Resources for 2018
Absconding and Chasing Across the Western Sephardic Diaspora
Traveling in the Western Sephardic diaspora often raised questions among their creditors whether the purpose of a travel was really for legitimate business interests or an attempt to abscond with their funds. By analyzing sources from Portuguese Inquisition files, and notarial records from both Amsterdam and Oporto, this presentation examines the tension between legitimate and illegitimate mobility within the diaspora, and widespread surveillance of debtors across long distances.
The Biblical Space and Jewish Identity
No description available.
Domestic, Religious and Public: The Use of Space by Jewish Women in Early Modern Italy
Mirian (daughter of the late Abram Israel Mora) and Rachel (daughter of the late Raffael De Silva and widow of Isach Oliver), the authors of the two testaments published here for the first time, lived in the Venetian ghetto since about the 1630s-1640s. While the former was a Levantine Jew, the latter was a Ponentine.1 In a sense, both belonged to the same family and household, the De Silvas, who lived in the ghetto vecchio: Mirian was a servant while Rachel a matron. When Mirian and Rachel each became aware of their extreme illnesses—we do not know their respective ages—they decided to dictate their wills in 1666 and 1679, respectively, and to bequeath their patrimonies (modest and rich) mainly to the members of the De Silva family. Both testaments introduce us into different and yet, at the same time, complementary ways Jewish women interacted with spatial contexts within the domestic, religious, and public spheres in early modern Venice.
Fluid Boundaries: Rivers and the Jewish Communities of Early Modern Ashkenaz
This discussion explores the interactions between Jews and the natural world. The session focuses around Jewish engagement with rivers, and how waterways shaped the spatial dimensions of daily life. The discussion revolves around three sources from Central Europe that examine the ways in which thinking with rivers can lead us to explore not only the human-made spaces of a landscape, but also the natural elements at their outer limits. Each source sheds light on an aspect of the experience of environment and the role of space in Jewish life, and together offer a portrait of the place of water as a zone of physical and cultural interaction.
Inquisitorial Prison As a Site of Cross-Cultural Encounter: The Case of Manuel Cardoso de Macedo aka Abraham Pelengrino Guer
The inquisitorial prison housed individuals who were accused of crimes of conscience and thus the encounters that a prisoner would have in a secret prison of the Inquisition would often enough center on issues of belief and identity. Manuel Cardoso de Macedo (1585–1652) was an Azorean Old Christian who found his way to Judaism after first embracing Calvinism as a teenager living in London and then discovering “the Law of Moses” in a cell he shared with an accused Judaizer in the prison of the Lisbon Holy Office.
Mapping with Midwives: Sources about Jewish Midwives in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam
No description available.