Emancipation and Poverty : The Ashkenazi Jews of Amsterdam, 1796-1850

by Sonnenberg-Stern, Karina

• ISBN13: 9780312227760
• ISBN10: 0312227760
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-02-01
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This is the first comprehensive study examining the impact of emancipation on the lives of Amsterdam's Jews. The enactment of equality in 1796 failed to provide these Jews with similar rights and opportunities as the non-Jews; two thirds of Amsterdam's Jewish community remained poor for much of the nineteenth century. Even though the declaration of emancipation should have provided the Jews with legal and social equality, the Dutch authorities continued to retain their perception of the Jews as a separate and different group of predominantly uncultured paupers and never made it their priority to remove all restrictive measures.

Author Biography

Karina Sonnenberg-Stern is currently researching the experience of German Jewish refugee women in Britain during the 1940s. She completed her D.Phil. thesis on the emancipation of the Ashkenazi Jews of Amsterdam at Oxford University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures, Maps and Tables	ix
Abbreviations	x
Preface	xi
The Nature of Emancipation in Europe	1	(25)
Germany	4	(5)
France	9	(2)
Britain	11	(2)
The particular case of Dutch Jewry's emancipation	13	(13)
The Ambiguities and Limits of Establishing a Jewish Community pre-1796	26	(16)
Jewish settlement in the Netherlands	26	(7)
Legal and social disabilities	33	(9)
The Uncertain Terms of Jewish Emancipation, 1796--1813	42	(31)
The conditional realisation of emancipation	42	(13)
Louis Napoleon's failure to abolish discriminatory legislation	55	(18)
Prejudice and Intolerance: Amsterdam's Treatment of the Jewish Poor	73	(44)
The Dutch authorities' domination of Dutch Jewry	80	(6)
Poverty and poor relief in nineteenth-century Amsterdam	86	(5)
The Jewish poor of nineteenth-century Amsterdam	91	(6)
The practice of discrimination	97	(20)
Education: An Attempt to Reform and Acculturate the Jewish Poor	117	(45)
Traditional Jewish education	119	(2)
The proposed programme of reform	121	(15)
The failure of education to regenerate Dutch Jewry	136	(26)
The pursuit of discrimination	136	(6)
Jewish resistance to secular education	142	(6)
The impossibility of acculturation and assimilation	148	(14)
Conclusion	162	(5)
Notes	167	(29)
Bibliography	196	(35)
Primary sources	196	(13)
ARA Algemeen Rijksarchief, Den Haag	196	(7)
GAA Gemeente Archief, Amsterdam	203	(2)
Newspapers and periodicals	205	(1)
Other printed primary sources	206	(3)
Secondary sources	209	(22)
Index	231