Overview

In the early modern period Amsterdam developed into the largest Jewish urban centre in Europe. Its rabbis had to navigate the intersections of urban dynamics, communal tensions, and diasporic entanglements. This book considers the individuals who made up the rabbinate of Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the particular challenges (and successes) they had in building and preserving Jewish communities in the Dutch Republic. These rabbis faced formidable new challenges to their authority, unlike what their medieval predecessors encountered. Among these were building a religiously, intellectually, socially, and economically thriving community on the banks of the Amstel while integrating immigrants from the Iberian Peninsula and Central and Eastern Europe; the reintegration of former conversos into normative Judaism; the greater separation of administrative and religious leadership, with lay leaders taking over communal responsibilities and prerogatives formerly held by rabbis; new organization of rabbinic training; and changes in titles. The early modern rabbi was thus quite distinct not only from his medieval predecessors, but also from his modern successors, and Amsterdam was one site where the institution of the rabbinate found its rearticulation.

Full Product Details

Author:   Bart Wallet
Publisher:   Amsterdam University Press
Imprint:   Amsterdam University Press
ISBN:  

9789048576029

ISBN 10:   9048576024
Pages:   188
Publication Date:   30 June 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

1. The Early Modern Rabbis of Amsterdam: Urban Dynamics, Communal Tensions, and Diasporic Entanglements - Introduction to the special issue 2. Christian Hebraism and Jewish Responses: A Comparison between Menasseh ben Israel, Saul Levi Morteira, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, and Raphael Moshe de Aguilar 3. Menasseh ben Israel (and Maimonides) on Human Freedom 4. Isaac Aboab da Fonseca: Leadership between the Spinozist and Sabbatian Storms 5. The Committee of Six: What a Little-Known Regulation Reveals about Rabbinic Opposition to Communal Authority 6. Creating an Urban Rabbinate: The Dynamics of the Early Rabbinate of the Ashkenazi Community in Amsterdam 7. Western Sephardic Prayer Books and an Evolving Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam 8. ‘No Person Shall Act Against the Resolutions of the Ma’amad:’ Dynamics of Printing in the Amsterdam Sephardic Congregation in the Seventeenth Century 9. Shadows of Support: Women and Religious Leadership of the Portuguese Jewish Community in Early Modern Amsterdam 10. Hakham Solomon Ayllon: Amsterdam’s Sabbatean Rabbi, 1700-1728 11. Mirjam Knotter, Gary Schwartz, eds. Rembrandt Seen Through Jewish Eyes: The Artist’s Meaning to Jews from His Time to Ours 12. Ian Buruma, Spinoza. Freedom’s Messiah

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Author Information

Bart Wallet is professor of early modern and modern Jewish history at the University of Amsterdam. He is co-editor-in-chief of Studia Rosenthaliana: Journal of the History, Culture and Heritage of the Jews in the Netherlands and editor of the European Journal of Jewish Studies.

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