City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, 3-volume box set

1 A Dutch Beginning

5 Upon viewing Manhattan Island in the early seventeenth century, Dutch poet Jacob Steendam remarked, “This is Eden, where the land floweth with milk and honey.” The “sweetness of the Air” transfixed the first explorers, astonished at the freshness and fragrance of the climate and by an island of “hilly, woody Country, full of Lakes and great Vallies.” Visitors marveled at vast meadow grass, at fields flush with strawberries, at woods filled with towering trees of walnut , chestnut, maple, and oak, at abundant wildlife as beavers, wolves, and foxes roamed and doves, swans, and blackbirds took flight, and at waterways where whales and porpoises whirled freely while oysters and lobsters flourished. The trails of the Lenapes, a nomadic confederation of Indian tribes, crisscrossed the island, connecting their fields of maize, squash, melons, and tobacco. On the east side, a dangerous estuary flowed into the Atlantic, while on the west side, a wide stream emptied as well into the sea, a river that was to be named after the English explorer Henry Hudson, who sailed the Halve Maen (Half Moon) into its waters in 1609. Three hundred years later, Steendam’s “land of milk and honey” housed the world’s largest and most prosperous Jewish urban population. The journey to this new world begins in fifteenth-century Spain and continues into Portugal, Holland, and Brazil before the landing on Manhattan Island in 1654.1 ■ Sephardic Exile and Dutch Welcome On a sultry early August morning in 1492 at the port of Huelva in southern Spain, Christopher Columbus sailed on the first of three epic voyages. On those same docks, a resident might have viewed hundreds of Spanish Jews, part of the 150,000 expelled from the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile by King C H A P T E R 1 A Dutch Beginning 6 ■ h av e n o f l i b e r t y Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The conjunction of these world-shattering events proved pivotal in Jewish history. The Jews of Spain, known as Sephardic Jews, equipped with mercantile skills and close family networks from centuries of Iberian residency, became significant factors in the new world. As states that became the homes of the exiled Spanish Jews claimed possessions in the new world, the refugees joined colonists risking their fortunes and lives in America, opening a new era for the Jews of Europe.2 Jews flourished in Islamic Spain as essential aides to Islamic leadership and commerce. Following the “Reconquista,” largely complete by the thirteenth century, Christian rulers welcomed them in similar roles. In Catholic Spain’s reorganization and economic growth, they held important administrative positions in government and vigorously pursued international trade. Jewish support enabled the monarchy to grow at the expense of the aristocracy.3 The famed Prototype View of 1664 portrays New Amsterdam as a small Dutch village in 1655. Visible are the fort, church, and city hall (far right). Note the gabled Dutch homes. For the interior layout, see the Castello plan in the “Visual Essay.” (Courtesy Museum of the City of New York, Print Archives) A Dutch Beginning ■ 7 Spanish Jewish society was largely autonomous before the expulsion. The Spanish government allowed the Jewish community to have its own councils enforce religious and even civil and criminal law, provided they did not interfere with affairs of state and church. While most Jews were not affluent, the well-educated economic and political elite dominated the councils. Many lived in Spain’s grandest villas and produced a rich collection of Judaic law and literature. In the fifteenth century, however, the persecution of Jews, never absent despite their critical contribution to the state, increased, spurred by the inception of the Inquisition in 1478. Over one hundred thousand Jews became conversos, converts to Christianity. While a number of Jewish communities, including one in Barcelona, could no longer survive in the Christian world, a significant population persevered, often with the help of Ferdinand and Isabella , who looked to them for financial aid. The pressures of a militant Catholic Church, however, forced the monarchs to accede to papal pressure and order the expulsion of all practicing Jews in 1492.4 The Spanish exile expelled Jews with their household goods except for their gold and silver. The outcast Jews also carried years of mercantile practice with them, as well as family ties to conversos remaining in Spain, who while living as Christians did not sever...