5

Sephardi Women in Holland's Golden Age

TIRTSAH LEVIE BERNFELD

It was not easy to approach the Sephardi women of Holland’s Golden Age. As he toured Amsterdam, an English traveler was greatly surprised that Sephardi men kept their wives restrained, essentially as prisoners.1 Had he gone to Hamburg, he would probably have noticed the same; there, Hakham Moses Israel ordained, in the 1660s, that Sephardi women should not go out unprotected unless to see a neighbor.²

In Amsterdam, the position of women seemed quite similar to that of women on the Iberian Peninsula. They were mainly confined to their homes and families, a phenomenon influenced by Spain’s Arab heritage.³ The influence of Muslim culture could also be observed in the Levant; Jewish women in seventeenthcentury Jerusalem were expected to stay at home.⁴ The lives of Jewish women in other parts of the Ottoman Empire were described as mostly revolving around the family and the house.⁵ This image stood in striking contrast to the great freedom of movement of Ashkenazi and non-Jewish females, who were present all over the streets of Amsterdam and were active in many aspects of the economic, social, and intellectual life of the Dutch Republic.⁶

Was the contrast really so great? Did the position of Dutch Sephardi women really differ so much from that of their surroundings? In fact, Amsterdam Sephardi women seemed to hide, not only behind their veils and facades but also behind a male identity. Often, their names did not appear in their own right; rather, they were also identified and registered as wife, widow, daughter, orphan, or mother/mother-in-law of a given man.⁷ If women’s issues among the Amsterdam Portuguese were at stake, the topic was dealt with through male eyes and perspectives.

The City of Amsterdam, Frederick de Wit, Amsterdam, ca. 1698. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Amsterdam.

Nevertheless, Sephardi women could be seen in the so-called Dutch Jerusalem. Charles Ogier must have observed them at close range when he noted the similarity of Sephardi women to other women in the city, except for the color of their eyes and their neat and aristocratic appearance.8 Many artists depicted them at home or in the streets, walking with their fans or pulled by horses while seated on the couches of their carraiges.⁹

The presence of Sephardi women can be felt even more in notarial deeds, including in last wills and inventories, letters, tax registers, lists of relief to the poor, criminal records, archives of Christian churches in the city, and in the administration of hevrot. There they appeared alive and well, with a broad spectrum of identities: rich and poor; single, married, and widowed; withdrawn in their mansions or in their little rooms, yet actively involved in business and social life; women living in an atmosphere of extravagance and those whose poverty spurred them to beg for help; honest women, but also madams living as thieves and prostitutes; senhoras who were very dedicated to Jewish life and those who were indifferent or even turned their backs to it.

This chapter examines the different identities of Sephardi women—discerning their financial status and whereabouts, educational background, work, family life, social activities, and Jewish identity. Various sources allow a view behind the scenes and help to unveil different aspects of the position of Sephardi women, within their own community and relative to the wider world. Thus, this chapter contributes to the investigation of the history of gender issues among the Dutch Sephardim in early modern times, a field in need of deeper exploration.10

Figures

At the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, an organized Jewish community developed in Amsterdam, especially established for immigrants from Spain and Portugal, former New Christians or conversos who were transformed into “New Jews” in the city.¹¹ Many had fled inquisitorial persecutions and a fearful existence on the Iberian Peninsula, and were attracted by the economic opportunities of the newly established Dutch Republic. The relative tolerance that was foremost in a city like Amsterdam was another asset; though, even here, there were restrictions.¹² Soon, the Sephardi community built a reputation of wealth and benevolence that became well known all over Europe. It stimulated a large influx of Jews from different backgrounds and European Jewish centers. Some, in addition to the Sephardim, organized themselves; for instance, beginning in 1635, Ashkenazi Jews from the German Empire and Poland established a community of their own.¹³

Among the Amsterdam Jews, the Sephardim had been a majority until the early eighteenth century, around 4,000 to 6,000 individuals. The number of Ashkenazim in the city surpassed that of the Sephardim, while growing from 3,200 individuals in 1700 to 15,000 individuals at the end of the eighteenth century. Starting as a small group, only 1.4 percent (3,600 persons) of the city’s population in 1650, the Jews of Amsterdam, at the end of the eighteenth century, formed about 10 percent (about 20,000 persons) of the total population.¹⁴

It is difficult to assess the number of Sephardi women living in early modern Amsterdam. Strangely enough, we have more information on the number of poor women than on the rich ones. No internal tax registers containing names of women are available until the end of the eighteenth century, when 160 women (32 percent of the estimated total) were assessed for the internal finta tax.¹⁵ On the other hand, up to 83 percent of single women, or women listed as heads of families, in the Amsterdam Portuguese community were given charity; as such, they were a majority as elsewhere in early modern Europe but a far greater one.16 Because the majority of the men listed in the tax registers were married,¹⁷ we can assume that the total female Sephardi population always formed a surplus among the Amsterdam Sephardi Jews, from the early 1600s until the end of the 1700s. The total female Sephardi population comprised hundreds of individuals, with, on average, one third to one half of them unable to survive without charity.

Migration and Family Structure

Immigration into Amsterdam from Spain, Portugal, and France consisted of a large number of women, although it is difficult to give precise figures.¹⁸ Some had fled with their extended families accompanied by husbands, children, and sometimes even their personnel.¹⁹ Others came to Amsterdam by themselves or in the company of other senhoras, married women with their children, grandmothers with grandchildren, orphans on their own, widows with nieces—in short, broken families.²⁰ This was the consequence of the unstable situation on the Iberian Peninsula, where New Christians, often separated from their loved ones, fled to escape the persecution of the Inquisition. Gracia Senior was very clear about this: She had come alone to Amsterdam because she feared the Inquisition.²¹

Sometimes these women were preceded by their husbands.²² It could also be the other way around: Women fled alone, awaiting the possible arrival of their families while in a safe and protected place like Amsterdam. In 1621, for example, Ilona Gomes, the wife of Francisco Rodrigues d’Olivença, lived in Amsterdam in the house of Thomas Fernandes while her husband was still imprisoned in Portugal.²³ Brites Tomas, dying and making her last will, also came to Amsterdam alone while her husband Luis Gomes de Aveiro still lived in Portugal.²⁴

Often, the ending was unhappy; in the community charity books, many women passed from “wife of” into “widow of,” although their partners never appeared in the community or city registers.²⁵ Why, where, and in what situation did men who never arrived in Amsterdam stay behind? Was it by choice or under coercion? Or did these (former) partners settle down elsewhere? We can only guess their fates.

There was always the prospect of starting a new life in a promising city with a flourishing Jewish community like Amsterdam. There single women hoped to enhance their chances of finding a Jewish partner, although that seemed easier than it actually was. The Sephardi community of Amsterdam often complained about the large number of poor females in their midst.26

Sephardi women arrived in the North not only from Spain, Portugal, or Southern France, but also from the Jewish world in Italy, North Africa, the Balkans, and the Levant. The latter displaced women also traveled to Amsterdam to flee wars, pogroms, poverty, epidemics, or just to look for better prospects. One woman came all the way from Oran, another from Venice.²⁷ A third one arrived from Turkey together with her two children.²⁸ Many women fled the Balkans during the war of the Holy League at the end of the seventeenth century.²⁹

Besides Sephardi women arriving at the Amsterdam Portuguese community (alone or as heads of their families), many other women, poor and rich alike, were left alone in the city, their partners or children working outside of the Republic for a short or a long time. This was a quite common phenomenon in Jewish society elsewhere.³⁰ While drawing up her testament, Sara Alvares declared she lived in Amsterdam, while her husband resided in London.³¹ Selomoh Gomes Soares was in the West Indies when his wife Simha Salom, in Amsterdam, received a legacy from her mother.³² When senhora Rachel Montalta made an agreement with the kahal concerning a silver lamp, her husband Isaac Montalto was said to be in Berberia.³³ Ribca Henriques Alvares never again saw her husband Moses Mesias, originally from Tetuan, when he left Amsterdam in 1730. The couple had gone through a personal crisis earlier. Six years later he was found dead in Safed.³⁴

Sometimes Sephardi women were abandoned for no clear reason. Gabriel Alvares, for example, confessed in Amsterdam in 1655 that he married Hester Alvares in Tunis and left her in Livorno “without reason.”³⁵ Bartholome Fernandes Torres must have fled to Amsterdam from Spain but apparently did not take his daughter (age nine) and possibly a former wife, who lived in Osuna in Spain.³⁶ Joanna da Fonseca resided alone in Amsterdam for more than twenty years without her husband, of whom no traces could be found.³⁷

All this coming and going influenced the composition of families among the Sephardim of Amsterdam; it clearly fluctuated.³⁸ Imbalanced family structures, however, were not an exclusive situation reserved for the Amsterdam Sephardim. High mobility was normal in pre-modern and early modern society; women often stayed behind at the home base while their husbands or children left them for whatever reason, temporarily or forever.³⁹

Deviance

Many Sephardi women, in the absence of a male head of the family, were often left to the care and supervision of the Portuguese community, or to their relatives and friends. Thus, Amsterdam served as a safe home base upon which males could rely.

Under these circumstances, we come across much more strict preoccupation with and supervision of the well-being of Sephardi women than we would suspect in a free city like Amsterdam, apparently because we are dealing with a relatively small, tightly organized immigrant group with a cultural approach imported from the Iberian Peninsula.40 It could have been worse: In the Portuguese empire, married women were often put into institutions in the absence of their husbands!⁴¹

The Sephardi community made sure, if necessary, that its female constituency had enough to eat; many women, in the absence of male partners, were listed on its charity rolls. Many Portuguese men who signed the statutes of the new community in Recife, Brazil, for example, left their female partners in Amsterdam to be provided for by the community.⁴² However, the Amsterdam Sephardi community and its members provided more than financial care. They, like their co-religionists elsewhere, also guarded moral standards, trying very hard to protect the honor of its female population because of the presence of so many single females.⁴³

There apparently was constant conflict regarding the supervision of Sephardi women. Some tried to escape continuous supervision and control by going to the synagogue at night, whereupon they were forbidden to attend evening or early morning services. The leaders of the Portuguese community, moreover, posted a guard at the entrance of the women’s synagogue to watch over and control their behavior.⁴⁴ Scandals, however, were not confined to the precincts of the synagogue. Cases of adultery were frequent, often, but not always, caused by a husband’s absence.

Menasseh ben Israel’s warning in his Thesovro dos Dinim of the 1640s, apparently based on actual situations, admonished women to avoid being alone in the house with any man when their husbands were out of town.⁴⁵ Beatris Fernandes, for instance, lead a “dishonorable” life in the absence of her husband, who had gone to Jerusalem.⁴⁶ Rachel Boena ran away from home with a married man, her cousin who had converted to Christianity. She was pursued, but not caught, by her family.⁴⁷ In 1714, the wife of the community’s hazzan appeared to have a relationship with another man. Consequently, the hazzan lost his job.48 In the seventeenth century, mostly men were punished for adultery; but in the eighteenth century, women also were put into herem for breach of moral rules, pointing to a growing neglect of morality among Dutch Sephardim, both men and women.⁴⁹

Amsterdam Sephardim, including their female population, were also involved in cases of theft, violence, and murder. Some cases concerned conflicts inside the house; others were committed outside in the streets. In 1658 Rachel Abarbanel and her son were arrested because they were making mischief and were kicking windows near the Sint Antonispoort.⁵⁰ Sara Abiatar was said to have murdered her children due to “poverty, grief and debt.”⁵¹ Other women stole or committed other types of crime. We meet them before Dutch Courts or in the prisons and workhouses of the Dutch Republic, but much less frequently than Ashkenazi or Dutch women.⁵² Yet, these and other cases prove once more that Sephardi women in Holland’s Golden Age were not as withdrawn, silent, and suppressed as described and depicted by observers.

Living Conditions

The extended family occupied an important place in Jewish society in general, as Grossman has argued.⁵³ Moreover, more than in Northern and Central Europe, multigenerational families commonly lived together in Southern and Eastern Europe.⁵⁴ Thus in Holland, the average household among the Sephardim consisted not only of the nuclear family but also of extended families. Often Sephardim, not having enough money to rent separate locations, were forced to live together in cramped units.

The well-to-do families, who had spacious homes, sometimes took in family members and friends, although a Hakham, such as Saul Levi Morteira complained about the empty houses of the rich and their lack of hospitality.⁵⁵ A wealthy merchant, Josua de Prado, had only his mother with him in his large mansion.⁵⁶ However, other houses must have been very crowded, such as the one into which Isaac Vaz Henriques and his mother moved—joining his sister, her husband, and their eight children.⁵⁷

Quite a few married women moved in with relatives or friends to await the arrival of their husbands. The daughter of Jeudah Piza, together with her two sons, stayed in her father’s house while her husband went to America.⁵⁸ Widows and single women also joined other families; it was a matter of convenience or need—either in economic, social, or emotional terms, or a combination of all these considerations. The deal was quite often, but not always, closed with a written contract—one having specific conditions, such as the yearly contribution to be paid by one party, and amenities, such as lodging, food, light, and servants, to be provided by the other.59

In addition to joining families headed by men, many Sephardi women, rich and poor alike, took in family and friends—males and females. Rachel Medina Chamis opened her house to and took care of her nephews and brother after the death of her sister-in-law.⁶⁰ The widow of Raphael Mendes da Costa had Isaac Mendes da Costa living with her.⁶¹ Abigail Dias da Fonseca, also a widow, gave shelter to her friend Ester Rodrigues.⁶²

Children arriving from abroad, alone or left to themselves because of the departure of their families, were often boarded with private families, mostly relatives or acquaintances. Upon arrival in 1618, Rachel da Fonsequa, who had neither father nor mother, was at first taken into the house of the widow of Jacob Levy, and later into that of Jacob Belmonte.⁶³ Abraham de Leon had two boys in his house; their family had gone to Rouen.⁶⁴ Even though Mazon Abanot (Nourishment for Girls), the girls’ orphanage founded in 1734, bought a house to take care of the orphan girls, the girls stayed there only during the daytime and spent the night with (host) families.⁶⁵

As elsewhere in the Jewish world, newly married daughters and their husbands in Amsterdam would often make their first home in the parents’ house.⁶⁶ A case in point was the daughter of Jacob Jeuda Leao.⁶⁷ The mother of bride Ester da Fonseca, who was to marry with Aron da Fonseca, agreed to take the newlywed couple into her home for a period of three years “as is the custom among the Jewish nation.”⁶⁸

Sephardi females also might live together with whichever family members were left: single mothers with their children and in-laws, grandmothers with their grandchildren, with sisters, and with other singles living by themselves. In 1650, the widow Sara Vaz left Seville with her daughter to live together in Amsterdam.⁶⁹ The widow of David Rodrigues lived with her grandson.⁷⁰ Three sisters moved in with each other: “Ester, Judit e Ribca Galenas tres irmans.”⁷¹ Four women from Spain also formed self-supporting units, living under one roof, as did the widow Sara Rodrigues de Guadeloupe and her sister.⁷² Even in institutions such as the Portuguese old-age home, women shared space: The widow Rachel Cotinho divided her single room there with her aunt (“moeije”) Ester Faije.⁷³

Thus we notice Sephardi women joining relatives, friends, or anyone else in search of a home, sometimes in the beautiful mansions on the canals, more often in the smaller houses on the main streets, in the side streets or in narrow alleyways, in rooms, or—quite rarely—in cellars. They mostly kept to a protective environment close to other members of their nação (nation), in the vicinity of the synagogue and Jewish life.74

