto, David 178 Nietzsche, Friedrich 219 Nirenberg, David 2 f. Nissim of Gerona (also: Ran) 94 Nissim, Aron 188 Nogueira, António de Vasconcelos 10 Nora, Pierra 103 Nordau, Max (also: Max Südfeld) 19, 209, 214 – 227

Offenberg, Sara 64 Oliel-Grausz, Évelyne 125, 127, 133 Olivari, Michele 105 Olivier, Josef (also: Iseppo Oliviers; Juzef Oliuier) 118 f. Olszewska, Izabela 8, 13, 15 Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith 168 Oppenheimer, Samuel 151, 187 Orfali, Moisés 126, 133 Ortiz, Fernando 184 Osiek, Carolyn 129 Osorio, Baruh/Bento 163 Osorio, Jacob Aboab 136 Osorio, Sara 163 Osuna, Jacob Henriques 131 Otsen, Isaac Israel 136 Ottolenghi, Alfredo 104, 118 Pacifici, Ricardo 104, 118 Padilla, Paul G. 32 Palache, Samuel 131 Papo, Manfred 205 f. Papo, Michael 183, 187 f., 190, 201, 205 Paraira, Mozes Cohen 158 Pardo, Josef 134 Pavoncello, Nello 105 Penslar, Derek 13, 23 Perani, Mauro 49 Pereira, Abraham 175 Pereira, Ya’akov 175 Peretz, Yehuda ben Yosef 171 Pereyra, Abraham 176 Pereyra da/de Paiva, Mosseh 160 Pfefferkorn, Johannes 77 Philippson, Ludwig 210 Piccini, Giovanni 109, 120 Pieterse, Wilhelmina Christina 163 Planas i Marcé, Silvia 54 Plener, Peter 184 Poirier, Véronique 21 Pokorny, Lukas 188 Poorthuis, Marcel 128 Popkin, Jeremy 178 Popkin, Richard H. 178 f. Prato, Jonathan 210 Pratt, Mary Louise 184 Presner, Todd Samuel 219

Index of Names

Priesching, Nicole 126, 128 – 130 Prossnitz, Yehuda Leib b. Yakov Holleschau (also: Judah Leib ben Jacob Holleschau Prossnitz) 175 Prutsch, Ursula 184 Pulido Fernández, Ángel 19, 211, 225 Quintana, Aldina

49

Radley, C. Perrin 179 Radosh, Efraim 166, 171 Ramirez, Samuel 144 Ramos, Alex 43 Ransmayr, Anna 186, 189 Rapoport-Albert, Ada 5 Rauschenbach, Sina 9, 13, 209, 216 Ravid, Benjamin 25, 41 Ray, Jonathan 3 f., 16, 27, 31 – 34, 38, 44, 71, 86 Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon 49, 64 Rebiger, Bill 161, 167 Rehrmann, Norbert 223, 225 f. Reif, Stefan C. 107 Reiner, Elchanan 177 Reinharz, Jehuda 25 Reizbaum, Marilyn 214, 219 Richler, Benjamin 52 Riemer, Jack 109 Ristović, Milan 189 Rivlin, Bracha (Ardos) 133 Rodrigue, Aron 186 Rodriguez, Lionel 111 Rommelse, Gijs 130 Rosenmann, Moses 191 Rosman, Moshe 36 Roth, Cecil 128, 133, 136 f. 139 f., 174 f. Roth, Norman 32 Roth, Pinchas 28 Rother, Bernd 211 Rotman, Youval 128 Rozen, Minna 12, 126, 133, 135 f., 138, 146 Ruderman, David B. 5, 14, 18, 146, 156, 177, 180 Russo, Marcus M. 200 f. Russo, Samuel 195 Ruthner, Clemens 184

