Conditional tolerance · Netherlands · Seventeenth century
Freedom to worship did not yet mean equal access to the city’s occupations and power.
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Seventeenth century
Conditional tolerance · Amsterdam offers refuge, with limits
Freedom to worship did not yet mean equal access to the city’s occupations and power.
Refuge after Iberian persecution
Portuguese and Spanish Jewish migrants came to Amsterdam after persecution of Jews and converts in Iberia. Some could now practise Judaism openly. They built religious and social institutions in a city that offered opportunities unavailable in their earlier homes. Refuge changed their lives without making every civic door open.
The closed guild door
City rules and trade guilds limited Jewish access to occupations. Such barriers shaped where people could work and how they could survive. Later stereotypes about Jewish livelihoods concealed this history of imposed restrictions. They turned the effects of exclusion into a supposed trait of the excluded.
A community is more than its wealthy families
Amsterdam’s Jewish population included Portuguese Jews and later Ashkenazi migrants, with substantial differences of language and wealth. Many lived in poverty. The image of a uniformly rich community was false. A successful merchant or an impressive synagogue could not stand for everyone’s daily circumstances.