Work

In accordance with the laws of the Dutch Republic, married women, unlike unmarried women or widows, were subordinate to the authority of a male.⁷⁵ In Jewish law, it was the same. Thus, to govern assets or start legal procedures, the married woman was under the guardianship of her husband. Accordingly, in many documents we find Sephardi women placed under the supervision of a male representative.⁷⁶ Rifca Dias da Fonseca, an old lady, sick in bed, was even prevented from answering a notary because no male person was present.⁷⁷ Men would also authorize other males to head the family in their absence. Moreover, it appears that Sephardi widows or unmarried women, more than the Ashkenazi or non-Jewish ones, were accompanied or represented, in court and elsewhere, by males, or gave a male power of attorney to act on their behalf. Perhaps this occurred to preserve a woman’s honor and to follow the custom of affording protection toward Sephardi women as described above.⁷⁸

On the other hand, we find many cases of married women, Jews or Gentiles, who, in the absence of their husband, were given the power of attorney to act in their husband’s place. Many Sephardi men did consider their female partners on an equal footing and, in accordance with Dutch law, did grant their wives the right to continue their businesses while traveling or to administer their inheritances after their death.⁷⁹

Thus many Sephardi widows acted independently, without any male involved. For instance, Ester Cuzina, widow of Pero Gomes from Lisbon, settled the accounts with merchants in Amsterdam and Antwerp herself.⁸⁰ The abovementioned Gracia Senior, likewise a widow, managed her possessions in Portugal, Castile, Italy, Brazil, Flanders, and in Amsterdam by herself.⁸¹

The financial structure of the Amsterdam Portuguese community in the early modern period encompassed large differences in wealth, which became more pronounced during the eighteenth century. Thus, big gaps in affluence between rich and less fortunate Sephardi women can be demonstrated, and more so over time.⁸² We only have to look at the inventories of well-to-do women and compare them with those of their poorer counterparts to see the difference.83 In fact, one would be amazed at the tremendous amount of jewelry and other silver and golden objects in the possession of Dutch Sephardim in the early modern period—many more objects than found among their non-Jewish neighbors.⁸⁴ Notarial deeds give us an impression of the difference in value of dowries given to Sephardi brides from wealthy backgrounds compared with girls from the other end of the spectrum, who brought in next to nothing.⁸⁵

The wealthiest Sephardi women were decidedly not much inclined to work. In 1742 a large majority of them were registered as so-called “renteniers.”⁸⁶ Though living off their capital, these rich Sephardi women, similar to those from the Dutch upper class, nonetheless were very keen to invest their money in bonds, houses, or industries.⁸⁷ For them and their families, the accumulation and preservation of capital had proved to be an important tool in the fight for survival while building a new existence in a foreign country, restoring their lost status, or building a new one.

The Sephardi women who needed income to keep up with daily expenses were often involved in the so-called family economy, as was a common practice elsewhere.⁸⁸ These women often shared their husband’s work. As customary in the past, we see these Jewish women beside their partners, being active in crafts, the medical profession, international trade, local industries, retail, and other work-related activities.⁸⁹ One couple produced “Portuguese cards.”⁹⁰ In the medical sector, a family-run enterprise was not uncommon. Surgeons engaged the help of their wives and daughters to assist women who needed medical treatment.⁹¹

Many Sephardi women carried on the family business once their husbands had passed away, as did the widow of Jeuda Azulay, who dealt in tobacco.⁹² After the death of her husband, Sara Mendes da Silva instructed different ships to travel to Lisbon, Brazil, and Goa with sugar, tea, and silk.⁹³ Johebed de Casseres took over the cotton trade business of her late husband,⁹⁴ and Guiomar Henriques ran a business of international sugar trade established by her deceased husband Gabriel Correia.⁹⁵ The widow of the pharmacist Isaac de Castro must have done pharmaceutical work in cooperation with her husband, and thus carried on the work after Isaac passed away.⁹⁶ Among the Ashkenazi Jews of Amsterdam, the pattern was identical; these Ashkenazi women also continued their husband’s business in the latter’s absence or after his death, as did their Sephardi and Dutch counterparts.⁹⁷

Thus these women not only pursued income for their families, especially to support their children, but they often passed the work on to family members. For instance, Sara de Fonseca helped her husband in his tobacco industry, and she continued to run the business for more than thirteen years after her husband died, giving employment to fourteen people and supporting two families, including that of her son.98 Clara Musaphia, like her husband before her, and her son afterward, traded in meal for, among other things, the preparation of matzot for the community.⁹⁹ The widow of Abraham Nunes continued to supply the community with wax after the death of her husband.¹⁰⁰ It seems plausible that she assisted her husband in his work because he was blind.¹⁰¹ After continuing the business for a few years, her son-in-law, Abraham Lopes Arias, took over; at that time, she seemed too old to work.¹⁰² Thus Sephardi widows often acted like others in their surroundings by keeping the work within the family and transmitting it to the next generation.¹⁰³

Sephardi women, like others, also looked for branches of work to do in their own right.¹⁰⁴ Some added to their income by running a shop;¹⁰⁵ others handled retail products.¹⁰⁶ One woman supplied the community with material for shrouds,¹⁰⁷ and another owned a private pawn bank.¹⁰⁸ Almost none would take up open-air work, as did their Ashkenazi female counterparts, who operated in markets in the streets, or went from house to house selling their secondhand clothes and other merchandise.¹⁰⁹

Some Sephardi women made money by renting lodgings to refugees, travelers, or children.¹¹⁰ As an extension of domestic activity, a great deal of needlework was done at home, a work pattern matching that of other Jewish and Gentile women in the Dutch Republic and elsewhere in early modern Europe.¹¹¹ Sephardi women were seen knitting at the doors of their houses, close to the light.¹¹² Domestic inventories often included spinning wheels as well as pillows women used while knitting.¹¹³ The orphanage Mazon Abanot received income by having the orphaned girls sew or knit clothes ordered by persons from the greater community.¹¹⁴ We assume, however, that the manufacture of clothes was not done on any large commercial scale, as it was an officially forbidden craft for Jews. Wealthy Portuguese families mostly had their clothes made by Dutch tailors.¹¹⁵

Sephardi women also found work within the different branches of the Amsterdam Sephardi community. We generally find Sephardi women, born and bred in an observant Jewish milieu, working in those areas that demanded a solid knowledge of the Jewish law and dedication to an observant way of life.¹¹⁶ Ribca Salom Pardo, for example, a poor widow and daughter of Hakham David Pardo, took care of the mikveh.¹¹⁷ Abigail de Leon, daughter of Rabbi Jacob Juda Leon, helped with the Jewish ceremony surrounding the baking of kosher bread.118 Sephardi women also acted as midwives. One of them was Simca de Campos, the granddaughter of Hakham Isaac Uziel from North Africa.¹¹⁹ Others worked as assistants to the poor or were in charge of the communal pawnshop.¹²⁰ Some were appointed as mortalhadeyras, making or repairing shrouds. Those who repaired shrouds also washed the corpses of female members.¹²¹ The day-to-day running of the many hevrot and yeshivot also called for a female staff,¹²² while, especially in the eighteenth century, institutionalized charities, such as the old-age home, the girls’ orphanage, and other charitable organizations, also provided work for women.¹²³

Many women were employed to care for the sick, dying, or elderly—much like elsewhere in the Jewish world and as conversas had acted on the Iberian Peninsula.¹²⁴ We should not, however, overestimate the role of western Sephardi women who were active in caring for the old and the sick, especially in the seventeenth century. If a type of work became too hard or unpleasant, Sephardi women, the ex-conversas, generally turned their backs on it, in accordance with their Iberian preference.¹²⁵ They brought with them, from the Peninsula to the Amsterdam milieu, a disdain for manual labor, an attitude they were disinclined to abandon.¹²⁶ As a result, these tasks were mostly given to Sephardim from North Africa and the Levant, and to Ashkenazim, Italian Jews, Dutch Christians, and blacks.¹²⁷ Pressing poverty in the eighteenth century, however, led some western Sephardi women to take this kind of work themselves.¹²⁸

Moreover, Portuguese Jews, the rich and the poor, liked to be served, and had a “passion for domestic servants,” as Bennassar has put it.¹²⁹ In many cases, they even took their own servants with them from the Peninsula or from elsewhere.¹³⁰ Thus, in most Sephardi households, domestic personnel consisted of Ashkenazi men and women, Gentiles, mulattos, moriscos, and blacks.¹³¹ If we do locate Sephardi women working for Portuguese families, they were mostly employed in higher positions, while a staff of other servants was below them in the hierarchy.¹³²

We do not meet too many Sephardi women at the margins of society. Only a handful were arrested and charged for prostitution, mostly out of sight of the Portuguese leadership. In Amsterdam, as in other places in the Dutch Republic, we come across prostitutes with Ashkenazi backgrounds more than once.¹³³ Only a few Sephardi prostitutes could be found there.¹³⁴ One of them was Gracia Baruch, who confessed that since divorcing from her husband David Athias in Amsterdam, she had made a living as a whore.¹³⁵ We also meet a Sephardi madam who ran a brothel in her home, where Jews could meet “Christian women.”¹³⁶ Very few Sephardi prostitutes ended up in workhouses. The abovementioned Gracia Baruch, however, was condemned to six years in Rotterdam’s workhouse to make “a living with her hands.”137

The pattern of economic activity of Sephardi women in Amsterdam was not a new phenomenon in Jewish history; it goes back to the Middle Ages and even earlier.¹³⁸ We can observe the same pattern back on the Peninsula and in different parts of the Diaspora. In Spain and Portugal, conversas were also active in a variety of professions.¹³⁹ There, they were used to acting on their own as well—taking care of their families and businesses while their husbands went on trips for prolonged periods.¹⁴⁰ Sephardi women in southern France were also involved in business while their partners stayed behind on the Iberian Peninsula. In their new residences, they were independent enough to try selling their properties in Spain and Portugal, to collect their dowries, or to recover debts owed them.¹⁴¹ A woman in Bordeaux even lent money to individuals in Madrid.¹⁴² In Hamburg, as well, businesses were continued by women in the absence of their husbands.¹⁴³ In the Ottoman Empire, too, Jewish women were involved in a variety of commercial enterprises, from the top to the bottom of the economic ladder.¹⁴⁴

In short, the picture might be not as clear and obvious as that of the Dutch and Ashkenazi women, yet many Sephardi women in Amsterdam were very keen on earning a living or maintaining the value of their capital, in their own right or by assisting their partners, as they had done on the Iberian Peninsula and now continued in the Sephardi Diaspora.

Upbringing and Education

Female activities in trade and crafts demanded an educated background. To our surprise, we did not find educational institutions for women among the Amsterdam Sephardim until the last part of the eighteenth century.¹⁴⁵ This was largely due to the protected position of Sephardi women in the home, in keeping with the Iberian tradition.¹⁴⁶ The general level of literacy among the Portuguese women, though, was quite high.¹⁴⁷ Johebed de Casseres, who we saw continuing her husband’s business, knew how to write (signing the contract of her intended marriage at City Hall) and thus must have received an education earlier.¹⁴⁸ The seventeenth-century Portuguese community could also boast of several female poets.¹⁴⁹ Yet, there were girls from more moneyed or educated families, such as the Spinozas, the Pardos, or the Juda Leons, who did not even know how to write their first names.¹⁵⁰ This was true particularly of Portuguese brides from poorer families.¹⁵¹

The more prosperous and educated Portuguese families probably hired tutors to teach their daughters at home,152 as was also customary in affluent Dutch circles—rich Dutch girls often attended a school as well.¹⁵³ At home, these Sephardi girls must have learned at least how to read the Portuguese language, sew, and knit, and they were instructed “in the fear of God,” similar to the curriculum of the girls’ orphanage, Mazon Abanot.¹⁵⁴ Some also learned to read and write in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, and even Hebrew! Books and dictionaries in the above-mentioned languages were found in the inventories of their houses.¹⁵⁵

Music was perhaps part of the curriculum, as it was in well-to-do non- Jewish families. In the inventories of the Amsterdam Sephardim we find “clavecimbels,” and Francisca Duarte is said to have sung at meetings in the so-called Muiderkring (a circle of men of letters and musicians meeting around the Dutch poet and playwright P. C. Hooft since 1621 in the Muiderslot, a castle near Amsterdam).¹⁵⁶

Beyond that, some Sephardi women must have been trained for commercial and vocational work, privately and in small circles; thus, many could enter into trade, industry, and crafts as adults. An example is offered through the records of Clara and Rachel Belilhos (their father was a teacher at the Ets Haim [Tree-of-Life] yeshivah), who were taught to be printers through the instruction of the Hakham and were given the tools to print ketubot.¹⁵⁷

The situation of Ashkenazi women was somewhat different, although they were also educated at home, like the Ashkenazi girl who was trained as a “naaister” (seamstress).¹⁵⁸ On the other hand, these Ashkenazi women seemed to have lived less protected and secluded lives than Sephardi women. Ashkenazi girls, for example, were also sent out of the house to learn a trade.¹⁵⁹ This custom stands in contrast to that prevailing among the Dutch Sephardim. At least in the first decades of the seventeenth century, Sephardi girls were not supposed to go into the streets “according to the customs of Portugal” (as stated in 1622).¹⁶⁰ Even though rules were not strictly adhered to, we have no proof of Sephardi girls sent out of the house to be taught a profession elsewhere.¹⁶¹

The educational background of many Sephardi women also becomes clear when we see the tasks with which their spouses, sons, or other family members charge them, in the upbringing of children at home in the absence of males (in life or death). Francisco Lopes Suasso requested that his mother assist his wife in educating his children in the same manner he had done.¹⁶² Jacob Oeb, on his deathbed, allowed his wife Rachel Athias to stay in his estate on the condition that she would, herself, raise his son David until his marriage or he reached age twenty-five.¹⁶³ In his last will, Joseph Mendes da Costa entrusted the upbringing of his six children to their grandmother and aunt.164 Ester de Abraham Keyzer, widow of Guidon Labat, gave her sister instructions to care for her four children and take them into her house.¹⁶⁵ This all proves that many Dutch Sephardi women did receive educations, general and professional. This not only enabled them to take proper care of their children, but also prepared them for pursuing a career.