267

Sáez-Santiago, Emily 184 Safrai, Shmuel 53 Safrai, Ze′ev 53 Safran, Bezalel 33 Salverda, Reinier 159 Salzer, Dorothea M. 2, 6, 15 Sandgruber, Roman 205 Sandoval, Craig 184 Saperstein, Marc 6, 74 Saraiva, António José 187 Sarasohn, Lisa T. 179 Saruco, Ishac 165 Sasportas, Jacob (also: Hakham Sasportas) 140 Savonarola, Girolamo 75 Schaerf, Moshe 220 Schäfer, Peter 75, 161, 174 Schapkow, Carsten 13 f., 19, 40, 209 f., 212 Schatz, Andrea 14 f., 39 f. Schechter, Ronald 10 Scheuneman, Janice Dowd 184 Schleicher, Mordche Schlome 183 Schmidt, Peer 215 Schoeps, Julius H. 220 Scholem, Gershom 17, 78, 171, 174 – 176 Schonfield, Jeremy 49, 51 Schorsch, Ismar 13 f., 38, 40, 202, 210 Schorsch, Jonathan 13, 18 f., 155, 160, 163 Schroeter, Daniel J. 7, 13, 21 Schubert, Franz 194 Schubert, Kurt 187, 189 f., 193 Schulte, Christoph 221 f. Schwartz, Joshua 128 Sclar, David 155, 159, 164, 171, 181 Secret, François 168 Segal, Ya‘akov bar Moshe 162 Sellés-Ferrando, Xavier 189 Selmanovich, Victor J. 6, 74 Semo, Clara 204 Semo, Shem Tov 183 f., 204 Septimus, Bernard 28, 39 Seroussi, Edwin 192 f., 196 f., 200 f., 204, 206 Seyfried, Ignaz Ritter von 194 Shagrir, Iris 91 Shahar, Yuval 128 Shalev-Eyni, Sarit 64

268

Index of Names

Shapira, Nathan Neta 175 Shatzky, Jacob 7 Shatzmiller, Joseph 31 Shear, Adam 177 Shevet, Ezra 6, 28 Shimshon of Sens (also: Rash of Sens) 94 Shoham-Steiner, Ephraim 48 Shoulson, Jeffrey S. 9 Shulvass, Moses 73 Siegfried, Brandie R. 179 Silverman, Lisa 185 Singer, Isidore 164, 166 Skinner, Stephen 161 Skolnik, Fred 209 f., 220 Skolnik, Jonathan 13 f. Sluhovsky, Moshe 91 Šmid, Katja 13 Smollett, Brian M. 7, 9 Snel, Harmen 163 Sofer, David 70 Sofer, Gal 155, 172, 176 Sorkin, David 16 Spitzer, Moshe 51 Spitzer, Salomon 191 f. Sprang, Felix 7, 25 Stampfer, Nathanael 109 Stanislawski, Michael 6, 219 Stechauner, Martin 15, 19, 188, 204 Steidl, Annemarie 189 Stein, Sarah Abrevaya 2 Steinschneider, Moritz 40, 164 Stern, David 47, 70 Stern, Frank 197 Stern, Heidi 185 Stern, Selma 22, 34 Stillman, Norman 34 Strauss, Eduard 206 Strauss, Johann I 206 Strauss, Johann II 206 Strommer, Franz 204 Stroumsa, Guy 5 Studemund-Halévy, Michael 15, 20, 108, 115, 120, 125, 184, 188 Südfeld, Gabriel ben Asser 214 Sulzer, Joseph 204 Sulzer, Salomon 193, 200, 204, 206 Sutcliffe, Adam 10, 14

