Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora

4. Childhood and Family among the Western Sephardim in the Seventeenth Century

h 4 i Childhood and Family among the Western Sephardim in the Seventeenth Century julia r. lieberman This chapter focuses on family life in three Western Sephardi communities —Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Livorno—with an emphasis on children. These merchant communities, populated by former New Christians originally from Spain and Portugal, were founded at the turn of the seventeenth century. I will begin this essay by exploring the Western Sephardi household and the roles assigned to husbands and wives. Next, I will explore how life-cycle events that involved children were celebrated; these events include birth, circumcision, naming the children, redemption of the first born, and, as well, the bar mitzvah, which Western Sephardim then referred to as a child “entering the guild of commandment observers.” I am also interested in parents’ attitudes toward their children from birth to adolescence, as well as the attitudes toward breastfeeding and religious education. The sources I have gathered consist of printed books and manuscripts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; these include sermons, prayer books, family memoirs, genealogies, ethical wills, and archival sources such as communal registers. My study also builds on demographic data about family life that has been collected by other researchers. Although the majority of the sources come from Amsterdam, I also have studied materials from Hamburg and Livorno, where Jewish life was permitted, and I touch upon Antwerp, where, under Catholic Spanish control, Judaism was practiced under the pretense of Catholicism. It was not uncommon for these merchant families and their children to live in places where they could not openly practice Judaism and then later move to places where they could. Thus the line separating converso life—with Jews pretending to be Christians—from Jewish life was at times rather thin. I will address two questions throughout 130 julia r. lieberman my essay. First, to what extent did Sephardim view their children as individuals different from adults; in other words, in what way were children recognized as having their own specific needs? Second, to what roles were children assigned in the Sephardi family? If we consider childhood as an idea formed in the minds of adults, then what was the relationship between the idea of childhood among the ex-conversos and their own collective Jewish identity, an identity that was also in the process of being reconstructed? I believe that exploring Sephardi attitudes toward children will also shed light on how their Jewish identity took form. The Structure of the Western Sephardi Family as Reflected in the Thesovro dos dinim by Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel (Amsterdam, 1647) To get close to the experience of children, we must begin by understanding how the Western Sephardim organized family life once they returned to normative Judaism. Our most important and, to my knowledge, only rabbinic source for the structure of the family among the Western Sephardim is the book by Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, Thesovro dos dinim (Treasury of Jewish Laws), which was published in Amsterdam in 1647.1 This important book has not received much attention by historians, perhaps because, as its title indicates, it has been considered merely a derivative explanation of halakhah (Jewish law and tradition). Nonetheless, and as I will demonstrate, the book is a unique source of information , because its primary focus is family life; it teaches readers how to celebrate life-cycle events in accordance with halakhah, and prescribes proper and expected behavior among family members. In addition, it addresses not only the Amsterdam community but also the scattered network of Western Sephardi communities. Menasseh also mentions aspects of his own family and professional life, such as the marriage of his daughter Gracia Abarbanel, which took place while he was writing the Thesovro, and he relates the difficulties he encountered finding time in his busy schedule to write it. Thus the book is not merely a set of prescribed rabbinic rules, but rather it seems to represent Menasseh ’s own teachings and lifestyle.2 More importantly, in the introduction Menasseh also addresses women as potential readers, calling them the very “noble and honest Senhoras of the Portuguese Nation,”and expresses his desire to persuade them to read his book on the laws (dinim) that pertain to good governance of the household. Although he does not quote specific contempo- Childhood and Family among the Western Sephardim 131 rary sources, as he addresses women he evidently is motivated by a desire not...