Nadene Goldfoot
The resettlement of the Jews in England was an informal arrangement during the Commonwealth of England in the mid-1650s, which allowed Jews to practise their faith openly. It forms a prominent part of the history of the Jews in England. It happened directly after two events. Firstly a prominent rabbi Menasseh ben Israel came to the country from the Netherlands to make the case for Jewish resettlement, and secondly a Spanish New Christian, called a Marrano, (a supposedly converted Jew, who secretly practised his religion) merchant Antonio Robles, requested that he be classified as a Jew rather than Spaniard during the war between England and Spain.
Manoel Dias Soeiro (1604 – 20 November 1657), better known by his Hebrew name Menasseh ben Israel (מנשה בן ישראל), also, Menasheh ben Yossef ben Yisrael, also known with the Hebrew acronym, MB"Y, was a Portuguese rabbi, kabbalist, writer, diplomat, printer and publisher, founder of the first Hebrew printing press (named Emeth Meerets Titsma`h) in Amsterdam in 1626.
Menasheh was born on Madeira Island in 1604, with the name Manoel Dias Soeiro, a year after his parents had left mainland Portugal because of the Inquisition. The family moved to the Netherlands in 1610. The Netherlands was in the middle of a process of religious revolt against Catholic Spanish rule throughout the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648). Amsterdam was an important center of Jewish life in Europe at this time. The family's arrival in 1610 was during the Twelve Years' Truce mediated by France and England at The Hague. In Amsterdam he studied under Moses Raphael de Aguilar.
Antonio Robles, AKA Antonio Fernandez Carvajal (c. 1590 – November 10, 1659)—in Portuguese: António Fernandes Carvalhal—was a Portuguese-Jewish merchant, who became the first endenizened English Jew. He was born around 1590, probably at Fundão, Portugal. He appears to have left Fundão on account of the Inquisition and, proceeding to the Canary Islands, acquired much property there, made many commercial connections, which led him (about 1635) to London, where he settled in Leadenhall Street. In 1649 the council of state appointed him one among the five persons who received the army contract for corn. In 1653 Carvajal was reported as owning a number of ships trading to the East and West Indies, to Brazil, and to the Levant. He dealt in all kinds of merchandise, including gunpowder, wine, hides, pictures, cochineal, and especially corn and silver, and is reported to have brought to England, on average, £100,000 worth of silver per annum.
When Menasseh Ben Israel came to England in 1655 to petition Parliament for the return of the Jews to England, Carvajal, though his own position was secured, associated himself with the petition; and he was one of the three persons in whose names the first Jewish burial-ground was acquired after the Robles case had forced the Jews in England to acknowledge their creed.
The 1640s and 1650s in England were marked by intense debates about religious tolerance, marked by speeches and tracts by radical puritans and dissenters who called for liberty of conscience. Overall the strongest political group of the 1640s and 50s, the English Puritans, had a negative view of toleration, seeing it as a concession to evil and heresy. The toleration of Jews was largely borne by the hope of converting them to Christianity.
Oliver Cromwell was an English general and statesman who led the Parliament of England's armies against King Charles I during the English Civil War and ruled the British Isles as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658.
It has also been pointed out that Cromwell held more practical beliefs. Cromwell believed that Jews could be used as skilled purveyors of foreign intelligence (which would assist his territorial ambitions). Further, toleration of Protestant sects made political sense for Cromwell as it prevented disorder and promoted harmony. He justified the readmission of the Jews using this same tolerant approach, as well as believing that it would improve trade (he saw the Jews as an important part of Amsterdam’s financial success).
Competition with the Dutch for trade and the increasingly protectionist commercial policy that led to the Navigation Act in October 1651 made Oliver Cromwell want to attract the rich Jews of Amsterdam to London so that they might transfer their important trade interests with the Spanish Main from the Netherlands to England. The mission of Oliver St John to Amsterdam, though failing to establish a coalition between English and Dutch commercial interests as an alternative to the Navigation Act, had negotiated with Menasseh Ben Israel and the Amsterdam community. A pass was granted to Menasseh to enter England, but he was unable to use it because of the First Anglo-Dutch War, which lasted from 1652 to 1654.