Family Life

In most cases, Sephardi women were respected by their spouses, sons, or other family members, who, in their turn, commanded deference from their children toward their female guardians. Francisco Lopes Suasso commanded his children offer “love, obedience and much respect toward their mother.”¹⁶⁶ Moseh Moreno Monsanto, after appointing his wife to guard his children and attend to their education, required complete obedience from the children toward their mother.¹⁶⁷ The same pattern existed with Emmanuel Abenatar, who told his children to respect and obey their mother.¹⁶⁸

As elsewhere, Sephardi women must have played a central role within the family, not only on their own merits but also through their husbands, who gave their wives the legal instruments to do so.¹⁶⁹ Various sources speak of a language of love and emotions, such as those exhibited by Manuel Levy Duarte and his wife Constantina Levy Duarte, who talked about their marital love, as did Aron de Pinto and Abigail Nunes Henriques.¹⁷⁰

Male partners often expressed warm feelings and appreciation toward not only their wives but also toward their mothers, other members of the family, and toward female friends. Francisco Lopes Suasso speaks of “his beloved wife” and also relates to his mother with tenderness, making sure she will live in his house.¹⁷¹ Joseph Mendes da Costa used the words “love and devotion” when he tried to define the attitude he demanded from his family, because they were charged with the education of his children.¹⁷² The cousin of Manuel Levy Duarte and Constantina Levy Duarte, Gracia Alvares, apparently was instrumental in the upbringing of their grandchildren. The couple, therefore, instructed the grandchildren to express their gratitude toward Gracia,¹⁷³ and, as a gesture of appreciation, Manuel (once a widower) granted Gracia a yearly income, accommodation, and household effects.¹⁷⁴

Women also knew how to express their emotions in their own right. Gracia da Silva sent a letter of condolence to Ribca Medina Chamis in which she expressed her regret on the death of Ribca’s sister-in-law and prayed God would help her brother and nephews overcome this “grande perda.”175 Rachel Belmonte left her niece money (in bonds), in light of the affection she felt toward her.¹⁷⁶ Sara Soares Henriques was very sensitive toward her brother, requesting that he not accompany her corpse and not to say kaddish for her, because she was convinced such ceremonies would move him too much.¹⁷⁷ Ester Arias expressed her gratitude for help and assistance from a male friend through a legacy.¹⁷⁸ She also left a bedcover of yellow silk to a female friend (“vrindin”), the wife of Salomon de Jacob Belmonte, as a memento (“tot een gedagtenis”).¹⁷⁹ Ribca Teixeira spoke to her adopted son with words of affection, saying she had always loved him very fondly and educated him with much care.¹⁸⁰ This episode also shows the tenderness and emotions toward children in times of high infant mortality, which also affected the Dutch Sephardim.¹⁸¹

One should not take for granted that Sephardi men and women would always respect or tolerate each other. Jacob Justo, for example, beat his wife and locked her in the attic,¹⁸² and Joseph Montes assaulted the wife of Daniel Fresco.¹⁸³ Moseh Moreno Monsanto was very bitter about the behavior of his daughter Rachel, born during his first marriage, and he did not want to deal with her any more.¹⁸⁴

The other side of the coin shows Sephardi women as the initiators of decisive marital actions and not willing to be underdogs. Margareta Rodrigues, accompanied by her daughter and a black servant, left her husband and house, taking along most of the household effects.¹⁸⁵ The wife of Jacob Pereira Bueno de Mesquita had enough of marital strife as well; she disappeared from her house and husband at night, taking along her little daughter.¹⁸⁶

Dutch Sephardi women were, first and foremost, in charge of the household, like other women of the European bourgeoisie of their time in general, and the Iberian society in particular.¹⁸⁷ The above-mentioned Rachel Medina Chamis, for example, registered her income and expenses meticulously, as she wrote it all down in a small booklet. We note the large operation she managed. She collected the rent from her houses and rooms; hired and paid her personnel, the butcher, the tailor, and the doctor; bought her food, clothes, wigs, and wood; and took care of the extended family present in her household.¹⁸⁸ Another example is Isabel Alvarez, who took care of Aaron Alvarez in all that related to food, clothes, and accommodation, as instructed by Manuel Levy Duarte.¹⁸⁹

Sephardi women seem to have been very dedicated to the life and well-being of their families, as they had been earlier on the Iberian Peninsula, where some even tried to liberate their imprisoned husbands by sending pleading petitions to the Inquisitorial tribunal.190 In Amsterdam, their dedication is expressed in letters, in the wording of last wills, in direct cash gifts, or in natura like clothes or grants given through foundations.¹⁹¹

Often, they seem to have been quite strong characters. Family members came to ask for financial help, if the women were rich enough to provide it.¹⁹² These, of course, were women of power, whose assets allowed them to have influence and make decisions, and who were aware, as were their male partners, of the importance of guaranteeing the family assets, status, and reputation.¹⁹³ Often, they were involved in contracting marriages.¹⁹⁴ Although Josua de Prado participated in family affairs by bequeathing his niece and nephew his house (including furniture, jewelry, and warehouses) on the condition that they would marry each other,¹⁹⁵ his mother, Rachel de Prado, widow of Isaac de Prado, wrote much more emotionally and perceptively concerning this issue. She maintained she did not want to force anything upon anyone, but did so implicitly, including a legacy to her two grandchildren, then sixteen and nine years old, on the condition that they would get married—stipulations they obeyed.¹⁹⁶

There are references to ethnic-religious criteria that females were very keen and proud to preserve.¹⁹⁷ Thus Dutch Sephardi women often made inheritance conditional on having children marrying members of the Spanish or Portuguese Jewish nation. Ribca Belmonte appointed as her heirs the child or children of her brother Samuel Belmonte, but only if such heirs entered into a legal marriage with a Spanish or Portuguese Jewish man or woman, and not with someone from any other nation.¹⁹⁸ Rachel Medina Chamis, widow of Joseph Henriques de Medina, appointed her two nephews to be her sole heirs on the condition that they marry someone from the Portuguese Jewish nation. If not, they would be disinherited.¹⁹⁹

Sephardi women from less well-to-do circles seemed to be equally strong, fighting their way through life, trying to get dowries for their daughters in order to marry them off well, and arranging educational and work opportunities for their sons in the Dutch Republic or abroad.²⁰⁰ The source material for the less fortunate is somewhat less abundant and evident than what is available regarding the richer segment of the Dutch Sephardim.

Social Activities

The life of Sephardi women was not just restricted to family, education, and work. They also were active in the social life of the community—some in works of benevolence, others in the literary academies (inside and outside the Jewish community), and perhaps in many more projects.

Many women were involved in charitable activities, eager to help the poor, obsessed by concepts of sin and reward, and keen on status and prestige. The conditions for bequests laid down in the last wills of Portuguese widows in early modern Amsterdam strikingly resemble those granted by widows among the Iberian elite, who were also very much inclined to make sure their name was immortalized, their family privileged and provided for, and the poor taken care of.201 Often, before they died women personally divided, instructed others to divide, or were told to divide money or goods among the poor.²⁰²

The fact that Sephardi women were particularly sensitive to the honor of unmarried women, by providing dowries to girls through private gifts and foundations, is not so much an expression of their bond to Judaism as it is a manifestation of the southern European culture they internalized.²⁰³

Charitable institutions that were established and administered—at least officially—by Sephardi women could not be found in Amsterdam.²⁰⁴ This phenomenon is quite unique in the Jewish world of this period, because in Italy, Germany, and also within the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam, women established hevrot of their own.²⁰⁵ Also, in Dutch and European society at large, charitable organizations set up and administered by women were a normal phenomenon.²⁰⁶

In many charitable organizations in the Portuguese community of Amsterdam, women could be members but had no right to vote, while financial matters always remained in male hands.²⁰⁷ Here again, we notice the influence of southern European society being transferred to the North; in Spain and Italy, especially, we find the same pattern. There, as among the Dutch Sephardim, women were involved in charitable organizations but, in most cases, had no part in initiating or administrating them.²⁰⁸

The more well-to-do women joined hevrot solely for charitable purposes.²⁰⁹ It could also have been a matter of status. In cases of membership in the boys’ orphanage, for example, the corpses of the women would be accompanied to the cemetery by orphans and members, while prayers for their soul would be delivered in the yeshivah. For example, Gracia Senior, apparently very keen to be accompanied, mentioned her wishes on purpose in her last will. The presence of the orphans, accompanying Gracia’s corpse, implied that she used to be a member of the orphanage and that she had left legacies to each of the orphans and/or the orphanage at large. Her benevolence, evident and perceptible, enhanced her prestige.²¹⁰ Yet membership of women in these types of organizations remained generally rather low.211 However, we see more involvement of Sephardi women in organizations where, besides charitable activities, they also got something back in return for their membership—insurance in times of widowhood, assistance during illness and old age, or help with funeral procedures.

Here we realize the precarious situation of many middle-class Sephardi women in early modern Amsterdam, who, lacking the protective membership of guilds, were looking for other forms of insurance and protection and did not want to rely on communal sedaca, which was beneath their honor and selfesteem. This explains why the largest contingent of Sephardim in hevrot, such as Maskil el Dal (Enlightener-of-the-Poor) and Temime Darech (Straightforward-People), consisted of female members. These hevrot were mostly intended as mutual aid organizations, besides being a venue for studying the Holy Law and taking care of the poor. Some hevrot even had their own medical staffs. This indicates how intensely these women were looking for some sort of security.²¹²

Although the administration of organized charity was mostly the affair of men, charitable initiatives were, to a great extent, directed toward poor females, including unmarried women and widows. This was not only through the official channels of the Portuguese community but also through private organizations like Sidcat Nassim (Charity-for-Women), Mispat Abanot (Justice-for-Girls), and Parnasad Almanot (Livelihood-for-Widows), to name a few.²¹³ Besides, many Dutch Sephardim left money in their wills or through other legal and financial instruments especially meant for women—in Holland and elsewhere in the Sephardi Diaspora, in the form of dowries or yearly allowances.²¹⁴ Here we see an intense focus on the well-being of women, which existed in Southern Europe and carried over to Northern Europe.²¹⁵

Currently, information is scarce on other social aspects of Sephardi female activities within their Amsterdam community, though, as pointed out earlier, we know that women were actively involved in the literary academies. In pictures we see Sephardi women dancing in taverns. Apparently, they disguised themselves for Purim; the rabbanim talked about masquerades of men and women during that festival.²¹⁶ Did they celebrate the shabbatot and holidays in the company of family and friends? We see them preparing for Pesach and celebrating a seder. They might have gone out to visit friends, as they were used to doing on the Peninsula, because there is talk of female friends.²¹⁷ The wife of Antonio Alvares (alias Joseph Israel Alvares) must have been all dressed up and adorned with jewelry when she went out to meet acquaintances in the company of her husband. In his will, the latter did not grant his wife a chain with pearls, because it was only on loan for his wife to wear on social outings.²¹⁸ We do not know to what extent Sephardi women in Holland were instrumental in organizing musical evenings or other social events at home. Such events were certainly the custom among Amsterdam Ashkenazim.219 Sephardi women probably accompanied their husbands on their visits to theaters.²²⁰ Further research might give us insight into many more aspects of social life among the Dutch Sephardi women.

Identification toward Judaism

It is well known that it was chiefly women in converso families on the Iberian Peninsula who transmitted Jewish traditions from parent to child.²²¹ Did Amsterdam Sephardi women become at all involved in normative Judaism or did they not take it all that seriously? Could we point to some development over time? Although there are some examples of female behavior that prove the opposite, the impression is often that of a strong dedication to Judaism, at least during the seventeenth century.

Upon arrival in the city, many Sephardi women expressed the desire to adhere to Jewish life freely, as can be deduced from the text on the tombstone of Sara Pereira: “I was born in Lusitania and prayed to God to be buried in a liberated country. And so I came 87 years of age, old and cripple, to enjoy the privilege I dreamt of.”²²²

Some even seem to have mastered Hebrew in Amsterdam, as in the case of Sara Sarfatim. Her gravestone, engraved in Hebrew, tells how she studied the Holy Tongue and prayed the prayers aravit, shakharit, and minkhah every day.²²³ Dedication to Jewish tradition and legacy can also be found in the case of the widow of H. H. R. Abraham Gabay Yzidro, Sara, who made an effort to have the work of her late husband printed, in order to keep it for posterity and have children learn from it. In the “Dedicatoria,” she shows herself to be quite knowledgeable about Judaism and presents some verses from the Tanakh in Hebrew, though she writes the main text in Portuguese, apparently not knowing enough Hebrew.²²⁴

Most of the New Christian women arrived in the Republic without a solid knowledge of an observant Jewish way of life, but we are not sure they all ended up mastering Hebrew or being as knowledgeable about Judaism as the aforementioned Saras. For Sephardi women, there were no study circles or institutes of Jewish Studies, such as those set up for adult men and boys. Yet in the end, in Amsterdam they must have known enough to teach their children at home, as they had done earlier on the Peninsula.

In Amsterdam, they instructed their children, boys and girls alike, in the basic principles of Judaism, often as explicitly requested by their spouses. Moses Abarbanel instructed his wife to educate his children, among them several daughters, “in the fear of God and according to the Laws given through Moses to Israel.”225 Thus in many cases, the Jewish tradition was taken up again and carried on by men and women, stimulated by the first generation of Sephardim in the Dutch Republic. Emmanuel Abenatar told his children, boys and girls alike, to practice (at home) the Holy Law given by God on Mount Sinai with all soberness and mildness. By doing so, they would be ensured God’s blessings.²²⁶

Sephardi women could learn about Judaism through books written in Spanish or Portuguese—for instance, in Menasseh ben Israel’s Thesovro, where, in the last part, he addressed himself to the “very noble and honest senhoras of the Portuguese nation, who were arriving anew every day from Spain.” Therein, he taught them the basic laws of Judaism and moral precepts related to women.²²⁷ He admitted that he was very much aware of the absence of good instruction for women. For that matter, he urged the Sephardi women to read his work and get away from “idle books,” especially on the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays. In his book, Sephardi women could read about marriage and how to run a Jewish home. Not only Jewish law was prescribed, he maintained, but also moral precepts of which he told them to take good note. He instructed them how to keep a kosher household, ordered them to cover their hair, and to behave nicely and humbly toward their husbands. He taught the women certain prayers, all of them in Portuguese, apparently presuming that most of them had not and would not master Hebrew.²²⁸

We do not know whether there were female teachers of Judaism, at least not until the end of the eighteenth century, although there is mention of a mestra in the girls’ orphanage Mazon Abanot.²²⁹ Perhaps Sephardi women who reached Amsterdam from the Jewish Diaspora, and were born and reared in an observant Jewish milieu, took the responsibility to introduce the Portuguese ex-conversas into Jewish learning.

At any rate, women found their own ways to gather knowledge about Judaism. Abigail Dias da Fonseca, for example, invited the yeshivah Temime Darech to hold its meetings in her house and apparently listened to the discussions from behind a screen.²³⁰ Perhaps, besides the Thesovro of Menasseh ben Israel, Sephardi women also glanced at the Menorat Ha-Maor, which Isaac Aboab, in fourteenth-century Spain, already intended for reading by women (and others), and which was made available in Spanish after 1629 under the title of Almenara de la Luz.231

In their last wills, many Sephardi women tell us how proud they were to be Jews of the Portuguese nation, believing in the Law God gave Moses on Mount Sinai.²³² When we read how often they pleaded with God to pardon them for their sins and prayed for salvation of their souls, we realize they were still carrying on aspects of Catholicism they supposedly left behind.²³³

The words of Dutch Sephardi women show a strong identification with Judaism, but what about their deeds? Many left legacies to charity and religious brotherhoods in Amsterdam and beyond, showing solidarity with Jews, mostly of their own “Spanish and Portuguese Jewish nation,” not only in the city but also in other areas of the Sephardi Diaspora and in Eretz Israel. Johebed de Casseres, for example, seems to have been actively involved in the Amsterdam Portuguese community, being a member of Aby Jetomim (Father-of-Orphans) and Temime Darech. She also left money to the above-mentioned hevrot, Ets Haim, the poor, and the sedaca box of the Amsterdam Portuguese community. Her charity, however, did not stop at the Dutch borders, like that of many others, but had an international dimension. She left money to a poor family member in Bayonne, remembered the people in the Holy Land, and participated in the mitzvah to redeem Jewish prisoners worldwide through gifts to the Cativos foundation.²³⁴ Abigail Dias da Fonseca, in addition to leaving money for the sedaca box and other Amsterdam institutions—such as the yeshiva Ets Haim and the hevrot Aby Jetomim and Honen Dalim (Pitier-of-the-Poor)—also set up a dowry fund for poor girls, preferably of her own family or that of her husband, on the condition that they married a person of the Portuguese Jewish nation, somewhere in the Sephardi Diaspora. In doing so, she also stressed the importance of ethnic and religious values and made them concrete in the Republic and beyond.²³⁵

Strong adherence to Judaism, actively practiced among Sephardi females in the Dutch Republic, can also be gathered from various documents, especially from those of the seventeenth century. Sephardi women often excluded family members from inheritance if the latter were not inclined to live in countries where Judaism could be professed openly.²³⁶ For some women, who were very serious in their dedication to Judaism, Amsterdam meant only an intermediate station, the ultimate goal being to settle down or be buried in the Holy Land. Felipa de Saa prepared to leave for Eretz Israel, leaving worldly goods like real estate in Portugal and jewelry in Amsterdam.²³⁷ Ester Pinta, widow of Jose Pinto, wanted to be buried in the Holy Land together with her husband, and saved her money for that purpose.238 Probably under the influence of the appearance of the false messiah Sabbatai Tsevi, in 1666 Refica Barug prepared herself for a trip to Jerusalem.²³⁹

