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ABSTRACT
Scholars often analyze houses’ “Jewishness” vis-à-vis Jewish law and rituals. For Dutch Sephardic Jews during the long eighteenth century, however, identity is better understood using a model of rhizome in which “Jewishness” consists of the deliberate interbraiding of multiple traditions. Jewish identity was inextricable from the cultures in which Jews lived. Jewish homes along the Vecht River near Amsterdam exemplify the rhizome model. They embody the same braided pastoral ideal found in eighteenth-century Dutch Sephardic literature and material culture. As Sephardic Jews relocated to Netherlands Antilles, the rhizome present in country houses shifted, taking into account Jews’ new role as slave owners. Thus while buitenplaatsen along the Vecht embraced the Jewish pastoral ideal of a retreat from mercantile life, landhuizen in Curaçao evoked a georgic ideal that channelled the residents’ gaze not on rivers, gardens, and grottos, but on guard stations, slave huts, and enslaved workers. Leisure became redefined as an ability to watch rather than retreat from labour. Taken together, Dutch Jewish country houses along the Vecht and in Curaçao challenge the notion that Jewish material culture has a “single root system.”
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the comments and feedback of the anonymous reviewers of this article, as well as David Rechter, Abigail Green, and the participants of the Jewish Country House Conference at Oxford University in March 2018. Funding for the research for this project was supplied by the Fulbright Program, Reed College, and Bard Graduate Center. I owe a debt to the Center for Jewish History, the Ets Haim Library, Yeshiva University, the Mongui Maduro Library, and the National Archives of Curacao for access to their collections. I am also grateful to the following for access to their museum or cultural spaces: Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, the Snoa Museum, Rembrandt House Museum, Mongui Maduro Museum, Landhuis Ascension, Landhuis Savonet, Kula Hulanda, Museum Van Loon, Willet-Holthuysen Museum, Pinto House, and the Tula Museum.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Laura Arnold Leibman is a professor of English and Humanities at Reed College and was a Leon Levy Foundation Professor of Jewish Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center. She is the author of numerous books and articles on Jewish material culture and the Jewish Atlantic world.
Notes
1 Meyer, The Stay of Mozes Haim Luzzatto at Amsterdam.
2 Weinstein, “The Storied Stones,” 657.
3 Kuiper, “The Rise of the Country House”.
4 Buddingh’, Van Punt en Snoa, 126–33.
5 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, 622–77; Huijgers and Ezechiëls, Landhuizen van Curação en Bonaire.
6 Niemeijer, “The Country-house Cromwijck”; Kuiper and Meierink, Buitenplaatsen in de Gouden Eeuw; Groll and Alphen, The Dutch Overseas; Huijgers and Ezechiëls, Landhuizen van Curação en Bonaire; Herwaarden, Buitenplaatsen; Groll, De Architektuur van Suriname; Schelhaas, Dekkers, and Wiersma, Kastelen en Historische Landhuizen.
7 Bahloul, The Architecture of Memory; Alexander, “Ritual on the Threshold”; Avigad, Archaeological Discoveries in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem; Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel.
8 Mulira, “Edouart Glissant,” 117.
9 Oelman, Marrano Poets of the Seventeenth Century; Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation; Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews; Weinstein, “Sepulchral Monuments”.
10 Leibman, “What is Sephardic Culture?”
11 von Greyerz, Religion and Culture, 80–2.
12 Leone, Religious Conversion and Identity.
13 Efron, The Jews: A History 221.
14 Irigoyen-García, The Spanish Arcadia.
15 Leibman, “What is Sephardic Culture?”
16 Oelman, Marrano Poets of the Seventeenth Century, 150–9, 206–7.
17 Ibid., 39.
18 Beth Haim; Weinstein, “Sepulchral Monuments,” 369–70.
19 Sclar, “‘Like Iron to a Magnet’,” 280.
20 Ibid., 197.
21 Schmidt, “Dutch Arcadia,” 173; Hunt, The Dutch Garden, 82–3.
22 Kuiper and Meierink, Buitenplaatsen in de Gouden Eeuw.
23 Schmidt, “Dutch Arcadia,” 175.
24 Feddes, A Millennium of Amsterdam, 114–77.
25 Kuiper, “The Rise of the Country House,” 15.
26 Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade.
