University of Groningen
Making Jews Dutch
Rädecker, Tsila Shelly
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Making Jews Dutch
Secular Discourse and Jewish Responses
)1796–1848)
Tsila Rädecker
To the memory of my grandparents
Salemon Jacobs (Blokzijl, 1907– Sobibor, 1943) z’’l
Rachel Heijman (Rijssen, 1905 – Sobibor, 1943) z’’l
ii
Acknowledgements
“I guess there’s no point in hanging on to this tuba, then,” I said. (Wonder Boys, 1995)
Curiosity and fascination with Jewish history went hand in hand in the preparation of
this book. It resulted in a pleasant and perverse presence in these last few years of my
life. Research was always there, lingering in the dark, plucking at my clothes and pulling
me back to work. And now this sweet burden has flown the nest, leaving its creator
empty handed and longing for a new research pet.
I have been privileged to spend this time in an intellectual playground. The Faculty of
Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen has provided me with a
warm and inspiring intellectual climate, witty colleagues, and a life-long aversion to the
carillon. Travelling to international conferences and participating in summer schools
have further enriched my personal life and research.
In the course of my research I have encounterd many brilliant scholars, all of whom,
both intentionally and unintentionally, contributed to this study. First of all I am grateful
to my supervisor, Kocku von Stuckrad, who saw potential in my research proposal and
from whose knowledge I greatly benefitted. His guidance, optimism, and sharp criticism
not only improved the research but also helped me to better understand my research
position and perspective. I am also very grateful to my second supervisor, Karin
Hofmeester. With her knowledge of Jewish history and keen observations, she pointed
me in the right direction and has prevented me from making errors. Her absolute trust
in my ability gave me the confidence to complete this task. Yaniv Hagbi, my co-promotor,
requires a special mention. He tutored me during my studies at the University of
Amsterdam and encouraged me to pursue an academic career. His advice, comments,
and suggestions have proven to be of great value.
I am grateful to my collegues at Groningen, my fellow PhDs and members of informal as
well as formal PhD peer groups, who commented on my work in its early stages. I
especially want to thank Froukje Pitstra and Michael Green for their kind advice.
Collegues such as Bart Wallet and David Wertheim have contributed greatly to my
research. I am also grateful to members of the groyse un klayne kraiz, under the guidance
iii
of Justus van der Kamp, as they have stirred up a long-lasting love for the Yiddish
language. I also want to express gratitude to the assistant conservator of the Library
Rosenthaliana, Rachel Boertjes, who tracked down many manuscripts and books for me.
In addition, I thank my editor Alissa Jones Nelson for carefully (copy) editing the
manuscript and patience with my endless requests.
This research would not have been possible without the generous funding of the
Henriette Boas Stichting, Rothschild Foundation, Stichting, Association for Jewish
Studies (AJS), Max Cohen Fonds, Goudse Stichting voor Joodse Sociale Arbeid, and the
Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Their support enabled me to present my research at
international conferences, visit archives, and enroll in summer schools.
I devote this last paragraph to my family. Firstly, I need to apologize to my father, whose
library on Jewish history in the Netherlands I have plundered and pilfered. I am grateful
for his suggestions and help. My husband David J. Knibbe has been invaluable. He not
only engaged in lengthy discussions and provided me with helpful insights and
perspectives, but also meticulously read and edited my writings. Without his input, I
would not have been able to write this book. A special thanks to my sweet daughter
Serle, who sat cozily in my belly during the writing of this book and who afterwards has
been such a delight and a pleasure.
iv
Contents
Acknowledgements
iii
Introduction
1
1. Between secularization and sacralization
2
2. Historiography on the emancipation of the Jews
5
3. An alternative research perspective
12
4. Chapter topics and outline
18
5. Notes on the chronological framework and the historical sources
26
Chapter one
State, citizenship, and nucleation:
The Dutch Jewish community in transition
31
1. Maskilic nucleation in the Netherlands
32
2. The naye kille
37
Jewish political participation
39
The ideal of equality
41
The Sephardic ideal
43
The alte kille’s response
46
Public shaming
47
The naye kille’s legacy
50
3. Orthodox nucleation
52
The Lehren family
52
Lehren’s private minyan
57
The Hasidic influence
60
Torat ha-qena’ot vis-à-vis Reform
Jews vis-à-vis the state
62
65
v
4. Conclusion
75
Chapter two
Civilizing the Jews:
The reform of language, education, and religion
1. The abandonment of Yiddish
70
71
Dutch in the synagogue
73
The translation of the Hebrew Bible
77
Pronunciation of Hebrew
79
The Hebrew pronunciation polemics
2. Educating Dutch Jews
81
89
Reform of the Jewish schools
90
A Jewish signature
94
3. Religious reform
98
The naye kille’s liturgy
100
Governmental religious reform
106
Romantic visions of the Jewish ritual: The case of hamankloppen
107
4. Conclusion
111
Chapter three
Rituals: New, old, and invented
112
1. Judaizing the state ritual: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen
113
The Additional Declaration
114
Rabbi Moses Löwenstamm’s resistance
117
The “For the Sake of Heaven” petition
120
The naye kille’s support of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen
121
vi
2. The politicalized Jewish ritual: Purim productions
Addressing ‘the Jewish question’
124
125
Jewish poverty
126
Jewish unproductivity
130
Critique of the Jewish religion in the character of Yerushalmi
133
3. The politicalized Jewish ritual: The sermon
The gunpowder tragedy in Leiden
136
138
Promotion of the Dutch language
142
The sermon as a moral message
144
The pastoral role
147
4. Conclusion
150
Chapter four
Self-labelling and othering: Images of the Jew
1. The Jewish self-image
152
153
The Jewish beard
154
Samuel Berenstein’s beard
157
Eating as a Jew
161
The Jew as soldier
167
Jewish conscription
173
2. Perception of the Jews by non-Jews
176
The Jew as citizen
177
The coarse Jew
183
The Jew in need of regeneration
186
3. Conclusion
189
Chapter five
vii
The Dutch Jewish Community: Betwixt and between medicine, and
religion
190
1. The Jewish burial controversy
182
Reform of Jewish burial in the Netherlands
2. Criticism on Jewish circumcision
193
199
Dutch reform of Jewish circumcision
200
Critique of meẓiẓah
204
The meẓiẓah controversy in the Netherlands
3. Conclusion
207
212
Conclusion: Making Jews Dutch
214
1. Modes of Jewish responses to secular discourse
214
Withdrawal
215
Rejection
216
Essentialization of contested Jewish practices
217
Embracing
218
Selective incorporation
219
Lip-service
221
2. Limitations of research
222
3. Future research
223
Summary in Dutch
226
Bibliography
228
Appendices
250
viii
Introduction
1. Between secularization and sacralization
The Church is separate from the State, but not the State from the Church. That means,
in other words: the State has to watch over everything that goes on in the State. It
cannot get involved in the inner affairs of the churches, but when it sees that the heads
of a specific church are capable of violating the laws of the land, it is the State’s duty to
step in. Otherwise a church administration could consider itself above the sovereign of
the country and be capable of treating the people of that church really like subjects
and thereby breach the social and civil order.
1
In the above citation, the recently seceded Jewish community in Amsterdam discusses
the repercussions of newly acquired citizenship for Jews.2 The Emancipation Decree
issued on 2 September 1796 transformed the Jews from strangers with a semiautonomous status into a religious minority under state authority. In this new political
constellation, the relationship of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam vis-à-vis the
state became uncertain and needed to be redefined. These developments arose after the
French invaded the Netherlands in 1795 and founded their satellite state, the Batavian
Republic. The Republic granted the Jews citizenship, while at the same time enforcing
the enlightened political ideal of the separation between church and state. The gist of
this ideological reorientation for Dutch Jewry was the loss of their punitive powers and
relative sovereignty within the Dutch state. Previously, the Jewish community/ies3 had
been a subordinated but semi-autonomous part of the Netherlands. They were referred
1
Joseph Michman and Marion Aptroot, Storm in the Community: Yiddish Polemical Pamphlets of Amsterdam
Jewry 1797–1798 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2002), 480.
2
The intensity and meaning of the debates preceding the emancipation of Dutch Jewry has been at the
center of Joseph Michman´s criticism of Huussen and the writers of the collection of articles Gelykstaat der
Joden inburgering van een minderheid. According to Michman, they all failed to pay attention to the
resistance of the Dutch to granting the Jews emancipation and also to the reluctance of the Jews to accept
citizenship. See Joseph Michman, “Ideological Historiography,” in Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves
and by Others, edited by Chaya Brasz and Yosef Kaplan (Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 2001); Joseph
Michman, “Gothische torens op een Corintisch gebouw. De doorvoering van de emancipatie der Joden in
Nederland,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 89 (1976); Joseph Michman, “De emancipatie van Joden in
Nederland,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 96 (1981); A.H.
Huussen Jr., “De emancipatie van de Joden in Nederland. Een discussiebijdrage naar aanleiding van twee
recente studies,, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 94 (1979).
3
Throughout this dissertation, I use the term Jewish community for the Ashkenazi community and I use the
plural when I refer to the Sephardic community as well. Both the term Jewry and Jewish community are
used to refer to the Jewish community collectively, this is done for linguistic variety and it does not imply
that there was a single, unified "Jewish community" in the Netherlands or a difference between Jewry and
Jewish community.
1
to as the Jewish nation(s) and described by contemporaries as a state within a state.4
The Jewish community´s loss of political power turned Judaism into a religion and
compelled the Jews to rethink their perception of Jewishness. At the same time, the shift
of the locus of power from Jewish authorities to secular ones triggered a ‘civilization
offensive’ with religious repercussions. The newly acquired citizenship was thus a
double-edged sword. It gave the Jews equal rights, but it also undermined the legal basis
of their community and thus forced them to reconsider and rearticulate their place in
Dutch society.