Many were apparently filled with a hatred of the Christian faith, shouting and spitting from their windows, yelling at a Sephardi woman who left the community and went over to the Reformed Church, and blaming her for lowering herself to the level of a dog and the law of a dog.²⁴⁰ A handful of women ignored this pressure; for instance, Gracia Baruch, after her divorce from David Athias, left Amsterdam for Brussels to join the Catholic Church, although she knew this would gain little appreciation from her friends.²⁴¹

Sephardi women further proved their allegiance to Judaism by their attitude toward the synagogue and its services. They filled the synagogue with presents such as Sifre Torah, embroidered mantles, and silver objects including rimmonim, plates, and cans.²⁴² They also made vows (promessas) during services and contributed money to cover the expenses for the building of the famous Esnoga.²⁴³ It was important to them that prayers for their deceased family members were delivered and candles lit, and they often set money aside for charity and for kaddish and haskavot prayers to be said upon their own deaths.²⁴⁴

The eighteenth century offers us a somewhat different picture. Concepts of sin and reward are mentioned less; religion did not seem to play a prominent role in many cases. In different derashot, a Hakham, named Ayllon, deplored the appearance of his female subjects: “Instead of observing Jewish law, being decent and pure, today they lack all the virtues that crowned them earlier . . . you can see the hair of these women, while their dress is not decent either.”²⁴⁵

Because of his plea, the leaders of the community tried to change the tide of further imitation of European trends, advising their male members to instruct their women and children to dress modestly, to tell their wives not to go into the streets with their hair uncovered, and to refrain from wearing clothes “prohibited by our Holy Law.”²⁴⁶ These admonitions were not very effective. Wealthy Sephardi women continued to dress according to the European fashion of their time. Many portraits from the eighteenth century show Sephardi women with low-necked gowns and uncovered hair, which would not get the approval of the Amsterdam hakhamim, and certainly not of the above-cited Hakham Ayllon.²⁴⁷

Exceptions certainly existed. In the course of the eighteenth century, several Sephardi women held strongly to their Jewish faith, especially those who only recently had come as conversas from the Catholic world.²⁴⁸ In many other cases, however, the eighteenth-century Dutch Sephardi community bore witness to a process of assimilation and acculturation among its women, especially among the upper class. Often they freed themselves from precise adherence to observant Jewish laws. Others continued to live strictly according to Jewish tradition and committed themselves seriously to transfer this legacy to the next generation.

It is difficult to find a common denominator for the wide spectrum of Sephardi women living in Holland’s Golden Age. How should we account for their courage, strength, and entrepreneurship on leaving a country of birth, making long-distance trips, and starting a new life in an unfamiliar environment and atmosphere?

Some lived in Amsterdam, not only with their extended families, but, more often than not, alone—be they single, married, or widowed, sometimes heading a household. Yet, in many cases, Dutch Sephardim, including the women among them, gave protection and showed solidarity and responsibility toward each other—sharing houses, inviting loners to join them, all of them living close to the center of Jewish life and social action.

Some documents give us the impression of happy women, now that they and their offspring were settled in a free world, proudly identifying with Judaism and actively involved in community life. Yet there were also cases of Sephardi women who turned their backs on the Sephardi community, or were dismissed by its lay and spiritual leadership because of improper behavior. The latter built a new life outside the community borders, in the Dutch Republic or beyond, disconnected from the Jewish milieu.

Many Sephardi women occupied influential positions in the family circle and in the Dutch and international economy. Various sources make us realize that, for a large group of Sephardi women, life in Amsterdam was not very easy. Many had to work hard to make a living, often became dependent on charity, and, sometimes, did not easily find a partner.

Because they were keenly aware of status and hierarchy, various distinctions were made between rich and poor (with almost no process of upward social mobility), but also between Sephardi women coming as conversas from the Peninsula versus those arriving in the city from the Sephardi Diaspora—mostly from North Africa, Italy, or the Levant. The permanent presence of women from the Diaspora was not always guaranteed in Amsterdam; moreover, they were often employed to care for the “upper-class ex-conversas” (even the now impoverished among them) in less elevated jobs.249

In the meantime, the ex-conversa Dutch Sephardi females did not manage to break completely from their Iberian past, manifesting Iberian influences in their attitude toward physical work, charity, and in the way they often hid behind or let themselves be represented by male partners or friends, through whom they were also often controlled. Consequently, the lifestyle and behavior of these Sephardi women contrasted with their surroundings, at least for the first generation.

Even though, in the course of the eighteenth century, we find ample proof of an ongoing process toward acculturation, we can still detect, among the Sephardi women of Holland’s Golden Age, traces of their Iberian heritage—feelings of exclusivity and superiority, proud identification with their ethnicreligious origin, and dedication to the Jewish and social life of their community. These communal characteristics represented a specific subculture that gave these Sephardi women a distinction all their own.

Notes

1. Sir William Brereton, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland and Ireland 1634–1635 (Manchester, UK: printed for the Chatham Society, 1844), 61.

2. Michael Studemund-Halévy, “Senhores versus criados da Nação: Portugueses, asquenasíes y tudescos en el Hamburgo del siglo XVII,” Sefarad 60 (2000): 349–367.

3. Marcelin Defourneaux, Daily Life in Spain in the Golden Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1979–1966 [first original French edition]), 146–148; Judith R. Baskin, “Jewish Women in the Middle Ages,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998, 2nd ed.), 103; Renée Levine Melammed, “Sephardi Women in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, 130; Ann M. Pescatello, Power and Pawn: The Female in Iberian Families, Societies and Cultures (London: Greenwood Press, 1976), 20; Raphael Patai, The Seed of Abraham. Jews and Arabs in Contact and Conflict (New York: Scribner, 1986), 233–270; James Casey, Early Modern Spain: A Social History (London: Routledge, 1999), 204–205, 212–213; Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 79, 111.

4. Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, “Everyday Life in the Sephardic Community of Jerusalem according to the Meam Loez of Rabbi Jacob Kuli,” SR 35, no. 2 (2001): 133–142.

5. Paméla Dorn Sezgin, “Jewish Women in the Ottoman Empire,” in Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry: From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern Times, ed. Zion Zohar (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 216–235.

6. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: Collins, 1987), 398–427, 260; Arie Th. Van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 81–95; Danielle van den Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship. Female Traders in the Northern Netherlands, c. 1580–1815 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Aksant, 2007); for Ashkenazi women, see Willem F. H. Oldewelt, Kohier van de Personeele Quotisatie te Amsterdam over het jaar 1742, vol. II. (Amsterdam: Genootschap Amstelodanum, 1945), 73, 87, 88—where many Ashkenazi women appear as merchants; see further notarial deeds on Ashkenazi women operating independently as described below. The frequency with which Ashkenazi women appeared in court for crime, prostitution, and the like also tells something about the large freedom of movement enjoyed by Ashkenazi women in Dutch society: Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, “Portugese joden en misdaad in de Republiek,” Pro Memorie 2, no. 8 (2006): 222; and 81.

7. See the welfare lists of 1700: SAA, PA 334, no. 176, 349, 1 Nisan 5460 [21 March 1700].

8. Kurt Schottmüller, “Reiseeindrücke aus Danzig, Lübeck, Hamburg und Holland 1636: nach dem neuentdeckten II. Teil von Charles Ogiers Geschaftschaftstagebuch,” Zeitschrift des westpreussischen Geschichtsvereins 52 (1910): 262–263.

9. John H. Landwehr, Romeyn de Hooghe, The Etcher: Contemporary Portrayal of Europe, 1662–1707 (Leiden: Sijthoff, 1973); Isabella H. van Eeghen, Bernard Picart en de Joodse godsdienstplichten (Amsterdam: Maandblad Amstelodanum, 1978); Samantha Baskind, “Bernard Picart’s Etchings of Amsterdam’s Jews,” Jewish Social Studies 13, no. 2 (2007): 40–64.

10. Until recently, only a few studies commented on the life of Sephardi women in early modern Amsterdam: Die mij gemaakt heeft tot een man. Joodse vrouwen tussen traditie en emancipatie, ed. Rachel van Emden (Kampen: Kok, 1986); Sherrin Marshall, “Protestant, Catholic and Jewish Women in the Early Modern Netherlands,” in Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Private and Public Worlds, ed. Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 120–139; Yosef Kaplan, “Famille, marriage et societé dans la diasporade séfarade occidentale (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles),” XVIIIe Siècle 183 (1994): 255–278; idem, “Moral Panic in the Eighteenth Century Sephardi Community of Amsterdam: The Threat of Eros,” in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture, ed. Jonathan I. Israel and Reinier Salverda (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 103–123; Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, “Mujeres judías hispano-portuguesas en el entorno holandés de Amsterdam en el siglo XVII,” in Familia, religión y negocio: El sefardismo en las relaciones entre el mundo ibérico y los Países Bajos en la Edad Moderna, ed. Jaime Contreras et al (Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes, 2002), 137–172.

11. For the term “New Jews,” see Yosef Kaplan, “Wayward New Christians and Stubborn New Jews: The Shaping of a Jewish Identity,” Jewish History, 8, nos. 1–2 (1994): 27–41; idem, Judíos nuevos en Amsterdam: Estudios sobre la historia social del judaísmo sefardí en el Siglo XVII (Barcelona: Gedisa, 1996); Marc Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of “New Jews” (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2005), xvii.

12. Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), 185; Carolus Reijnders, Van Joodsche Natiën tot Joodse Nederlanders. Een onderzoek naar getto-en assimilatieverschijnselen tussen 1600 en 1942 (Amsterdam: Joko, 1970), 18–33, 53–91; Arend H. Huussen, “The Legal Position of the Jews in the Dutch Republic c. 1590–1796,” in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture, ed. Jonathan Israel and Reinier Salverda (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 25–41.

13. Daniel M. Swetschinski, “From the Middle Ages to the Golden Age, 1516–1621,” in The History of the Jews in The Netherlands, ed. Hans C. H. Blom et al. (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007), 44–84; Jonathan I. Israel, “The Republic of the United Netherlands until about 1750: Demography and Economic Activity,” in The History of the Jews in the Netherlands, 85–115; Yosef Kaplan, “The Jews in the Republic until about 1750: Religious, Cultural and Social Life,” in The History of the Jews in the Netherlands, 116–163.

14. Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, “The Chosen Poor: Charity and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam” (Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University, 2005), 73, table 9; and the forthcoming book Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization); Israel, “The Republic of the United Netherlands,” 100.

15. SAA PA 334, no. 30, 331, 14 Adar 5551 [18 February 1791]; ibid., no. 290, 1–30, 5551 [1791].

16. Levie Bernfeld, “Chosen Poor,” 85, tables 11 and 12. The surplus of women within the Amsterdam Portuguese community was not a singular phenomenon, but, in fact, characteristic for the city as a whole: Lotte C. van de Pol, Het Amsterdams hoerdom. Prostitutie in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1996), 106–111.

17. Ets Haim Library, Amsterdam, Manuscript 48 D 43: “Memoria de las personas que ay en la Nacíon cazadas, en 19 de Sivan 5435 [13 June 1675].” Here, out of the 558 married persons, 300 were taxed for the internal finta tax; SAA PA 334, no. 174, 1033–1046, 7 Tishri 5435 [7 October 1674].

18. Levie Bernfeld, “Chosen Poor,” 30, table 3.

19. See the flight of the De Pinto family in Herman Salomon, “The ‘De Pinto Manuscript’: A Seventeenth-Century Marrano Family History,” SR 9, no. 1 (1975): 1–62.

20. Antonia Nunes, spinster, came alone to Amsterdam from Viseu (SAA NA 5075, no. 611B, 589v-590, Not. Ruttens, 6 August 1619); see also women coming to Amsterdam from Málaga (SAA PA 334, no. 215, 28, 26 Av 5424 [17 August 1664]).

21. SAA PA 334, no. 826, 1, 30 August 1673, last will of Gracia Senior, alias Doña Isabel Henriques, widow of Duarte Coronel Enriques.

22. See the case of Bartholomeus Rodrigues Henriques: SAA NA 5075, no. 2205, 357, Not. A. Lock, 2 September 1658.

23. Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam, 161, n. 56; idem, 160. The husband involved here is David Mexia, who in 1618 was imprisoned by the Portuguese Inquisition.

24. SAA NA 5075, no. 646A, 574–575, Not. S. Cornelisz., 26 June 1623; also published in SR 24, no. 2 (1990): 220–221, no. 2924.

25. See the case of Refica Gomez de Sevilla, who apparently arrived alone in Amsterdam in 1652, to be supported by the community till her death in 1659. Meanwhile, in 1656, she appeared to have become a widow without any trace of a husband (f.e. SAA PA 334, no. 173, 194, 214; and ibid., no. 174, 167, 303: years 5412–5419 [1651–1659]).

26. SAA PA 334, no. 1141, 90 and 92, 12 Adar 5378 [9 March 1618].

27. For the woman from Oran, see SAA PA 334, no. 216, 74, 28 Tevet 5432 [29 December 1671]; for Sara Cardoza and her two children arriving from Venice, see SAA PA 334, no. 1142, 26, 23 January 5384 [1624]; ibid., 110/219, 5396 [1636]; ibid., no. 172, 4, 6, 10–11, 24, 35, 59, 64, 77, 82–83, and 85–86: years 5399–5400 [1639–1640].

28. SAA PA 334, no. 217, 5, 7 Hesvan 5437 [14 October 1676].

29. See SAA PA 334, no. 219, 26, 25 Kislev 5452 [16 December 1691]. On the influx and reception of Balkan Sephardim in Amsterdam, see Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, “Les Sépharades des Balkans à Amsterdam au début de l’époque moderne. Confrontation entre l’Orient et l’Occident,” Itinéraires sépharades. Complexité et diversité des identités, ed. Esther Benbassa (Paris: PUPS, 2010), 33–61.

30. Mark R. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 143–144; Shelomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: An Abridgement in One Volume; revised and edited by Jacob Lassner, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 397–398; Avigdor Levy, The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1992), 81–82; for the situation of Ashkenazi women: Florike Egmond, “Contours of Identity: Poor Ashkenazim in the Dutch Republic,” in DJH 3, ed. Jozeph Michman (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993), 217–218.

31. SAA PA 334, no. 119a, map 16, undated [apparently 1671], 486–487, 28 November 1671; ibid., NA 5075, no. 2237, 1105–1108, Not. A. Lock, written 28 November 1671; opened 23 December 1671, last will of Sara Alvares.

32. SAA PA 334, no. 667, 1, 7 December 1787.

33. SAA PA 334, no. 19, 216, 28 Kislev 5407 [6 December 1646].

34. SAA PA 334, no. 630, 20 January 1741. The crisis (“Geschillen”) took place during the 1720s.

35. SAA RA 5061, no. 310, 162v, 2 April 1655.

36. Last will of Abraham Israel Torres, alias Bartholome Fernandes Torres (SAA NA 5075, no. 2890, 17–19, Not. P. Padthuysen, 10 November 1661).

37. SAA NA 5075, no. 942, 295, 4 July 1633.

38. The number of persons within a family unit is counted on the basis of 8 pounds (livras: 327,45 gram) matzo flour per person (SAA PA 334, no. 10, 1, 5393 [1632–3]); see the case of Sara Lopes Pita (SAA PA 334, no. 172, 205, 5403 [1643]; ibid., 292, 5405 [1645]; ibid., no. 173, 213, 5412 [1652]; ibid., no. 174, 609, 5424 [1663]).

39. Jan Lucassen, Dutch Long Distance Migration: A Concise History 1600–1900 (Amsterdam: IISG Research Paper 3, International Institute of Social History, 1991), 20, 36; Van Deursen, Plain Lives, 89; Roelof van Gelder, Zeepost (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Atlas, 2008); Kathryn Norberg, Rich and Poor in Grenoble 1600–1814 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 103 ff; Olwen Hufton, “Women without Men: Widows and Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 355–376; Leslie P. Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 84–87.

