Descent

I, ABRAHAM (friends call me Bram), am the son of Jesaja, son of Abraham, who was a diamond cutter, son of Jesayas, also a diamond cutter, son of Benjamin Pays—who was married twice and had eleven children from his first and seven from his second marriage—son of Nathan Pais, son of Benjamin Paes, son of Nathan Paes. All of these ancestors, as well as I myself, were born in Amsterdam.

The reason I can trace my paternal ancestry that far back is that all of these Paises belonged to the Portuguese-Israelitic, also called the Sephardic, congregation Talmud Torah of Amsterdam and were registered in its record books, which have been preserved.

I have not been able to follow my lineage to still earlier times. It is certain, however, that my ancestors came to Amsterdam from the Iberian peninsula at some time after the 1590s, when the first Sephardic Jews reached the Low Lands (now the Netherlands and Belgium) via the Friesian town of Emden, most probably from Portugal. (The early spelling "Paes" perhaps indicates earlier Spanish origins.) Many Sephardim fled from Spain to Portugal after the Inquisition began. To this day the telephone book of Lisbon shows a long list of Paises, a name which in Portugal dates back to medieval times. In 1160, a Gualdim Pais established the Templar Order of Christ near where, in 1345, the town of Tomar was founded—by a Dom Pais, according to an inscription on his statue in the town's main square. I do not think that these gentlemen are ancestors of mine, however.

The arrival of Sephardim in the northern Netherlands marked the founding of the oldest emancipated post-Renaissance Jewish community in the Western world. Later it would sometimes be called the Jerusalem of the North.

In 1519, the humanist and scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote in a letter: "If it is Christian to hate the Jews, then we are all of us outstanding Christians." Nothing unusual about that. There were only a few Jews to hate in his environs, however. Before 1500, one finds only scarce and scattered references to the presence (and persecution) of Jews in the area now known as the Netherlands. Of the few Jews who lived there, most disappeared after 1544, when Emperor Charles V, king of Spain, who also ruled over the Netherlands, issued a decree ordering their expulsion from the region. By that time they had already suffered a similar fate in Spain.

The Spanish Inquisition, initiated in 1478, "had been originally devised for Jews and Moors, whom the Christianity of the time did not regard as human beings." It brought to an irrevocable end the golden age—the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—for Jews and Arabs living in Spain; many Spanish Jews converted to Catholicism in order to escape horrible brutality. These neo-Christians were known as Marranos, which is Spanish for swine. Most remained secretly faithful to Judaism, however; thousands were caught and lost their lives at the stake. Those who continued openly to profess Judaism were expelled from Spain by the royal edict of March 31, 1492, four months before Columbus set sail on his first voyage of discovery of the New World. Many fled to Portugal where, shortly afterward, they were again forced to renounce their faith. In 1536, the rule of Inquisition was also introduced in Portugal, causing some to flee, others once again to become Marranos.

Meanwhile, the Inquisition had extended its activities to the persecution of Christian heretics. Recall that the sixteenth century was the age of the great religious and political revolution known as the Reformation, spearheaded by men such as Martin Luther and Johannes Calvin. The new Protestantism found a large following in the Netherlands; the Inquisition reacted there accordingly, ably sustained by Philip II, son and heir of Charles V, with its customary cruel tortures and executions. These events caused the peoples of the Low Lands to rise up in arms, led by William (the "Silent"), count of Nassau, prince of Orange. In 1568, the eighty-year war with Spain began. Up till then the Low Lands had been an agglomerate of regions ruled by counts, barons, and other nobles. Now it became one nation, "the Netherlands," which initially comprised both Holland and Belgium. William, known to the Dutch as "the Father of the Fatherland," wrote that he was prepared to stake "his person and all that is in his power to commence and maintain the liberty of religion and of the fatherland."

In this favorable climate the first Sephardim settled in Amsterdam, from where the Spaniards had meanwhile been expelled. By 1612 about 500 were already living there. In 1618 they inaugurated their enlarged synagogue on the Houtgracht. It was there that in 1642 Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel welcomed William's son, Prince Frederick Henry, who was accompanied by the queen of England; also here, on July 27, 1656, the infamous ban on the Sephardi Baruch Spinoza was pronounced. Rabbi ben Israel played an active role in the readmission of Jews to England—from where they had been expelled since 1290—when in 1655 he visited London at Cromwell's invitation. Sephardim were also the first Jewish settlers in New York (in 1654).

The Portuguese synagogue of Amsterdam, inaugurated in 1675, unharmed by war and occupation, stands today as one of the world's most renowned synagogue buildings. Its services are still held in a Hebrew that, apart from small variants, is identical to the Iwrith now spoken in Israel. As I remember from my...