Introduction

Poor relief was organized on a number of different levels and reflected a variety of cultural influences. It was centralized, yet subdivided. It was institutionalized, yet showed close personal involvement and private initiative. It was hierarchical, yet also mutual. Age-old Jewish charitable concepts could be perceived, yet Iberian and Catholic patterns were also interwoven. Modernity set in, yet conservatism persisted.

Rabbis, mostly recruited from various Jewish centres round the Mediterranean, introduced a traditional Jewish model of social and religious organization when founding the new Portuguese Jewish community in the north. Armed with experiences from their own kehilot, they were pleased to put their knowledge and ideas at the disposal of the Amsterdam Portuguese community. The Jewish heritage which they transplanted to Amsterdam was influenced in its turn by factors in both their immediate and more remote surroundings.

It is not surprising, then, that the Amsterdam Portuguese community incorporated many elements of the Sephardi model from Jewish communities in southern Europe and the Orient, above all from Venice. More general references to traditional Jewish models were made in the founding articles of the burial society Gemilut Hasadim in 1643, which make it clear that the organization was based on ḥevrot (societies) found in other parts of the Jewish world: como hay em outras partes. Thus the Amsterdam Portuguese kahal was to some extent modelled on traditional Jewish forms of organization and on the southern European and oriental Sephardi model in particular.

Within the Portuguese community, the Jewish tradition rubbed shoulders with concepts and structures of poor relief characteristic of Catholic and Iberian society brought to Amsterdam by the immigrants as part of their intellectual baggage. Moreover, being modern citizens, some at least of the newcomers must also have been au fait with the latest ideas on poor relief current in early modern Europe and have used some of these ideas when setting up a poor-relief system in Amsterdam. Traces of this cultural encounter can also be found in certain forms of social care dispensed by the Amsterdam Portuguese, who could also see for themselves how novel ideas for poor relief were applied in the Dutch city. The new views on dealing with and caring for paupers must have given even the traditional Jewish community pause for thought and encouraged them to opt for the greater centralization of poor relief.