Port Jews, Gracia Mendes Nasi and Sephardic Haskalah

      In my next blog post I'll be writing about the well-known and well-studied process through which Ashkenazi Jews left the ghetto around the time of Enlightenment. One of the main ways through which they did this is known as the Court Jew, a well-established concept in Jewish history. But Ashkenazi Jews, as my students and regular blog readers know, are only part of the Jewish world. In the last few decades researchers have begun using the concept of a Port Jew to describe the very different process through which many Sephardic Jews underwent Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment).

     Port Jews are those Jewish traders, often refugees from the Iberian peninsula, who established their lives in various port cities around the world (a few of which I'll mention momentarily). Port cities, as a whole, historically tend to be liberal places. There tends to be a larger mix of different sorts of people, and, by definition, residents of these cities tend to have much more interaction with the outside world. If you think about the politics of the modern day US, for example, the two coasts tend to be much more liberal than the vast middle of the country. While there are certainly a plethora of reasons for this phenomenon, one of them is certainly the traditional liberal outlook of port cities.
     Aside from the joy of teaching about a lesser-known aspect of Jewish history (which I certainly enjoy), teaching about Port Jews enabled me to spend most of class talking about a famous Jewish woman(!), something that rarely happens in any history class, Jewish or otherwise. The woman, Gracia Mendes Nasi , was born in Portugal to a family of conversos (Jews who were outwardly pretending to be Christian to avoid persecution). She was loosely related to the famous Mendes/Beneviste trading family, who had grown exceedingly rich trading with the east, specializing in black pepper. She married one of the heads of the business (a distant relative), but when he and his brother both died she was left the sole heiress of this massive empire.
     When she was widowed she decided to leave Portugal for the Netherlands, who had recently passed an edict of toleration (they passed it because they were predominantly Protestants, though it applied to Jews as well), which, as always, drew members of Am Yisrael. Not surprisingly the combination of liberalness and an influx of Jewish-Spanish/Portuguese refugees led to a period of prosperity known as the Dutch Golden Age (as always there are many factors that contributed, but these are two main ones). While living in the Netherlands Gracia Mendes Nasi set up a network to smuggle Jews out of Portugal, first hiding them on her ships to the Netherlands, then arranging for an overland journey to Venice (a perilous journey which included traversing the Alps) and finally sending them by boat to the welcoming arms of the Ottoman Empire.
     Eventually she, too, moved to Venice for a few years before eventually moving on to live in the Ottoman Empire. Around this time the Ottoman Sultan famously (though perhaps apocryphally) mocked King Ferdinand (of Spain/Portugal) saying "Ye call Ferdinand a wise king he who makes his land poor and ours rich!" about this expulsion of Am Yisrael. While in the Ottoman Empire Gracia Mendes Nasi was a generous benefactor to Am Yisrael (as she had been in the Netherlands), supporting dozens of btei knesset (synagogues) and yeshivot. One beit knesset, called senora synagogue in her honor, still stands and functions today in modern day Izmir, Turkey. She also essentially bought the city of Tiberias in Eretz Yisrael (she actually promised to generate more taxes, which she probably expected to pay herself), which was then under Ottoman control. She attempted to set up a yeshiva there and encourage Jewish settlement. While it didn't work, many scholars consider this to be the first act of modern Zionism (by a 16th century Sephardic Jewish woman!), 300 years before Theodor Herzl, who receives much more attention.
Using the story of this incredible woman as our guide I spoke to the students about several important Sephardic Jewish centers. The first center we talked about was Amsterdam, which, at the beginning of the period we're talking about, was only a small port. But the influx of thousands of Sephardic Jews with major trade connections and capital, along with the general improvement of the Dutch economy, turned it into an international center for trade. These Dutch Jews also played an important role in establishing Am Yisrael in colonial America. The remnants of this important community can be seen in the Portuguese Synagogue, also known as the Esnoga, which still stands in Amsterdam. It became active in 1672, and is one of only five known btei knesset worldwide to have a floor of sand (to absorb noise and moisture). It was also the home of the famous Eitz Chayim (tree of life) library.

Amsterdam, with the Esnoga on the Left

Painting of the Esnoga

And here it is today:

     Perhaps the most important center of Sephardi Jewry after the expulsion was in Salonica, Greece, which was ruled by the Ottomans at the time. As mentioned above, the Ottomans were happy to welcome the fleeing Sephardi Jews, both for the important effect we were known to have on an economy, and also to prevent Greek settlement in Ottoman lands. The few centuries after the expulsion from Spain saw the Ottoman Empire reach its peak.

