Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of “New Jews”
Marc Saperstein
Hebrew Union College Press
Exile in Amsterdam is based on a rich, extensive, and previously untapped source from one of the most important and fascinating Jewish communities in early-modern Europe. The leading rabbi of this community, Saul Levi Morteira (ca. 1596-1660), a master of Jewish homiletical art, was known to have published one book of fifty sermons in 1645. Recently a collection of 550 manuscript sermons in Morteira’s writing turned up in the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. After years of painstaking study from microfilms and three trips to Budapest to consult the actual manuscripts, Marc Saperstein has written the first comprehensive analysis of the historical significance of these texts (some of which were heard, as they were delivered in the synagogue, by the young Spinoza).
Starting with the preacher, Saperstein reviews the broad outlines of Morteira’s biography, his treatment by scholars, and his image in literary works; he then reconstructs the process by which the preacher produced and delivered his sermons. In Section Two, Saperstein moves on to the community, presenting information derived from the sermons about individuals and institutions in Morteira’s Amsterdam and analyzing the shortcomings of behavior and the lapses in faith criticized by the preacher. In Section Three, he shows how the sermons presented an ongoing program of adult education that mediated and transmitted the Jewish tradition on a consistently high yet accessible level to a community of “new Jews”—immigrants who had lived as Christians in Portugal and were now assuming a Jewish identity with minimal prior knowledge. Here Saperstein focuses on themes Morteira considered crucial: memories of the historical past, confrontations with Christianity, ideas of exile and messianic redemption, and attitudes towards the “New Christians” who remained in Portugal. Finally, in order to illustrate and concretize, Saperstein presents in English eight previously untranslated sermons in their entirety, with full annotation.