40. Yosef Kaplan, “Famille, marriage,” 255–278; idem, “The Social Functions of the Herem in the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century” in DJH [1], ed. Jozeph Michman and Tirtsah Levie [Bernfeld] (Jerusalem: Tel-Aviv University, Hebrew University, The Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry, 1984), 111–155; idem, “Deviance and Excommunication in the Eighteenth Century: A Chapter in the Social History of the Sephardi Community of Amsterdam,” in DJH 3, 103–115; idem, “Moral Panic,” 103–123; for control in matters of morality and family life within Amsterdam churches: Herman Roodenburg, Onder censuur. De kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam 1578–1700 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1990).

41. Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, Quando o rico se faz pobre. Misericórdias, caridade e poder no Império Português 1500–1800 (Lisboa: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1997), 202.

42. SAA PA 334, no. 1304, 10–14, 15 Kislev 5409 [30 November 1648]; Arnold Wiznitzer, “The Minute Book of Congregations Zur Israel of Recife and Magen Abraham of Mauricia, Brazil,” American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 42, no. 3 (March 1953): 217–302. The signature of Isaias Salom, for example, is registered in the Brazilian document. He left for Brazil in 1638 (SAA NA 5075, no. 1050, 72, Not. J. van de Ven, 27 May 1638). He appears on the imposta tax list of the Portuguese community in Brazil in 1649 (SAA PA 334, no. 1304, 10–14, 15 Kislev 5409 [30 November 1648]). Meanwhile, his wife and her “familia” (one daughter, apparently married in 1652), winning a dowry from a private dowry foundation (SAA PA 334, no. 173, 233, 28 Iyyar 5412 [6 May 1652]), are for years being supported in Amsterdam by the Portuguese community, as of 1647 until her death in 1675. In 1668 the mother Judica turned from “wife of” into “widow of” without Isaias being around (SAA PA 334, no. 173, 11, 28, 29, 214, 259: years 5408 [1647–1648], 5412–5413 [1652–1653]; ibid., no. 174, 6, 7a, 21, 31, 48, 50, 77, 87, 119, 143, years 5413–5416 [1653–1656]; ibid., no. 215, 60, 63, 253, 290, 296: years 5424–25 [1664], 5428 [1668]; ibid., no. 216, 112, 186, 189: years 5432 [1672], 5435 [1675]), except for one time, in 1664 only (SAA PA 334, no. 215, 71, 16 Shevat 5424 [12 February 1664]).

43. For strict moral codes for women in the Ottoman Empire, see Dorn Sezgin, “Jewish Women in the Ottoman Empire,” 223–224; for New Christian women in the Iberian Peninsula isolated in and around their home, see Bernardo López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda. Hombres de negocios y judíos sefardíes. (Alcalá: Instituto Internacional de Estudios Sefardíes y Andalusíes, Universidad de Alcalá, 2001), 257–258.

44. SAA PA 334, no. 13, 86/43, 25 Tishri 5393 [10 October 1632]; ibid., no. 19, 62/147, 14 Adar 5400 [8 March 1640]; ibid., 214, 15 Elul 5406 [26 August 1646]; ibid., 479, Tisha be-Av 5420 [17 July 1660]; ibid., 754, 4 Hesvan 5437 [11 October 1676]; ibid., no. 24a, 11, 11 and 29 Tishri 5426 [20 September and 8 October 1665].

45. Menasseh ben Israel, Thesovro dos dinim, ultima parte na qual se co[m]tem todos os preceitos, ritos e cerimonias q[ue] tocaõ a hua perfeyta economica (Amsterdam: Ioseph be[n] Israel, 5407 [1647]), 122–123. Two years earlier, in 1645, Menasseh had published the first volume, the Thesovro dos dinim que o povo de Israel he obrigado saber e observar (Amsterdam: Eliahu Aboab, 5405 [1645]).

46. SAA NA 5075, no. 913, 63v–64v, Not. B. Jansen Verbeek, 4 April 1631.

47. Oud-Rechterlijk Archief Rotterdam 15, no. 149, 249–262, 23 and 26 June 1734.

48. SAA PAA, no. 118, map 1, 25 Kislev 5475 [2 December 1714]; also cited in Yosef Kaplan, “Eighteenth-Century Rulings by the Rabbinical Court of Amsterdam’s Community and Their Social-Historical Significance,” in Studies on the History of Dutch Jewry 5, ed. Jozeph Michman (Jerusalem: The Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry, 1988), 1–54 (Hebrew).

49. Kaplan, “Social Functions” and idem, “Moral Panic.”

50. SAA RA 5061, no. 198, 22 May 1658.

51. SAA RA 5061, no. 393, 215v-217v, 11 April 1736; ibid., no. 631, 1 February 1736. On infanticide in the Dutch Republic, see Sjoerd Faber, “Vrouwen van de rekening: kindermoordzaken ten tijde van de Republiek te Amsterdam en in Friesland,” in Soete Minne en Helsche boosheid, ed. Gert Hekma and Herman Roodenburg (Nijmegen: Sun, 1988), 145–167; Sjoerd Faber, Kindermoord, in het bijzonder in de achttiende eeuw te Amsterdam (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1988).

52. Levie Bernfeld, “Portugese joden en misdaad in de Republiek,” 208–234; Kaplan, “Moral Panic,” 108–109. See also Archives of the so-called “Spinhuis” and “Werkhuis:” SAA PA 347, no. 39, 1678–1811 and ibid., no. 118, 1664–1670.

53. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 47.

54. Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, The European Family: Patriarchy to Partnership from the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), 31–32; for conversos on the Peninsula living together in multigenerational families: Rafael Carrasco, “Preludio al ‘siglo de los Portugueses’: La Inquisición de Cuenca y los judaizantes lusitanos en el siglo XVI,” Sefarad 47, no. 166 (1987): 551.

55. Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam, 193.

56. Last will of Josua de Prado, alias Anthonio de Prado (SAA NA 5075, no. 7490, 19, Not. Van den Ende, no. 19, 12 March 1708).

57. SAA DBK 5072, no. 209, 56, 26 November 1693.

58. SAA PA 334, no. 973, 76, 27 Tevet 5525 [20 January 1765]; ibid., 80, 22 Iyyar 5528 [9 May 1768], and 22 Tammuz 5531 [4 July 1771].

59. Contract between David Mocatta Nunes and Rachel Keijser, who went to live in two rooms in his house (SAA PA 334, no. 719, 136, 23 May 1777); for the contract between Judica de Souza Machado and her son-in-law Isaac de Aron Henriques Moron, see SAA PA 334, no. 726, 23 May 1752. Living-in-contracts were also made among Ashkenazim: SAA NA 5075, no. 7533, Not. J. van Vilekens, 28 February 1710: Contract between Ariaentje Moses, widow of Jacob Abraham Pollack and her son Isacq Jacobs Pollack.

60. SAA PA 334, no. 658, 1733–1739.

61. Oldewelt, Kohier 1742, vol. II, 94.

62. SAA PA 334, no. 700/SAA NA 5075, no. 2942, Not. P. Padthuysen, 30 March 1703, last will of Abigail Dias da Fonseca, alias Beatris de Casseres, widow of Aron Dias da Fonseca.

63. SAA PA 334, no. 1141, 84, 109, 127, 143, 164: years 5378–5382 [1618–1622].

64. SAA PA 334, no. 17, 20 July 5389 [1629].

65. SAA PA 334, no. 120, map 81, 879–886, 6 Shevat 5494 [10 January 1734].

66. For similar patterns in Jewish and Iberian societies of the medieval and early modern period: Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (with an afterword and bibliography by Bernard D. Cooperman) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000, 2nd ed.), 117; Casey, Early Modern Spain, 29; Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 147.

67. SAA NA 5075, no. 2210, 33–34, Not. A. Lock, 7 January 1661; 14 January 1661, 119–121; ibid., PA 334, no. 24, 4 Kislev 5421 [7 November 1660]; for Ashkenazi couples just married in Amsterdam, at first living in parents’ house (SAA NA 5075, no. 7668, Not. A. Tzeewen, 14 July 1735, marriage settlement between Kaatje Cohen and Isaak Andries Levy).

68. SAA NA 5075, no. 7667, Not. A. Tzeeuwen, no. 318, 4 June 1735.

69. SAA PA 334, no. 173, 112, Rosh Hodesh Tevet 5410 [5 December 1649]; ibid., 167, 5411 [1651].

70. SAA PA 334, no. 20, 177r, Rosh Hodesh Nisan 5454 [27 March 1694].

71. SAA PA 334, no. 174, 250, 5418 [1648], matzot; ibid., no. 215, 4, 5423 [1663], rental subsidy to “Galenas tres irmaas.”

72. SAA PA 334, no. 219, 91, 9 Hesvan 5453 [19 October 1692].

73. SAA NA 5075, no. 7566, no. 133, Not. J. van Vilekens, 21 September 1735.

74. On living of the Amsterdam poor in rooms of small alleys and passageways, see Tirtsah Levie [Bernfeld] and Henk Zantkuyl, Wonen in Amsterdam in de 17de en 18e eeuw, ed. Renée Kistemaker and Carry van Lakerveld (Purmerend: Amsterdams Historisch Museum and Muusses, 1980), 41–42, 47, 53–57

75. Ariadne Schmidt, “Vrouwen en het recht. De juridische status van vrouwen in Holland in de vroegmoderne tijd,” Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 58 (2004): 37–38; Danielle Van den Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007) 56–69.

76. See the case of Catharina Lopes, wife of Abraham Alfarim: SAA NA 5075, no. 547a, 199–199v, Not. J. Westfrisius, 27 July 1620; published in SR 17, no. 1 (1983): 71, no. 2158.

77. SAA NA 5075, no. 6678B, Not. J. Snoeck, 549, 20 November 1703.

78. There is an abundance of material to be found in the notarial records on this matter. For the Sephardim in early modern Amsterdam, see the case of Lianor Cardoso, widow of Matias Rodrigues, who gave power of attorney to her son Matias Rodrigues Cardoso to look after all her affairs concerning the estate of her deceased husband (SAA NA 5075, no. 646a, 287, Not. S. Cornelisz., 9 November 1622; also published in SR 22, no. 1 [1988]: 66, no. 2733); when the latter left, he gave this power of attorney to his brother-in-law: SAA NA 5075, no. 646a, 381, Not. S. Cornelisz., 6 February 1623; see also SR 23, no. 1 (1989): 116, no. 2807.

79. HGA, BNR 130, no. 318, Not. S. Favon, 12 March 1742, last will of Jacob Henriques and Sara Lopes d’Almeida, in which the couple gives authority to the surviving partner to administer their possessions; on Dutch law and inheritance, see Ariadne Schmidt, “‘Touching inheritance.’ Mannen vrouwen en de overdracht van bezit in Holland in de 17e eeuw,” Holland 33, no. 3 (2001): 175–189.

80. SAA NA 5075, no. 6461, 689–691, Not. S. Cornelisz., 21 September 1623; see also SR 25, no. 2 (1991): 176, no. 3003.

81. For the last will of Gracia Senior, see n. 21.

82. See Levie Bernfeld, “Chosen Poor,” 65–89; see also Levie Bernfeld “Financing Poor Relief in the Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Community in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture, ed. Jonathan I. Israel and Reinier Salverda (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 63–102.

83. Compare the inventory of Rachel Cohen Belinfante on her bankruptcy with her meager belongings (SAA DBK 5072, no. 440, 178, 24 December 1743), or that of the poor Ester Barrocas (SAA PA 334, no. 218, 155–156/68–69, 25 Adar 5447 [10 March 1687]), with that of Lea Abenacar, widow of Abraham de Meza Flores (SAA NA 5075, no. 7491, no. 75, 895–919, Not. J. van den Ende, 7 July 1710).

84. Kees Zandvliet et al., De 250 rijksten van de Gouden Eeuw. Kapitaal, macht, familie en levensstijl (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and Nieuw Amsterdam Uitgevers, 2006), 138.

85. Isaac and Rachel de Prado gave one daughter a dowry of 30,000 guilders in cash and goods, the other one 46,000 guilders in cash and goods (SAA NA 5075, no. 3309, Not. H. Outgers, 27 January 1691). At the other extreme, others brought in very little: see the case of Eli de Medina (SAA DBK 5072, 208, 10 March 1692), and that of Abraham Bassan (SAA DBK 5072, no. 214, 19, 11 March 1698).

86. 38 out of 42 Sephardi women were registered as “rentiers” (90 percent) (Oldewelt, Kohier 1742, vol. II, 78–79, 80, 83, 85–89, 93–97, 101, 104, 105–107). However, the withdrawal from active economic life of the elite among the Dutch Sephardim is in line with the general picture of the merchants in the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century: see Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), part 4, especially 1016–1017.

87. Dutch Sephardi women invested their money in bonds, houses and industries: SAA NA 5075, no. 7549, Not. J. van Vilekens, 23 May 1724; SAA NA 5075, no. 7701, no. 109, Not. A. Tzeewen, 18 May 1750; ibid., PA 334, no. 668, 4–19, Not. Jan Barels, 18 April 1747; ibid., NA 5075, no. 7544, Not. J. van Vilekens, 18 September 1728; Frits Ph. Groeneveld, De economische crisis van het jaar 1720 (Groningen: Noordhoff, 1940), 198–207, supplement 1; on economic activities of Dutch upper-class women (including Sephardi women) Van den Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship, 251–262; on Jewish women in Italy who had lots of property to divide: Howard E. Adelman, “Jewish Women and Family Life, Inside and Outside the Ghetto,” in The Jews of Early Modern Venice, ed. Robert C. Davis and Benjamin C. I. Ravid (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 151.

88. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women in the Crafts in Sixteenth Century Lyon,” in Women and Work in Pre-Industrial Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 167–197; Martha C. Howell, “Women, the Family Economy and the Structures of Market Production in Cities of Northern Europe during the Late Middle Ages,” in Women and Work in Pre-Industrial Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 198–222; Olwen Hufton, “Women and the Family Economy in Eighteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies 9 (1975): 1–22; Ariadne Schmidt, Overleven na de dood. Weduwen in Leiden in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2001), 76.

89. For the pattern of work among Jewish women in the Middle Ages, Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, see index under “Women.” For occupational patterns among Jewish women in Italy, see Howard Adelman, “Rabbis and Reality: Public Activities of Jewish Women in Italy during the Renaissance and Catholic Restoration,” Jewish History 5, no. 1 (1991): 35–36; for a similar pattern among the New Christians in Portugal, see Bruce A. Lorence, “Professions held by New Christians in Northern and Southern Portugal during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century,” in History and Creativity in the Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Communities, ed. Haim Alexander (Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, 1994), 320–321.

90. SAA NA 5075, no. 7573B, 96, Not. J. van Vilekens, 5 September 1740.

91. SAA PA 334, no. 24a, 31, 1 Elul 5433 [13 August 1673]; ibid., no. 219, 126–127, 5452–5453 [1692–93]; ibid., 226, 30 Nisan 5454 [25 April 1694]; ibid., 404, 4 Sivan 5458 [14 May 1698]; ibid., no. 220, 92, 23 Elul 5460 [7 September 1700]; on Jewish women in the medical profession, see, among others, Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine and Medieval Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 108–112; Jacob R. Marcus, Communal Sick-Care in the German Ghetto (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1978); Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 119.