The status of the Jews in 1655-56 was still very indeterminate, with the Attorney-General declaring that they resided in England only under an implied licence. As a matter of fact, the majority of them were still legally aliens and liable to all the disabilities that condition carried with it.
William III is reported to have been assisted in his ascent to the English throne by a loan of 2,000,000 guilders from Francisco Lopes Suasso (1614–1685) (of the well-known Lopes Suasso family), later made first Baron d'Avernas le Gras by Charles II of Spain. William did not interfere when in 1689 some of the chief Jewish merchants of London were forced to pay the duty levied on the goods of aliens, but he refused a petition from Jamaica to expel the Jews. William's reign brought about a closer connection between the predominantly Sephardic communities of London and Amsterdam; this aided in the transfer of the European finance centre from the Dutch capital to the English capital.
Over this time a small German Ashkenazi community had arrived and established their own synagogue in 1692, but they were of little mercantile consequence, and did not figure in the relations between the established Jewish community and the government.
In February 1657 Cromwell granted ben Israel a state pension of £100, but he died before enjoying it, at Middelburg in the Netherlands in the winter of 1657 (14 Kislev 5418). He was conveying the body of his son Samuel home for burial. His grave is in the Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, and remains intact (headstone and gravestone).
As early as 1723 an act of Parliament allowed Jews holding land to omit the words "on the true faith of a Christian", when registering their title. Only once more would this allowance be made in the passage of the Plantation Act 1740, but more significantly the act allowed Jews who had or would have resided in British America for seven years to become naturalised British subjects.
George Washington and his Letter of August 1790 to the Jews of Newport:
The original of Washington’s Letter to the Hebrew Congregations of Newport, Rhode Island is small in size, but its impact on American life is immense. In 340 well-chosen words, the Letter reassures those who had fled religious tyranny that life in their new nation would be different, that religious “toleration” would give way to religious liberty, and that the government would not interfere with individuals in matters of conscience and belief. Quoting the Bible’s Old Testament, Washington writes,
“every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
He continues:
For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.1The United States of America would elect George Washington as their president in 1789. He remained in office until 1797.
The first group of Jews in the northern colonies disembarked in early September 1654, shortly after Barsimson. Barsimson is said to have met them at The Battery upon their arrival. This group was made up of twenty-three Portuguese Jews from the Netherlands (four couples, two widows, and thirteen children).
- April 26 1655– The Dutch West India Company denies Peter Stuyvesant's request to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam (Manhattan). Several Jews were part owners of the company.
In 1657, Stuyvesant, who did not tolerate full religious freedom in the colony, and was strongly committed to the supremacy of the Dutch Reformed Church, refused to allow Lutherans the right to organize a church. When he also issued an ordinance forbidding them from worshiping in their own homes, the directors of the Dutch West Indies Company, three of whom were Lutherans, told him to rescind the order and allow private gatherings of Lutherans.
Freedom of religion was further tested when Stuyvesant refused to allow the permanent settlement of Jewish refugees from Dutch Brazil in New Amsterdam (without passports), and join the handful of existing Jewish traders (with passports from Amsterdam). Stuyvesant attempted to have Jews "in a friendly way to depart" the colony. As he wrote to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company in 1654, he hoped that "the deceitful race, — such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ, — be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony."[ He referred to Jews as a "repugnant race" and "usurers", and was concerned that "Jewish settlers should not be granted the same liberties enjoyed by Jews in Holland, lest members of other persecuted minority groups, such as Roman Catholics, be attracted to the colony."
Stuyvesant's decision was again rescinded after pressure from the directors of the Company. As a result, Jewish immigrants were allowed to stay in the colony as long as their community was self-supporting, however, Stuyvesant and the company would not allow them to build a synagogue, forcing them to worship instead in a private house.
