Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean (11 page)

From the outset, Sephardim were at home in this cosmopolitan setting, and displayed a worldly lifestyle marked by opulent self-confidence. They lived in palatial mansions, held musicals, staged theatricals and poetry competitions, and entertained sumptuously. They formed literary and philosophical academies and a score of social organizations covering every aspect of community life. They also frequented gambling houses run by Samuel Pereira and Abraham Mendes Vasques, and a popular brothel that featured Jewish prostitutes from Germany.
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Along with other religious dissidents who gained sanctuary here, the émigrés found they could be loyal both to their religion and to Holland. Outwardly, they didn’t appear far different from their Dutch neighbors, but their long ancestry on the peninsula left them loyal to its language and culture. Whether they came directly from Iberia or elsewhere in the Diaspora, all referred to themselves as members of La Nação, the Portuguese Nation. On the banks of the Amstel River, the Jodenbreestraat (Jewish Broad Street) came to resemble a miniature Lisbon or Madrid:

No caballero could outdo them in dignity; no grandee could bear himself with more
grandezza
than they. The Jewish caballeros of Amsterdam strutted about in jeweled garments of golden threads adorned with pearls and precious stones, and rode about in fancy coaches emblazoned with their coat of arms. Even the cases of their prayer shawls were decorated with coats of arms.

Their spice boxes were of ivory, their wives’ bonnets of Brabant lace…
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There were still restrictions: Jews could not join craft guilds, engage in retail business, or hold political office. Neither could they marry Christians, employ them as servants, or have sexual relations with “the daughters of the land,” even prostitutes.
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Despite such legal restraints, they had more freedom and security in Holland than anywhere in Europe and are thought of as “the first modern Jews.”
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Proud of their heritage and accomplishments, they may have felt, in the words of one period historian, that “if the Jews were God’s chosen people, then they were God’s chosen Jews.”
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It is little wonder that their children blossomed unafraid and determined to live free.

Rembrandt, who lived in the Jewish quarter at 2 Jodenbreestraat, drew his neighbors as they appeared, an assimilated group, for once no longer caricatured as mistrustful aliens. An example is his painting of the biblical scholar Menasseh ben Israel, who, dressed in a familiar broad-brim hat and white-collared coat and sporting a Vandyke beard, looks no different from other Dutch burghers.
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Rembrandt also used his neighbors in his biblical paintings, seeing in their countenance the patriarchs and prophets, including Jesus and Matthew.

While the economic impact of this first generation is impressive, a simple recounting of facts and statistics does not convey the emboldened character of the men who created it. As much as their livelihoods, it was their remarkable lives their Dutch-born children emulated when, still in their teens and early twenties, they invaded the New World and, in an unremitting struggle lasting decades, took on and defeated those who would deny Jewish rights. Two adventurous role models who strutted along the Jodenbreestraat, and whose deeds were bandied about with awe, were a cardsharp and a slave trader.

Samuel Palache was the second man interred at the Jewish cemetery, having been preceded by his friend Don Manuel Pimental, who had purchased the cemetery two years before. Like Palache, his friend exemplified the diverse character and bravado of Amsterdam’s Jewish pioneers. Pimental (alias Isaac Ibn Jakar) was the wealthiest member of the Neveh Shalom congregation, and owed his fortune to his skill in the era’s favorite pastime—playing cards. He had honed his skills at the French court during the reign of King Henry IV. The king’s nightly passion, when not dallying with one of his sixty-four mistresses, was gaming at cards. One night, after losing heavily to Pimental, the lustful and humorous monarch told him: “I am the king of France, but you are king of gamblers.”
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Jews were then outlawed from France, and while Pimental had converted, he freely admitted being a Judaizer. His honorific title “Don” is evidence that he was comfortable with the court etiquette that required regal dress and appropriate manners. Henry, known for tolerance, defended his Jewish friend: “Those who honestly follow their conscience are of my religion, and mine is that of all brave and good men.”
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Pimental’s presence in France was cut short in 1610, when his royal protector was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic schoolmaster who, fearing Henry intended to destroy the Catholic Church, leaped onto the king’s passing carriage and stabbed him to death. After Henry’s demise, the gambler moved to Venice, and three years later settled in Amsterdam. He joined Neveh Shalom, and in 1615, one year after purchasing the Ouderkerk cemetery, was buried there. In his honor, Palache’s congregation passed a resolution to recite a yearly Sabbath prayer in memory of the king’s favorite cardsharp.
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In 1611, Spain’s Grand Inquisitor, in his annual
aviso
to the Madrid Council, reported that the Dutch Jew Diego Diaz Querido

