Jerusalem on the Amstel: The Quest for Zion in the Dutch Republic

Journalist, documentary filmmaker, and memoirist Pelham (The Unlikely Settler) tells the history of Amsterdam’s Jewish community. Pelham starts with the exodus of Jews from Portugal in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, due to the threat of the Inquisition. Many Jews with the means to flee sought homes elsewhere, and a large number settled in Amsterdam; the Dutch Republic, Pelham explains, had no penal legislation against Jews and quickly welcomed the newcomers as citizens and merchants. Pelham discusses the establishment of the first Jewish congregations, the building of synagogues, and the involvement of immigrant Jews in mercantile life up through WWII. In the second half of the book, Pelham transcribes her conversations with descendants of three of the original Jewish immigrant families, their thoughts on the history of Jewish Amsterdam, and the future of the now small Jewish community still in the city. Pelham is clearly enthusiastic about her subject, but the switch from textual analysis to oral history at the halfway point is jarring. The second half of the book, however, is much better reading; Pelham is more adept at relating conversations and describing her own travels than she is at dealing with archival material. Pelham’s part history, part oral record, paints a full portrait of a little-studied aspect of European Jewish history. (May)