The abolition of Jewish semi-autonomy resulted in the dismantling of religious
and political power. Underlying this reattribution was a new vision of religion’s place in
society. According to Enlightenment thought, religion was a private matter that could
not be forced upon the population; religion should be independent of political power
and free from coercion.5 This restricted religion´s influence in the public sphere.6 The
new discourse on religion separated political power from the religious sphere, and as
such, it redefined religion’s content as well as its (permitted) sphere of influence. As
Michel Foucault demonstrated, discourses are systems of thought and ideas that
produce and regulate meaning. They affect the way we perceive the world and construct
our thinking and behavior. Discourses are not steady and fixed but are constantly
reassembled.7 This idea of discourse as a historical construct has been applied to the
4
Because of their differences in language, culture, and religious practices, the Sephardim and the
Ashkenazim had their own distinctive communities. In 1602, the Sephardim founded their community in
Amsterdam, and the Ashkenazim followed some years later in 1639. Since these foundations, some
animosity has characterized their relationships, as the Sephardim looked down upon the mostly
impoverished Ashkenazim while at the same time stressing their own noble Iberian heritage. Moreover,
until the emancipation of Dutch Jewry, Jewish regulations prohibited marriage between the two groups.
Cf. Joseph Michman, Hartog Beem, and Dan Michman, Pinkas. Geschiedenis van de joodse gemeenschap in
Nederland, translated by Ruben Verhasselt (Ede/Antwerpen: Kluwer Algemene Boeken, 1992), 7–64; R. G.
Fuks-Mansfeld, De Sefardim in Amsterdam tot 1795: aspecten van een joodse minderheid in een Hollandse
stad (Hilversum: Verloren, 1989).
5
This conception of religion as a private matter developed during the Reformation and influenced several
Enlightenment thinkers, including Baruch de Spinoza, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Immanuel Kant.
6
The public sphere is the space between the state and the private sphere “made up of private people
gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state” (Jürgen Habermas, The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society [Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1989], 176). On the privatization of religion, see Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the
Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
7
Cf. Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (London/New York:
Routledge, 2003); Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage
Books, 1995); Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York:
Vintage Books, 1994);.Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity
and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
2
religious and secular spheres by Talal Asad.8 According to Asad, the new discourse on
religion simultaneously constructed the category of the ‘secular’ as something distinct
from ‘religion’. Precisely in this period, the secular and the religious became
conceptualized as separate spheres, establishing boundaries between the two.9 New
discourses on religion and secularity were incorporated into the nation-state’s political
constellation; consequently, the nation-state represented itself as secular and sovereign,
independent of religion. This divided Dutch Jews as they negotiated, engaged, and
resisted the new, restricted role of religion. Enlightened Jews (maskilim)10 heralded the
diminishing power of the Jewish community, while others feared for the endurance of
Judaism as a whole because they did not make a distinction between religion and
political power.
Various authors have since taken the theoretical implications of Foucault and
Asad in new directions. They have pointed to the fluid boundaries between the secular
and the religious and the “outcome of a variety of practices, concepts and institution[s].
And it shifts and changes. ‘Religious’ and ‘secular’ are not fixed categories; they are in
active relationship with each other – a relationship that is constantly renegotiated via
particular practices and policies.”11 Moreover, the ways in which the secular and the
religious are conceptualized serve the dominant ideology and its power structures.12
This restructuring process between the secular and the religious affected Dutch Jewry in
different ways and on various levels. On the social level, it redefined community ties by
removing punitive powers and making membership in the Jewish community voluntary.
Moreover, the granting of citizenship to the Jews turned them into subjects of the state
8
Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University
Press, 2003). Cf. David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, ed., Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His
Interlocutors (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).
9
Asad, Formations of the Secular.
10
From now on, I will refer to Jewish enlighteners as the maskilim in order to stress their affinity with the
Jewish questions. This does not mean, however, that I regard the Jewish experience as essentially different
from the larger European Enlightenment context.
11
John Seed, “´Secular´ and ´Religious´: Historical Perspectives,” Social History 1 (2014): 3–13; David Biale,
Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press,
2011), 2–4; Leora Faye Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish
Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), 1–5. Cf. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1, 2,
8–12; Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 27–43; Lucian Hölscher, “The Religious and the Secular: Semantic
Reconfigurations of the Religious Field in Germany from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries,” in
Religion and Secularity. Transformations and Transfers of Religious Discourses in Europe and Asia
(Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 2013).
12
Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); William
T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict
(Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 59.
3
and members of a religious group. Because of their double affiliation, the question of
double loyalty, conflicting values, and a hybrid Jewish identity arose. On the political
level, the abolition of Jewish semi-autonomy enabled the state to encroach on the Jewish
religion, and by issuing various decrees on the performance of religious rituals, the state
incorporated religious objectives into its policy. The creation of and shifts in the
boundaries between the secular and the religious also resulted in the employment of the
religious infrastructure by both the state and the maskilim in order to disseminate their
ideas. This clash of ideas on the content of religion frayed the boundaries between state
and church. Because of the reconceptualization of the religious and the secular, the
binary opposition between church and state fails to describe the Dutch Jewish
experience. The intertwining, the overlapping, and the merging of those categories
characterized their response to the changing times. In this grey area, Dutch Jews
developed different modes of response and constructed their new Dutch Jewish
identities.
2. Historiography on the emancipation of the Jews
The emancipation of the Jews and the dismantling of the Jewish organizational structure
have been one of the leitmotifs in the historiography of Dutch Jewish history. Historians
traditionally described the abolition of the autonomy of the Jewish community as a
separation between the national and the religious aspects.13 According to them, it
characterized the emancipation and the later integration of Dutch Jews into
‘mainstream’ society. This portrayal of the new Jewish community after their
incorporation into the nation-state goes back to Hendrik Jacob Koenen, who described
the history of Dutch Jewry in his Geschiedenis der Joden in Nederland (History of the Jews
in the Netherlands) as a transformation “from an autonomous nation into a religion, into
a church society.”14 Other historians regarded the transition as a break with the Jewish
national structure.15 In his book De opheffing van de autonomie der Kehilloth in
13
Cf. H.J. Koenen, Geschiedenis der Joden in Nederland (Utrecht: C. van der Post Jr., 1843); Bart Wallet,
Nieuwe Nederlanders. De integratie van de joden in Nederland 1814-1851 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert
Bakker, 2007); M.E. Bolle, De opheffing van de autonomie der kehilloth (Joodse gemeenten) in Nederland
1796 (Amsterdam/Jerusalem: Systemen Keesing and Rubin Mass, 1960).
14
Koenen, Geschiedenis der Joden in Nederland, 34. All translations from languages other than English are
mine, if not indicated otherwise.
15
Cf. Mozes Heiman Gans, Memorboek. Platenatlas van het leven der joden in Nederland van de
middeleeuwen tot 1940 (Baarn: Bosch & Keuning n.v., 1971), 273–275.
4
Nederland 1796 (The Abolition of the Jewish Communities’ Autonomy in 1796 in the
Netherlands), Menachem Bolle analyzes the granting of citizenship (emancipation) in
the light of the loss of a Jewish communal structure, which was characterized more by
affinity or connection with other Jews than by the state wherein they resided.16
Joseph Michman, Renate Fuks-Mansfeld, and Bart Wallet especially stressed the
Jewish communities’ loss of political power.17 For instance, in his Nieuwe Nederlanders.
De integratie van de Joden in Nederland 1814–1851 (New Dutch. The Integration of the
Jews in the Netherlands, 1814–1851) Bart Wallet views the separation between national
and religious aspects in the light of the integration of Dutch Jewry and the maintenance
of a Jewish identity. According to Wallet, the Hoofdcommissie tot de Zaken der Israëliten
(Supreme Committee for Israelite Affairs), a governmental organization for the Jewish
communities, was a prominent factor. “‘In this organization, the Jewish elite cut the
Gordian knot for their members, but not always to their liking.”18 Furthermore, he refers
to the break as the separation between the civil and the religious and describes this
separation in terms of a restriction of the power of the parnasim and the rabbinate.19
Wallet hints at the restructuring of the religious sphere when he describes the
separation: “[N]ow it had to be decided what was religiously sanctioned and what
wasn’t.” Unfortunately, however, Wallet does not elaborate, problematize, or provide an
analysis of the separation between state and church.20
The historian Jaap Meijer likewise employs a political perspective. In the majority
of his work, Meijer stresses the erosion of the Jewish community. According to him, the
emancipation of Dutch Jewry was the end of Dutch Judaism. He criticized the Jewish
entry into Dutch society.21 For Meijer, Judaism died during the period after the
16
Bolle, De Opheffing van de Autonomie Der Kehilloth, 4–21.
R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, “Verlichting en Emancipatie omstreeks 1750-1814,” in Geschiedenis van de Joden in
Nederland, edited by J.C.H. Blom, R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, and I. Schöffer (Amsterdam: Olympus, 1995), 178;
Jozeph Michman, Dutch Jewry during the Emancipation Period: Gothic Turrets on a Corinthian Building
1787–1815 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 77–157; Michman, Beem, and Michman,
Pinkas. Geschiedenis van de joodse gemeenschap in Nederland, 65–71; Salvador Bloemgarten, Hartog de
Hartog Lémon, 1755–1823. Joodse revolutionair in Franse Tijd (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007), 67–74.
18
Wallet, Nieuwe Nederlanders. De integratie van de joden in Nederland 1814–1851, 9–10.