employs several Negro slaves, natives of the coast, who had received instruction in the Portuguese and Dutch languages so that they could serve as interpreters in Africa to assist him in his Africa dealings…[Furthermore] in his house, the Negroes are given instruction in the Mosaic Law and converted to Judaism.
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If true, Querido, a religious man, would have first freed his slaves, as Jewish law forbade their conversion unless previously set free.
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Querido was born in Portugal and lived many years in Bahia, Brazil’s capital, until he was denounced as a Judaizer in 1595. He then left for Amsterdam, where he joined the Beth Jacob group, and in 1612 was one of the twelve founders of Neveh Shalom. He may have been among those arrested at Palache’s home on Yom Kippur the night the Dutch police raided.

In the Inquisitor’s denunciation, he accused Querido of “large scale transactions damaging to the royal treasury.” Reportedly, his ten ships were illegally engaged in triangular trade between Amsterdam, Africa, and Brazil. Their holds filled with manufactured goods, his ships left the Dutch port for the Guinea coast to barter for slaves for Brazil, where they were exchanged for sugar.

In 1609, the slave trader was one of the twenty-five Jewish merchants who established bank accounts at the opening of Amsterdam’s Exchange Bank. The Inquisitor, however, wasn’t so much troubled by Querido’s lucrative trade as by the fact that he was a proselytizer for Judaism. Evidence of this was disclosed at a 1595 Inquisition hearing in Brazil, when an informer testified that a friend had told him that when he first arrived in Bahia, Querido had said to him: “I am glad you came here to save your soul,” and urged him to marry his sister. The friend, a candy manufacturer, told the informer he declined “because she was a Jewess.”
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Querido, in doing business on four continents (he also traded with India), was a man on the move. In an age when ocean voyages were perilous and took months, Jews like him and Palache strode over continents and oceans. They braved new worlds, negotiated with kings, and robbed them as well. Querido’s story does not end here.

“Cursed by day and cursed by night; cursed when he goes forth and cursed when he comes in.”
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So reads the condemnation of Uriel da Costa, excommunicated by holier-than-thou Jews who felt compelled to outdo the Christians in orthodoxy. Jews might have been freer in Amsterdam, but they still had to abide by the strictures their religious leaders demanded of the community. Before da Costa wound up killing himself, he wrote an account of his life and of the early community’s severity and religious dogmatism.

So stringent were these constraints that they drove away many young Jews, including members of da Costa’s family, who, seeking personal freedom, settled in the New World and led the fight for Jewish rights. Their parents, having been raised with the strictures of Christianity and being newly returned to Judaism, felt compelled to adhere—or pay lip service—to the numerous tenets of their religion. As if doing penance for all their years pretending to be Catholic, few of the older émigrés looked to confront those rabbis who (like Palache’s brother-in-law) were zealous in their litany of do’s and don’ts, and quick to excommunicate those who didn’t toe the line.

Uriel da Costa was one of those who refused. His autobiography, excerpted below, illuminates this early period as few other sources can.
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Born in Oporto, Portugal, in 1585 to a wealthy converso family, he studied for the priesthood and served in the local church before moving to Amsterdam in 1615 with his mother and four brothers. What prompted his return to Judaism is best described in his own words:

I grew up in the Roman Catholic religion, and since I was terribly afraid of eternal damnation I occupied myself with reading the New Testament and other spiritual books…I became completely confused…It seemed to me impossible to confess my sins in accordance with Roman Catholic custom to obtain absolute absolution…I began to doubt if it was really true what I was taught of the life to come and tried to reconcile faith with reason, for it was reason which whispered into my ear something utterly irreconcilable with faith…

Longing to find some satisfaction in any religion, I began to read the Books of Moses and the Prophets, knowing full well there was great competition between Jew and Christian. I found in the Old Testament many things that contradicted the New Testament completely. In addition, the old covenant is accepted by Jews as well as Christians, and the new one only by Christians. Finally I began to believe in Moses and decided to live according to his law because he received it from God, or so he maintained, and he simply considered himself an intermediary.

