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These Ashkenazi were mostly
poor, often destitute, lacking the education and contacts of the Sephardim.
In 1748 a decline in the city’s important diamond industry, which had no guild
and was dominated by the Jews, put many Christian workers out of work. They
demanded that a diamond guild should be created so that Jews could be excluded
or restricted but the government refused, on the grounds that it was the Jews
who had created diamond trade.
Amsterdam’s treatment of Jews differed from that of some other parts of the
Dutch Republic. I have a fac simile in my bibliography of a document, a crudely
printed proclamation, issued during the 18th century in Overrijssel,
in the east of Holland, threatening dead to “Jews who wear arms” and to
farmers giving shelter to “Jewish gangs”. There is no evidence that the
threatening was ever carried out. Apparently, the poster reflected a temporary
panic such can sometimes occur among ignorant rural populations: the “Jewish
gangs” were probably Ashkenazi peddlers going from farm to farm with ribbons
and combs and needles. Yet, the poster is a useful reminder that, even in
Holland, the phantom of the dark sides of human heart and nature sometimes lie
in wait!
The presence of Jews in Amsterdam brought the city other distinctions besides
financial ones. A Hebrew printing press was founded in 1627 and produced the
very first printed Hebrew book of prayer. Soon, Hebrew books printed in
Amsterdam spread all over Europe.
In the 18th century, Amsterdam’s Jewish community became the
largest and most important in Europe. In 1795 there were just over 20,000
Ashkenazim in the city versus 2,800 Sephardic Jews. Finally, in 1796 under the
influence of the revolutionary France, Holland erased all remaining legal
discrimination against Jews. The Republic came to an end during the Napoleonian
wars to be replaced by the king of Holland, Napoleon’s brother Louis. After
the defeat of France in Waterloo in 1815, Holland remained a monarchy and two
years later, William 1st, the first Dutch king, required that
ordinary teaching in Jewish schools be done in Dutch. Religious teaching could
be done in either Hebrew or Dutch, but Yiddish—a form of German spoke by most
Ashkenazim—was forbidden weakening the use of Yiddish as an international
“lingua franca”. At the same time, however, the increasing use of Dutch by
Jews helped to unite the Sephardic and Ashkenazic groups into a single
society—albeit a complex and varied one.
Next…despite
rich objects seen in Jewish museums the conditions of Jews was far from prosper.
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