92. SAA NA 5075, no. 6676C, 305, Not. J. Snoek, 13 May 1701.

93. SAA NA 5075, no. 8830, no. 733, Not. J. Barels, 20 October 1733.

94. SAA NA 5075, no. 3280, no. 74, Not. H. Outgers, 21 November 1685. For the work of David de Casseres delivering material, among others for shrouds: SAA PA 334, no. 216, 145v, 17 Menahem-Av 5433 [30 July 1673]; ibid., 159, 4 Kislev 5440 [8 November 1679]; ibid., no. 217, 207, 13 Av 5440 [8 August 1680]; ibid., 256, 22 Tevet 5441 [12 January 1681]; ibid., 258, 28 Shevat 5441 [16 February 1681]; ibid., 259, 19 Adar 5441 [9 March 1681]; ibid., 264, 7 Iyyar 5441 [25 April 1681]; ibid., 310, 19 Shevat 5442 [28 January 1682].

95. SAA NA 5075, no. 628, 342–344, Not. S. Cornelisz., 2 July 1621; also published in SR 19, no. 2 (1985): 174, no. 2450.

96. SAA PA 334, no. 222, 46–47, 12 Adar 5474 [27 Feb 1714]); for Isaac de Castro acting as a pharmacist, see SAA PA 334, no. 217, 490, 5 Av 5444 [16 July 1684].

97. SAA NA 5075, no. 7533, 289–290, Not. J. van Vilekens, 24 March 1710; SAA NA 5075, no. 7582, Not. J. van Vilekens, 12 May 1748.

98. Johannes G. van Dillen, Bronnen tot de geschiedenis van het bedrijfsleven en het gildewezen van Amsterdam (’s- Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1974): no. 1625, NA 5075, no. 3582, Not. J. Snel, 13 January 1668; idem, “De economische positie en betekenis der joden in de Republiek en in de Nederlandse koloniale wereld,” in Geschiedenis der Joden in Nederland, ed. Hendrik Brugmans and Abraham Frank (Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1940), 573; also SAA DBK 5072, no. 141, 112 and 118v, 16 December 1692 and 22 January 1693; ibid., no. 294, 98–100v, 6 January 1693.

99. SAA PA 334, no. 215, 250, 5428 [1668]; for conversas selling flour: Renée Levine Melammed “Castilian Conversas at Work,” in Women at Work in Spain: From the Middle Ages to Early Modern Times, ed. Marilyn Stone and María del Carmen Benito-Vessels (New York: Lang, 1998), 84, 89, 94.

100. SAA PA 334, no. 220, 40, 16 Nisan 5459 [15 April 1699].

101. SAA PA 334, no. 174, 540, 10 Shevat 5423 [18 January 1663]; on Amsterdam Sephardi women making candles from wax: Menasseh ben Israel, Thesovro dos Dinim, 1647, 89, 12 Tammuz 5407 [15 July 1647].

102. SAA PA 334, no. 25, 83, 25 Adar 5463 [13 March 1703].

103. Schmidt, Overleven na de dood, 143–150.

104. See the different articles in Women at Work in Spain.

105. For the shop of Rachel Preto, see SAA RA 5061, no. 312, 211–212, 20 February 1659.

106. Maria Luria and Maria de Soria, for example, delivered groceries to the shop of Josua Furtado: SAA DBK 5072, no. 213, 34, 10 June 1697.

107. SAA PA 334, no. 219, 30, 4 Nisan 5452 [21 March 1692].

108. SAA NA 5075, no. 645B, Not. S. Cornelisz., 17 November 1620; also published in SR 17, no. 2 (1983): 217, no. 2241; on Jewish women in the Middle Ages being active in money lending, see Cheryl Tallan, “Opportunities for Medieval Northern European Jewish Widows in the Public and Domestic Spheres,” in Upon My Husband’s Death: Widows in the Literature and Histories of Medieval Europe, ed. Louise Mirr (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 115–127; see also, on Jewish women in Constantinople active in money lending between 1645–1675: Eliezer Bashan, “Jewish Money Lending in Constantinople and Smyrna during the 17th–18th Centuries as Reflected in the British Levant Company’s Archives,” in The Mediterranean and the Jews: Banking, Finance and International Trade (XVI–XVIII Centuries), ed. Ariel Toaff and Simon Schwarzfuchs (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1989), 66–67.

109. SAA PA 334, no. 87, 1750; ibid., no. 20, 1753; on the sale of old clothes in the open air by Ashkenazim, see SAA, RA 5061, no. 693, 26 January 1737: Requestenboek Kleermakersgilde.

110. The widow of Salomon Farques took in Isaac Calvo in transit from Hamburg to Bordeaux (SAA PA 334, no. 215, 311, 13 Nisan 5429 [14 April 1669]; ibid., no. 216, 10, 27, 13 Nisan–23 Sivan 5430 [3 April–11 June 1670]; ibid., no. 174, 891, 7 Av 5430 [24 July 1670]).

111. Van Deursen, Plain Lives, 7–10; Bibi S. Panhuysen, “Gevestigden en buitenstaanders in de kledingsector: het Amsterdams kleermakersgilde, 1500–1800,” in Amsterdammer worden. Migranten, hun organisaties en inburgering 1600–2000, ed. Leo Lucassen (Amsterdam: Vossiuspers Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2004), 149–185; see also SAA NA 5075, no. 5061, no. 694, no. 29, 1747–1748. The same pattern can be found elsewhere in Europe and also in Spain, where women were spinning at home for the wool and silk industry (Casey, Early Modern Spain, 62). For similar activities for Jewish women in the Ottoman Empire, see Dorn Sezgin, “Jewish Women in the Ottoman Empire,” 220–221. In Amsterdam, Rachel de Andrade sewed clothes for Rachel Sega de Espanha (SAA PA 334, no. 217, 97, 14 Shevat 5438 [6 February 1678]). Sara Macabeu made shirts (see inventory of Jean Cardoso: SAA NA 5075, no. 2261B, 995, Not. A. Lock, 12 April 1661).

112. SAA PA 334, no. 24a, 41v, 20 Sivan 5437 [20 June 1677].

113. For spinning wheels in private houses: SAA DBK 5072, no. 382, 167, 14 January 1678; ibid., no. 385, 201, 26 March 1680; for pillows to knit: SAA NA 5075, no. 2894, 1551, Not. P. Padthuysen, 24 February 1665; SAA NA 5075, no. 7490, no. 52, Not. J. van den Ende, 28 September 1708.

114. SAA PA 334, no. 120, map 81, 916, paragraph 7, 8 Adar I, 5494 [11 February 1734].

115. SAA NA 5075, no. 2261, 547–551, Not. A. Lock, 9 February, 1660; ibid., PA 334, no. 612, no. 1, Not. D. van den Brink, 20 May 1754.

116. For the same phenomenon in the Ottoman Empire, Dorn Sezgin, “Jewish Women in the Ottoman Empire,” 222–223.

117. SAA PA 334, no. 24a, 64v, 13 Tishri 5444 [3 October 1683]; ibid., no. 175, 236, 1 Hesvan 5444 [21 October 1683]; ibid., no. 1052, 132v/121v, 5449 [1689]. According to Idaña, widows were usually appointed to take care of the mikveh (Benjamin N. Teensma, “Fragmenten uit het Amsterdamse convoluut van Abraham Idaña, alias Gaspar Méndez del Arroyo (1623–1690),” SR 11 (1977): 134.

118. SAA PA 334, no. 174, 610, Rosh Hodesh Tevet 5424 [30 December 1663].

119. SAA PA 334, no. 1329, no. 162, carton 24. We also come across the profession of midwives among conversas at the Iberian Peninsula: Levine Melammed, “Castilian Conversas at Work,” 133.

120. Ribca Lopes Cardoso became such an assistant to the poor in 1736 (SAA PA 334, no. 25, 224, [s.d.] Tevet 5496 [December 1735/January 1736]); for a female administrator of the loan bank, see the daughter-in-law of Abraham Cohen de Lara, the widow of the hazzan Is. Cohen de Lara (SAA PA 334, no. 248, 214, 13 Nisan 5506 [3 April 1746]).

121. SAA PA 334, no. 218, 78, 18 Tishri 5446 [16 October 1685]; ibid., no. 25, 170, 10 Kislev 5488 [23 November 1727]; ibid., 209, 14 Hesvan 5492 [13 November 1731]; ibid., no. 912, 127–132, 16 Adar 5515 [27 February 1755], 11 Iyyar 5517 [1 May 1757], 13 Nisan 5518 [21 April 1758].

122. The widow of Jeosua Sarfatim put together the lists of members in preparation of the elections for the yeshivah Gemilut Hassadim (Benevolence), through a paid position (SAA PA 334, no. 1191, 124 and 131, [s.d.] 5449 and 5450 [1688–1690]).

123. For Mazon Abanot: SAA PA 334, no. 120, map 81, 890–919, 6 Shevat/8 Adar I 5494 [10 January/11 February 1734]; for Sidcat Nassim: ibid., no. 25, 212, 25 Tishri 5494 [4 October 1733]; ibid., no. 120, 951, articles 13, 17, 21 Hesvan 5517 [14 November 1756]; for Mishenet Zequenim (Support-for-the-Elderly): SAA PA 334, 1220, 24–25, paragraph 12, 12 Nisan 5511 [7 April 1751].

124. Levine Melammed, “Castilian Conversas at Work,”133–134.

125. Defourneaux, Daily Life in Spain, 103–106, 117–123; SAA PA 334, no. 19, 30, 7 Tishri 5400 [5 October 1639]; ibid., 80, 18 Elul 5400 [5 September 1640].

126. López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda, 256, 257.

127. For poor Sephardim from North Africa employed in sick care, see SAA PA 334, no. 24, 21, Rosh Hodesh Sivan 5424 [25 May 1664]; for Sephardi women from the Balkan active in this field, see the case of belograda Dona Jurada, who took care of a woman named “Cardosa” (SAA PA 334, no. 219, 172, 3 September 5454 [1693]); for Dutch Christian women at work assisting the sick, old, and disabled among the Amsterdam Sephardim, see the Dutch woman taking care of the Portuguese Dina Gher (SAA PA 334, no. 17, 49v, 25 September 5394/1633); for Ashkenazim working with the sick of the Portuguese community, see the example of Abraham Sacuto, who was cared for by a tudesco (SAA PA 334, no. 216, 116r, 28 Elul, 5432 [20 September 1672]); for blacks and Italian Jews at work with the sick, see Florenca Negra, who took care of Doyrada; Natan Italiano helped Abram Geer (SAA PA 334, no. 217, 8, 11 Nisan 5436 [25 March 1676]); for the relation between blacks and Jews, also in Amsterdam, see Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

128. SAA PA 334, no. 220, 95, 27 Adar II 5461 [6 April 1701]; ibid., 141, 1 Elul 5461 [4 September 1701].

129. Bartolomé Bennassar, The Spanish Character: Attitudes and Mentalities from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: California University Press, 1979), 103–106, 117–123. Also, New Christian women on the Peninsula in the early modern period had many servants at home (López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda, 252–253). In Amsterdam, Sephardi families often had more than one servant: the widow of Moses de Chaves living on Herengracht, for example, had six servants (Oldewelt, Kohier 1742, vol. II, 85, no. 4194; 89, no. 4457; 98, no. 4919).

130. Rica de Leon, alias Maria Pereira, wife of Moses de Lion, alias Roque de Leon took the mulatta woman Angela (“Angela a mulata”) with her to Amsterdam (SAA NA 5075, no. 7533, Not. J. van Vilekens, 31 October 1710); see also n. 19; Jonathan Schorsch maintains that many Jews and conversos fleeing to eastern lands, especially after 1492, brought their black slaves with them (“Early Modern Sephardim and Blacks”) in Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry: From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern Times ed. Zion Zohar, (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 242. See also above n. 19.

131. For blacks put to work in the households of the Amsterdam Sephardim, see the black woman serving Immanuel Pinto (SAA PA 334, no. 217, 15, 10 Nisan 5436 [24 March 1676]); for a mulatta woman cleaning the women’s section of the synagogue, see SAA PA 334, no. 215, 216, 5 Tishri 5428 [23 September 1667]; for moriscos serving the Amsterdam Portuguese, see the case of Maria d’Avila, of the “Moriscan nation,” being the servant of Francisco Gomes Henriques (SAA NA 5075, no. 645b, 1204–1205, Not. S. Cornelisz., 21 January 1621; also published in SR 18, no. 2 [1984]: 164, no. 2337). For Ashkenazi women working in the houses of the Amsterdam Sephardim, see the example of Anna Isaaks; she signed her name in Hebrew and was a maid for Manuel Aires (SAA NA 5075, no. 461, Not. Mathijsz., 297–298, 17 October 1619; also published in SR 16, no. 1 [1982]: 61, no. 1883) For Dutch Gentiles at work among the Dutch Sephardim, see SAA NA 5075, no. 942, 126, Not. D. Bredan, 9 February 1633: Annetje Andries, maid of Isaac Pallache; for servants among the Portuguese in Hamburg, see Studemund-Halévy, “Senhores versus criados da Nação,” 353–355, 358–359, 365.

132. Sara de Tavora, for example, was living and working in the house of Gracia Senior, but apparently did not do the heaviest work, since a “tudesquita” was employed there as a maid (last will of Gracia Senior, from 1673, cited in n. 21).

133. See the case of Rachel Jacobs: SAA RA 5061, no. 346, 94, June 1698.

134. See the cases mentioned in Kaplan, “Moral Panic,” 103–123. Hester Cordua was suspected of acting as a whore, although she denied it (SAA RA 5061, no. 405, 140–140v, 3 September 1744); on Gracia Moreno, see Kaplan, “Social Functions,” 129, 154 and SAA RA 5061, no. 310, 56v, 57, 63, 64v, 70v, 15 April 1654.

135. For her appearance in an Amsterdam brothel, see SAA RA 5061, no. 367, 168v, 27 July 1713; cited by Lotte C. van de Pol, “Amsterdam Jews and Amsterdam Prostitution, 1650–1750,” in Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and by Others: Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on the Jews in the Netherlands, ed. Yosef Kaplan and Chaja Brasz (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 184–185; for her activities in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Ghent, see GAR, Oud-Rechterlijk Archief 15, no. 145, 82–83, 86–87, 11 April/17 April 1715; see also Levie Bernfeld “Portuguese joden en misdaad in de Republiek,” 226–227.

136. SAA, RA 5061, 40, 21 June 1695.

137. GAR, Oud-Rechterlijk Archief 15, no. 145, 86–87, 17 April 1715. She was dismissed and set free, though, after one year: ibid., 27 April 1717.

138. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 123–153.

139. Levine Melammed, “Castilian Conversas at Work.”

140. Juan I. P. Serrano, Injurias a Cristo. Religión, política y antijudaísmo en el siglo XVII (Alcalá: Instituto Internacional de Estudios Sefardíes y Andalusíes, Universidad de Alcalá, 2002), 118; López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda, 257–258.

141. Zosa Szajkowski, “Trade Relations of Marranos in France with the Iberian Peninsula in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” JQR (1959–1960): 69–78.

142. Szajkowski, “Trade Relations,” 74.

143. See the widow of Duarte Estevez, alias Isaac Milano, importing sugar from Brazil: Hermann Kellenbenz, Sephardim an der unteren Elbe: ihre wirtschaftliche und politische Bedeutung vom Ende des 16. bis zum Beginn des 18. Jahrhundertssbaden (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1958), 125–126.

144. Levy, The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire, 36–37.

145. Joost Divendal, “Mozes Cohen Belinfante, Jew to the Depth of His Soul,” SR 31, nos. 1/2 (1997): 101.

146. On education for women on the Iberian Peninsula: Pescatello, Power and Pawn, 27–28; Defourneaux, Daily Life in Spain, 154; Lisa Vollendorf, The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitional Spain (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005), 169–86; for literacy among women in early modern Europe, see Robert A. Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education 1500–1800 (London: Longman, 2002), 21–25, 40, 45–46, 142, 144–146, 157–158, 169–171.

147. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 88–90, 284–285, table 2.8; Simon Hart, Geschrift en getal (Dordrecht: Historische Vereniging Holland, 1976), 130–132; Erika Kuijpers, “Lezen en schrijven. Onderzoek naar het alfabetiseringsniveau in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam,” TVSG 23 (1997): 490–522; Nantko L. Dodde, “Joods Onderwijs in Nederland van 1815 tot 1940,” in De Gelykstaat der Joden. Inburgering van een minderheid, ed. Hetty Berg (Amsterdam: Joods Historisch Museum and Waanders Uitgeverij, 1996), 67–80.

148. SAA DTB 681, 92, 25 May 1651.

149. For Isabella Enriques and Isabella Correa in the literary academy Academia de los Sitibundos: Harm den Boer, Bibliografía de los impresos en lenguas española y portuguesa de Holanda c. 1600–1800 (Leiden: s.n., 1983), 296; Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 235, 248, 299–302; on educated Jewish women in Italy, see Adelman, “Servants and Sexuality”; idem, “The Educational and Literary Activities of Jewish Women in Italy during the Renaissance and Catholic Restauration,” in Shlomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume, ed. Daniel Carpi (et.al.) (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University: 1993), 9–23; see also Judith R. Baskin, “Some Parallels in the Education of Medieval Jewish and Christian Women,” Jewish History, 5, no. 1 (1991): 41–51; on educated Jewish women in the Middle Ages, Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 162–165.

150. See the civil marriage contract of Isaac de Imanuel Baruch and Rachel Josephs Pardo. Joseph Pardo, student of the Jesiba de los Pintos, was the son of Hakham David Pardo and worked first as a hazzan of the Portuguese community in Rotterdam, and later in London (Jacob Zwarts, Hoofdstukken uit de geschiedenis der Joden in Nederland [Zutphen: W. J. Thieme and Cie, 1929], 95, 106, 110–111). His daughter signed her marriage contract only with the mark “a” (SAA DTB 687, 273, 10 November1668). Spinoza’s sister Miriam could not write either, at the time of the publication of the banns of her civil marriage (Koenraad O. Meinsma, Spinoza en zijn kring. Historisch-Kritische Studiën over Hollandsche Vrijgeesten—with an introduction by Siegfried B. J. Zilverberg [Utrecht: Hes, 1980], 66–67 and SAA DTB 680, 243, 2 June 1650). The daughter of the famous rabbi and teacher R. Jacob Jeuda Leon Templo also could not sign her name (see, about her, in n. 118). She puts a mark as if to sign a notarial deed in 1661 (SAA NA 5075, no. 2210, 119–121, Not. A. Lock, 14 January 1661); also, the daughter of Dr. Benjamin de Sea could not write (SAA DTB 696, 86, 2 April 1688).

151. See Rachel Barocas de Brazil (SAA DTB 687, 365, 12 July 1669); Hester Baroccas Henriques (SAA DTB 686, 364, 16 July 1666); Benvenida Pereira (SAA DTB 700, 9, 27 October 1696).

152. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 284–285, suggests the same; also, for Jewish girls in the Ottoman Empire, Dorn Sezgin, “Jewish Women in the Ottoman Empire,” 221; Howard Adelman observes the instruction of orphan girls taken into Jewish families in early modern Italy: see his “Servants and Sexuality,” 82.

153. Benjamin Roberts, Through the Keyhole: Dutch Child-Rearing Practices in the 17th and 18th Century. Three Urban Elite Families (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998), 102, 107, 116–122, 136; Engelin de Booy, “Naar school. Schoolgaande kinderen in de Noordelijke Nederlanden in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw,” TVG 94 (1981): 439–440; Erika Kuijpers, “Lezen en schrijven,” 513–514; Luuc Kooijmans, Onder Regenten. De elite in een Hollandse stad, Hoorn 1700–1780 (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1985), 193; Van den Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship, 46–56.

154. SAA PA 334, no. 120, file 81, 19, 6 Shevat 5494 [10 January 1734]; Pescatello (Power and Pawn, 27–28) mentions the same subjects; “Christian dogma,” of course to be changed into “Jewish faith,” for education of girls at home in Spain, namely “the traditional household tasks, Christian dogma, and embroidery.”

155. For Maimonides in French, see Ribca Susarte, widow of Eliseu Pereyra (SAA PA 334, no. 518, 250, Not. Jan Snoek, 17 June–October 1722); Hana de Jacob de Moses Pereira, single, had about ten books, among which one Spanish Bible and one book on history (SAA PA 334, no. 787, 108, 111, Not. J. Klinkhamer, inventory of Hana de Jacob de Moses Pereira, 25 February 1788); Rachel Rodrigues left prayer books in Ladino and a Bible in French (SAA PA 334, no. 119b, 793, 14 June 1739); see also the household book by Rachel Medina Chamis, who wrote her notes in Portuguese and Dutch (see n. 60); for the Dutch dictionary, see the inventory of Rachel Rodrigues: SAA PA 334, no. 119b, 793, 14 June 1739; see also the introduction written in Portuguese by the widow of Abraham Gabay Yzidro, below; on the knowledge of Hebrew, see the case of Sara Sarfatim, below.

156. For clavecimbels, see the inventory of Rachel de Spinosa Henriques (SAA PA 334, 694, 102, 18 November 1737); for Francisca Duarte singing in the Muiderkring: Leendert Strengholt, “Over de Muiderkring,” in DBNL, Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (Leiden: 2001), 271, http://www.dbnl.org; Mozes H. Gans, Memorbook. History of Dutch Jewry from the Renaissance to 1940 (Baarn: Bosch and Keunig, 1978), 48.

157. SAA PA 334, no. 25, 243, 27 Hesvan 5459 [1 November 1698]; for women operating printing presses, see the wife of Abraham Conat, a fifteenth-century Hebrew printer in Italy, mentioned in Adri K. Offenberg, “Peregrine Printers,” SR 35, no. 2 (2001): 157–158.

158. SAA NA 5075, no. 10704, Not. S. Dorper, 7 February 1741, the inventory of the late Levi Mordochay Cohen: “Voor de dogter naey leergeld f 7:16”; for the home education of a Jewish orphan as a servant girl in Italy, see Adelman, “Servants and Sexuality,” 82.

159. See the case of Rosie, an Ashkenazi girl, who was placed into another Ashkenazi family in town to learn the trade of a hairdresser (SAA NA 5075, no. 7566, Not. J. van Vilekens, 25 November 1735).

160. Handvesten ofte privilegien ende octroyen; mitsgaders willekeuren, costuimen, ordonnantien en handelingen der stad Amsterdam, 5 vols., ed. Hermanus Noordkerk and Johan Pieter Farret (Amsterdam: Van Waesberge & Schouten, 1748–1778), vol 2, 470–471, 15 June 1622. Here we also come across a custom apparently influenced by Islam.

161. See the introduction to the establishment of the girls’ orphanage Mazon Abanot (SAA PA 334, no. 120, map 81, 863, 6 Shevat 5494 [10 January 1734]); see above, the section on “Deviance.”

162. GAA, PA 996, no. 17, 7, Codicil Ab. Is. Suasso, alias Francisco Lopes Suasso, 18 September 1705.

163. SAA PA 334, no. 668, 149–158, Not. P. Padthuysen, 8 March 1700.

164. SAA NA 5075, no. 4090, Not. D. van der Groe, 25 June 1679.

165. SAA PA 334, no. 719, Not. N. Wilthuyzen, 9 November 1774; see also SAA PA 334, no. 720, 286, 3 June 1776; ibid., 290, 19 March 1776.

166. For source, see n. 162.

167. Last will of Moseh Moreno Monsanto, Not. B. Baddel, 18 January 1655 (Ets Haim Manuscript 48 A6).

168. SAA PA 334, no. 609, Not. D. Cappelen, 15 May 1735.

169. On the central place of Jewish women in family life in medieval times, see Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 126–131. For the same pattern in Italy, see Adelman, “Jewish Women and Family Life.” See also the will of Abraham de Souza Henriques in 1739 in France, cited in Gérard Nahon, “From New Christians to the Portuguese Jewish Nation in France,” in The Sephardi Legacy, vol. II, ed. Haim Beinart (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1992), 359.

170. SAA PA 334, no. 518, 125, The Hague, Not. C. den Haan, 13 April 1699 (with an extension on pages 130–131, 15 February 1707), last will of Manuel Levy Duarte and Constantina Levy Duarte; see also the last will of Aron de Pinto and Abigael, alias Gracia Nunes Henriques (SAA NA 5075, no. 7493, 63, Not. J. van den Ende, 10 August 1717).

171. See n. 162.

172. See n. 164.

173. SAA PA 334, no. 518, 128–129.

174. SAA PA 334, no. 518, 132–134, 5 July 1708, Manuel Levy Duarte, widower.

175. SAA PA 334, no. 658: letter by Gracia (the name is not clearly written) addressed to Sra D^na Ribca Medina Hamis, The Hague, 27 August 1733.

176. SAA PA 334, no. 641, art. 12 (13), Not. C. van Achthoven, 3 March 1724: Copia Testamento van Rachel Belmonte, alias Schonenberg.

177. HGA, BNR 372, no. 2099, no. 39, Not. J. Sijthoff, 17 March 1755.

178. SAA PA 334, no. 632, 11 June 1745.

179. Ibid.

180. HGA, BNR 372, no. 2077, 16 January 1744, last will of Benjamin Teixeira and Ribca Teixeira.

181. See the financial registers of the community referring to the burial of many infants during the early modern period (for example, classified under “gastos gerais” in the livros longos: SAA PA 334, nos. 215–223). Saul Levi Morteira also refers to death of infants in a sermon held in Amsterdam (Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam, 109–110).

182. SAA RA 5061, no. 299, 165v–166v, 12 April 1633; ibid., NA 5075, no. 942, Not. D. Bredan, 3 May 1633; ibid., 361, 392–393, 395, 421, 20 May, 1 June; on wife beating, see Avraham Grossman, “Medieval Rabbinic Views on Wife-Beating, 800–1300,” Jewish History 5, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 53–62 and idem, Pious and Rebellious, 212–230.

183. SAA RA 5061, no. 211, 11 October 1695.

184. For source on Moseh Moreno Monsanto and his relation to his daughter Rachel, see n. 167.

185. SAA NA 5075, no. 6677A, 804, Not. Jan Snoeck, 23 August 1702.

186. SAA NA 5075, no. 7582a, Not. J. van Vilekens, 11 June 1748.

187. López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda, 256–257.

188. This booklet covered the years 1728–1730, 1732, 1735–1737, 1739 (for source, see n. 60); for a similar notebook of the Dutch woman Cornelia Maria Bors van Waveren (1697–1763): SAA PA 231, II, 749a; for Jewish women in the Middle Ages who kept track of the household budget: Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 115.

189. For source, see n. 170.

190. López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda, 230.

191. SAA NA 5075, no. 7619, 26 May 1713, Not. A. Tzeeuwen, last will of Gracia Alvares: Gracia Alvares left her best clothes, four in total (“haar vier beste klederen”), to her daughter-in-law and her granddaughter. The widow of Don Francisco Manrique, Marie Anne Josephe Therese de Partes, also showed how much she cared for her family. She instructed her maid and left her money to take care of Marie’s brother-in-law, after Marie’s death. The brother-in-law seemed to be poor. Marie made this gesture out of generosity and affection toward her brother-in-law (HGA, BNR 130, no. 319, Not. J. Sijthoff, 27 June, 1746, last will of Marie Anne Josephe Therese de Partes, widow of Don Francisco Manrique). For foundations that gave priority to family members, see Levie Bernfeld, “Chosen Poor,” 189–214.

192. See the letter of Isaac Hamiz Vaz, written in London and sent to his aunt in Amsterdam, Rachel Medina Chamis, widow of Joseph Henriques Medina, in which he bids for help (SAA PA 334, no. 658, 17/28 May 1734, London; see also his letter dated 15 February 1734).

193. To guarantee the family assets, Brites Tomas, for example, demanded in her last will that her son-in-law should control the share belonging to her son, Antonio Gomes, who apparently was a spendthrift and not capable of controlling his possessions (SAA NA 5075, no. 646A, 574–575, Not. S. Cornelisz., 26 June 1623; also published in SR 24, no. 2 [1990]: 220–221, no. 2924).

194. In the well-to-do circles of early modern Europe, marriage was not only a love affair, but, above all, one in which the family assets, status, and reputation had to be guaranteed, as it had been in the Middle Ages. For an overview of the attitudes toward marriage in that period, see Hufton, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, vol. 1: 1500–1800 (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 99–133, and literature mentioned in the annotated bibliography; see also Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 63, 148. For the policy in Spain, see Pescatello, Power and Pawn, 25; for the Dutch Republic, see Kooijmans, Onder Regenten, 119–206; for examples of this policy among the Amsterdam Sephardim, see the last will of Aron de Pinto and Abigael, alias Gracia Nunes Henriques (for source, see n. 170) Sara Lopes, a widow, gave money to her son on condition he would marry her niece (SAA NA 5075, no. 4120, 691–696, Not. D. van der Groe, 29 April 1686). For the change of a planned marriage strategy into a more affective choice of partners in Western Europe, in general, and the Jews of the western Sephardi Diaspora, in particular, in the course of the eighteenth century, see Kaplan, “The Threat of Eros,” 117–123.

195. See n. 56.

196. SAA NA 5075, no. 7490, Not. J. van de Ende, no. 18, 12 March 1708.

197. See, on ethnic-religious aspects of Sephardi identities, the different contributions in Jewish Social Studies 2009, 15, issue 1.

198. SAA PA 334, no. 641, Not. C. van Achthoven, 3 March 1724.

199. SAA PA 334, no. 658, Not. Jan Barels, 12 August 1738.

200. Levie Bernfeld, “Chosen Poor,” 215–260.

201. Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, “Catholic Charity in Perspective: The Social Life of Devotion in Portugal and its Empire (1450–1700),” E-Journal of Portuguese History, 2, no. 1 (2004): 11; see also Jodi Bilinkoff, “Elite Widows and Religious Expression in Early Modern Spain: The View from Avila,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner (Harlow: Longman, 1999), 181–192; for France: Barbara B. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), especially 203–238.

202. SAA NA 5075, no. 8885, Not. J. Barels, no. 824, 22 August 1748, last will of Ribca Pereira wife of Jacob Nunes Henriques; ibid., no. 7533, Not. J. van Vilekens, 257–260, 12 March 1710, last will of Ester Rodriguez.

203. Rachel de Prado, Rachel Belmonte, and Abigail Dias da Fonseca each had their own dowry organizations; thus they were not only concerned about marrying off their own offspring, but also helped to settle poor orphans through marriage (for the last will of Rachel de Prado, alias Rachel Gabay Faro, widow of Isaac de Prado, see n. 196; for the source on the dowry foundation of Rachel Belmonte, see n. 176; for that of Abigail Dias da Fonseca, see n. 62). See also Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, “Caridade Escapa da Morte: Legacies to the Poor in Sephardi Wills from Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” in DJH 3 (1993): 179–204; idem, “Financing Poor Relief.”

204. No woman was among the twenty founders of Dotar in 1615, although they were invited to become members if they were unmarried, widowed, or married with a husband outside of the Republic. The condition was that, in the case that a husband appeared, he would take over their place in the hevrah (SAA PA 334, no. 1322, especially chapter VIII, 13 Adar 5375 [12 February 1615]); consequently, female membership remained rather low: from 1615 to 1732, there were sixteen female members—the first one entering in 1641—among a total of 532 (0.03 percent) (SAA PA 334, no. 1144, 21–40, years 5421–5491 [1661–1731]). Legacies of women to Dotar were not that frequent either (SAA PA 334, no. 1143, 48, 29 Av 5404 [31 August 1644]; ibid., no. 1144, 283, 20 Adar II 5440 [21 March 1680]). On the other hand, women seem to be very dedicated to the improvement and protection of young girls, also via private donations and foundations, as we have seen above; for Dotar, see also Israel S. Révah, “Le premier règlement imprimé de la “Santa Companhia de Dotar Orfans e Donzelas Pobres,” Boletim Internacional de Bibliografia Luso-Brasileira 4 (1963): 650–691; Miriam Bodian, “The Portuguese Dowry Societies in Venice and Amsterdam: A Case Study in Communal Differentiation within the Marrano Diaspora,” Italia 6 (1987): 30–61; Wilhelmina Chr. Pieterse, 350 jaar Dotar (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers 1965).

