Description

The 1638 founding document of the Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora of Amsterdam is well known as a “merger agreement” that brought three existing congregations together into one synagogue under one leadership council (Mahamad). It bears the signatures of 218 householding men of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish nation in Amsterdam, signifying their agreement to subject themselves to the authority of the new leadership. It is also well known that this document, along with the set of communal regulations drawn up later that year, granted nearly unfettered authority to the Mahamad. Looking at these two documents along with an earlier one that established an umbrella government over the three congregations (1622) and later references to them, there emerges a more nuanced view of how these they functioned—both as political texts and as documents in a working archive.

Text 1 has been published in Portuguese in Wilhelmina C. Pieterse, Daniel Levi de Barrios als Geschiedschrijver van de Portugees-Israelietische Gemeente te Amsterdam in Zijn “Triumpho del Govierno Popular” (Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema, 1968), 155-67; but never in its totality in translation. Wiznitzer (see below) published an English paraphrase. Texts 2 and 3 have not been published to my knowledge, aside from short excerpts.

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17-8-2017 12:00 PM

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17-8-2017 1:00 PM

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Aug 17th, 12:00 PM Aug 17th, 1:00 PM

Founding Documents of the Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora, Amsterdam

The 1638 founding document of the Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora of Amsterdam is well known as a “merger agreement” that brought three existing congregations together into one synagogue under one leadership council (Mahamad). It bears the signatures of 218 householding men of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish nation in Amsterdam, signifying their agreement to subject themselves to the authority of the new leadership. It is also well known that this document, along with the set of communal regulations drawn up later that year, granted nearly unfettered authority to the Mahamad. Looking at these two documents along with an earlier one that established an umbrella government over the three congregations (1622) and later references to them, there emerges a more nuanced view of how these they functioned—both as political texts and as documents in a working archive.

Text 1 has been published in Portuguese in Wilhelmina C. Pieterse, Daniel Levi de Barrios als Geschiedschrijver van de Portugees-Israelietische Gemeente te Amsterdam in Zijn “Triumpho del Govierno Popular” (Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema, 1968), 155-67; but never in its totality in translation. Wiznitzer (see below) published an English paraphrase. Texts 2 and 3 have not been published to my knowledge, aside from short excerpts.