19
Ibid., 148.
20
Ibid., 173.
21
Jaap Meijer has self-published books demonstrating a very negative attitude toward emancipation, lay
leaders, and the rabbinate, as compared to work published in Jewish-community-financed publications. Cf.
Jaap Meijer, Tussen verstrooiing en verlichting. De historiografie der joden in Nederland. Eerste fase
(Heemstede, 1981); Meijer, Erfenis der Emancipatie. Het Nederlands Jodendom in de eerste helft van de 19e
eeuw (Haarlem: Uitgeverij Bakenes, 1963); Meijer, Hoge hoeden, lage standaarden. De Nederlandse joden
17
5
emancipation, for which he blamed the Jewish elite and the rabbinate. He claimed they
were more interested in prestige and worldly recognition than in preserving Jewish
religion and culture. Meijer abhorred the blending of the nation-state with the Jewish
community. For Meijer, it was either Judaism with sovereignty or no Judaism at all.
“Emancipated Judaism was torn between two ideas and thus doomed. This does not
detract from the fact that in this manner nothing real remained. The time was not far
away when groups at the top would become embarrassed of the Jew, of Judaism, and of
the carrier of Judaism especially. Social accomplishments became the norm.”22 Although
Meijer does not problematize the transformation of Dutch Jewry in terms of a
restructuring of the national and religious features of Judaism, he does regard political
power and national aspects as intrinsically bound up with his idea of a true Judaism.
Losing Judaism’s national aspects thus also ultimately entailed its destruction. Meijer’s
nationalistic perspective on Judaism reveals his point of view as a Zionist, as he
interprets Dutch Jewish history mainly in the light of the survival or endurance of the
Jewish people.
The same Zionistic outlook can also be ascribed to Joseph Michman.23 His
negative perception of Dutch Jewish history and his emphasis on social discrimination
and anti-Semitism reflects the Zionist meta-history of the Jews as a perpetually
persecuted people. For instance, in his book Dutch Jewry during the Emancipation Period:
Gothic Turrets on a Corinthian Building 1787–1815, a revealing chapter is titled
“Emancipation or Pseudo-Emancipation,” wherein Michman recounts the troubled entry
of Jews into Dutch society and the ongoing discrimination they faced, regardless of their
juridical equality. Michman heavily criticized the emancipation because it “improved the
position of the Jews but did not raise them to the status of first-class citizens, on a par
with the Protestants, or even to that of second-class citizens, like the Catholics.”24 He
tussen 1933 en 1940 (Baarn: 1969, z.d.); Meijer, Het verdwenen ghetto.Wandelingen door de Amsterdamse
Jodenbuurt (Amsterdam: Joachimstal, 1968); Meijer, Het Jonas Daniël Meijerplein. Bezinning op drie eeuwen
Amsterdams Jodendom (Amsterdam: J.H. De Bussy, 1961). For an analysis of his work from a psychological
perspective, see Evelien Gans, Jaap en Ischa Meijer: een joodse geschiedenis, 1912–1956 (Amsterdam: Bert
Bakker, 2008).
22
Meijer, Erfenis der Emancipatie. Het Nederlands Jodendom in de eerste helft van de 19e eeuw, 9.
23
Renate Fuks-Mansfeld blamed both authors for their grudge against Dutch society and their perspective
of viewing Dutch Jewish history through the prism of the Holocaust and their own experiences. R.G. FuksMansfeld, “Moeizame aanpassing (1814–1870),” in Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland, edited by J.C.H.
Blom, R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, and I. Schöffer (Amsterdam: Olympus, 1995), 207.
24
In the Dutch Republic, Catholics were banned from public office and forbidden to publicly perform their
religious services. Michman, “Ideological Historiography,” 207.
6
regarded the creation of the State of Israel and the emigration of many Jews to the new
state as proof of a close-knit Jewish community that went beyond national boundaries.
Michman thus defined Judaism in terms of a civilization with a shared history and
culture.
All this can only be understood if we stop seeing Dutch Jews as part of the Dutch
population and start viewing them primarily as part of a worldwide Jewish civilization
with an old and rich history. Then we must also acknowledge the sham of supposing
that Dutch Jewry was losing its identity. Judaism does not die. Wechajee olam nata’
betochenu – He has planted eternal life in us – for better or worse.
25
In his phenomenological exposition of the Jewish essence, solidarity amongst the Jews is
the underlying, enduring, eternal truth.26
Both Michman and Meijer view the Jewish emancipation as a not necessarily
positive event in (Dutch) Jewish history.27 The loss of Jewish national aspects, the
abolition of their semi-autonomous status, and continuing anti-Semitism, culminating in
the Holocaust, were all consequences or unwanted results of the Emancipation Decree of
1796. Their national perspective relies heavily on Simon Dubnow, who emphasized
Jewish self-government as pivotal throughout the centuries.28 Because autonomy is
regarded as an essential feature of Judaism, its history is measured along these lines. For
them, Judaism is intrinsically bound up with having a nation, land, or autonomy.
Therefore Meijer constantly bemoans the loss of what he considers the true
characteristic features of Judaism, and Michman repeatedly stresses that there is no
place for Judaism in the Netherlands as he recalls the attitude of the Dutch government
toward the Jews after their return from the camps.29
25
Michman, “Ideological Historiography,” 214.
Joseph Michman, “The Jewish Essence of Dutch Jewry,” in Dutch Jewish History II, edited by Joseph
Michman, (Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1989), 1–22.
27
In this respect, the book by Karina Sonnenberg-Stern should be mentioned. Although her book does not
fit the Zionist mold, she shares with both authors the (over-)emphasis of anti-Semitism as a pivotal factor
in Dutch Jewish history. See Sonnenberg-Stern, Emancipation and Poverty: The Ashkenazi Jews of
Amsterdam, 1796–1850 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
28
Likewise, the Dutch historian Menachem Bolle places a similar emphasis on the Jewish communities’
autonomy. Bolle, De Opheffing van de autonomie der kehilloth.
29
Joseph Michman, “Hoe verging het de joden in Nederland?” http://www.joodsleven.nl/jodendom/Jodenin-Nederland/De-Joden-in-Nederland-1.htm (accesed 17 June 2014); Joseph Michman, “Historische
achtergrond,” in Rechtvaardigen onder de Volkeren. Nederlanders met Yad Vashem-onderscheiding voor
hulp aan joden, edited by Joseph Michman and Bert Jan Flim (Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Uitgeverij L.J.
26
7
This negative appreciation of Jewish emancipation is a variation on the dominant
teleological framework in which Jewish historiography has been cast since the
nineteenth century, namely integration of the Jews into society more broadly. In this
meta-history, the emancipation of the Jews is regarded as the most important event in
their history. Their break with tradition, educational and religious reform, as well as
their adoption of the dominant (Christian) culture is a sign of their integration and
sometimes of their intellectual development. These types of historical writings can be
found in international as well as in Dutch Jewish historiography. The first historian who
employed this positivistic perspective was Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891). Graetz
portrayed Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) as a harbinger of modern times. Later
scholars of Jewish history mirrored his appreciation and regarded Mendelssohn as the
pivotal figure in initiating the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah).30 Graetz’s focus on
Germany had a major influence on Jewish historiography.
Jacob Katz (1904–1998), for instance, constructed from Graetz’s narrative an
ideal German type of Jewish integration, which dominated Jewish history for decades. In
his book Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation 1770–1870,
Katz analyzes the transition of German Jewry from a community based on traditions to
an integrated part of mainstream society. Katz deemed this break the most important
event in Jewish history. His emphasis on ideal types, larger structures, and regularities
reveals his appreciation of the social sciences in Jewish historiography. Consequently,
Katz tends to look for a general theory of Jewish emancipation.31 According to him,
German Jewry, more so than any other Jewish community, converted and assimilated
into the dominant society. Their incorporation of German culture ultimately lead to
political emancipation. German Jewry’s emancipation as a reward for their integration
has become a compelling paradigm for European Jewish history ever since, and many
scholars elaborated on Katz’s ideal German type.
Veen/NIOD, 2005), 16–25, esp. 17.
30
Historians who break with this dominant focus on Moses Mendelssohn and describe the period before
him or other circles of maskilim include, respectively, Azriel Shohet, Im hilufei tequfot. Reshit hahaskalah
bgermania (With the Change of Eras: The Beginnings of the Haskalah among German Jewry) (Jerusalem:
Mossad Bialik, 1960); and Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, translated by Chaya Naor
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2002).
31
Cf. Jacob Katz, “The Concept of Social History and Its Possible Use in Jewish Historical Research,” in
Emancipation and Assimilation: Studies in Modern Jewish History (Westmead/Farnborough/Hants: Gregg
International Publishers Limited, 1972); Jay Michael Harris, ed., The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz
and His Work (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002).
8
Next to this German model of Jewish emancipation, there is a French or Dutch
model in which assimilation followed legal emancipation.32 In the latter model, the state
implemented emancipation and actively integrated the Jews into society. Consequently,
government policy aimed at turning the Jews into participating, contributing citizens
with a privately practiced religion. As the French invaded the Netherlands 1795, they
imposed their model of Jewish emancipation on Dutch Jews. Notwithstanding the
different manners in which the Jews received emancipation, both the German and the
French/Dutch models regard legal and social integration as the most important events
in modern Jewish history.33 These emancipation narratives profoundly influenced the
historiography of Dutch Jewry. Revealing titles such as Nieuwe Nederlanders. De
integratie van de Joden in Nederland 1814– 1851 (New Dutch: The Integration of the Jews
in the Netherlands 1815–1851) and the volume De Gelykstaat der Joden. Inburgering van
een minderheid (The Emancipation of Jewry: Naturalization of a Minority) reflect this.34
The focus in these histories is on Jewish adjustments to mainstream society, how the
Jews became nationalized and acculturated. However, these histories do not
problematize the changing religious discourse or identify Jewish modes of response to
religious change.
