Jodenbuurt

The Jodenbuurt (Dutch: Jewish neighbourhood) is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands. For centuries before World War II, it was the center of the Dutch Jews of Amsterdam — hence, its name (literally Jewish quarter). It is best known as the birthplace of Baruch Spinoza, the home of Rembrandt, and the Jewish ghetto of Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Traditionally, the boundaries of the Jodenbuurt, east of the city center, are the Amstel River in the southwest, the Zwanenburgwal "Swans City Wall" and Oudeschans "Old Rampart" canals in the northwest, Rapenburg, a street in the northeast and the Nieuwe Herengracht "New Patricians Canal" in the southeast. But it grew to include parts of Nieuwmarkt "New Market", Sint Antoniesbreestraat "St. Anthony's Broad Street", the Plantage "Plantation", and Weesperzijde "Weesp Side", especially after 1882, when two canals, the Leprozengracht "Lepers Canal" and the Houtgracht "Wood Canal", were filled in.

The first Jews to settle in Amsterdam were the Sephardim, who had been expelled from Portugal and Spain in 1493. They were joined in the following decades by the Ashkenazi from Central and Eastern Europe, the first of whom had come from Germany in 1600. In those years, the only available land for them was at the outskirts of the eastern side of the Centrum — the island of Vlooienburg, surrounded by the Amstel River and the canals — so they settled along the island's main street, Breestraat, which quickly became known as Jodenbreestraat [ "Jewish Broad Street" ]. ( The nearby square, Waterlooplein [ "Waterloo Square" ], would not be created until 1882, when the Leprozengracht and the Houtgracht were drained. ) By 1612, the population was about 500 people but it doubled to about 1,000 in 1620 and again to 2,500 in 1672. The Jews gave their new home, Amsterdam, its Hebrew name, Mokum ( "place" ) to show that they had finally felt at home in the city.

This was because, with the Union of Utrecht in 1579, all the residents of the Dutch Republic were to be given religious freedom, the first time a European country had ever established and enshrined the freedom of religion as the law of the land. So the Jews were allowed to build their own synagogues. The first of them was the Beth Jakob, built between 1602 and 1610, followed by the second synagogue, Neve Shalom, constructed between 1608 and 1612, and the third, Beth Israel, founded in 1618. They were all Sephardic. They were all hidden and therefore not visible from the streets.

But the Jews were not alone in the Jodenbuurt. They were joined by several Christians. One of them was the artist Rembrandt, who was fascinated by the "Biblical" faces of his new neighbors. In 1641, a group of Franciscans also came to establish a Catholic clandestine church in a house called "Moses", out of the reach of the Protestant authorities of Amsterdam. Known as the "Jewish Church", it began as the Sint-Anthoniuskerk [ "St. Anthony of Padua Church" ] but it grew into the Mozes en Aäronkerk [ "Moses and Aaron Church" ]. It is still standing today at the Waterlooplein.

On 8 November 1616, the Jews were made legal citizens by the City of Amsterdam. But they were still not allowed to enter certain occupations; they were not permitted to join the guilds of Amsterdam. So they were limited to street trading, financing, book printing and diamond cutting — the only occupations that were open to them. From 1622, the synagogues began to cooperate for the good of the Jodenbuurt. On 3 April 1693, they merged their districts into a single municipality under the name of Talmud Torah. In that year, they also opened the first synagogue that was visible from the streets. It stood on the Houtgracht, at the present Waterlooplein. Next to the new synagogue on Nieuwe Amstelstraat [ "New Amstel Street" ] was a meat market, where the residents of the neighborhood could buy their kosher meat.

The Sephardi did not have proper knowledge about Judaism. They were not allowed to be Jews in Portugal and Spain but they were allowed to live as the so-called Marranos or fake Christians. So in Amsterdam they sent for the rabbis to come out of Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire to teach them the ways of Judaism in the Jodenbuurt. The first Ashkenazi shul, the Great Synagogue ( now the Jewish Historical Museum ), and the fifth Sephardi shul, the Portuguese-Israelite Synagogue, were opened in 1671 and 1675, respectively, immortalized by the engravings of the Dutchman, Romeyn de Hooghe ( 1645–1708 ). The Portuguese Synagogue was the place where Spinoza was placed under the ban by the Sephardic Jewish community in 1656.

Because of their knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese, many of the Sephardim were involved with trade and plantations in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South America. Several Jews, such as Isaac de Pinto and his father David, had a great influence on the national government of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces but they came under heavy criticism from the Doelisten, a political coalition of Orangists, moderates, radicals and democrats. In the days of the Batavian Republic, several residents of the Jodenbuurt, including Jonas Daniel Meijer ( 1780–1834 ), the first Jewish lawyer in the Netherlands, and Carel Asser ( 1780–1836 ), a judge, were admitted to the bar, the civil societies and even municipal politics but they came in conflict with the parnassiem, the religious leaders of their neighborhood.