Considering all this and the fact that in my country there was no freedom of religion, I decided to leave my beautiful house built by my father, and did not think twice about giving up my ecclesiastical office. So we embarked on a ship under the greatest danger, for it is known that those descended from Jews were not permitted to leave the country without a permit by the king. My mother was with me, as well as my brothers whom I had won over to my newly won convictions…It was a daring enterprise and could have failed, so dangerous was it in this country to even discuss matters of religion. It was a long voyage and finally we arrived in Amsterdam where we felt Jews could live in freedom and fulfill the commandments. And since I was imbued with it, my brothers and I immediately submitted to circumcision.

Uriel’s concept of Judaism was based on the Old Testament. He had expected to find a biblical Judaism that no longer existed. Like many conversos, his knowledge was based solely on the Old Testament as transcribed in the Christian Bible. Instead, he encountered the Judaism of the Diaspora, an evolving faith built on interpretations and the commentaries of learned Jews found in the Talmud rather than the Torah. Wishing to live in accordance with the Commandments, da Costa rejected any new rendering of divine law not intoned in the Five Books of Moses.

When a converso moved to Amsterdam, he was immediately embraced by the rabbis. No matter how idolatrous he had been while in “Babylonian exile,” he was absolved. But now that he had returned to the bosom of Judaism, the rabbis smothered him with their laws:

After the first few days I began to understand that the customs and institutions of the Jews in Amsterdam were not at all in accordance with what Moses had written. If Moses’ commandments were observed strictly as written, then the Jews here were wrong to have invented so many things which deviated from them. It was not right for a man who had exchanged security at home for freedom abroad, and had sacrificed every possible advantage to permit himself to be so threatened…

Not reticent about his views, Uriel accused members of the Mahamad, the synagogue’s executive committee, of inventing a new Torah: “They call themselves the sages of the Jewish people, inventing a host of laws which are totally opposed to it [and] do all these things in order to sit in the first row of the Temple and to be greeted in the marketplace with particular respect.”
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In 1623, two incidents occurred that led to his excommunication. His nephew, “who lives with me, went to the community leaders and accused me of eating food which was not in accordance with Jewish law, and said that I could not possibly be a Jew.” Soon after, da Costa met two new arrivals, who “I advised against joining the Jewish community, telling them they did not know what kind of yoke they were about to be burdened with.”

I asked them not to mention our conversation to the Jews. But these scoundrels betrayed me…As soon as the elders of the synagogue learned of my conversation, they met with the rabbis, who were hot with anger. A public war ensued. The rabbis and the people began to persecute me with a new hatred and did so many things against me that I could only react with utter and justified contempt.

Expelled from the synagogue, he was shunned. “Even my brothers, whose teacher I was, passed me by. So afraid were they of the authorities that they did not even greet me on the street.” When his wife, Sarah, died, his only close companion was a faithful housekeeper. After seven years, he could take it no longer. He asked to be reconciled, and agreed to the humiliating subjugation demanded by the Mahamad for reinstatement. On the appointed day:

I entered the synagogue, which was crowded with men and women who had come to observe this spectacle. When the time came, I went to the pulpit…and read in a loud voice the list of my confessions, concluding “I merit to die a thousand deaths for what I have committed.”…After, the sexton told me to go to a corner of the synagogue and strip off my clothes. I disrobed to my waist, wrapped a scarf around my head, took off my shoes, and the sexton tied my arms to one of the columns of the synagogue. The cantor came, and with leather whip beat me 39 times according to the law which provides for 40 lashes. But these people are so conscientious, they are afraid they might give me more than the law states. While he whipped me I recited the psalm.