Jewish Culture and History
Abstracts
of articles in Issue 7.1
Special Issue: David Cesarani and Gemma
Romain (eds.), Jews and Port Cities, 1590–1990: Commerce, Community
and Cosmopolitanism
Part I: The Sephardi Diaspora
- Introduction by David Cesarani
- Lois C. Dubin, ‘Wings on their feet … and
wings on their head’: Reflections on the Study of Port Jews
- This essay surveys previous scholarly work on port
Jews and sets forth a range of questions for further investigation. Developing
a seventeenth-century image of merchants that represents them
by Mercury’s
winged feet and cap, that is, with ‘wings on their feet … and
wings on their head’, it stresses the distance, movement, networks
and boundary-crossing inherent in commercial exchange. It thereby
highlights a relatively neglected
aspect in the first studies of port Jews which had focused on
their distinctive paths toward settlement and emancipation in
early modern Europe. This essay
also seeks to distinguish between the respective roles of Neptune
and Mercury, that is, the sea and commerce, in the analysis of
port Jews. In exploring
possible relations between commerce, culture and cosmopolitanism,
it emphasises connection, communication and cultural mediation
within and among commercial
cities and minority communities.
- Francesca Trivellato, The Port Jews of Livorno and their Global
Networks of Trade in the Early Modern Period
- This essay aims to contribute to the ongoing debate
about ‘port
Jews’ in two ways. It examines the large and important Sephardic
community of Livorno before emancipation, and finds numerous similarities
to and important differences from the Sephardic settlements of north-western
Europe. It also stresses the significance of the diasporic dimension of
Sephardic identity, and establishes the existence of several (sometimes
overlapping) networks within the Sephardic diaspora itself. The importance
of these transnational, ‘ethnic’ networks is evident in the
marriage strategies of affluent Sephardic families of Livorno,
their close ties to the Ottoman Empire and their business relations with
non-Jews in
long-distance trade.
- Thorsten Wagner, Port Jews in Copenhagen: The Sephardi Experience
and its Influence on the Development of a Modern Jewish Community in Denmark
- In spite of the small number of Sephardic immigrants
to Denmark, the concept of the Port Jew seems applicable to some degree
to the transformation
of Jewish life in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Denmark.
Especially in Copenhagen the general appreciation of commerce seems to
have contributed
significantly to an early rapprochement between Jews and non-Jews,
preparing the ground for social inclusion. The port Jewish presence seems
to have
had a decisive influence in creating a social and legal setting
that ended up determining crucial dimensions of the process of Jewish
emancipation
and integration. The ‘Portuguese’ community played a crucial
role in the formative beginnings of a modern Jewish culture in
Denmark as well: Sephardi merchants constituted the core of a counter-elite
challenging
the rabbinic establishment from the 1780s. This essay argues that
Copenhagen is a case in point, both illustrating the usefulness of the
port Jew category
and at the same time requiring an approach that does not push
the dichotomies between court Jews and port Jews too far, but rather focuses
on the interplay
and simultaneity of these phenomena.
- Evelyne Oliel-Grausz, Networks and Communication in the Sephardi
Diaspora: An Added Dimension to the Concept of Port Jews and Port Jewries
- The relevance and utility of the concept of port
Jews, from both a historiographical and heuristic point of view, is beyond
discussion.
However, the Sorkin–Dubin dialogue is missing one dimension, that
of the relations between port Jewries, on the multifaceted networks
shaping the diasporic space, and ultimately on the issue of communication.
Confronting
a multiplicity of sources, this essay provides a global sketch
of these networks and interactions.
- Klaus Weber, Were Merchants More
Tolerant? ‘Godless Patrons
of the Jews’ and the Decline of the Sephardi Community in Late Seventeenth-Century
Hamburg
- This essay provides a chronology of the Sephardi
merchant community in seventeenth-century Hamburg and describes its decline,
caused mainly
by anti-Jewish pressure from the guilds and the Lutheran clergy.
In particular, it examines the discourse between the Senate and the wealthy
maritime traders
on one hand, who tried to protect the Portuguese Jews, and the
largely hostile guilds and preachers on the other. By contextualising
this conflict
in light of pastors’ and citizens’ attitudes towards other
minorities such as Calvinists and Roman Catholics, more general
conclusions may be drawn, showing that pressure on Jews was only one element
from a
larger set of intolerant measures exercised in general by the
Lutheran community in Hamburg.
- Adam Sutcliffe, Identity, Space and
Intercultural Contact in the Urban Entrepôt: The Sephardic Bounding
of Community in Early Modern Amsterdam and London
- The pattern of Sephardic social transformation
in Amsterdam and in London during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
was broadly similar.
Both communities faced intense challenges to their integrity in
the economically dynamic and culturally cosmopolitan environments of
these key trading entrepôts.
However, the sheer size of London, and also the intensification
of assimilatory pressures in the eighteenth century, led to that city
experiencing a more
dramatic erosion of Sephardic collective cohesion.
- Linda M. Rupert, Trading Globally,
Speaking Locally: Curaçao’s
Sephardim in the Making of a Caribbean Creole
- During the eighteenth century the Sephardic community
of Curaçao,
a Dutch Caribbean entrepôt, played a key role in developing Papiamentu,
a creole language that was spoken widely across social class, race and
ethnicity. Their role in Papiamentu’s success indicates that, far
from being an isolated, internally focused enclave, Curaçao’s
port Jews helped to forge a strong inter-ethnic colonial identity
in the local society at the same time they were consolidating far-flung
regional
and global trade networks. Their case raises compelling questions
about the wider role of port Jews in creolisation processes throughout
the early
modern Atlantic world.