It was the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella who had requested a papal bull establishing an inquisition in Spain in 1478. Pope Sixtus IV granted a bull permitting the monarchs to select and appoint two or three priests over forty years of age to act as inquisitors. He was born Francesco della Rovere, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 August 1471 to his death. His accomplishments as pope included the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the creation of the Vatican Archives. A patron of the arts, he brought together the group of artists who ushered the Early Renaissance into Rome with the first masterpieces of the city's new artistic age. He WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SPANISH INQUISITION THAT AFFECTED AND ALL THE JEWS.
Spanish Inquisition, (1478–1834), judicial institution ostensibly established to combat heresy in Spain. In practice, the Spanish Inquisition served to consolidate power in the monarchy of the newly unified Spanish kingdom, but it achieved that end through infamously brutal methods. That included torturing Jews and killing them. It even followed Jews to Mexico.
Alexander's bulls of 1493 confirmed or reconfirmed the rights of the Spanish crown in the New World following the finds of Christopher Columbus in 1492. (It is thought that Columbus might have been Jewish, a Marrano (hidden Jew). He wrote to his son in Hebrew. We know that a few of his sailors were Jews getting out of Spain. During the second Italian war, Alexander VI supported his son Cesare Borgia as a condottiero for the French King. The scope of his foreign policy was to gain the most advantageous terms for his family.
Alexander is considered one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, partly because he acknowledged fathering several children by his mistresses. As a result, his Italianized Valencian surname, Borgia, became a byword for libertinism and nepotism, which are traditionally considered as characterizing his pontificate.
The Jews of Spain had been given the Pope's edict in 1492 of having to convert to Catholicism or leaving Spain. Many moved to Portugal, only to be given the same edict a few years later. It came from the Pope, so many Catholic countries treated Jews the same way. These Spanish Jews, (Sephardis), had the problem of finding refuge for years. It even affected the Ashkenazis as most countries came under the Pope's domain.
What was happening to Ashkenazi Jews in the 17th century? Genetic evidence also indicates that Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews largely descended from Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from central Europe and subsequently experienced high birthrates and genetic isolation.
The German Jews: In the 17th century after the 30 Years War when a large number of competative states, vying with one another in petty magnificence, began to emerge. Many of these employed Jews as factors, military purveyors, financial advises, etc, and conferred on them privileged positions as COURT JEWS, around whom new communities began to establish themselves. The Jews of Hamburg came to be of prime importance after a Marrano colony was established there in the early 17th century. Prussia (Brandenburg) attracted important new colonies like Berlin, when it began its period of expansion.
As early as the beginning of the 17th century, it was known that there were Jews living in cities of Lithuania, whose language was "Russiany" (from Hebrew: רוסיתא) and did not know the "Ashkenaz tongue", i.e. German-Yiddish. However, according to more recent research mass migrations of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, they occurred to Eastern Europe from the west who increased due to high birth rates and absorbed and/or largely replaced the preceding non-Ashkenazi Jewish groups of Eastern Europe. The numerical increase was due to mass migration of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews from Central Europe to Eastern Europe beginning from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, as well as a high birth rate among these immigrants.
In Poland, the 16th century was better for Jews than being in Lithuania. Sigismund (1500-48) and Sigismund II Augustus (1548-72) was when Jewish revenue collectors, gankers, physicians, etc. occupied key-positions in the economic and political lif. From this period onward, Poland was a renowned center of rabbinic study and its talmudic scholars affected Jewry as a whole. The economic situation became stronger.The Jews relied on their charters, and appealed for royal protection and with the mediation of the king to obtain agreements and concessions. Sigismund III (1587-1632) protected Jews from Church persecutions, especially that from the Jesuits. Then was the Council of the 4 Lands that was abolished in 1764. The Kehillot (an organized Jewish community or congregation) had joined forces to become provincial councils by being a part of this group.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Colonial_America#:~:text=The%20first%20group%20of%20Jews,widows%2C%20and%20thirteen%20children).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Fernandez_Carvajal
https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/09/05/amsterdam-rabbi-became-famous-jew-world/ideas/essay/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menasseh_Ben_Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettlement_of_the_Jews_in_England
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#:~:text=Spanish%20monarchs%20Ferdinand%20and%20Isabella,age%20to%20act%20as%20inquisitors.
