Hebrews of the Portuguese nation

In the seventeenth century, descendants of forcibly baptized Jews (conversos) fled the Iberian Inquisitions to settle in Amsterdam, a city renowned for its commercial ties and religious tolerance. On arrival the conversos lacked clear ethnic or religious identities and had little social organization. Yet they formed the nucleus of what within a generation became a strongly cohesive community with a highly structured and well-developed sense of its Jewish identity. Drawing on family and communal records, diaries, memoirs, literary works, and other sources, Miriam Bodian reconstructs the fascinating story of how these Portuguese immigrants - merchants, professionals, and intellectuals, for the most part - reasserted their Judaism, while maintaining their Iberian heritage.

First sentence: The Portuguese conversos who made their way to Amsterdam in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries would not have been conspicuous upon arrival, despite their ignorance of Dutch and their Iberian dress.

Year

1997

Language

English

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Editions

1

Pages

219

ISBN

9780253213518

Data source: Wikidata