27 Subsequently called Vechtevoort and owned by Abraham Bueno de Mesquito.
28 Coppenhagen, Neveh Shalom, 12.
29 Scarborough and Dixon, Art and Social Change, 23–5.
30 Ibid., 24.
31 Ibid., 25–6.
32 Kuiper, “The Rise of the Country House,” 15.
33 Schmidt, “Dutch Arcadia,” 175.
34 Bailey, Rembrandt’s House, 185.
35 Feddes, A Millennium of Amsterdam, 63–5.
36 Bailey, Rembrandt’s House, 185.
37 Andrews, Landscape and Western Art, 59.
38 Ibid., 62.
39 Ibid., 62–3.
40 Ruff, Arcadian Visions, 56.
41 Ibid., 60.
42 Ibid., 60.
43 Frijhoff and Spies. Dutch Culture in a European Perspective, 484.
44 Coppenhagen, Neveh Shalom 12.
45 Michman et al., Pinkas, 466.
46 Remaining houses once owned by early Jewish residents include Boomgaard, Druydenborgh, Daalwijk, Doornburg, Endelhof, Geesberge, Hazenburg, Herteveld, Hoogevecht, Leeuwenburg, Leeuw en Vecht, Luxemburg, Mariënhof, Neerbeek, Nieuw-Vechtevoort, De Nonnerie Overkerck, Raadhoven, Richmond, Soetendael, Huys Ten Bosch, Vechtoever, Vechtwens, and Vijerhof. Most early Ashkenazi who settled in the area lived across the river in Maarsseveen, where they opened a separate synagogue in 1759 (Michman et al., Pinkas, 466). Of the remaining, houses, however, only Vechtendaal belonged to an Ashkenazi Jew, Mozes Samuel Polak who bought it in 1853. During the eighteenth century, however, the house belonged to the Sephardic family of Manuel Henriques (Coppenhagen, Neveh Shalom).
47 Coppenhagen, Neveh Shalom; Speelman, Buitenplaatsen.
48 Zinberg, The German-Polish Cultural Center, 188–9.
49 Ibid., 188.
50 Ibid., 188.
51 Ibid., Ironically, the pastoral bliss offered by the countryside sometimes protected renegade Jews from Jewish persecution: Spinoza, for example, took refuge the country estate Tulpenburg, which belonged to his friend Dirck Tulp, a Protestant(Adams, The Universal Cyclopaedia, 63). Later Isaac de Pinto bought Tulpenburg.
52 The artist who made the ketubah, Shalom Italia, was an Italian-Jewish artist who lived in Rotterdam (Epstein, Skies of Parchment, 169).
53 Coppenhagen, Neveh Shalom, 7–8.
54 In 1686, for example, David Emanuel de Pinto rebuilt the house at Sint Antoniesbreestraat 69 now known as the “Pintohuis” with an Italianate neoclassical facade (Stoutenbeek and Vigeveno, Jewish Amsterdam, 71–2).
55 For example, see the restored bird paintings from ceiling of hallway in Pintohuis, St. Antoniesbreestraat 69, Amsterdam.
56 Goslinga, A Short History of the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam, 54–5, 57; Rupert, Creolization and Contraband, 94.
57 Hoberman, Leibman, and Surowitz-Israel, Jews in the Americas, xxv, xxxiii.
58 Hunt, The Dutch Garden, 82.
59 I am grateful to Ton Tielen and Loes Donkers for helping me sort out the nuances of these terms.
60 Gibson, Pleasant Places, 133.
61 Tobin. Colonizing Nature, 56.
62 Emmanuel, and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, 151, 277, 497.
63 Rupert, Creolization and Contraband, 119.
64 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, 681.
65 Higgins, Lima, 34, 51–2; White, Cities Of The World, 183, 186; Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation, 63.
66 Buddingh’, Van Punt en Snoa, 65.
67 Huijgers and Ezechiëls, Landhuizen.
68 Freyre, The Masters, xxxii.
69 Ibid., xvi.
70 Agorsah and Childs, Africa, 73.
71 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews, 65, 663.
72 Ibid., 228; Faber, Jews, Slaves.
73 Leibman, Messianism, 104.
74 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews, 619.
75 Ibid., 64.
76 Ibid., 181.
77 Mintz-Manor, “The Phoenix,” 13.
78 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews.
79 Casid, Sowing Empire, xxii.
80 Edney, Mapping an Empire, 34.
81 Crain, Historic Architecture, 47, 95; Connors, Caribbean Houses, 99; Fonk, Curaçao, 15, 38; Pruneti Winkel, Scharloo, 153–5.
82 Proportionately Jews held fewer slaves than their Protestant neighbours. Emmanuel and Emmanuel note that
In 1720 the six top-ranking Jewish slaveholders had a combined total of 165 slaves as against 497 by the six largest Protestant slaveholders … In 1744, the Protestants owned 1,788 slaves, and the Jews only 310 … In 1749 the first five of these big Jewish slaveholders (of 1744) had a combined total of 91 slaves as against 420 owned by the five leading Protestant slaveholders. A very strict slave census taken in 1765 showed that the Jews owned only 860 of a total of 5,534 slaves. (History of the Jews, 228)
83 Pruneti Winkel, Scharloo.
84 One reason for this change in style may have been the rise of a parallel Jewish community in nearby Coro in the early nineteenth century.
85 Slavery wasn’t abolished in Curaçao until 1863.
86 Langenfeld, 30 years, S.A.L, 45.
87 Ibid., 47–8.
88 Ditzhuijzen, A Shtetl.
89 Dubin, “Introduction”; Cesarani, Port Jews; Kagan and Morgan, Atlantic Diasporas; Leibman, Messianim; Monaco, “Port Jews or a People”.
90 Bourdieu, “The Berber House,” 104.
91 Lionnet, Postcolonial Representations, 12.
92 Nation of Islam. The Secret Relationship; Faber, Jews, Slaves; Friedman, Jews and the American Slave Trade.