Map of the Ottoman Empire

     For those of you who's French isn't up to par (like me), Salonica is written on this map as "Salonique". With the arrival of the Sephardi refugees Salonica began a 400 year stretch of having a Jewish majority (or at least plurality), the only city in the world to claim such a feat.

Population of Salonica over time

Here you can see the various communities from which Jews arrived to Salonica

     Salonica's Jewish majority (or plurality) expressed itself in many ways. For one, Jews participated in virtually all professions, which is rather unusual. For example, this was basically the only time in history there were Jewish fishermen (for those readers with a connection to EIE, Yossi Cohen, the driver for EIE, has roots among Salonica-area fishermen). There were so many Jewish traders that the port of Salonica, a main hub for east-west trade, closed on Shabbat. The city itself had several nicknames expressing its Jewish character, such as "Le Madre de Yisrael" and "The Jerusalem of the Balkans."

     While initially the various Sephardi communities that came to Salonica retained their own traditions (a list of Salonica btei knesset from the late 1400s and early 1500s includes names like New Lisbon, Sicily and Majorca) in 1520 an overarching organization was established to make decisions on behalf of the community. Among their decisions they chose, rather than to have each beit knesset run its own school, to create one big school, which at its peak had 10,000 students and 200 teachers. This school included both secular studies such as Latin, Arabic, the sciences and humanities, and the traditional religious subjects. Among others Shlomo Alkabetz (author of Lecha Dodi, a song Jews still sing to welcome shabbat) and Yosef Caro (author of the Shulhan Aruch, one of the most important compendia of Halacha ever written) both spent time there. 

     As Salonica became an important Jewish center, it also became the center of Ladino (a mix between Old Spanish and Hebrew) culture. In the same way that eastern Europe saw the development of Yiddish literature, drama and newspapers, Salonica (and the rest of the Ottoman Empire) saw the development of a wide variety of Ladino culture. Perhaps the most prominent Ladino book is the Me'am Loez, a commentary on the Chumash (Five Books of Moses). There was Ladino theater and numerous Ladino newspapers. With the death or emigration of the vast majority of the Ladino-speaking world very little of this culture exists today (again, much like Yiddish), but there's one historically Ladino newspaper, now published primarily in Turkish, that still publishes some articles in Ladino. Check it out (I have been told that Spanish speakers can somewhat understand). There are also some artists who still sing in Ladino, such as Yasmin Levy. 

     While Amsterdam and Salonica were important and fascinating Sephardi centers, I've left out another location, near and dear to many of our hearts, to which some Sephardim fled: the US! When the Portuguese controlled Brazil, many Jews left to go settle there, especially in the northeastern coastal city of Recife. Eventually, the Dutch captured it, which led to even more Jews arriving. A few years later the Portuguese retook Brazil and Am Yisrael fled; most returned to the Netherlands, but 23 of them made their way north, stopping in the Caribbean and eventually arriving to the new Dutch fort/settlement of New Amsterdam. Peter Stuyvesant, the anti-semitic governor of this small fort/colony, was unhappy with this development, and wrote back to his company in the Netherlands to ask permission to kick the Jews out. Unfortunately for him, his company had several Jewish board members, who weren't supportive of that plan. 

     It's not just New Amsterdam (the original name of New York) that had a Sephardi community from early on. Other early American settlements such as Charleston, Savannah, Philadelphia and Newport, Rhode Island all had Sephardi Jewish communities. The earliest (and still standing) beit knesset in the US is the Touro beit knesset in Newport (pictured below), originally home to a Sephardi community. The Ashkenazi Jews from whom most modern American Jews are descended didn't really begin arriving until the end of the 19th century. (I, being super special, am actually half Sephardi. We think that side of my family fled Spain/Portugal to Amsterdam and then spent a few generations in Jamaica before coming to the US)

Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, founded 1763

     One early important American Jew was Chayim Solomon, who came from a Sephardi family (though they'd lived in Poland for a couple generations). When George Washington was ready to strike the decisive blow against the British at Yorktown he found his war chest empty, a discovery to which he responded "send for Chayim Solomon." Along with financing this final march and battle, Chayim Solomon played a major role in financing the American Revolution, often charging below market interest rates or even giving away his money out of patriotism. George Washington's Enlightenment views about the importance of separation between church and state played an important role in establishing religious freedom in America, and are reflected in this letter (full text at the bottom of the linked page) he wrote to the Newport Jewish community. Here's one oft-quoted excerpt:

May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

Still beautiful words over 200 years later.