Under the influence of postmodern thought, most scholars replaced the German
or French ideal type with a focus on variations in Jewish emancipation.35 Their work
emphasizes local differences and internal power struggles. An important example of this
type of historiography is the edited collection by Frankel and Zipperstein, Assimilation
and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-century Europe, which can be viewed as an
32
The ideal types of Jewish emancipation continue to inspire historians. Cf. Michael Brenner, Rainer
Liedtke, and David Rechter, eds., Two Nations: British and German Jews in Comparative
Perspective,(Tübingen: M. Siebeck, 1999).
33
Cf. Rainer Liedtke and David Rechter, eds., Towards Normality? Acculturation and Modern German Jewry
(Tü bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); Deborah Herz, How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and
Assimilation in Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); David Sorkin, The Transformation of
German Jewry, 1780–1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Michael Brenner, Vicki Caron, and
Uri R. Kaufmann, eds., Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered: The French and German Models (Tü bingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2003); Marion A Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in
Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Jay R. Berkovitz, The Shaping of Jewish
Identity in Nineteenth-Century France (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989).
34
Cf. Michman, “Ideological Historiography.”
35
Shmuel Feiner and David Jan Sorkin, eds., New Perspectives on the Haskalah (Oxford/Portland, Or.:
Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001). Others focus on the relationship between discourse and
Jewish experiences. Cf. Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Jay Geller, The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew
and Making Sense of Modernity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011).
9
attempt to deal critically with the linear-development narrative. Various authors
challenge the dominant view of the integration of European Jewry by counter-balancing
the homogenizing forces of modernity with narratives highlighting Jewish agency.36 For
instance, the collection by Birnbaum and Katznelson, Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States,
and Citizenship, focuses on the different European Jewish responses to modernity.37
Although most historians nowadays admit that the road to emancipation was not a
linear development, the plot nevertheless remains unrevised: the break with the
shackles of tradition paved the way for Jewish political participation and social
acceptance.38
Other historians concerned with European Jewish history have also tried to come
to terms with this strong emancipation narrative and focus instead on the Eastern
European Jewish road to modernity.39 The postmodern historian Gershon Hundert, for
instance, emphasizes the unique development of Polish and Lithuanian Jewry and avoids
the all-too-common criteria or leitmotifs such as Enlightenment, emancipation, and
urbanization.40 He stresses the particular mentality of Polish and Lithuanian Jews as
they created their own “positive evaluation of Jewishness.”41 Their acceptance of the
Hasidic movement, for instance, proves that the simple dichotomy between tradition
and change does not apply to them, nor does it describe Jewish experiences of
modernity.42 In his book, Hundert proposes a new model of modernization, which is not
contra religion but rather in close relationship to it.
36
Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein, Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century
Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
37
Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein, eds., Assimilation and Community: The Jews in NineteenthCentury Europe (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Pierre Birnbaum and Ira
Katznelson, ed., Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University
Press, 1995).
38
Cf. Michal Meyer ed., German Jewish History in Modern Times, Vol II: Emancipation and Acculturation
1780–1871 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Shulamit S. Magnus, Jewish Emancipation in a
German City, Cologne 1798–1871 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Rainier Liedtke and David
Rechter eds., “Towards Normality”: Acculturation of Modern German Jewry (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2003).
39
Cf. Yiśraʼel Barṭal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2005); Iris Parush, Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century
Eastern European Jewish Society (Waltham, Mass./Hanover: Brandeis University Press, University Press of
New England, 2004).
40
Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth-Century: A Genealogy of Modernity
(Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 3.
41
Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth-Century, 3.
42
Ibid., 3.
10
Hundert´s history challenges the secularization thesis in the Jewish emancipation
paradigm, wherein the loss of religious identity markers accompanies or precedes the
modernization process of Jewry.43 Becoming less visibly Jewish is equated with being
more integrated. The adoption of modern dress, clean-shaven faces, or other changes in
various aspects of appearance expose a Jewish abandonment of (some) religious
traditions. Likewise, counter-trends in religion or the incorporation of Christian thought
into Judaism are seen as forerunners of the inevitable modernization, which is, in this
respect, a violation of religious prescriptions. This connection between modernity and
secularization was recently reproduced in Shmuel Feiner’s book The Origins of Jewish
Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe.44 It is precisely this notion of secularization,
sometimes implicit and often very explicit, that characterizes a great deal of the
historiography of Jewish paths to emancipation and which this study attempts to revise.
However, contra Hundert´s account of a specific Jewish mentality, this study regards the
discursive reconfigurations of the religious and the secular as an engine for cultural
change and a producer of Dutch Jewish modes of response and different paths to
emancipation.
3. An alternative research perspective
This study views the transformation of Dutch Ashkenazi Jewry after the Emancipation
Decree of 1796 not as part of a process of secularization, in which Jews becomes less
religious, but rather in the light of the restructuring of the religious and secular fields.45
43
The secularization thesis holds that the world and its population are becoming less religious. This model
of historical change has been challenged, and it divides scholars into supporters, opponents, and modifiers
of the thesis. Cf. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy. The Social Construction of Reality: Elements of a
Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1967).; Peter L. Berger, ed., The Desecularization
of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Washington, D.C./Grand Rapids, Mich: Ethics and
Public Policy Center/W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1999).; Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007); Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 1994.
44
Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). Like the historian Benzion Dinur (1884–1973), Feiner places
special emphasis on the Sabbatian movement, but whereas Dinur regards them as proto-nationalists,
Feiner views them as harbingers of modernity because of their incorporation of a secular moral, with
which he describes their promiscuity and violation of religious prescripts. In this respect, he reflects a
position taken earlier by Azriel Shohet in his book Im hilufei tequfot. Cf. Gershon David Hundert,
“Reflections on the ´Whig´ Interpretation of Jewish History: ma’asei banim siman le’avot,” in Truth and
Compassion: Essays on Judaism and Religion in Memory of Rabbi Solomon Frank, edited by Howard Joseph
(Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1983 ),111–119.; Shohet, Im hilufei tequfot, 9.
45
Asad, Formations of the Secular; Craig Martin, “Genealogies of Religion, Twenty Years on: An Interview
with Talal Asad,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion 1 (2014). Recently the Christian roots of the concept of
the secular as traced by Asad have been challenged and replaced with a perspective which views the
11
Changing discourses on the secular and the religious created a grey area, wherein the
boundaries between the secular and the religious were renegotiated. These changing
constellations characterized the Jewish community´s transition to the status of a
religious minority and also shaped new Jewish identities. This study investigates the
various Jewish responses to cultural change in a secularizing environment, wherein the
social and political functions of religion were absorbed by the state. It identifies the
modes of Jewish response to secular discourse and provides an explanation for religious
change.
Although much criticized for the religious decline he predicted, José Casanova has
introduced the fecund concepts of the privatization and differentiation of religion.46 The
privatization of religion describes the banning of religion from the public sphere. After
the French invasion of 1795, consecutive Dutch governments criminalized (Jewish)
religious conspicuousness in public. Prayers in public, processions, and talith (prayer
shawls) were outlawed by the state, making a private experience of religion the accepted
one. The other concept, the differentiation of religion, a process in which the state
absorbs the social and political functions of religion, can also be observed in the Dutch
Jewish community. Government policy aimed at taking over the educational and
charitable functions of the Jewish community. Education, poor relief, and health care
were now provided by the state. As a result, the Jewish community lost its role as
caretaker.
As will become apparent throughout this book, the differentiation and
privatization of religion are useful categories with which to describe Dutch Jewry´s
transition to the status of a religious minority. However, privatization and
differentiation of religion are more an ideal desired by some historical agents than a
encounter especially with Asian cultures as influential in the construction of the concept. See Heiner
Roetz, “The Influence of Foreign Knowledge on Eighteenth-Century European Secularism,” in Religion and
Secularity: Transformations and Transfers of Religious Discourses in Europe and Asia, edited by Marion
Eggert and Lucian Hölscher (Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 2013). Cf. Scott and Hirschkind, Powers of the
Secular Modern.
46
Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World; Casanova, “Secularization Revisited: A Reply to Talal
Asad,” edited by David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, n.d. Later, however, like many others, Casanova
revised his idea on the decline of religious belief and the privatization of religion as part of secularization
while maintaining the third aspect, namely the differentiation of religion. Cf. David Martin, On
Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory (Aldershot, England/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005); M.
Chaves, “Secularization as Declining Religious Authority,” Social Forces 3 (1994): 749–74. For supporters
of the theory of a decline in religious belief, see: Taylor, A Secular Age; Pippa Norris, Sacred and Secular:
Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
12
natural process or inevitability to which society progresses. After all, freedom of religion
and the abolition of political power were forced upon the Jews. The new discourse on
religion as a private matter stimulated many reform initiatives, both from within and
from outside the Jewish community. The secularization thesis, however, erroneously
represents two distinctive developments: namely, ideas about the place of religion in
society and the consolidation and centralization of the government.
Because of this interplay between ideology and state formation, it is important to
analytically distinguish between the terms secular, secularism, and secularization. The
term secular is not without ideological content, and it refers to a place or a sphere
separate from religion. Although this meaning originally described the worldly or
temporal function of religion, in its modern sense it has become conceptualized as a
category in opposition to religion.47 Related to the modern category of the secular is
secularism, an ideology of the restricted role of religion in society and in government.