Swetschinski, Daniel S. Switers, Abraham 150 Szajkowski, Zosa 8

25, 128

Talmon, Yanina 77 f. Taman, Seadia 142 Tarnow, Ulrike 168 Tartakoff, Paola 31, 35 Tartas, David de Castro 159, 161, 165 Tartas de Castro, Samuel Texeira 161 Ta-Shema, Israel M. 4 f., 27 f., 91 – 93, 95 Tavim, Jose Alberto Rodrigues da Silva 86 Tcherikover, Anat 49 Teixeira, Isaac Senior 151 Teller, Adam 37 Theis, Lioba 201 Theune, Claudie 108 Timm, Erika 73 Toaff, Renzo 8, 138 Toch, Michael 32 Toledano, Joseph 133 Tollet, Daniel 109 Treves, Eliezer 76, 78, 85 Trigano, Shmuel 6, 133 Trimble, Joseph E. 184 Trivellato, Francesca 11, 139 Tsur, Yaron 21 Turniansky, Chava 73 Twardowska, Aleksandra 8, 13, 15 Twersky, Isadore 28, 33, 39 Tzarfati, Jacob ben Solomon 50 Tzarfati, Shmuel 162 Tzoref, Heschel 174 Tzvi, Shabtai (also: Sabbatai Ṣevi; Shabbetai Zevi) 31, 172 – 176 Ujvári, Hedvig 214 Unterweger, Ulrike 201 Valle, Moshe David 178 Van Helmont, Francis Mercury 169 Van Krieken, Gerard 130 f. Van t’Hoff, J. H. 180 Varanini, Gian Maria 73 Verdooner, Dave 163 Veronese, Alessandra 73 Vidaković-Petrov, Krinka 13, 20

Index of Names

Vidro, Nadia 168 Vink, Wieke 20 Vollendorf, Lisa 11 Voltaire 9 f. Von Braun, Christina 1 Von Schmädel, Stephanie 2, 6, 15 Von Zemlinsky, Adolf 183, 187 f., 190, 201, 204 Von Zemlinsky, Alexander 204 f. Voß, Rebekka 76 Vučina Simović, Ivana 13, 15 Wachtel, Nathan 163 f. Wachten, Johannes 220 Wacks, David A. 3 Waddington, Raymond B. 43 Wallenborn, Hiltrud 7 Walzer, Tina 108 Weiner, Gordon M. 178 f. Weinstein, Donald 75 Weinstein, Roni 64 Weiser, Rafael 50 Weiss, Yfaat 212 Wenger, Beth S. 42 Werber, Eugen 49 Wertheimer, Jack 33 Wertheimer, Samson 187 Wessely, Hartwig 209 Wiedenfeld, Hugo Ritter von 201 Wiegers, Gerard 131 Wiese, Christian 9 Wilke, Carsten L. 5, 125, 188, 191 Williams, George H. 75 Williamson, Arthur H. 43 Winter, Susanne 104 Wistrich, Robert S. 190, 192 f. Wittig, Claudia 58

Wiznitzer, Arnold 128, 132 Wolf, Gerson 191 Wolf, Johann Christoph 168, 171 Wolfson, Elliot R. 174 Wulf, Ze’ev ben R. Shmuel of Yaroslav

269

172

Yahuda, Abraham Shalom 19, 225 f. Yanes/Jenes, Denis 163 Yardeni, Myriam 10 Yassif, Eli 35 Yates, Frances 180 Yeruham (ben Meshulam; also: Rabbenu Yeruham) 94 Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim 5 f., 105 Yitzhaki, Shlomo (also: Rashi) 94 Yom-Tov son of Avraham Asevilli (also: Ritva) 94 Yose the Galilean 59, 61 Yosef Shmuel of Cracow (also: Yosef Shmuel) 175 Yovel, Yirmiyahu 187 Zacharias, Lazarus 151 f. Zacuto, Moses 144, 148, 173 Zangwill, Israel 9 Zeldes, Nadia 42 Ziliol, Cesare 111 Zimmels, H. J. 1, 9, 30 Zimmermann, Heidy 193 f. Zirlin, Yael 52 f., 63, 70 Zolli, Paolo 111 Zorattini, Pier Cesare Ioly 111 Zudrell, Petra 219 Zurkanden, Jacob Izaqs 150 f. Zwiep, Irene E. 14 f., 39 f., 168 Zwiers, Ariane 136