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The Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam called themselves 'La Nacão' - the Nation. The Dutch did not enforce any Ghetto restrictions so the Nation was free to live where they could. Mostly they crowded into 2 districts around the city's 2 Synagogues. They were swarthier than the Ashkenazim Jews but oddly enough, they were better assimilated. The Sephardim spoke Dutch at work and Portuguese or Spanish at home. They dressed like the Dutch and adopted their daily rhythms. |
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In 1492 there had been 800,000 Jews living in Spain. Over time they had lost tens of thousands to the Inquisition's stakes and Pillories. When the 'Reys Catalicos' threw them out of all the Spains they had fled to North Africa, the Middle East, and other open places in southern Europa. The largest cohort - 120,000 - moved west to Portugal. Things were not much better for them across the border. 20,000 Jewish children had been forcibly baptized as christians - a trick the Catholic Church used throughout Europa up into the 20th Century. Then in 1506, 2,000 Jews were massacred in Lisbon. After which the Inquisition was "invited in" to Portugal so that by 1580 when Spain and Portugal were 'United,' the Portuguese were actively trying to outdo even Spain in Jew Baiting, murder, and religious bigotry. Monty Python time in Iberia. In 1572 the Dutch revolted against Spanish rule and freed themselves from Catholic tyranny. It was not as if the Protestant Dutch welcomed or wanted the huge influx of Spherardi from Portugal but the fact that their tolerance bugged the shit out of the Pope pleased them no end. So the Jews did, in fact, find a Haven in Mokum Aleph.
From 1572 to 1640 ADAM quadrupled in population. It became the center of world trade: Brazilian sugar, Spanish wool, Portuguese salt, Baltic grain, Turkish mohair. Fruit and wine from the Mediterranean, spices from East India. The Dutch exported ceramics, furniture, pipes for smoking tobacco, and dye stuffs for artist's pigments and paints. 17th Century Holland had neat and clean streets, low crime, street lamps, clocks, telescopes, microscopes, and paintings - lots and lots of paintings. Amsterdam was thought by those who had seen it to be the most beautiful city in the world. It had more real freedom than any other place in the christian west. Servants dressed as well as their masters and if they didn't like their boss they quit and found a new gig.
1000 Portuguese Jews were living in a neighborhood in and around the island of Vlooienburg when Bento Spinoza was born. The hood was dominated by lumber warehouses which had been conveniently located along the Amstel River and the Houtgracht Canal. Holland was a country filling up with Goods from around the world and the Warehouse was the country's Icon. Cynics will tell you that the vaunted Dutch Tolerance is the by-product of adopting Commerce as a Faith and I supposed it is no accident that the hallmark of 17th century Dutch Philosophy is an "enlightened understanding of commercial self-interest." As Isaac Asimov once noted: democracy starts when the 'Haves' are forced to treat the masses not as 'Villain' but as 'Customers.' During Spinoza's time in Mokum A , the Dutch Jews accounted for 15% of ADAM's foreign trade.
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| The Sephardic tradition is more intellectual and artistic than the other branches of the Stirpe Jesse of Judaism. Living at peace with Islam had paid off with Kabbalah and now this mysticism poured into the low-countries from the warm south. The Ashkenazic tradition ran more towards "Talmudic legalistic disputations." Rebecca Goldstein refers to it as the "sacramentalizing of logic," where Reason is used "as the means of unifying with god." Becky paints Baruch as the Father of Modernity where the Modern begins with the Triumph of Reason as the tool with which to study and know the world. |
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In 1657 Jews in Holland were officially recognized as Citizens of the Dutch Republic, so Spinoza and his fellow Marranos were the 1st European Jewish community which could stop hiding in plain site and openly practice their Judaism. Such freedom can be heady. Sometimes freedom can be toxic. Many former Marranos grew "fiercely religious, messianic, and mystical." Others turned away from Torah and Talmud and simply melted into the Goyim and the godless. Spinoza turned his Religion into Reason - which, like his times, turned from superstition to axioms, rules, canons, and measurements. The world was busting out of its tight forms and Holland was the place to be.
But Caute, Caute - Catholics had spies where they needed them. And that meant Holland where they could keep their eyes on the Conversos who shed Jesus so quickly and fell back into 'error.' The problem for the Mokum A Marranos was that they had more than likely left relatives back in Iberia - family still under the yoke of the Inquisition. Family still hiding as New Christians. After his Excommunication - his Cherem - Spinoza drops out of sight and there are no northern Euro-records to trace his movements for 4 years. Except Inquisitional spies have sent back intel to the Iberias where Spinoza is mentioned in Spanish reports. Also - the Dutch were tolerant to a point - and that point was proselytizing among christians. If a Jew tried to convert a christian to Judaism, Dutch tolerance evaporated. The Dutch wanted Good Jews. Jews who followed Mosaic traditions. The last thing on earth Holland wanted was an Atheistic Jew.
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It was the German Romantik Philosopher Novalis [Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg 1772-1801] who called Benedictus Spinoza "ein gott-trunkender mensch." A god-drunk man. Or a man drunk with god. Translation matters. Novalis, like Leibniz, and the AI Lads designing Semantic Webs, thought it possible to chart the connections between science and poetry and discover a "Universal Poesy." Neurologists who study Synesthesia and Mirror Neurons believe something similar. Spinoza may or may not have been drunk with god but he and his times and his contemporaries were certainly tipsy with reason, logic, and geometry. For 350 years Spinoza has been called an Atheist - a charge he ridiculed - and it begs the question how a man gott-trunk in the 1st place could be read as an Atheist. When Einstein said that he believed "in Spinoza's god," was that just a clever dodge from the question? Was Spinoza's god Void? When you go Pantheistic and Everything is god - is there a god? |
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| Click the dick stamp below to see what Gerard van Honthorst's "The Procuress" [1625] is hiding about Mokum's other freedoms which began in Bento's day just up the canal from his hood. |
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