Jerusalem on the Amstel: The Quest for Zion in the Dutch Republic (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781787380080)

Seventeenth-century Amsterdam was a cosmopolitan "carnival of nations: " French Huguenots, North African merchants, Spanish Moriscos--and Iberian New Christians, formerly Jewish families forcibly converted to Catholicism, now fleeing the Inquisition and rediscovering their ancestral faith.

This is the extraordinary tale of Amsterdam's prosperous Sephardi community during the Dutch Golden Age. Trading, writing, publishing, staging plays and being painted by Rembrandt, this Na艫o (Nation) of formerly wandering Jews not only settled but thrived, enjoying high status and unparalleled freedom. At a time when Dutch Catholics were repressed and Jews elsewhere were confined to the ghetto, this community dared to nurture the 'Hope of Israel', sowing the seeds of Zionism.

Lipika Pelham charts the captivating history of Amsterdam's Jews, from their integral role in the Dutch economic miracle and the Enlightenment to a somber coda in 1942, when the Nazis herded them into the "Jewish Theater" for deportation to the camps. But this was not the death of the resilient Na艫o--Pelham also seeks out its descendants in present-day Amsterdam, offering poignant reflection on the meaning of nationhood, the Holocaust and what remains of Jerusalem on the Amstel.

Author: Lipika Pelham
ISBN-10: 1787380084
ISBN-13: 9781787380080
Publisher: Hurst & Co.
Language: English
Published: 05/01/2019
Pages: 352
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.80w x 1.70d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/04/2019
Foreword 06/26/2019