This handsome volume, marred only by a few unnecessary typos, presents the proceedings of the Twelfth International Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands (Jerusalem, November 2011). Under the somewhat grandiloquent umbrella of religious cultures, it groups a wide variety of topics, spanning the period from the seventeenth century to the present, and highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of Dutch Jewish historiography. Researchers working on Dutch Jewish history are blessed with an abundance of well-organized, accessible archives and libraries, rich in Jewish as well as general source material covering most every aspect of life. The study of Amsterdam’s Spanish and Portuguese Jews of the seventeenth century was the first to reap the benefits of this gold mine. More recently, other segments of the Dutch Jewish population and other periods are, slowly but surely, subjected to similarly detailed investigations. The volume under review reflects this imbalance.

In seventeenth-century Amsterdam the Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain were welcomed by the Reformed authorities with unprecedented understanding. They were tolerated more readily and more widely than any other minority in the city, including any other Christian minority. The appreciation of the city fathers went beyond the economic gains they expected to make from the commerce of these very well-connected immigrants. The Amsterdammers and the newcomers shared similar histories and an outlook born of their recent experiences. Both had suffered religious persecution, had fled their homelands, rebuilt their lives, and drew upon the Hebrew Bible for inspiration in formulating their new identities.

In “The Phoenix, the Exodus and the Temple,” Dr. Limor Mintz-Manor soberly details various symbols and texts associated with the biblical Exodus and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and applied by Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jews to their community and their own history, to describe their discovery of Amsterdam as the New Jerusalem and Holland as the Promised Land. She highlights the extent to which these Jews, more consciously than not, repurposed Iberian and Dutch Christian symbols to make their point. In “In the Land of Expectation,” Professor Matt Goldish takes Dr. Mintz-Manor’s conclusions a step further. He proposes a new intermediary stage governed by a “pre-messianic redemption consciousness,” which he believes some Dutchmen and some Portuguese Jews shared and which in his view explains the sense of kindred spirits they recognized in each other. He reminds us of the enthusiasm Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jews showed for the messianic message of Shabbetai Tzvi and the delight the leaders of the community took in comparing the Esnoga (the Portuguese Jewish synagogue) built shortly thereafter with the Temple in Jerusalem.

In building the Esnoga on a contemporary model of the Jerusalem Temple, Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jews clearly went beyond the traditional Jewish view of the synagogue as a “small temple.” On other occasions—as on their tombstones, for instance—the Portuguese Jews identified themselves with the biblical Israelites more concretely than was common in Jewish history. The sermons delivered at the inauguration of the Esnoga stress the similarities between the seventeenth-century present and biblical times of yore more than they point to or hint at any messianic future. In building the Esnoga these Jews rooted themselves in the biblical past to give their new identity a proud footing. The experience was perhaps more cathartic than redemptive.

Dr. Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld’s contribution is a perfect example of how much the plethora of sources available in Amsterdam archives and libraries yields to elucidate aspects of the largely hidden religious life of Portuguese Jewish women. Overall it does seem that these women’s commitment to Judaism was not significantly different from that of their husbands or fathers, even if the sphere in which they were allowed to practice was more restricted. Two contributions address the religious cultures of Jewish settlements in the Caribbean basin: Professor Oliel-Grausz merely tells the tale of the almost comical quarrelsomeness—she uses the Gallic “conflictuality”—of Curaçao’s Jews; Professor Jonathan Israel makes a very convincing case for the inclusion of David Nassy (of Surinam, one of the most remote Jewish communities in the world) in any study of the Jewish Enlightenment.

The remaining studies of the Dutch Ashkenazi Jews and on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have a preliminary feel about them. The best of them are first steps in a research project about to unfold.