This doctrine envisions that the state should be free of religious affiliation or influence.
As will become evident, this Enlightenment ideology profoundly influenced Dutch Jews
in their transition from strangers to citizens. Secularism affected the government´s
attitude toward the Jews and its legislation while also inducing the maskilim’s reform
agenda. Likewise, it stimulated the narrative in (Dutch) Jewish historiography of Jews
becoming less religiously inclined.
It is this link between secularism and secularization that muddled the categories
of the secular and the religious. The idea of a diminishing role of religion in public fits
well with the idea that with the rise of the modern age, religion has become obsolete. In
this way, secularization (religious decline, privatization, and differentiation of religion)
is the inevitable consequence of secularism. The categories are descriptions as well as
attributions; they are not without ideological content. Therefore, it is almost impossible
to refer to the secular without invoking the teleological connotation of secularization.
Moreover, the linear secularization narrative obscures the exchange and interplay
between the secular and the religious. Many ‘religious’ functions and beliefs were
incorporated by the state as it became concerned with orthopraxy. For instance, the
various ordinances of the government concerning the appropriate performance of
Jewish rituals attest to this. The government came to prescribe the when, the how, and
47
Asad, Formations of the Secular; Hölscher, “The Religious and the Secular: Semantic Reconfigurations of
the Religious Field in Germany from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries.”
13
the why of Jewish rituals. Observance of Jewish rituals in this respect was part of the
state´s policy. Although differentiation of religion describes the incorporation by the
state of the ‘civil’ functions of religion, it does not explain ongoing state involvement
with the performance of religious rituals. By taking over of the functions previously
performed by religion and installing civic rituals, the state placed itself on a religious
pedestal and sacralized itself.
In this book, I propose viewing the religious and the secular fields as interrelated
rather than dichotomous. This enables us to perceive Jewish modes of response as a
process of Jewish repositioning between the state and the Jewish community. Moreover,
it enables us to identify the reflexive, innovative, and creative responses from all angles
of the Jewish spectrum. As a useful concept in my analysis of these reconfigurations, I
introduce the term nucleation. Nucleation is used in the natural sciences to describe “the
initial process that occurs in the formation of a crystal from a solution, a liquid, or a
vapor, in which a small number of ions, atoms, or molecules become arranged in a
pattern characteristic of a crystalline solid, forming a site upon which additional
particles are deposited as the crystal grows.”48 Nucleation is the first step in
crystallization, but the material can also remain in gaseous bubbles or dissolve in liquid.
The stabilization of the nuclei depends on a variety of factors in addition to the
formation of the nuclei themselves. Nucleation can also occur spontaneously or
randomly, without a specific site. By employing the term nucleation, I can emphasize the
dynamics, formations, and transitions of Dutch Jewry instead of focusing on an
ideologically constructed end.
For instance, nucleation better describes the formations of different maskilic or
orthodox Jewish communities stemming from the same source, which can, under the
right circumstances, develop into more solid and enduring forms. The term nucleation
can overcome binaries, such as the orthodox and the enlightened or the secular and the
religious, as it describes the phase rather than the content. Nucleation is the budding of
forms, which can later crystallize into stable groups. Specific persons, groups, or places
can function as a nucleation site, while historical events can induce spontaneous
nucleation. A well-known example of a person serving as a nucleation site is Moses
Mendelssohn, as he attracted a wide circle of admirers and followers. While in the
48
Definition taken from the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
14
Netherlands, outstanding maskilim such as Hirsch Sommerhaussen and David
Friedrichsfeld functioned as local pivots for Dutch maskilim. Likewise, the Lehren family
became the center of Dutch Hassidism. Historical events can also instigate nucleation, as
the Emancipation Decree created Jewish citizens and also defined Judaism solely in
terms of a religion. However, these nucleations depend on various factors and can easily
dissolve. For example, the temporality of nucleation comes to the fore in the abolition of
the naye kille and the disintegration of the Hebrew society Tongeleth. Both groups
existed only temporarily, and their members integrated into the mainstream Ashkenazi
community without keeping their distinctiveness.
In order to explain and trace Dutch Jewry´s transition, I will take a Grounded
Theory (GT) approach to the analysis of the (historical) data. The Grounded Theory
method constructs theory after carefully organizing and categorizing the collected data
by tagging it with codes. This method generates theory from the bottom up and
developes concepts that explain human action regardless of time and place. In recent
years this approach has been fruitfully applied in combination with discursive research
methods.49 Following this research, I combine GT with the analysis of various discursive
practices and formations.
Throughout the book I employ the term discourse in a Foucauldian sense,
wherein systems of knowledge construct behavior, texts, ideas, legislation, institutions,
etc., and vice versa. Discourses can be defined as “practices that organize knowledge in a
given community; they establish, stabilize, and legitimize systems of meaning and
provide collectively shared orders of knowledge in an institutionalized social ensemble.
Statements, utterances, and opinions about a specific topic, systematically organized and
repeatedly observable, form a discourse.”50 It is important to stress that the basis of a
49
For a discussion on the objectivity of GT between its founder Barney Glaser and Kathy Charmaz, see
Barney G. Glaser, “Constructivist Grounded Theory?” Historical Social Research / Historische
Sozialforschung Supplement 19 (2007); Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory (London/Thousand
Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications, 2006), 509–535. Cf. Barney G Glaser and Anselm L Strauss, The Discovery of
Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1967). For the application
of GT in a discursive theoretical framework, see Reiner Keller, “Analysing Discourse. An Approach From
the Sociology of Knowledge,” Qualitative Social Research – Sozialforschung 3 (2005): 32; Jayson Seaman,
“Adopting a Grounded Theory Approach to Cultural-Historical Research: Conflicting Methodologies or
Complementary Methods?” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 7 (2008): 1–17.
50
Kocku von Stuckrad, “Discursive Study of Religion: Approaches, Definitions, Implications,” Method and
Theory in the Study of Religion 25 (2013): 15. This understanding of discourse research is informed by the
sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD), as introduced by Reiner Keller, “The Sociology of
Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD),” Human Studies 34 (2011): 43–65. For a recent overview of
discourse research in the study of religion, see Frank Neubert, “Diskursforschung in der
15
discursive approach is the idea that “social communicational structures attribute
meaning to the world and organize explicit and implicit knowledge.”51 Furthermore, a
discourse is an analytical construct of the researcher and does not refer to a real entity;
it is merely a tool to define, reflect on, and explain cultural change and knowledge
construction.52
In order to apply a discursive analytical framework, it is important to identify the
ways in which discourses come into being, work, and attribute meaning. A discourse is
made up of other discursive strands, which provide partial meaning to the discourse. For
instance, the discourse on Jewish circumcision in the nineteenth century also entangled
the discourse on religion and other discourses on medicine, on government policy, on
civilized behavior, etc. These entanglements form a discursive knot, which can be
defined as “intertextual and interdiscursive relationships between utterances, texts,
genres and discourses, as well as extra-linguistic social/sociological variables, the
history of an organization or institution, and situational frames.”53 The discursive knot
can be regarded as the construction of a new discourse. These entanglements and
discursive formations constantly move the discourse from one meaning to another.
Discourse expresses itself in various ways, and the apparatus in which the
discourse comes into being is called a dispositive. A dispositive can be anything from
government decrees to religious regulations and institutions and any other means in
which the discourse evolves, expands, and is constructed. It can be defined as “the
totality of the material, practical, social cognitive or normative ‘infrastructure’, in which
a discourse
develops.”54 Because community archives, quantitative material,
government documents, and textual expressions such as literature, polemics, play,
poetry, and satire all shed light on the construction of discourses, discursive knots, and
their dispositives, they are equally relevant in their representations of the past, and no
hierarchical distinction is made between them. This wide variety of historical sources
enables the reconstruction and analysis of Dutch Jewish responses to secular discourse
from a variety of angles.
Religionswissenschaft,” in Diskursforschung: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, 2 vols., edited by Johannes
Angermuller, Martin Nonhoff, Eva Herschinger, Felicitas Macgilchrist, Martin Reisigl, Juliette Wedl, Daniel
Wrana, and Alexander Ziem, vol. 1 (Bielefeld: Transcript 2014), 261–275.
51
Kocku von Stuckrad, “Discursive Study of Religion," 11.
52
Ibid., 16.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid., 15.
16
4. Chapter topics and outline
This study describes Dutch Jewry’s transformation in light of the rearrangement
between secular and religious spheres. In the course of this study, I will identify the
different Jewish modes of response to a secularizing environment, including rejection,
acceptance, selective incorporation, and negotiation. The first chapter starts with an
analysis of the place of the Jewish community vis-à-vis the state. As a dispositive, the
Emancipation Decree structurally changed the relationship between the state and its
Jewish inhabitants. Furthermore, the state doctrine of secularism set in motion Dutch
Jews’ transition from being strangers to becoming Jewish citizens and being considered
a religious minority. At the turn of the nineteenth century, political chaos characterized
the Netherlands. The French-supported Batavian Republic replaced the Dutch Republic,
and a few years later Napoleon Bonaparte annexed the Netherlands. After Napoleon’s
defeat, between 1813 and 1815 the Netherlands became a kingdom under the rule of
Willem I. During this time, the foundations of the state were dismantled in favor of a new
political constellation based on equality, liberty, and fraternity. The governments that
came after the Batavian Republic lost much of their radical democracy but preserved
equal citizenship regardless of religion.
