Reluctant Cosmopolitans : The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Note on Orthography, Transliteration, and Special Usages -- List of Tables -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: The Dutch Jerusalem: The Distortions of History -- 1: 'The True Book of Experience': Amsterdam's Toleration of the Jews -- 2: Refuge and Opportunity: The Geography of a Jewish Migration -- 3: Commerce, Networks, and Other Relations: The Inner Workings of Portuguese Jewish Entrepreneurship -- 4: Nação and Kahal: A Religious Community in the Making -- 5: 'Dissonant Words', 'Bad Opinions', and 'Scandals': Varieties of Religious Discord and Social Conflict -- 6: A Patchwork Culture: Iberian, Jewish, and Dutch Elements in Peaceable Coexistence -- Conclusion: Reluctant Cosmopolitans: Jewish Ethnicity in statu renascendi -- Appendix: Details of Freight Contracts -- Bibliography -- Index of Persons -- Index of Subjects.

Winner of the 2000 National Jewish Book Award for Sephardic Studies Focusing on the social dimension of Amsterdam's Portuguese Jewish economic and religious life, Swetschinski paints a lively and unconventional picture of the dynamics of a remarkable Jewish community, the first traditional Jewish society to engage creatively with the non-Jewish, secular world in relative harmony. A broad, authentic, and original vision of the transition from medieval to modern Jewish history.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.