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>> 93 5 Families, Networks, and the Challenge of Social Organization Trust yourself neither to your own brother nor to your best friend —Elijah da Pesaro The independent congregation-community was not the only way in which Mediterranean Jews organized themselves during this period. As the refugees of 1492 set about reestablishing these local political associations, they also began to form broader interregional links with one another. These horizontal associations, or networks, represent an important dimension of the early Sephardic Diaspora that served to complement that of the congregational community. Much like the local Jewish community, the expansion of these social and economic networks marks a point of continuity with the period before 1492. Wide-ranging networks of Jewish merchants and intellectuals had been central features of Jewish society throughout the medieval period. In his influential portrait of medieval Jewish life, S. D. Goitein famously emphasizes the fluidity of Jewish social and economic contacts across the broad expanse of the Mediterranean. Although the disintegration of the Pax Islamica during the later Middle Ages caused a sharp decline in Jewish long-distance trade, the Mediterranean society depicted by Goitein never truly disappeared. The circulation of large groups of European Jewish 94 > 95 her brothers in Egypt, requesting financial help and advice, and complaining that she had no one in Jerusalem on whom she could depend for support.3 Indeed, women were integrated into the mercantile networks of the sixteenth century as both producers and purveyors of goods, but were not as mobile as their male counterparts. Sephardic women were involved in a variety of economic activities, from money-lending and real estate sales to the manufacture and sale of textiles, perfumes, jewelry, and other commodities. Jewish women even acted as the agents of Muslim craftswomen, selling their goods in the public market while the latter remained sequestered at home.4 When it came to long-distance trade, however, they generally remained dependent upon the activity of their male relatives.5 At times, Sephardic families could prove to be as problematic a support system as the local Jewish kahal, especially in matters involving money. An inquisitorial register from Lisbon records the case of a Converso family that was torn apart over the matter of a large inheritance. João Baptista, a Converso merchant operating in Italy, had been found guilty of Judaizing and only released from prison upon confession of his sins to the Inquisition . Once a Converso merchant had been imprisoned or even interrogated for suspicion of Judaizing, his position within his trading network became jeopardized. Though he was still considered a member of his family and its important mercantile system, João’s relatives now feared that his arrest by the Holy Office had attracted too much unwanted attention. Their solution to this thorny problem, all too common among Converso families, was to send him first to Angola and then Brazil, the furthest points of their far-flung trading network. However, João did not take his banishment with equanimity . Upon the death of his uncle, Jorge Carlos, in the Portuguese colony of São Tomé, João saw his opportunity for a reversal of fortune that would return him to prominence as a merchant. Using his compromised position with the Inquisition to his advantage, he denounced his relatives to the local bishop in order to inherit the whole of his uncle’s vast estate.6 As we have seen, tensions existed throughout the sixteenth century between Sephardic Jews and their communal leaders. Yet even the most independentminded among these Jews regularly found themselves in need of the sort of political guidance and regulation provided by their communal authorities. One area in which the needs of both the Jewish masses and their leadership regularly overlapped was in the process of arranging social alliances through betrothal and marriage. In many cases, the families involved contracted third parties to act as arbiters to set the conditions for the engagement, the wedding, and the dowry. Communal councillors often sought to involve themselves directly in this process, but families frequently turned to arbiters who were 96 > 97 sage wrote back and emphasized the importance of including legal scholars in this process of communal control over marriage alliances. Alashkar approved of the kahal’s efforts to regulate betrothals, but added that the absence of knowledgeable scholars at such ceremonies “would lead to chaos.”13 Despite such efforts, many Jews continued to arrange betrothals as they saw fit, often without the consent or recognition of their community...

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