The shift in discursive constellations regarding religion’s role in society and its
relation to the state triggered a variety of Jewish responses. In the first chapter, I will
focus on two prominent responses to citizenship, first from the naye kille and later from
the Lehren family. This focus also enables me to trace processes of nucleation. The
classical opposition between Jewish enlighteners (maskilim) heralding political
participation while rejecting the eternal validity of the Talmud and orthodox Jews
ferociously defending the boundaries of Jewish identity, as postulated by scholars such
as Shmuel Feiner and David Ruderman, is an overly simplistic representation.55 Sorkin,
for instance, already observed how Jews incorporated cultural aspects of mainstream
German society into their identity while at the same time maintaining religious
observance. His study shows the expansion of meaning attributed to Jewishness. A
55
See for example: Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment; Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in
Eighteenth-Century Europe; David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History
(Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010); David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an
English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University
Press, 2000); Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973); Jonathan Israel, European Jewry in the Age of
Mercantilism 1550–1750 (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997).
17
similar argument can be made for the chief rabbi of Amsterdam, Samuel Berenstein
(1767-1838). He not only endorsed many enlightened initiatives, but he also regarded
the Talmud as the sole foundation of Judaism and rejected attempts to reconcile the
Jewish religion with the new (political) situation.56 Berenstein embodies both ends of
the spectrum and shows how essentialized categories of ´enlightened´ and ´orthodox´
fail to describe the historical situation. As this study will show, the transformation of
Dutch Jewry was far more complex than a simple binary opposition presupposes.
During the above-mentioned political turmoil in the Netherlands, secular
discourses affected Jewish positions as Jews struggled to find their place under a new
political and social constellation. However, opposing Jewish factions show remarkable
similarities in their solutions and proposed directions for the Jewish community. For
instance, both the orthodox and the maskilim employed the discourse on human
equality, even though their interpretation of it differed profoundly. Likewise, the
Sephardim, in particular their liturgy, functioned as a model to adhere to for both the
orthodox and the maskilim. These discursive practices challenge the idea that
development and reform were typical maskilic ideals. This chapter demonstrates that
even though Jewish factions responded differently to the new challenges, maskilim as
well as orthodox factions of Dutch Jewry redefined – each in their own way – Judaism in
relation to the state.
The second chapter discusses the governmental reform policy that followed the
Jews’ juridical emancipation. It traces how the ‘civilization offensive’, the call for
regeneration, and enlightened discourse entangled and constructed the discursive knot
of an uncivilized Jewry. At the end of the eighteenth century, various authors criticized
(Dutch) Jews’ deplorable state as well as their social and political segregation. Numerous
enlightened writings offered solutions for what came to be known as ´the Jewish
question´, ranging from abolishing religious rituals and educating the Jews to moving the
Sabbath to Sunday. The German Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (1751–1820), for instance,
proposed in Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden that if the Jews wanted to be
56
As will become apparent throughout this book, Berenstein’s point of view resembles that of Rabbi
Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), the founder of neo-orthodoxy, who envisioned Judaism with torah
im derech eretz (Torah with the way of the land), combining Jewish observance with the modern world.
Moreover, Berenstein can be seen as the personification of Hirsch’s mensch-yisroel, the enlightened
religious Jew. Cf. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Mensch-Yisroel: Perspectives on Judaism (Collected writings
of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Volume VIII) (New York: P. Feldheim, 1995).
18
part of society and be eligible for citizenship, they should reform their religion. An essay
published in the Dutch spectatorial De Koopman (1770) made a similar critique. The
writer, a so-called anonymous Sephard, suggested moving the Sabbath to Sunday in
order to solve the problem of the poverty of the Jew.57 Both men held the Jewish religion
partly responsible for poverty and juridical inequality.
The idea that the Jews themselves were responsible for their deplorable state
reflects nineteenth-century politics. Education, abolition of Yiddish, and reform of
religious rituals became dispositives for both the government and the maskilim. By
removing conspicuous Jewishness, the Jews would be civilly elevated and worthy of
Dutch citizenship. Consequently, several government decrees attempted to Dutchify the
Jewry, which Wallet characterized as a “paternalistic civilization offensive… to raise and
educate the destitute Israelites.”58 Solving the Jewish question was a question of
abolishing ‘backward’ Jewish rituals. This intrusion of Jewish rituals reveals that the
boundaries between the state and the church were highly ambiguous. Moreover, by
removing conspicuous religious aspects, the government redefined religion as
something that needed to be experienced internally and consequently attributed a new
meaning to the Jewish religion.
The new nation-state employed the dispositive of the Jewish religious framework
to nationalize and control Dutch Jewry. Gorski already pointed to religion as a
disciplinary tool for the new discourse on the state in his provocative book, The
Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. He
57
De Koopman of Weekelijksche bij-dragen ten opbouw van Nêerlands koophandel en zeevaard, Vol. II
(1770) nos. 54–57, 425–450. There is a discussion between scholars concerning the writer’s identity.
Joseph Michman is of the opinion that it is Isaac de Pinto, while Odette Vlessing considers him unjewish
because of his rigorous proposals, and lately Ton Jongenelen postulates that it was a fictional letter by the
editor Willem Ockers himself–this was a technique often used by Dutch editors, as they usually
singlehandedly wrote all the journal’s content. Cf. Joseph Michman, David Franco Mendes: A Hebrew Poet
(Amsterdam: Joachimstal, 1951), 134;‘The Jewish Community in Transition: From Acceptance to
Emancipation”, in H. Berg, J. Frishman, S.A. Herman, and A.K. Offenberg, eds., Proceedings of the Seventh
International Symposium on the History and Culture of the Jews in the Netherlands. Expectation and
Confirmation. Two Hundred Years of Jewish Emancipation in the Netherlands, Studia Rosenthaliana 1 (1996)
197; Ton Jongenelen, “Mordechai. Illusie en werkelijkheid in het spectatoriale blad De Koopman”,
Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman 2 (2003). J.C.E. Belinfante en Peter Buijs, “De
gelijkstaat der Joden. Inburgering van een minderheid”, in De gelijkstaat der Joden. Inburgering van een
minderheid, edited by Hetty Berg (Amsterdam, Zwolle: Joods Historisch Museum; Waanders, 1996), 8;
Peter Buijs, “Tot nut en eer van ’t jodendom. Joodse genootschappen in Nederland”, in De gelijkstaat der
Joden. Inburgering van een minderheid (Amsterdam, Zwolle: Joods Historisch Museum; Waanders, 1996),
17.
58
Wallet, Nieuwe Nederlanders. De integratie van de joden in Nederland 1814–1851, 96.
19
considers religion pivotal in constructing a certain mindset, which enabled the
government to exercise control and build a strong nation-state.59 The Dutch
government(s), however, primarily used rituals and institutions for communicating
their message of elevating the Jewry. Their ‘civilizing offensive’ concentrated mainly on
language, education, and religion; by these means the Jews could escape poverty and a
destitute future. Various factions incorporated this new discourse on the Jew, and
consequently the maskilim as well as conservative rabbis such as Berenstein and
Lehmans endorsed this civilization offensive. All variations of the religious spectrum
advocated reform and supported the idea of bringing Jewish rituals in line with modern
times, modeled on Christian or Sephardic liturgy.60 In this respect, Jewish and
governmental reform blended in their joint effort to integrate Dutch Jewry into the
national framework.
The civilizing efforts constructed decorum as an essential aspect of religion.
Order, silence, and aesthetics were emphasized and contrasted with the perceived
tumultuous, chaotic, and uncivilized customs of Ashkenazi Jewry.61 Consequently,
discourses on decorum created a new Jewish image and also redefined Dutch Jewry as
uncivilized. However, the pressure to abandon certain modes of behavior also resulted
in the creation of an orthodoxy that resisted change. The civilizing offensive produced
new discourses on the Jew, such as the coarse Jew and the religiously observant Jew, and
simultaneously shaped the reactionists’ response. As a result, power struggles over the
essence of Jewishness fostered the religious interpretation of daily aspects of Jewish life,
such as language. The civilization of Jewish rituals triggered the sacralization of formerly
secular aspects of Jewish identity. It thus generated new meanings with regard to what it
meant to be Jewish.
The third chapter examines the politicization of Jewish rituals by both the
government and Jews. It reveals Dutch Jewry´s engagement with the new political
constellation and shows how processes of Judaization and secularization characterized
their responses. During the period of Dutch political turmoil, consecutive governments
59
Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
60
Cf. Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth Sephardic Supremacy,” Leo Baeck Year Book (1989): 47–66; Andrea
Schatz, “Returning to Sepharad: Maskilic Reflections on Hebrew in the Diaspora,” in Sepharad in Ashkenaz:
Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse, edited by Resianne Fontaine,
Andrea Schatz and Irene E. Zwiep (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007).
61
For the civilization process, see Norbert Elias, The Civilization Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969).
20
aimed to create a unified sense of citizenship. In the transition to a nation-state, binding
elements such as language and culture came to play an important role. The formation of
a national identity was deemed pivotal for the nation-state’s strength, and its creation
intertwined political and religious discourses. Religion was used as a tool to nationalize
the Jewry as well as to consolidate state power. This can be seen especially in sermons
or Purim festivities, which were a relatively open Jewish format with space for diverging
opinions. Not surprisingly, these rituals became imbued with nationalistic propaganda
and maskilic objectives; they became dispositives of the new discourses on citizenship.
Moreover, the recently invented ritual of the proclamation of the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen propagated the message of the government’s new
foundations, linking the discourses on religion and the nation-state into a discursive
knot. Secular agendas such as nationalization and political consolidation thus permeated
Jewish rituals, stretching their content beyond the confines of religion and turning it into
a political handmaiden.