205. Bracha (Ardos) Rivlin, Mutual Responsibility in the Italian Ghetto: Holy Societies 1516–1789 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), 112–113 (Hebrew); Salo W. Baron, The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1945, 2nd ed.), vol. 1, 349; Marcus, Communal Sick-Care, 135–145. In the last will of the Ashkenazi Jew Joseph Salomons in 1691, he left a legacy, to the sisterhood, of clothing for poor orphans (SAA NA 5075, no. 4242, 348–357, Not. D. van der Groe, 14 June 1692).

206. Hufton, The Prospect Before Her, 381–387, 490.

207. For women having no right to vote within the Dotar, see Dotar regulations: SAA PA 334, no. 1322, para. VI, 13 Adar 5375; see also the regulations of the Mazon Abanot orphanage (SAA PA 334, 196dd, 6 Shevat 5494 [10 January 1734]; ibid., no. 120, file 81, 892–919, 8 Adar Rison 5494 [11 February 1734]).

208. Maureen Flynn, Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), 23–24, 56; Christopher F. Black, Early Modern Italy: A Social History (London: Routledge, 2001), 160–162.

209. For participation of women in the membership of the boys’ orphanage, see Aby Jetomim: SAA PA 334, no. 1211, 26, 26v, 56–65 and 56, 5408–5462 [s.d.] [1648–1702]. According to the information we have, almost the same number of female members as male ones granted the boys’ orphanage a legacy (Wilhelmina Chr. Pieterse, Daniel Levi de Barrios als geschiedschrijver van de Portugees-Israelietische gemeente te Amsterdam in zijn ‘triumpho del govierno popular’ [Amsterdam: Scheltema en Holkema, 1968], 118). Rachel Belmonte was a member of Mazon Abanot (for source, see n. 176); Abigail Dias da Fonseca was a member of the yeshivah Temime Darech: David Franco Mendes, Memorias do estabelecimento e progresso dos judeos portuguezese espanhoes nesta famosa citade de Amsterdam, edited with introduction and annotations by Lajb Fuks and Renate G. Fuks-Mansfeld, and a philological commentary, analysis, and glossaries by Benjamin N. Teensma (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975), 69.

210. For the last will of Gracia Senior, see n. 21.

211. Only 6 percent (20 women out of 347 members) participated, until 1642, in the loan-bank Honen Dalim (SAA PA 334, no. 1186, 2–2v, 5385 [1624–25] and Pieterse, Daniel Levi de Barrios, 106); for Dotar, see n. 204.

212. In 1683, Temime Darech had 200 female members from a total of 270 (74 percent). Also, in Maskil el Dal, female members were in the majority (54 percent in 1683: 150 “sisters” from a total of 275). On Temime Darech and Maskil el Dal, see Pieterse, Daniel Levi de Barrios, 122–124, 125–127, 186–187; Franco Mendes, Memorias, 59, 64, 69, 84, 86–87, 130; SAA PA 334, no. 1214, 122–124, 186–187, 5 February 1680.

213. On organizations of the Amsterdam Sephardi community in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Jeremias M. Hillesum, “Vereenigingen bij de Spaansche en Portugeesche Joden te Amsterdam in de 17de en 18de eeuw,” Jaarboek Amstelodanum 1 (1902): 167–183; for Mispat Abanot: SAA PA 334, no. 195, 4 Elul 5490 [17 August 1730]; for Sidcat Nassim: SAA PA 334, no. 25, 212, 19 Kislev 5494 [26 November 1733]; ibid., no. 120, map 84, 943–953, 21 Hesvan 5517 [14 November 1756]; Franco Mendes, Memorias, 116; for Parnasad Almanot, see SAA PA 334, no. 27, 8–10, 7 Kislev 5527 [9 November 1766].

214. See the wills of Joseph Nahemias Torres (SAA NA 633, Not. S. Cornelisz., 26 October 1626–10 January 1627), Moses Curiel Rosado (SAA NA 1563, Not. J. Volkaertsz. Oli, 18 October 1678), Gracia Alvares (SAA NA 7619, Not. A. Tzeeuwen, 26 May 1723), and of Gracia Senior (see n. 21). See also the case of Maria de Conceiçao, now in Amsterdam, whose dowry was transferred from Portugal to safeguard the capital for her marriage (SAA NA 5075, no. 645a, 836–838, Not. S. Cornelisz., 3 October 1619; also published in SR 15, no. 2 [1981]: 252, no. 1865; also cited in Van Emden, Die mij gemaakt heeft tot een man, 13).

215. Guimarães Sá: “Catholic Charity,” 11–12.

216. SAA PA 334, 118, I, 31, 10 Adar 5492 [7 March 1732]. Mentioned here are Jewish tavernas (“tavernas judaicas”); see also Kaplan, “Eighteenth-Century Rulings”; see also the drawing of P. Wagenaar in Mozes Gans, Memorbook, 216.

217. See the remarks of the Hakham in Hamburg, n. 2. On female friends, see Ester Arias, widow of Joseph Abraham Capadoce (SAA PA 334, no. 632, 11 June 1745). On the life of these well-to-do Portuguese women on the Peninsula, the account of Leonor Gómez (Madrid) indicates she was accustomed only to visiting marquesses and duchesses: López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda, 274–275.

218. SAA PA 334, no. 616, Not. S. Favon, 21 January 1694.

219. See SAA 5075, NA 13564, 149, Not. D. Genets, 20 February 1760; ibid., NA 13553, 207, Not. D. Genets, 20 February 1758.

220. On Dutch Sephardim and their love for theatre, see Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 286–289, 312–313. The widow of Campos Perera had two chests at home, filled with Spanish comedy plays (SAA 5072, no. 448, 311–319, 26 September 1754).

221. Renée Levine Melammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-Jewish Women of Castile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Henri Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (London: Phoenix, 1997), 285 and n. 12; Serrano, Injurias a Cristo, 118; Edward Glaser, “Invitation to Intolerance. A Study of the Portuguese Sermons Preached at Autos-da-Fé,” Hebrew Union College Annual 27 (1956): 352.

222. SAA PA 334, no. 1329, 163, no. 124, 12 Shevat 5452 [30 January 1692].

223. SAA PA 334, no. 1329, 134, no. 10, S^a de Sara Sarfatim q faleceo em 5 de Sivan 5457 [25 May 1697].

224. Abraham Gabay Yzidro once studied and lived in Amsterdam but moved later to Surinam and Barbados to become the chief rabbi there. His widow approached the Amsterdam Hakham Abendana de Britto in 1760 to publish the work of her late husband. Her request appears as an introduction to her husband’s legacy, the work named Sefer Yad Avraham (Amsterdam: Soesmans & Jansons, 1758): “Dedicatoria: Sara, Viuva do H. H. R. Avraham Gabay Yzidro.” On Abraham Gabay Yzidro, see also Encyclopaedia Judaica 7 (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007), 319; also his sermon of 1724: Sermon predicado neste K. K. de T. T. por Ribi Abr. Gabay Izidro en Sabbath Vaikrà en R. H. Nisàn del año (Amsterdam: Mosseh Dias, 1724); see also Cecil Roth, “The Remarkable Career of Haham Gabay Yzidro,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 24 (1974): 211–213.

225. SAA PA 334, no. 613, Not. C. van Achthoven, 28 May 1722.

226. SAA PA 334, no. 609, Not. D. Cappelen, 15 May 1735.

227. Moral teachings on women and marriage could also be found in European literature of the period. In 1625, Jacob Cats published his Houwelick in Holland, while one century earlier, in 1524, Juan Luis Vives published his Institutione feminae christianae in Spain.

228. Menasseh ben Israel, Thesovro dos Dinim, 1647, 12 Tammuz 5407.

229. SAA PA 334, no. 120, file 81, 896, para. 6, 8 Adar I 5494 [11 February 1734].

230. See n. 209.

231. Den Boer, Bibliografía, 184 and 348.

232. Last will of Miriam Alvares, alias Miriam del Sotto (SAA PA 334, no. 628, Not. D. van der Groe, 29 August 1685); ibid., 5 September 1685; Levie Bernfeld, “Caridade,” 181.

233. Last will of Miriam Alvares (see n. 232): “emcomendando primeyram^te e antes tudo minha alma ao Sor Deus . . . pido perdão de meus pecados”; see also SAA PA 334, 518, 387–388, Not. J. Barels, 15 May 1731, last will of Judit Rodrigues Carrion, widow of David de Daniel Rodriguez; Judith Machado, widow of Samuel Abarbanel Souza in her will in 1733 asked for pardon of her sins, in the tradition of the wills of centuries before her (SAA NA 5075, no. 8830, Not. J. Barels, 29 October 1733); for a similar phenomenon in Venice, see Adelman, “Jewish Women and Family Life,” 154–155; see also Levie Bernfeld, “Caridade”; on the theme of repentance in the sermons of the Hakham of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jews, see Saul Levi Morteira, Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam, index.

234. SAA NA 5075, no. 3280, no. 74, Not. H. Outgers, 21 November 1685; on Jewish women and charity in the Middle Ages, Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 192–197.

235. Last will of Abigail Dias da Fonseca (for source, see n. 62). For the ethnic component of marriage as a condition for inheritance, see earlier text; see also the wills in France in Nahon, “From New Christians to the Portuguese Jewish Nation in France,” 359; idem, “Pour une approche des attitudes devant la mort au XVIIIe siècle: Sermonnaires et testateurs juifs portugais à Bayonne,” REJ 136, no. 1/2 (1977): 3–123.

236. Last will of Ribca Carneira, who put, therein, the condition that her cousins would inherit, on their return to this country or any other country of the “Judesmo” (SAA PA 334, no. 19, 301–302, 8 Adar 5411 [1 March 1651]).

237. SAA NA 5075, no. 645B, 1499–1502, Not. S. Cornelisz., 28 April 1621.

238. SAA NA 5075, no. 414, Not. N. Jacobs, 16 December 1636.

239. SAA NA 5075, no. 2895, Not. P. Padthuysen, 17 February 1666.

240. Sara Lumbrosa was the woman involved. She went over to the Reformed Church in 1657 and stayed there for ten years until 1666/1667 (SAA PA 376, no. 9, 210, 211, 215, 12 July, 19 July, 6 September 1657; ibid., no. 11, 249, 250, 252, 296, 21 and 28 October, 4 November 1666; 28 April 1667); see also Isabella H. van Eeghen, “De gereformeerde kerkeraad en de joden te Amsterdam,” Maandblad Amstelodanum 47 (1960): 169–174.

241. GAR, 15, no. 145, 82–83, 11 April 1715.

242. See the last will of Ester Pinta (SAA NA 5075, no. 414, 542, Not. N. Jacobs, 16 December 1636). Ester left her community the wooden box, in her house, in which pieces for her synagogue (Bet Israel) were kept. She also granted the kahal other pieces, used in her synagogue for Yom Kipur and at the cemetery of Bet Haim. Dona Sara Cahanet bestowed upon the synagogue two silver pieces, a plate and can, to be used in the service for the cohanim (SAA PA 334, no. 1074, 1–2, 5404 [1644]). See also the pieces of Judica Coen Enriques and Sara Lopez Redondo, sold by the Portuguese community in 1676 (SAA PA 334, no. 19, 734, 736–737, 7 Kislev, 5 and 23 Tevet 5436 [25 November/22 December 1675; 9 January 1676]). Abigail Dias da Fonseca, on her deathbed, bequeathed the synagogue what she already gave in life, namely a Sefer Torah with embroidered mantles and silver rimmonim (for source, see n. 62); Ester Morena, widow of Jacob Morena also granted the Portuguese community a Sefer Torah with all the ornaments and silver rimmonim and two mantels—a white one with flowers and one with silk flowers, including the faxas (SAA PA 334, no. 24, 22, 23 Elul 5429 [19 September 1669]). On Sifre Torah in Portuguese households and other types of Judaica in early modern Amsterdam, see Swetschinksi, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 289; see also Julie-Marthe Cohen, “The Inventory of Ceremonial Objects of the Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam of 1640,” SR 37, no. 1 (2004): 225–308. For donations of ceremonial objects by Ashkenazim, see idem, “Donation as a Social Phenomenon: Synagogue Textiles of the Ashkenazi Community of Amsterdam in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” SR 32, no. 1 (1998): 24–42.

243. SAA PA 334, no. 19, 623–626, 9 Kislev 5431 [22 November 1670]. Around 10 percent of the contributors were women (57 in total); see further, ibid., no. 172, 32, 28 Tishri 5400 [26 October 1639]; ibid., no. 175, 111, 1 Nisan 5440 [31 March 1680].

244. For gifts in exchange for saying the kaddish and hashkavot prayers, and the lightning of a ner tamid, see the following examples: Dona Sara Cahanet left money, among other things, for lighting a ner tamid (SAA PA 334, no. 19, 175/260, 23 Av 5404 [25 August 1644]); the heirs of Sara Dona Judique Miriam Soares granted a copper lamp for the same purpose (SAA PA 334, no. 323, 28 Iyyar 5412 [6 May 1652]); Gracia Senior reserved an amount to pay the hazzan Faro, or in his absence, his son, Rubi Faro, to say kaddish (last will of Gracia Senior [see n. 21]).

245. Selomoh Ayllon, Sermon, que predicó el Doctissimo Señor Haham Moreno A-Rab R. Selomoh Ailion Ab Bet-Din, y Ros-Yessiba del Kahal Kados de Talmud Torah en dia de Sabbath Echá (Amsterdam, 5483).

246. For the address of the leaders of the Mahamad in the synagogue, see SAA PA 334, no. 21, 257, 8 Hesvan 5482 [29 October 1721]. Admonitions concerning immodesty of women were not new but have been expressed many times earlier in Jewish and Muslim societies, as opposed to the freedom of women in Christian Europe: Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 102–122.

247. See portrait paintings of Rachel Texeira and Eliseba Lopes Suasso de Pinto in the period 1725–1750 (by J. Vollevens), and that of Rachel Dias da Fonseca in 1773 (by Benjamin Bolomey); see also Gans, Memorbook, 238–239.

248. See the case of Rica de Leon, alias Maria Pereira, wife of Moses de Lion, alias Roque de Leon (SAA NA 5075, no. 7533, Not. J. van Vilekens, 31 October 1710). Apparently, newly arrived in Amsterdam in 1710, she not only expressed her strong adherence to Judaism in her will, but she asked that a family member say kaddish after her death. She also insisted on the distribution of money from her capital to the poor of the Portuguese nation in Jerusalem, to the synagogue in Jerusalem, and a variety of other Jewish charitable goals, inside and outside the Dutch Republic.

249. Paloma Vidal, for example, a poor Sephardi woman who came from Belgrade with a small child, was paid by the Portuguese community to take care of Portuguese Jews who were receiving charity, in this case Moses Rodrigues and the family of the widow Milana (SAA PA 334, no. 219, 361, 11 Tishri 5458 [26 September 1697]; ibid., no. 220, p. 36, 1 Sivan 5459 [29 May 1699]; ibid., 10 Sivan 5459 [7 June 1699]); for Moses Rodrigues being paid by the Portuguese community for taking care of children or for hosting people (SAA PA 334, no. 219, 386, 3 Elul 5458 [10 August 1698]). The widow Milano was also assisted through charity (SAA PA 334, no. 176, 378, 2 Nisan 5461 [10 April 1701]). For Paloma Vidal on the charity lists of the community see SAA entry no. 334, no. 219, 2, 5451 [1690–1691].