Ronald Schechter also observed the Jewish sacralization of the nation’s message
in his Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France 1715–1815. He convincingly
showed that hybridity characterized Jewish responses to the challenges posed by
citizenship. Jews actively engaged with the new nation-state and incorporated its values
into their own discourse on religion. Or in Schechter’s words, “rather than being
assimilated into France, they assimilated France into themselves.”62 Schechter’s
emphasis on Jewish agency in facing modernity further builds on the thesis postulated
by Sorkin, who described their responses in terms of a Jewish subculture.63 Likewise,
several Dutch Jewish factions employed sermons and Purim productions as well as the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to communicate their oftenconflicting messages.64 The maskilim as well as the orthodox used the religious
62
Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815, 252.
Years before David Sorkin, a Dutch historian had already analyzed the Jews in terms of a subculture.
Carolus Reijnders, “Van ‘Joodsche Natiën’ Tot Joodse Nederlanders: Een Onderzoek Naar Getto- en
Assimilatieverschijnselen Tussen 1600 en 1942,” (1969).
64
I will look at ritual from a functionalist perspective, focusing on its disrupting, stabilizing and
transformative capacities. For the functionalist approach to ritual, see Émile Durkheim, The Elementary
Forms of the Religious Life (1912), transl. by Carol Cosman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); A.R.
Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, paperback edition 1965 (New York: Free
Press, 1952).; H. Hubert and M. Maus, Sacrifice. Its Nature and Functions (1898) (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1981); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983).
63
21
infrastructure of Purim to criticize Jewish society and to disseminate their ideals. Both
groups engaged with newly invented state rituals, such as the proclamation of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and used them for their own benefit.
Consequently, rituals came to serve various political objectives, and the claims made on
rituals drew them into political power struggles. Because these rituals had overlapping
claims, they cannot be considered to belong to a certain camp; both the orthodox and the
maskilim converted them into their distinctive power structures. Additionally, although
rituals could be employed to support the dominant structures in society and foster social
cohesion, the same rituals could also be a locus for resistance. As such, ritual functioned
both as an expression of power relations and as a renegotiation of them. Moreover, as
will become apparent below, these rituals functioned for Dutch Jews as a model for
behavior and created a social context in which the new discourse on citizenship became
internalized.65 The political use of Purim, sermons, and the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen counters both the differentiation and the privatization of religion;
religion did not decline but rather blended with political discourses.
The fourth chapter examines the interplay between Jewish self-labelling and
othering. Underlying the (governmental) reform of the Jews was the representation of a
backward, uncivilized, and desolate Jewry. This chapter discusses Jewish self-labelling
and responses to discourses on Jewish citizenship and civility. It identifies non-Jewish
responses to citizenship for Jews and analyzes how this altered representations of the
Jew. I will demonstrate that Jewish self-identification crossed the line between the
orthodox and the maskilim. Jews took an active role in the creation, transformation, and
rejection of representations of Jews. The negative images of the Jew influenced Jewish
discursive practices as they responded to their own representations. This hermeneutical
play of what came to be essential or identifying characteristics of the Jew appear in both
non-Jewish and Jewish discourses. As Jay Geller observed in his “not for the intellectually
faint-hearted” book The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of
For the idea that rituals can also disrupt society and renegotiate power relations, see Catherina Bell, Ritual
Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of
Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985);
Abner Cohen, Masquerade Politics: Exploration in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements (Berkeley, Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). Cf. Ursula Rao, “Ritual in Society,” in Theorizing Rituals:
Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, edited by Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek, and Michael Stausberg (Leiden,
Boston: Brill, 2006).
65
Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion,
edited by M. Banton (London: Tavistock, 1966), 28–35.
22
Modernity, Jews reacted to and actively engaged with pejorative representations, which
they used to sustain their own identity. As he observes, “these ascriptions not only
identified ‘the Jew’ but also became, for those to whom they were ascribed, building
blocks. These ‘intellectual bricoleurs’ drew upon these quasi-objects for self-fashioning
as well as for thinking through their social situation for representing that thinking.”66
As will become apparent in this chapter, conspicuous Jewish regulations, such as
dietary regulations and wearing a beard, developed into strong identity markers. This
development contradicted the Jewish emancipation paradigm, which connected
integration with the loss of religious identity markers: becoming less visibly Jewish
equaled being more integrated, and the loss of conspicuous Jewishness67 hallmarked
Jewish entry into society.68 Moreover, the emancipation paradigm is an example of the
doctrine of secularism at work. Feiner, for instance, emphasized promiscuous behavior,
adoption of fashion, and violation of religious prescriptions as the first steps toward
Jewish secularization.69 However, being discernibly Jewish was still at the heart of the
Dutch Jewish debate, and even so-called secularists or maskilim strongly adhered to
specific Jewish regulations.70 There was not a clean break between traditionalists and
‘secular’ reformers. Both envisioned themselves as true Jews, and both groups identified
themselves with perceptible Jewishness; they could not escape the new attributions of
meaning to the Jew.
66
Geller, The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity, 5.
By conspicuous Jewishness, I refer to the display of Jewish behavior to foster one’s status as a righteous
or ‘real’ Jew. This is a variation on the concept of conspicuous consumption postulated by Veblen, wherein
it displayed one’s status and economic power. Cf. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An
Economic Study of Institutions (New York: Macmillan Company, 1899).
68
For the general perception of the Enlightenment as a hallmark of secularization, see Peter Gay, The
Enlightenment, 2 Vols. (New York, 1966). For Jewish secularization, see Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry;
Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key; Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England,
1714–1830 (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Todd M. Endelman, Radical Assimilation in
English Jewish History 1656–1945 (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990); Katz, Out of the Ghetto; Katz,
Emancipation and Assimilation: Studies in Modern Jewish History (Westmead/Farnborough/Hants: Gregg
International Publishers Limited, 1972); Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment; Feiner, The Origins of Jewish
Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe. For the idea that the encounter with secular culture
stimulated the creation of a distinct Jewish identity, see Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry,
1780–1840.
69
Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe.
70
Recently, Veerle Vanden Daelen analyzed the emergence of visible religious identity markers in the
Orthodox Jewish community of Antwerp, where, compared to before WWII, the community adopted a
more conservative dress, and where it became customary to wear kippot (skull caps) and tallitot (prayer
shawls) in public. See Veerle Vanden Daelen, “Markers of a Minority Group: Jews in Antwerp in the
Twentieth Century,” in Borders and Boundaries in and Around Dutch Jewish History, edited by Judith
Frishman (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2011).
67
23
Jewish conspicuousness also influenced the perception of Jews by non-Jews. They
discerned ‘the Jew’ by behavior and bodily features. Some writers exclusively depicted
Jews negatively, while others employed a veiled stereotypical image. However, under
the influence of recently acquired Jewish citizenship, other more positive discourses on
‘the Jew’ appeared. The enlightened discourse on regeneration explained negatively
perceived Jewish qualities historically and welcomed the Jews as fellow citizens. Even
though a plethora of different images of ‘the Jew’ developed, old perceptions and
stereotypes, such as Jews being loud, remained in contemporary descriptions. As this
chapter shows, the representation of ‘the Jew’ became entangled with the discourse on
political citizenship and older discourses on the Jew’s anomalous body. Both non-Jews
and Jews blended various discursive strands into their newly constructed identities.
The fifth and final chapter demonstrates how the redefinition of secular and
religious spheres legitimized religious governmental reform. It focuses on the only
Jewish rituals, namely circumcision and burial regulations, in which the state came to
determine the proper religious execution. These two rituals reveal the power struggles
over secular and religious authority. This chapter will identify Jewish modes of response
to state intrusion against the background of the medicalization of society. In the shifting
discursive constellations between the medical and the religious realms, the civilization
process linked with discourses on etiquette.71 These entanglements constructed the idea
that Jewish rituals should be valued according to their civilized appearance. As Jews
began to identify themselves as Dutch citizens and subjects of the state, they
incorporated these new attributions of meaning into their religion. As a result, they
began to view decorum, edification, and civilization as essentially Jewish aspects; as
such, these aspects mirrored the Jewish inner core. All factions of the Dutch Jewish
community subscribed to this new meaning attributed to the Jewish religion and
supported the adjustments of Jewish religion to contemporary notions of good taste,
albeit in a different manner.
Under the influence of (Jewish) physicians, whom John Efron aptly termed
“secular modernizers,” and through the advancement of medical knowledge, medical
71
Elias, The Civilization Process; for medicalization, see Peter Conrad, “Medicalization and Social Control,”
Annual Review of Sociology 18 (1992): 209–231.
24
discourse became a tool to describe and reflect on society.72 For instance, Jewish rituals,
the Jew, and his or her behavior were pathologized, and Jewish rituals were valued
according to their damaging or healing capacities.73 These new discursive formations
appeared at the end of the nineteenth century and were profoundly epitomized in
dispositives such as health legislation.74
The discourse on health was entangled with the discourse on Jewish religion, and
consequently defined Jewish rituals in relation to the health of the Dutch nation. These
medical discourses shifted authority over the body to the government. Rituals that
concerned the body, such as for instance circumcision and burial practices, were not
only regarded as religious prescriptions but as medical practices as well. This, in turn,
justified encroachment onto Jewish rituals. In this final chapter, I will argue that in the
fertile ground of fear, disease, and contamination, discourses on medicalization and
refinement of manners met and reinforced each other into a discursive knot, not only
causing the transformation (with fear as legitimization) of religious practices in the
nineteenth-century Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam, but also redefining the
medical and the religious spheres.75
5. Notes on the chronological framework and the historical sources
This study’s research focus is on the Ashkenazi Jews of Amsterdam. As the Yiddish
nickname mokum olf (first place) for Amsterdam indicates, it was the place for Jews to
settle in the Netherlands. The city´s central position resulted from a policy of free
settlement Jews and the economic opportunities this afforded. The continuing arrival of
Ashkenazim since the seventeenth century made it the largest Jewish community in the
Netherlands. Around 1800, almost 20,000 Ashkenazim lived in Amsterdam, comprising
a tenth of the city’s total population.76 Because the city retained its central position
72
John M. Efron, Medicine and the German Jews: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 66. In
the Netherlands the physicians Hartog de Hartog Lémon (1755–1823), Immanuel Capadoce (1751–1826),
and Samuel Elias Stein (1778–1851) played an important role in the modernization of Dutch Jewry.
73
Sander L. Gilman, The Jewish Body (New York, Oxon: Routledge, 1991). Cf. Susan Sontag, Illness as
Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988).
74
Michel Foucault, “The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Essential Works of Foucault,
Volume 3: Power, edited by James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2000), 90–105, Foucault, The
Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978–1979.
75
Thomas Shlich, “Medicalization and Secularization: The Jewish Ritual Bath as a Problem of Hygiene
(Germany 1820s–1840s),” Social History of Medicine 3 (1995): 441–442.
76
Michman, Beem, and Michman, Pinkas. Geschiedenis van de joodse gemeenschap in Nederland, 56.
25
throughout the centuries, its Jewish inhabitants left their mark on Dutch Jewry as a
whole.77 However, this does not mean that the relation between Amsterdam and the
countryside was one-sided. Therefore, at times when it contributes to this research,
developments outside of Amsterdam or Jews residing in other Dutch cities are discussed
as well.
This research project begins with the Emancipation Decree of 1796 because
juridical equality changes the power relations between Dutch Jewry and the state.78 This
is not so much a watershed but rather a turning point in Dutch Jewish history. Since
Dutch Jewry´s transformation is part of the separation between state and church, it
justifies a political periodization. In this respect, the research project ends in 1848, when
the church is officially separated from the state. However, this separation reflects more a
desired ideal than a lived condition, as contemporary references to God in, for instance,
Dutch laws and the King’s and Queen’s speeches attest. Notwithstanding the continuing
state and church relation and the various ways in which the Dutch government
interpreted the separation between state and church, the proposed dates function as
research demarcations.79 Sometimes, this research will cover the time preceding or
following this period in order to stress continuities or ongoing developments. The dates
are thus more reference points than absolute ruptures.
Various scholars of Jewish history have called the proposed period the beginning
of modernity. They relate this beginning to what they regard as modernity´s essential
aspects. Modernity is a contested and charged term with as many usages as meanings,
and consequently it has become an all-purpose word. Scholars who consider ideas and
ideologies as motors of historical change trace its beginnings as early as the
excommunication of Baruch de Spinoza. Because of his support for freedom and
toleration, he functioned for them as the first modern Jew.80 Scholars interested in
77
As a result of the Emancipation Decree of 1796, Jews obtained the right to settle anywhere they liked in
the Netherlands, and this in turn resulted in the establishment of several Jewish communities in the
countryside.
78
For a discussion of the commencement and meaning of Jewish modernity, see Michael A. Meyer, “Where
Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?” Judaism 3 (1975); David Rechter, “Western and Central
European Jewry in the Modern Period: 1750–1933,” in Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, edited by
Martin Goodman, Jeremy Cohen, and David Sorkin (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002),
383–388.
79
See for instance the reference to the general Christian values in the National Education Bill of 1806.
80
Meyer, “Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?”; Daniel B. Schwartz, The First Modern
Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).
26
political structures will stress the seventeenth century as modern, with its
commencement of state regulation and state building and the abolition of the
autonomous Jewish community.81 On the other hand, social historians and scholars
working with the secularization thesis will stress irreligiousness and heterodox
behavior as the starting points of modernity. In addition, for some, modernity has
become almost identical with a decline of religion.82 Notwithstanding the many usages of
modernity, in this study modernity relates to the beginnings of the nation-state. This
development profoundly induced and influenced the transformation of Dutch Jewry. In
this, it closely follows the ‘Anderson-Geller-Hobsbawm trinity’, which regards the
nation-state as a product of modernity and vice versa. Their observations on the political
roots of modernity and its construction (as opposed to viewing modernity as the
inevitable result of historical progress) serves here as a backbone.83
Next to modernity, other contested terms will appear in this study. Emancipation
is one such term. Reinhart Koselleck already pointed to the historical notion of the term
and analyzed its changing meaning, from juridical equality to social acceptance and
integration.84 In this study, I use the term both in a juridical and a social context. Other
terms, which have been debated extensively in Jewish history, are acculturation and
assimilation.85 Acculturation means adjusting to society while maintaining a distinctive
Jewish identity, while assimilation is adjustment without holding on to a Jewish lifestyle.
An example of assimilation is, for instance, conversion.
81
Cf. Jay. R. Berkovitz, “Social and Religious Controls in Pre-Revolutionary France: Rethinking the
Beginnings of Modernity,” Jewish History 15 (2001); Bolle, De opheffing van de autonomie der kehilloth
(Joodse gemeenten) in Nederland 1796.
82
Peter L Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (Garden City,
N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980), 28; Shohet, Im hilufei tequfot; Feiner, The Origins of Jewish
Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe; Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry. A New Cultural History;
Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–1750.
83
For the term ‘Anderson-Geller-Hobsbawm’ trinity, see Murray Jay Rosman, How Jewish is Jewish History?
(Oxford/Portland, Or: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007), 28. Cf. Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities (New York, London: Verso, 1983); Ernest Geller, Nations and Nationalism: New
Perspectives on the Past (New York: Cornell University Press, 1983); Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention
of Tradition.
84
Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, Calif:
Stanford University Press, 2002), 248–264.
85
Cf. David Sorkin, “Emancipation and Assimilation – Two Concepts and Their Application to GermanJewish History,” Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute (1990); Werner E. Mosse, “Introduction,” in Two
Nations: British and German Jews in Comparative Perspective, edited by Michael Brenner, Rainier Liedtke,
and David Rechter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 2–11; Belinfante and Buijs, “De gelijkstaat der Joden.
Inburgering van een minderheid,” 8.
27
Another issue with jargon is the use of Hebrew and/or Yiddish words or their
translations. For the convenience of the reader, most Hebrew and Yiddish words are
translated. An additional reason for translation is that too much jargon can
communicate the message that the Jewish experience is essentially different, a category
in itself, which cannot be compared to the outside world. An example of this is using the
word maskil for Jewish enlightener. Using the Hebrew word emphasizes the Jewishness
of the Enlightenment, while its translation refers to the many similarities and
comparisons between the Jewish and the general Enlightenment. In this study, the
maskilim are considered to operate in close relation to developments outside the Jewish
world and not in isolation. However, regardless of the phenomenological connotation, in
this book the word maskil is used because it is a familiar term in Jewish historiography,
because of its relation to the Jewish world, and because the historical agents employ it
themselves. The same applies to words such as mohel (Jewish circumciser), parnas
(Jewish leader), alte and naye kille (Old and New Community), etc.
Two exceptions to the above-mentioned explanations are the terms Ashkenazim
for (Eastern) European Jews and Sephardim for Portuguese and Spanish Jews. The
reason to refer to the Ashkenazi community instead of to the High German Jewish
community (Hoogduitse Joodse Gemeente), as the historical agents themselves called it, is
twofold. First, I use the term to point to the large network of relationships between Jews
in Europe, including Polish, Lithuanian, German, Italian, and many other Jews with
western, northern, and eastern European roots. Moreover, because the Ashkenazi
community in Amsterdam also included Polish Jews, this term more precisely describes
the various European backgrounds within the community. Finally, the term is common
in Jewish historiography.
In a slightly different manner, this study employs the (new) term Sephardim for
Jews of Portuguese and Spanish origin. I am aware that they called themselves
Portuguese Jews. However, as often happens in language, old terms are replaced with
new terms, and as a result, the older terms lose their familiarity with a larger public.
Maybe that is why both the Portuguese community and the Sephardic community
appear in Jewish historiography. Yosef Kaplan, for instance, speaks of the Sephardi
28
community, and Miriam Bodian of the Portuguese community.86 Because both terms are
correct, the aesthetic argument, namely a balance between terms in this book, tips the
scale toward the word Sephardim.
The research analyzes a wide variety of manuscripts and printed publications
located in the city archives of Amsterdam and the Jewish libraries Ets Haim and
Rosenthaliana. Important sources are the protocols of the Ashkenazi community of
Amsterdam and the Berenstein collection that resides at the city archives of Amsterdam
and has been digitalized. Those sources are written in Yiddish, Hebrew, or a
combination of these. Rosenthaliana preserves the chronicle of Benjamin Wing, the
pronunciation pamphlets, and the Diskursn. Ets Haim keeps the Purim productions. In
addition to manuscripts, various transcribed, translated, and printed sources have been
used, such as the printed Diskursn collection by Michman and Aptroot, the Benjamin
Wing chronicle translated by Meijer Roest, the excerpts of Protocolbuch IV translated by
D.M. Sluys, and the Torat ha-qena’ot translated by Els Kooij-Bas. The Hebrew is
transliterated with the transliteration system of the Encyclopedia Judaica and the
Yiddish with YIVO´s transliteration system. Besides manuscripts and printed Hebrew
and Yiddish texts, this study employs various archives written in Dutch, which are
located at the National Archives of The Hague. Examples include the archives of the High
Consistory and the Supreme Committee of Israelite Affairs. Other Dutch archives include
the naye kille archive, various parts of the Berenstein collection, and the archives of the
Batavian and later governments, which can be accessed digitally.
86
Yosef Kaplan, An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill,
2000); Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern
Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).
29